Greetings from Oggsford!
Over at the Guardian, Anthony Grayling writes about dogma, rationality, and Dembski.
There is something one can do to fight back, by taking part in the battle that underlies it all: the battle (to put it in Voltaire’s terms) between those who seek the truth and those who claim to have it.
On one side are those who inquire, examine, experiment, research, propose ideas and subject them to scrutiny, change their minds when shown to be wrong and live with uncertainty while placing reliance on the collective, self-critical, responsible and rigorous use of reason and observation to further the quest for knowledge.
On the other side are those who espouse a belief system or ideology which pre-packages all the answers, who have faith in it, who trust the authorities, priests and prophets, and who either think that the hows and whys of the universe are explained to satisfaction by their faith, or smugly embrace ignorance. Note that although the historical majority of these latter are the epigones of one or another religion, they also include the followers of such ideologies as Marxism and Stalinism – which are also all-embracing monolithic ownerships of the Great Truth to which everyone must sign up on pain of punishment, and on whose behalf their zealots are prepared to kill and die.
They’d have done better to have pointed to the DI and the closed internet forum where IDists “discuss ID science,” and which wouldn’t allow David Heddle to bring up the evidence for an ancient earth and universe. Those places are more like where the “Jesuits” conjure up their lies for Jesus, and their tactics for ignoring our attempts to engage them, while they blatantly state that it is we who won’t engage.
That’s where the real secrecy and the likely discussions about how to lie occur. I don’t doubt that they’re lying to themselves constantly as well, and hiding their dishonesty (in plain sight) from each other, but they must be planning strategies for “calling for ID science” while failing to bother doing any ID science (does anyone think the Biologic Institute is doing much science, let alone anything that could be called ID science?).
As appalling as Dembski’s test is, it’s pretty much in the open, where the pre-determined lies are implemented. It’s pretty clear what they’re up to, restate the long-exploded claims about how ID is science (in spite of the fact that it has no theory and no entailed predictions), cry persecution because BS is called BS, and try to cozen as many as they can with the Big Lie that gains psychological cogency simply via repetition.
But see, that’s done without having to do anything “Jesuitical” beyond what has gone on behind closed doors. The repetition of the Big Lie is meant to deceive both Dembski’s students and their own future students. By teaching persecution as the only reason ID doesn’t prevail, and with that and other methods to prevent open-minded thought, they can succeed in stupefying their captive audiences, and at least some beyond.
Behind closed doors, and in secret internet forums, these facts are almost certainly discussed, however obliquely or straightforwardly this may occur.
Grayling is not convincing about the exam being “Jesuitical,” except in the implementation of what lies have been decided in secret are the ones to be taught to students. The DI and the secret forums are the properly “Jesuitical” part of ID that he should be discussing.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Exposing the Liars for Jesus™, whether they be the old style Jesuits or the creationist William Dembski for his Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics course at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary or even Donald Rumsfeld is the key to handling their aberrant behavior.
Getting the knowledge out to as many people as possible and ridiculing them while showing critical thought processes to counter their beliefs can take away the hold they try to have over the uneducated.
We’re very lucky to have Anthony Grayling in our generation.
Well, this is old territory, but it is worth saying again. Science will never be able to answer life’s most vexing questions. It will never answer the why questions.
so, the distinction that the snippet above make between inquiry and dogma could just as easily be made about making up your mind and about being indecisive.
A G.K. Chesterton quote comes to mind.
“We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end. “
Science will never be able to answer life’s most vexing questions. It will never answer the why questions. Let’s grant that this is true for the sake of argument. If science cannot answer such questions, what can? No religion can provide answers that we can reasonably believe as no religion can justify its claims. The wise thing to do would be to accept that we don’t know and may never know. The silly thing to do would be to grab hold of a religion an say that it has the answer. Wouldn’t you agree?
Chesterton was a shameless apologetic and an orthodox Christian who converted to Roman Catholicism.
Andrew, the rest of your first paragraph should have been:
…but religion never had a prayer of a chance of ever answering life’s most vexing questions, including any why question. Religion’s main purpose is to confuse, control and obfuscate.
So here, I fixed it for you.
Have a pint at Rosie O’Grady’s for me, would you? (You can tell them I sent you.)
just a post so i can get follow up comments emailed to me.
Chesterton, oh my gawd, is less than a shameless Catholic apologist. He is a minor Catholic apologist who’s only fame is to have inspired William F. Buckley’s “faith.”
