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Does The Supernatural Exist?


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Posted

It's been inferred, but never tested or confirmed 

Why should it be?

 

How do we test the scientific method?

 

It cannot even prove that God exists!  ;)

Posted

My brand of ID deals specificalky with refuting Darwinian evolution, which, btw, is exactly the same brand of ID as Behe.

Nice try to discredit me though. You are gonna have to dig deeper.

 

But Behe ACCEPTS evolution. Even Darwinian evolution. He just thinks there is a designer influencing some of the larger shifts. In other words he thinks there is a designer influencing the path of evolution. He believes what I do. I just wouldn't call it science. Neither do most of his colleagues.

Posted

The paradigm doesn't work for you though. On the one hand you must exclaim the Creator is essential to life arising on this planet and on the other you must exclaim that we cannot posit any god or godlike force in explaining how life arose on this planet. Your own religious beliefs are in a head on colision with your scientific beliefs and you cannot intersect the two without serious damage to one or the other or both.

 

Again I have no problem with God or with science. Some 40% of all current American scientists have no problem with God or with science. You have created a false dichotomy hoop in your own mind and expected me to jump through it. I won't do it! To me science merely explains how God did/does it IE; I believe God took matter unorganized and fashioned our earth. There is nothing in LDS belief about how God took that matter unorganized and fashioned our earth only that he did. The best evidence so far is that a accretion disks formed from gravity and coalescing dust to form our sun and planets. Whether God was involved is not a subject for science.

Posted (edited)

 

See Wedge Document http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

 

Other statements of Johnson's acknowledge that the goal of the intelligent design movement is to promote a theistic and creationist agenda cast as a scientific concept. "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. Its about religion and philosophy. 

Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools".

Edited by thesometimesaint
Posted

My brand of ID deals specificalky with refuting Darwinian evolution, which, btw, is exactly the same brand of ID as Behe.

Nice try to discredit me though. You are gonna have to dig deeper.

 

Behe whatever his personal beliefs has be debunked on his Irreducible Complexity argument. He even admit that according to his ideas Astrology is a science.

 

BTW; Kenneth Miller is Roman Catholic

Posted

Behe whatever his personal beliefs has be debunked on his Irreducible Complexity argument. He even admit that according to his ideas Astrology is a science.

 

BTW; Kenneth Miller is Roman Catholic

 

I will just note that the Dembski article Rob linked to rests in large part on the irreducible complexity argument.

Posted

The same as can be designed to test science.

 

I started to type a response, but I'm not taking the bait. Your sniping is not an attraction to me.

Posted (edited)

And you know this because of what? This is as bad as Nye stating that because of gravity intellugence exists.

 

It's been observed directly, and it is also in keeping with the laws of physics 

 

Loose matter in space tends to coalesce into balls due to gravitational attraction. Get enough mass in there and things start to heat up. Pretty soon you've got a solar system.

 

SolarNebula.jpg

Edited by Gray
Posted

I started to type a response, but I'm not taking the bait. Your sniping is not an attraction to me.

 

Philosophy paper:

 

Take a stand for or against reason. Prove your point.

Posted

Why should it be?

 

How do we test the scientific method?

 

It cannot even prove that God exists!   ;)

 

The scientific method is a philosophy and is not directly testable, although of course one could point the obvious fruits of the philosophy to argue its utility. ID however purports to be a scientific theory, but since it is not testable it is not by definition scientific. 

Posted

The scientific method is a philosophy and is not directly testable, although of course one could point the obvious fruits of the philosophy to argue its utility. ID however purports to be a scientific theory, but since it is not testable it is not by definition scientific. 

 

Yes, that is the point. Rob said it was a scientific theory, and as Mark acknowledges, it's not testable, and thus cannot be considered scientific. Is ID "true" in some sense? I have no idea and don't much care. But I object when people claim it's a scientific theory.

Posted

In other words, it's OK to use mockery and offensive terms to describe religious beliefs that you disagree with. I'm really having my eyes opened here lately.

I've repented of the offensive and mocking things I've said about the LDS church in the past, but if you're right, I am in the clear after all.

It shouldn't be perceived as offensive (as in hurtful or harmful) when someone tells someone else the truth about something, or at least not when the intent is to share the truth about something good with someone else. Some people just don't like to hear someone else say they are wrong about something, but if you have something good and true to tell me about anything, then I for one want to hear it.

Just don't get offended if I tell you that you are wrong about what you think is good and true when it actually isn't good or true. Some people think that whatever they like is good even when what they like is actually false and/or evil.

Posted

It shouldn't be perceived as offensive (as in hurtful or harmful) when someone tells someone else the truth about something, or at least not when the intent is to share the truth about something good with someone else. Some people just don't like to hear someone else say they are wrong about something, but if you have something good and true to tell me about anything, then I for one want to hear it.

Just don't get offended if I tell you that you are wrong about what you think is good and true when it actually isn't good or true. Some people think that whatever they like is good even when what they like is actually false and/or evil.

 

You can tell someone you think they're wrong without being offensive. Reducing 2000 years of Christian belief to "blather" is offensive.

 

In my case, I think it abundantly clear that I don't believe in the LDS religion, but it would be rude to say what you believe is, say, "superstitious nonsense" or "blather." I wouldn't say that to you, but apparently it's OK to say that to a Christian.

Posted

Point taken. Of course, once you get past the simple "god is a supersmart guy" you run into the same problem in LDS theology. Where did these supersmart guys come from? Why does the system of creating Gods work the way it does? It all ends up in the same place as the Christian God: we don't know, it just is that way.

