Dialogue with a skeptic

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:49 am

More from Frank...
Frank Stanford Been away a bit... btw when asked "how did life begin?" non religious people/atheists/sec-hum will give the only answer they can, "we don't really know." followed by, "but there is no evidence whatsoever that a god did it." "Which is also true. "god" usually refers to the more colloquial jud/Ch. version. If you broaden it to some sort of deistic version it could satisfy a range of atheists. God as energy, etc. which is so vague it's pretty meaningless. As for my previous post...
Frank Stanford I don’t know what subject you think I’m avoiding. I’ve nothing to avoid. I’ve been as intellectually honest as possible. I freely admit I shouldn’t have lumped those founders with Hobbe’s deism, as there are variations. I did a quick search and corrected myself. And yes Jefferson could have shifted his positions during his life, as anyone could. I also know quite well what eschatology means and it’s not necessary for a deistic position at all. But I was wrong about Jefferson in that regard. I’ll also accept whatever def. you wish for deity or divinity, as to me they are as the diff. between Thor and Superman. My own deistic allowance would be best described as a force, or energy, like nuclear – which just always was. Totally non-sentient and all that goes with that. I don’t give that the same level of power as the term “deity” or “divine” but I’ll accept whatever goes with it. But this is all a side track having nothing to do with the original point.

I have however brought up points, twice, that you haven’t addressed, and this will be the third time. And that is that science doesn’t warrant mockery and that religious beliefs, outside of a very basic deism, would imply someone is insane if the beliefs weren’t cloaked in the term “religion” as they are flat-out absurd. They sound like mythology, they follow perfectly the structure of mythology, they are used as mythology (by the political class, etc.), they are as utterly unfounded as mythology, and they function psychologically and sociologically in exactly the same way as mythology functions when believed. And that is why it is mocked, when it is. And everyone thinks their myths are correct and everyone else’s is false, and/or mockable. I could make a long list of these beliefs, but I’m sure you’re aware of many of them. Christianity falls into this list just like the others. To someone who has let go of, or never had such beliefs, Christian beliefs are as utterly foolish as I’m guessing the Hindu belief of the half elephant/man 4-armed demi-god is to you. Btw they believe he is the son of a god and a mortal woman also. The god-impregnating-virgin-mortal-woman is shared by a number of religious myths. Yet conservative Christians will freely believe in a talking bush, a talking snake and donkey, a magic tree with a magic fruit (explaining why we have cancer, etc. no less), a man-god walking on water, water turning into wine, a man into a pillar of salt, the sun standing STILL, raining blood, billions of animals on a boat made by a 900 yr. old man, and blah blah, etc. These stories are completely unfounded, only believed by the believers in the religion that teaches them, and in a age where a child knows more about the world than whomever wrote them and those who founded the religion, they are ridiculous to believe. I’m guessing you regard at least some Mormon beliefs to be utterly ridiculous and mockable as well. They are. But believers don’t see their own beliefs that way of course because it would prompt the belief to dissolve, so instead they try to rationalize them being true or demand they be proven false. Which is of course impossible, as you nor I can prove Gonesh doesn’t really exist somehow. Disproving ANY myth is impossible so the demand is pointless.



You’ve said I’ve thrown the kitchen sink and/or a hodge-podge before, but as I’ve said before, your arguments display a serious lack of understanding of the life/geologic sciences and certainly the social sciences. ALL of which utterly support evolution, including why most humans believe in mythology of all kinds, throughout history. Because you clearly don’t understand these things - and clearly don’t want to, (your regarding psychology as “junk science,” for inst. and even disparaging formal education), and your friend Gregg trying to argue with the O.E.D and every other English dictionary regarding the meaning of the word “evidence” – it seems like I’m throwing the kitchen sink because all the things I’m saying are to not only refute your position, which attacks an enormous web of connected knowledge, but I’m also trying to tell you about things that you are unaware of or don’t understand. I also know you are capable of doing so. IQ’s and educational levels are tightly negatively correlated with religious belief the world over. With ALL religions. And this isn’t an accident. Low IQ, uneducated people are the MOST religious the world over, because it requires no thought at all. Smart people have to try much, much harder to maintain their religious beliefs. This isn’t my opinion, it’s well studied and available.