Mr. English,
thank you for granting my assertion for the sake of argument. Please continue to grant.
Religion does purport to answer the vexing questions, and the place to start is the Bible. I do not say that the Bible we see today is infallible, but I do believe that it was divinely inspired and is generally correct.
Yes, it may be hard to accept that God revealed himself to the Jews and then sent Jesus to the Earth to die for our sins. However, a few assumptions may help.
1. Even if you believe in Macro-Evolution, it does not make sense to believe that the religious instinct was developed by natural selection. Evolutionists are frantically trying to come up with theorems to explain this phenomena, among others (altruism).
2. What kind of religion were other civilizations embracing during God’s relationship with the Jews? I call it the “everybody into the pool” religion, which was basically a mishing and mashing of Gods together in a polytheistic orgy. at the same time, the Jewish people stayed singularly monotheistic. Every serious religion today is monotheistic.
3. Jesus. Every honest historian would grant that he existed. Then, you are left with what C.S. Lewis called the “Trilemna”. Jesus was either insane, the Devil, or he was who he said he was. Well, after Jesus purportedly ascended to Heaven, Christianity was spread to the ends of the earth by the poor apostles who roamed with Jesus and a converted Roman persecutor of Christians. It was hardly (at this time) a tool used to control the masses.
4. Why not the other major monotheistic religion Islam? Well, to put it quite succintly, if two people came to you saying that they caught a 50-pound fish, the second one coming after seeing the first person get a trophy, who would you believe?
5. Why not scientology? Well, if the 50th person came to you saying they caught a 50-pound fish after seeing 49 people in a row get at least some recognition.
The rest of the reasons are paradoxical(“whomever wants to save his life shall lose it”, counter-intuitive(free will), nuanced(why does christian theology make sense), and require a cursory understanding of probability theory (pascal’s wager) and a deep understanding of human nature (resulting in acceptance of the doctrine of original sin, acknowledgement of the grave seriousness of the sin of pride), and is best explained by G.K. Chesterton in “The Everlasting Man” and “Orthodoxy” and C.S. Lewis in “The Problem of Pain” and “Mere Christianity”.
No, AndrewTron the theistic, dogma swallower. Nothing you said in this comment has any meaning or value at all.
Your comment is bible-thumping nonsense.
1. Already explained, sorry.
2. Pointless drivel.
3. Shit no. “Every honest historian” is your bullshit argument from FALSE authority. He is fiction from a later date.
4. You ramble on unintelligibly here.
5. Stupid, irrelevant analogy that says absolutely nothing.
As I and others pointed out, Chesterton is a useless apologetic just like you. The rest of your final paragraph is says nothing but your delusional opinion based upon conjecture.
Anybody who starts with macro evolution as if it were somehow distinct from evolution has shown himself to be not even wrong.
The rest is just you rationalizing your particular variant of superstition.
“‘Every honest historian’ is your bullshit argument from FALSE authority. He is fiction from a later date.”
This is a remarkable claim and one which, if established, should provide you with substantial fame and royalties. Do you have any evidence to support it?
Every serious religion today is monotheistic.
I’m sure the billion or so Hindus in the world really care about your opinion. Not to mention the 380 million Buddhists, the 400 million adherents of traditional Chinese religious beliefs, and the hundreds of millions of believers in various other non-Biblical religions (e.g., Shintoism, animism, etc. etc. etc.). I am trying to imagine a more arrogant, uninformed, and unsupported claim, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with one.
Like many Christians, your worldview is so narrow that you literally can’t imagine other people believing differently than you, much less actually view your own beliefs from an objective perspective.
I’m sorry for butting in and seeming uncouth, but, Andrew, are you retarded? No, I’m not joking. Really? Really?
Quite apart from the other replies here, it is quite clear from the Bible that monotheism was a fairly late development in Jewish religion. Religions do indeed purport to answer those vexing questions – many times and in many ways. The problem from where I stand is they all have equal validity and therefore cancel each other out.
Yes, they all have equal validity – none whatsoever.
Oh I just noticed you think Christian theology makes sense.
QED
ok Andrew, as per the rules of this website, which were posted not long ago, if you’ve come here to tout religion, your first duty is to tell the other commenters WHAT EVIDENCE YOU HAVE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD?
If you cannot lay out this evidence, you should go elsewhere.
Well, if you atheists are open-minded as you claim (which I dont believe even for a second), then try reading the following for starters:
– The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami
– The Field by Lynne McTaggert
– The God Theory by Bernard Haisch
There are plenty of scientific reasons to consider “God” (in a general sense of the word) as a valid possibility.