 

Full agreement with you there :-)

Posted

If, as the LDS posters here seem to be saying, God is an advanced homo sapien with a spatial location, in theory a spaceship can be built and a course plotted to God's location, like in Star Trek 5 . This seems to make the LDS theory testable.

 

Agreed. Highly testable. Any chance I can borrow your advanced spacecraft so I can fly you there?

Posted

Is it correct to say that in the LDS view everything that exists, including God, can be reduced to matter? That there is no supernatural, transcendent, immaterial reality?

If so, on what is the assertion that only matter exists grounded? How is the claim defended, can it be defended, without reference to Joseph Smith, testimony, or personal revelation?

 

As long as human kind can only experience via matter we will never be able to engage the question. Mormons take the belief in a fully materialistic cosmology and God from revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Posted

Indeed.  3DOP's reasonable request that such things be retracted has gone unanswered, except for Ahab's continued offensiveness.

 

I like how 3DOP asks you ("you" does not mean jk, but those who speak with such condescension of Catholic dogmas) to think of Christian doctrine: as a successful mistake.  When Mormons dismiss it as blather, nonsense, absurdity, impossibility, etc, you are basically saying that the greatest religious thinkers in the past were incredibly dumb.  That is arrogant and prideful.  Can you write a book like Summa Theologica?  I seriously doubt it.  You may disagree with it, you may disagree with its conclusions, but if you do not respect Catholic Theology as a serious intellectual pursuit with serious intellectual people pursuing it, then it appears to me that you are showing your own ignorance.

 

I disagree with Mormonism yet I do not think it is stupid.  Something can be wrong and quite intelligent at the same time (take Newton's physics, for example, or Euclid's geometry).

 

Please don't tell us our doctrines about God are stupid and non-sensical.  It is much more respectful (and intellectually honest) to call them successful mistakes.  They have, after all, nourished millions and millions of souls for nearly two thousand years. (there's some pragmatism for ya)

 

Thank you.

 

ETA:  It occurs to me that the Book of Mormon falls into the same category for me.  I don't agree with it, I don't believe it is historical nor inspired (obviously, or I would be a Mormon), but I don't think it is stupid.  It is a complex text with many intellectually stimulating ideas.  For me it is a successful mistake.

 

Well said. I respect the beliefs of others, even though I know I'm right. :)

Posted

And you know this because of what? This is as bad as Nye stating that because of gravity intellugence exists.

 

When I look in my telescope and see a planet over in yonder heaving being formed, then go a way for a week and come back and it is still being formed I can confirm that it was not formed in 7 days. When I go away for seven years and observe again and see that it is still not made I can confirm that it is also not made in seven years. I can repeat this for hundreds of different planets in the process of forming through out our universe. 

 

So, either God used a totally different mechanism to make our planet than he did all the other planets we can see bing formed in the universe, or all planets are not made by God, or God used the same process to make our planet as we did the ones being formed today and it takes a really long time.

 

When I see a planet being formed I can't see gods hand... likewise then I make a roast chicken you can not see may hand in the oven while it bakes. 

Posted (edited)

Indeed.  3DOP's reasonable request that such things be retracted has gone unanswered, except for Ahab's continued offensiveness.

 

I like how 3DOP asks you ("you" does not mean jk, but those who speak with such condescension of Catholic dogmas) to think of Christian doctrine: as a successful mistake.  When Mormons dismiss it as blather, nonsense, absurdity, impossibility, etc, you are basically saying that the greatest religious thinkers in the past were incredibly dumb.  That is arrogant and prideful.  Can you write a book like Summa Theologica?  I seriously doubt it.  You may disagree with it, you may disagree with its conclusions, but if you do not respect Catholic Theology as a serious intellectual pursuit with serious intellectual people pursuing it, then it appears to me that you are showing your own ignorance.

 

I disagree with Mormonism yet I do not think it is stupid.  Something can be wrong and quite intelligent at the same time (take Newton's physics, for example, or Euclid's geometry).

 

Please don't tell us our doctrines about God are stupid and non-sensical.  It is much more respectful (and intellectually honest) to call them successful mistakes.  They have, after all, nourished millions and millions of souls for nearly two thousand years. (there's some pragmatism for ya)

 

Thank you.

 

ETA:  It occurs to me that the Book of Mormon falls into the same category for me.  I don't agree with it, I don't believe it is historical nor inspired (obviously, or I would be a Mormon), but I don't think it is stupid.  It is a complex text with many intellectually stimulating ideas.  For me it is a successful mistake.

 

I apologize for any offense my comments on the "blather" quote may have created. I was not intending to be offensive. I do stand by the notion that many mainstream Christian religions accept that God is both ineffable and indescribable. This has been true of my learning while studying religion at university as well as while engaging with my many mainstream Christian friends. I would also add that with the exception of the LDS notion of God being embodied the LDS God is really no more describable. I think many LDS consider the Mormon notion of God more describable because of the direct idea of a physically incarnate God.

Edited by Bikeemikey
Posted

The scientific method is a philosophy and is not directly testable, although of course one could point the obvious fruits of the philosophy to argue its utility. ID however purports to be a scientific theory, but since it is not testable it is not by definition scientific. 

My point was that even the scientific method cannot be tested by it's own method and neither can ID.

 

Paradigms work for a specific purpose or they don't, but none are "true" independent of their use as a tool to accomplish a pre-defined purpose.  I would not be surprised to see ID gain more proponents, oddly enough.

Posted

Absolutely not!

 

;)

8P

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