Psychology and sociology explain quite well, with data galore and many studies, why people believe utterly unfounded mythological beliefs. You can learn of it yourself, but believers usually don’t want to. Or simply call it “junk” or a massive “conspiracy” or deny the use of the word “evidence.” I could support my belief in the tooth fairy the same way. This is why every major university in the WORLD, and every major museum in the WORLD, including our own national Smithsonian, all support evolution and the scientific view of the cosmos. This doesn’t refute a supreme force, but it very much refutes the “creation myths” (which is the common term) that people believe in various forms around the world.
Frank Stanford And no, I’m not blinded by science. I don’t derive my meaning for existence with science, or what matters to me the most and such. I ACCEPT the scientific method as being the best way to gain knowledge, not meaning. And science, thru its method has shown itself to beat the pants off religious belief or what a culture “believes to be true” every single time there is a confrontation. Science can’t say there’s no supreme force tho, nor does it try. And yes, the poster at the top of this post says ATHEISM, but it goes on to mock science. I explained why already. I also mentioned twice Francis Collins, an extremely well-respected geneticist, who would only change the first line with There was God and that everything happened for his reasons, but he would agree with the rest of it, because it’s the scientific perspective (albeit mocked with words like “magic.”) But you haven’t commented on Collins. Or why most scientists who ARE religious (which is a minority) agree with this. Collins knows genetics essentially proves evolution. He just regards it as God’s method of speciation. He also became religious while struggling with his parents’ deaths, and started believing in Jesus because on a hike he saw a waterfall with three water jets. Unlike what he knows about genetics, this proves nothing and is evidence of nothing – except psychology/neurology. And people become deeply religious in similar ways all about the world. Strong religious belief relieves psychological stressors that are damaging, (the evolutionary reason) but it doesn’t matter what the religion or belief is. That’s why Freud called it “religious illusion” and Dawkins calls it a “delusion.” And I looked it up, Dawkins doesn’t put his disbelief at 3.99 out of 4 (which would be 99.75%), he puts it at 6 out of 7 (85.75%) that’s an enormous difference, which makes sense, as claiming absolute knowledge of such things (including fairies) isn’t something a thinking person would do. But religious believers do it all the time. They have to, or it doesn’t really work psychologically. The illusion will fade, which is the manner in which most atheists will say they “lost their faith.” And initially it IS often quite frightening. They just started thinking about it and the more they learned the more their belief waned. Becoming an expert in one’s religion isn’t the same thing at all tho, because the knowledge is focused upon only that which bolsters the belief. Like you respect science to the point that it doesn’t threaten your belief. Imams and the like in other religions do the same.



And no, very, very, very few atheists would say they “absolutely know” there is no supreme force, they will just say there is no evidence whatsoever for one, so they believe or strongly assume, or it is apparent… that there isn’t. Were we able to verify that a man, while running just turned into a pillar of salt, or the sun stood still, or an Arab claiming to be god’s favorite, flying to Denver on a horse and instead of dying, just floating incarnate up to the sky… we’d likely change our minds. It’s reasonable to assume that stuff like this doesn’t happen and that they are simply stories written and believed a long time ago when the average believer was an illiterate goat-herder and this stuff wasn’t difficult for them to believe. It is now, though. And that’s why the best way to create believers is to teach them/brainwash them as children. The bible says this too, as it is obvious in every religion, belief system and culture. Unless they grow up and really, really think carefully about it, in which case it’s difficult to let go. It even was for me a little bit. Snakes don’t talk, horses don’t fly, there are no half-god men with 4 arms and an elephant’s head, and humans will literally believe ANYTHING, no matter how absurd, or obviously false. A conversation with a nice, educated, deeply believing Mormon will make this quite clear. Or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jew… or Christian.



Greetings from the St.Barth’s Bucket, btw. I don’t know whether you keep up with that sort of stuff or not.

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Perry
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by Perry » Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:29 am

Of all of Frank's posts that I've seen, this one is the least impressive.

It may be thus abridged:
Nuh uh!

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:07 pm

And my response so far (may be my sign-off)...
Not sure whether I'll respond further at this time (wisdom of time management - pearls vs. swine and that sort of thing) -- all I have to say for now is quod erat demonstrandum.

Re: St. Barth's Bucket -- that's cool! Are you spectating or sailing? I don't keep up with this stuff so much anymore -- my racing life is on a hiatus taking backseat to kids' sports and the like.

There is a book I'd be interested for you to read and consider -- whether it convinces you is doubtful, but I think you'd enjoy it -- I haven't read it but have heard the author debate these topics and have heard a fair bit about the book.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Chance-Necess ... 1851681167

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steve
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by steve » Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:04 am

Darin,

Did Frank ever answer my responses to him? I know he didn't do so here, but did he privately with you? He acts as if he never saw them.

It is so amusing to see a man boasting that he is among the intelligent classes (the ones who find belief in God difficult), and that his views are evidentially based, but then for him to rant like the most irrational of adolescents and to provide no evidence for anything he asserts—just rhetoric.