Sorry to break it to you buddy, but just as ancient religions are being recognized outdated, so is atheism beginning to be revealed as a baseless, unscientific, ideology. A new spirituality is getting born, and there ain’t much you lot can do about that. Its just a matter of time and Science will reveal “God”. Its already starting to point in that direction.
Good day!
Mr. Coyne, it seems that your only acceptable evidence for the existence of God is of the physical kind, as if God had like signed and dated his name in some obscure place. As I have tried to explain many times, science is necessarily silent on issues of the supernatural. You interpret this to mean that the supernatural does not exist. let me give you two analogies.
A deaf person could ask you to prove that music existed. If his acceptable evidence only consisted of hearing the music himself, then you would have nothing to offer him. However, if he accepted the reasonable proposition that observing other people’s behavior constituted good evidence for music,on the assumption that they were not all raving lunatics, then the amount of evidence would be incredible. You could show him a mass of people at a concert dancing and gesticulating wildly, you could show him musical notes, you could show him people’s writings about the way music has changed their life, given them hope, made them cry. You could help him feel the vibrations of the music, explaining that those vibrations were caused by the sound waves.
Also, I believe in democracy, which means that every voice should be heard. Because I believe in democracy, I believe in tradition, which means that even dead people’s voices should be heard. Because I believe in democracy and tradition, I do not dismiss the early religions, and believe that the people had a very good reason for belief in divinity. Your assertion that “My oh my, their are so many competing systems of belief” is in my mind, evidence that one of them is true, while in your mind, is evidence that the whole exercise was useless.
I think that the onus is on you to explain why you think that a whole mass of people believing one thing (the existence of the supernatural) is an excellent reason for denying that thing?
Look at that – two delusional theists, one right after the other.
Hameer – sorry, but you are not even in the starting blocks. Show some evidence, not laughable junk science.
The Self-Aware Universe: pure junk science with nothing but conjecture.
McTaggert: a journalist who is a “mind over matter” kook.
The God Theory: Summary: light is god. Another kook.
Also to you Hameer: atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. It is NOT a religion, it is not an ideology. Why can’t ignorant people like you understand such a simple concept?
Andrew Alexander, I can hear Jerry Coyne laughing at you from half a world away.
You produce stupid, irrelevant, specious analogies and listen to dead people. Your comments are the sign of a delusional personality who refuses reality.
Half of your sentences are incoherent. Have you seen your doctor recently?
>>Look at that – two delusional theists, one right after the other.<>Hameer – sorry, but you are not even in the starting blocks. Show some evidence, not laughable junk science.<>The Self-Aware Universe: pure junk science with nothing but conjecture.<>McTaggert: a journalist who is a “mind over matter” kook.<>The God Theory: Summary: light is god. Another kook.<>Also to you Hameer: atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. It is NOT a religion, it is not an ideology. Why can’t ignorant people like you understand such a simple concept?<<
Atheism is the BELIEF that there is nothing beyond the physical universe. It is the BELIEF that 'matter' is the primacy of reality and there is no transcendental realm. It is a BELIEF, not reached from any empirical data.
Bob says,
>>Look at that – two delusional theists, one right after the other.<>Hameer – sorry, but you are not even in the starting blocks. Show some evidence, not laughable junk science.<>The Self-Aware Universe: pure junk science with nothing but conjecture.<>McTaggert: a journalist who is a “mind over matter” kook.<>The God Theory: Summary: light is god. Another kook.<>Also to you Hameer: atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. It is NOT a religion, it is not an ideology. Why can’t ignorant people like you understand such a simple concept?<<
Atheism is the BELIEF that there is nothing beyond the physical universe. It is the BELIEF that 'matter' is the primacy of reality and there is no transcendental realm. It is a BELIEF, not reached from any empirical data.
NewEnglandBob, I am an agnostic in favor of the ‘God’ hypothesis. You keep on calling me a theist. Are you that dumb?
The atheists demand ‘evidence’, and when you show them scientists who give compelling reasons for atheists to re-evaluate their standing, they call it “junk science”. How very convenient!
According to Bob, “The Self-Aware Universe: pure junk science with nothing but conjecture.”
Really Bob??? Then that would make legendary scientists like Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Eugene Wigner, John Von Neumann Erwin Schrodinger, and John Bell (to name a few) as being “junk scientists” as they also entertained such notions you call “junk science”. Sorry Bob, you have just shot yourself in the foot!
“McTaggert: a journalist who is a “mind over matter” kook.”
And you are a dogmatic atheist fundamentalist.
“The God Theory: Summary: light is god. Another kook.”
Well the author is a respected astrophysicist. If there is a kook, its you Bob.
“Also to you Hameer: atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. It is NOT a religion, it is not an ideology. Why can’t ignorant people like you understand such a simple concept?”
Atheism is the BELIEF that there is nothing beyond the physical universe. It is the BELIEF that ‘matter’ is the primacy of reality and there is no transcendental realm. It is a BELIEF, not reached from any empirical data.
No, Hameer. It is NOT a belief.
This is just your opinion and it is completely wrong in every sentence, Hameer.
You need to learn what words mean and you need to learn how to post a comment instead of that mess you posted. Your delusions and ignorance combine into a laughable package.
Once again, Hameer is one of those ignorant trolls who makes up pure nonsense and crap and spews analogies out of delusional feverish ignorance.
You can not compare real scientists with the junk science crap that you recommend. You need to get an education to learn what science is about. Until then, keep your ignorance to yourself because you just embarrass yourself here. Let the grown ups converse.
Every voice should be heard. Except for atheists. And non-Christians. And historians who doubt that Jesus existed. But other than those…
“It is the BELIEF that ‘matter’ is the primacy of reality . . . It is a BELIEF, not reached from any empirical data.”
Damn! You just made me spray soda all over my monitor. I’m still coughing.
The Bible is divinely inspired?Inspired by the Magic Man?
The full-of-crap Bible is generally correct?
You’re a member of the asylum, aren’t you?
Andrew, let’s start from the beginning shall we? How about you demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that there is such a thing as a god. After that, you can show how it’s reasonable to believe that there is only 1 god. Then show how it’s reasonable to believe that the 1 god is 3 gods. Then that the 3 in 1 god supports the bible. Finally that it supports your particular interpretation of the bible.
You’ll note that appealing to the bible before you’ve shown that your god exists, is the only god, and supports the bible is question begging.
1.The first statement was enough to discount everything else you’ve said, but really now. All you do here is throw out your opinion, which you clearly mark as biased.
2.You prefer one god to many. Congrats, that’s what you’ve given yourself.
3.Nice, the way you left yourself the out of “dishonesty” to hurl at historians who may actually have the nerve to dispute your revealed truth.
“Jesus was either insane, the Devil, or he was who he said he was.” I could let myself agree that he was one of those.
4.Wow…ok.Let’s move on to 5.
5. Damnit, this is just as silly as 4, why did I move on to it? Okay, the important part is aparently that Christians were first. No wait, Jews were first. Well, Christians are kinda like Jews. Jews perfected, as Anne Coulter said. Is that it?
Look, skip the first fishy shit. All you’ve done here is say “You’re wrong and I’m right because I believe me.”
Of course you fleshed it out with even more ignorant statements and vague appeals of different types.
I don’t see you having much to offer this discussion.
The most likely thing – if Jesus existed – is that people embellished his life long after his death and elevated him into myth.
Good grief. Are you serious? ‘It does not make sense’? We call this the argument from personal incredulity, and it’s an automatic fail in any discussion.
Your cluelessness aside, evolution is a far better explanation for religion than the existence of any gods; the fact that there are so many, with astonishingly varied tenets and folklore, is a good indication that there is no common ‘truth’ underlying any of them.
Mix scientific ignorance, susceptibility to magical thinking and a tendency toward authoritarianism and you have an explanation for religion.
Well, in unsophisticated, primitive societies, at least. Today there’s no excuse.
Newenglandbob – Yes, they all have equal validity – none whatsoever.
I was being polite, as we are exhorted to do 🙂
I wonder if Andrew is in Dembski’s class?
Andrew, I want to thank you for the laughs your posts have created. I particularly got a good chuckle from:
“A deaf person could ask you to prove that music existed.”
This made me think immediately of the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” where the main character has the very dilemma of getting his deaf son to “hear” music. He does so by playing a concert in which musical notes are digitized and translated into varies patterns of flashing lights. His son finally see the beauty of his father’s music (and life).
The problem with you analogy is that the properties of sound waves are measurable. You can detect the frequency or the wavelength of the sound wave and measure it. Even a deaf person can be shown evidence of sound because it exists in the physical world and alters the physical world.