I am still willing to interact with him here, if he has the inclination. He claimed in his earlier correspondence to be quite knowledgable about religions, but his knowledge of what the Bible teaches (as evidenced in his list of alleged biblical events) is not very reliable, which makes me wonder how much he knows about the other religions with which he compares Christianity.
To someone who has let go of, or never had such beliefs, Christian beliefs are as utterly foolish as I’m guessing the Hindu belief of the half elephant/man 4-armed demi-god is to you. Btw they believe he is the son of a god and a mortal woman also.


If Frank does no better research on other mythologies than he has done on Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god, then any statements he makes about pagan mythologies (along with any he makes about Christianity) can be taken as those of a man who, wishing to convince others of his scholarship, in fact, is very careless about passing off "facts" that he may have received from sources no better than bathroom graffiti.

In the Hindu mythologies, Ganesha was not the product of the union of a god and a virgin human, but of a god (Shiva) and a goddess (Parvati). Variations on the myth hold that he was created (not born) by Shiva and Parvati, or by one or the other of them. This myth, like so many others that are falsely claimed to be similar to the nativity story of Christ, actually has no point in common with it. It's closest analogs are in Greek and Roman mythologies—which, likewise, bear no resemblance to the Christ story.

Even if the birth mythology of Ganesha were identical to the Christian nativity story, the fact that the Ganesha myth did not arise until the 6th century AD (over four centuries after Christianity arrived and became influential in India) would suggest that it is more likely that any such similarities were borrowed by Ganesha from Christianity than that the reverse is true.

To bring up Ganesha in some attempted comparison with Jesus shows how lacking in scholarship Frank's arguments are. Historians generally do not have any serious doubts that Jesus was a historical character about which historical records exist. Has anyone seen any credible historical reports of people who lived alongside Ganesha? Or Horus? Or Mithra?

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:39 am

nope. just dropped it.

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steve
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by steve » Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:08 pm

I hope I wasn't too rude with him. As I read my comments to him again, I feel I was a bit hard on him. He deserved it, it seems to me, but he may not have intended to engage in rigorous argumentation. I just feel that whenever a person makes outrageously irresponsible criticisms of the views of others in a public setting, that person is thereby inviting public criticism of his own views. When, in addition, he insists that he is superior, unusually smart and educated—but everything he says conveys the opposite impression—then I think it legitimate for another to try to draw out from him further statements that may better display this heretofore hidden intellectual superiority.

He thinks I disdain formal education. Well, he is formally educated, and I clearly am not. Let him demonstrate that formal education actually enhances clear thinking and the ability to reason—rather than simply an ability to blindly quote opinions of other philosophers. I am willing to be convinced.

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john6809
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by john6809 » Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:24 pm

Wow, did I enjoy this dialogue! Creation 1 - Naturalism no score!

The first one to plead his cause seems right,
Until his neighbor comes and examines him.
Proverbs 18:17

Out of context, but true in this case.
Thanks Steve.
"My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior." - John Newton

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:22 pm

Feel free to re-engage or anyone else to engage for that matter -- if you want to friend me on FB, drop me a note if you don't think I'd recognize your name. If he weren't filling young skulls full of mush in his classes (as Rush says), I probably wouldn't even bother....

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:45 pm

More...
Yeah, time management... I wrote the last one on the plane, which was an excellent time-burner. We should have a "4 sentence rule" on such matters to keep things reigned in. I'll start:

Not only have I now made the same points on the or...iginal post and asked the same questions of you 3 times with no response on them, but ironically you haven't told me what you think I'm avoiding, which is important to me bc I have nothing to avoid whatsoever. My points regarding the original post and what warrants mockery are all logically sound, extremely easy to make sense of, and true - including the correction of Dawkins' belief scale (all these points are easily researchable). I won't read the book bc I don't care enough, but I read some reviews and it appears he is an old-earth evolutionist that adds the element of god-intent/morality with "natural" selection - a position that is very much in opposition to very common evangelical positions on evolution/science, including your own I think. This actually supports one of my points that if one knows enough about science it is obvious that the world is old and an evolutionary speciation has taken place - that stories in the bible supporting otherwise (the ark, fall of man causing carnivores, etc.) are false - which is further indication that religious belief is an enormously subjective, psychological event (re examples of the massive range of religious beliefs, even were one very specific perspective actually true). Whew.

Holy cow. Apparently 4 sentence answers are possible.

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steve
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by steve » Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:40 pm

Is he referring to a dialogue with you, Darin? He certainly can't be referring to his dialogue with me. I answered him sentence-by-sentence, and left many questions for him to respond to. He seems to have dropped that line of discussion like a hot potato. I thought he had fled the country, or gone into the witness protection program or something. Tell him I (along with others) am still awaiting his answers to my questions.

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