However, the same is not true for any god. Most religious people believe in prayer and if prayer works it is a manifestation in the physical world and it should be measurable. There have been studies to try and prove that prayer works. Most notably the Templeton Foundation’s study on the effects of prayer on patients after surgery. There were no positive affects for patients that were prayed for without knowing and a slightly negative affects for those that new they were being prayed for.
Actually, I think my analogy still holds.
The only reason that we are able to say that the sound of music has measurable qualities is that we link the sound of the music with the vibrations or other physical measurements (flashing digitized lights in mr. holland’s opus). However, if the deaf person insisted on HEARING the music to be convinced that music existed, then he could never be convinced.
As far as your prayer experiment goes, I know of it. However, the success of a prayer experiment would probably convince me of the existence of a devil that in it would convince me of a god. consider the ramifications. God would be viewed as a sugar daddy. Rich people would pay other people to pray for them in the hospital. People of all stripes would pray for selfish desires.
I am glad that this experiment did not work. I also do not think that in theory it could work. Prayer needs to be genuine. All prayer associated with an experiment is not genuine.
What a load of malarkey. Do you even think before making such ignorant statements Andrew?
Genuine prayer. Please! That is the statement of someone who knows he is beaten and has nothing. Moving the goalposts yet again. God made it that way…what a load of crap.
Okay, it’s true, if a the person is deaf and dumb refusing to accept physical evidence, then your analogy holds. However, if you provide physical evidence for the existence of god, I, along with probably everyone else at this blog would most likely concede and change our hypothesis on the existence of God.
Once again, thanks for the laughs with your prayer comments. I’ll make sure to tell people who are starving, diseased, dying, etc. that there prayers aren’t genuine.
Well, JD, I did not say that your prayers do not get answered because they are not genuine, but I do say that if your prayers are not genuine they have no chance of being answered.
Anyhow, if you like, you can tell them that their prayers are not genuine, and that is the reason they are still sick. Or you can tell them what you really believe, that their is no god and that prayer is useless. Which one is more comforting?
Yet another incredibly stupid statement. Guess what, no matter what, your prayers will never be answered because no one is home to hear them.
So they should pretend tha tthey work for comfort and do nothing to save themselves? How incredibly malicious of you Andrew Alexander. You want people to suffer and/or die. Nice going. Is that compassionate conservatism in action?
“you can tell them that their prayers are not genuine, and that is the reason they are still sick. Or you can tell them what you really believe, that their is no god and that prayer is useless. Which one is more comforting?”
Oddly enough, reality doesn’t care what we find comforting. I’m sure children find it comforting to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but that doesn’t make them real. Don’t confuse therapy with evidence.
Because all of you atheists here have no coherent argument, it makes it all the tougher to argue with you.
Of course, I did not bring up the fact that some of my statements might not seem “comforting” to hospital patients, it was JD. I was just responding with the point that if comfort is your measure, then I have much more comfort to offer.
I also have much more reality to offer as well.
New England Bob, you surely cannot be serious when you type these words. If you have a problem with what I am saying, please respond with intelligence. At your current rate, I cannot have a debate with you because the pattern is 1. I make an argument 2. You call me an idiot. After this exchange, someone has to raise a point that I can actually argue with.
I would love to debate you, but you have to formulate your argument in a way that does not rely on name calling.
No, there can be no debate when all you do is spew nonsense. Nothing you say is coherent and all you talk about is supernatural and superstitious woo. It is you who has no grasp of reality. Anyone who talks about efficacy of prayer while there is so much suffering in the world has no sense of reality. Your analogies are specious and there is no logic or critical thinking to what you say.
I wandered onto this site, hoping to find more support for Evolution, since the ID people are still pulling their stunts.
Instead I see a lot of bashing directed at perceived or real mistakes made by various contributors. Has the feeling of an echo chamber.
Have a nice day, everyone!
So, you just dropped in to look down your nose at everyone and from the sound of it. will never return.
You want evidence. Have you read the book? It’s jam-packed with evidence. Start there.
Dear Hempenstein,
The article by Grayling was pretty good. What got me “off-course” if you will, was that the discussion on this website did not seem to directly engage the masthead topic, which seems to be “Why Evolution is True”. I deliberately identified myself as new to the website. Why, because after decades of dealing with the public, I learned that most people who are disappointed with a service, a product, or a discussion, do not voice their opinion; they just go away.
I am familiar with Dembski; I followed the Dover case very closely and read the judge’s opinion in its entirety. Yes, I am interested in more information, particularly if I can get a better feel from others on a website who have already investigated sources of information that work for them; then I can usually spend my limited time a little more productively.
Personally, after raising four kids to be critical thinkers and also tolerant of others opinions, I see not less polarization in our society, but more. I believe that makes it difficult to constructively engage those who think differently that we think. Apparently about half of people, in the US anyway, do not support evolution; that is scary to me.
So if you inferred that I am looking down my nose at you or others, my sincere apologies; that was not the purpose of my spontaneous comment.
NavyHelo, there are dozens of articles posted here in the past that reference Jerry Coyne’s book “Why Evolution is True”.
The science and evidence is covered extremely well in the book and many discussions here tried to advance that knowledge.
Theists do come in here often and spout their religious dogma and are countered. They refuse to use reason, logic, evidence or critical thinking. Try to ignore those comments. A lot can be learned by looking back over previous posts.
Andrew Alexander, your analogy is flawed. Here is why:
The deaf person could watch a musical instrument being played – a guitar string being plucked, for example – and any number of devices would provide visual representation of the frequency emitted. This is, of course, how electronic guitar tuners work.
Likewise, the expulsion of air from the end of a wind instrument or the vibrations from a drum or a piano.
If you can provide us with an device that can specifically show some kind of response when a person prays to the Christian god – and only the Christian god – rather than when a person is simply wishing for something, or meditating, or concentrating hard, then perhaps your analogy could be considered valid.
So, no amputee has ever ‘genuinely’ prayed?
Prayer needs to be genuine. All prayer associated with an experiment is not genuine.
You really are arrogant. You assume that people in experiments didn’t genuinely want what they prayed for. Why? Because you are right and you’ll spin any story to justify why you’re right and all contrary evidence must be wrong. Did someone mention echo-chamber?
They may have very much wanted their prayer to come true, but they were wanting their prayer to succeed for very different reasons.
Apparently, Andrew, you know what they were thinking and their motives.
Unbelievably arrogant and delusional of you.
Can you tell what I am thinking right now?
So you’re saying prayers only come true when people are ‘genuine’, but they’re only ‘genuine’ under certain conditions – and suffering by having lost one or more of your limbs doesn’t meet the criteria?
You appear to consider yourself an expert on prayer. Care to list the specifics of which kinds of prayers work and which don’t, and precisely what differentiates ‘genuine’ from ‘non-genuine’ prayer? Oh, and you’ll also need to provide some citations for when you obtained this information, and how you checked its validity.
Or are you just making it up as you go along?
No I am saying that if a prayer is not genuine, it has 0% chance of coming true.
If it is genuine, then it at least has a chance. This is a very easy point to see.
As usual, Andrew evades the questions and posts irrelevant nonsense that are pointless.
Andrew did not answer Wowbagger, Brian English or my comments. He has nothing rational to say because his statements are based on a house of cards of woo. He has nothing intelligent to say here.
OK Andrew, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.
1.Prayer never works if you test it?
2.Prayer works only occasionally if you don’t test it?
I have a question. How could you possibly ever justify prayer under those conditions? You can’t ever say it worked because that would be testing it. It seems to me to be a classic case of confirmation bias. When you say something was the result of prayer, there’s not way of testing that. When you pray sincerely for something and it didn’t happen, that doesn’t count against prayer. It’s untouchable. I believe that’s epistemological wankery otherwise known as wishful thinking.
Andrew, any reasonable i.e. non question begging evidence for the existence of any god or spirit yet?
Dear “NEWENGLANDBOB”
Talk about feeling stupid! In my haste to digest the thrust of the Anthony Grayling’s article and comments about it, I missed the fact that this website refers to a specific book, not just the generally-accepted principle that evolution is true.
Actually first became cognizant of Mr. Coyne’s work this AM when his book was favorably reviewed on another evolution website. Now that you have seconded that recommendation, I have used my lunch hour to order it from a local bookseller.
Thanks again for the tips.
NH: Sorry for the touchy reply above – we get our fair share of creationists here, and spend time with some of them trying to patiently explain various points, which are almost universally ignored. Those who appear to be making just make a single post trigger similar responses. In any event, great to hear you’ve ordered WEIT!
As further indication of its caliber, if you haven’t already seen/heard it mentioned, it recently appeared on Newsweek’s list of 50 titles “For Our Time” (number 39; just Google Newsweek 50 books). This was not summer reading list, or a list only of recent books – Longfellow, Faulkner, Kipling, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and Thoreau are there as well.
From what you’ve written above, unless you’re looking for evidence at the molecular level, which was purposely left out, I think you’ll be very pleased.