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861  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 25, 2014, 02:56:54 PM
As the eternal party pooper, I'm afraid I have this to say on the matter: Proof exists for anyone who wishes to have it.
Proof is the succulent, seasonless, ever-present fruit hanging from the tree of knowledge. From newborns to centenarians, all are equally well-equipped to pluck it with ease  Cheesy

Interesting thing is, few seem to recall that it was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Smiley

...I doubt that.  You're talking about a story written within the first couple of pages of the best selling book in the world.

862  Other / Off-topic / Re: Let's Help Destroy Google on: November 24, 2014, 06:55:06 PM
@247casino

Do you think it's possible for you to respond briefly to comments instead of filling a whole page?

Makes it more easy to read for people, quite hilarious battle between you an b!z  Cheesy

No battle here, biz is a failed nyc injury lawyer that the owner of www.1leads.com laughed at in a pm from my account

Biz thought his lousy 100K was a big deal and the guy that has access to my account since he is a partner in some other projects with me told him, you need 200K a month to really penetrate google for sem/seo

Now he's criticizing me as the owner of www.1leads.com and I'm not

But I sure will admit to having a piece of www.1Player.com

We specialize in high stakes tables, biz doesn't like our site

boo hoo

fuck biz

he's a broke ass jew lawyer that won't even admit to being a jew from nyc

note the usage of MEH in his posts, it's a yiddish term, so he won't even admit he's a jewboy wearing a beanine from nyc

haha

Based on your posts, I can conclude two things beyond a reasonable doubt:

1) Your sense of self-importance and total awesomeness is over-exaggerated.

2) I will never be using your casino.
863  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 24, 2014, 03:23:35 PM
Thanks for your encouragement, BitChick. So far, in this forum, it is really fun to be able to show people the truth. They are basically nice people. Just look at the things S.Boxx has to say. His (her?) encouragement and concern are wonderful, even if he/she is a little backward in the way he says it.

I am happy for your successes in India. I haven't had the opportunity to do something like that... travel with an outreach or medical group. Maybe I simply haven't made my opportunity.

Lots of churches say that you can't receive Jesus without hearing God's Word. Personally, I am coming to believe more and more that it is in the heart through nature that you first hear Jesus... not the Bible. What I mean is this.

If God hadn't held back the destruction when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, everything would have collapsed back then.
We don't know what it would have been like to have children in a sinless state, because it never happened.
Even though little children and fetuses have sin in them (they are physically flawed in their DNA), it is the power of Jesus that they are living in from their start.
In other words, all people hear Jesus throughout their fetal life, and for the first few years as children, even though they are gradually being corrupted by sin, and the hearing is becoming dull.
The point is that ALL hear Jesus, not only those to whom the Bible is read (although most reject who have not heard the Bible because they haven't received the confirmation of God working through His Word, and they have become deaf to their original fetus and little-child training from nature).

I know that I have opened up a lot of folks in this forum to alternative ideas. It's evident from the way some of them pick on me. Oh well. They are the ones that have to live with themselves.

Thanks, again. And blessings on YOUR work.

Smiley

Oh God.

Quote
So far, in this forum, it is really fun to be able to show people the truth.

You realize it's a contradiction to have faith in something and then claim something is 100% true, right?   If you have faith in something, that specifically means that you aren't (and can't be) 100% certain that it's the truth.

Epic fail.

You and I both know that the primary reason why you spread the "truth" is because you're seeking recognition for something.  The truth is just never as fun, interesting, or beneficial unless someone else believes the same things that you do, am I right?  This is a rhetorical question.  But actually, you basically confirm this yourself when you then say:

Quote
Just look at the things S.Boxx has to say. His (her?) encouragement and concern are wonderful, even if he/she is a little backward in the way he says it.

You don't care one bit whether people know the "truth" about anything.  You're interested in reactions.

Quote
Maybe I simply haven't made my opportunity.

God probably doesn't want someone running around preaching a bunch of nonsense all over the world  Roll Eyes

Quote
I know that I have opened up a lot of folks in this forum to alternative ideas. It's evident from the way some of them pick on me. Oh well. They are the ones that have to live with themselves.

You have a really hard time understanding the difference between correlation and causality.  We're not picking on you because you have exposed us to alternative ideas, we're picking on you because you're proud to be wrong about things and proud to be a complete asshole to others because they don't believe the absurd things that  you do.  

But yes, your ideas are very "alternative"...like if there was an "alternative" reality with an "alternative" form of logic that is mutually exclusive from our own.
864  Economy / Goods / Re: [WTB] high end men's timepieces on: November 21, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
I've got one of these in gently used condition that i'd sell
http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Movado-Valor-Mens-Black-Dial-Tungsten-Watch/612804/product.html

absolutely love it, but no one around here seems to able to appreciate what a movado is.  PM if you are interested for pricing

That is a nice watch, and I do appreciate it.. but sadly I only collect watches that hold their value..

Movado is in the same league as tissot.... mass produced watches for the average guy.....

I'm looking for something a little more high end... but maybe this thread will help you sell that movado...

thanks for sharing...

I'm 100% with you on this.  I would never buy a high end watch that can't also act as an SOS signal at a candlelit dinner table.

Free bump, best of luck with your search!
865  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 10:50:45 PM
Seeing oneness in the words god and universe is trapping me?

Is this still the joint from a couple years ago?

If you hold awareness and are able to conclude that you exist, you can also conclude that the universe exists.  If you can conclude through your awareness of your existence that the universe exists, you can conclude that the universe is aware.

Is god not an omnipresent form of consciousness?  Ie, the aware universe your awareness concluded to exist?

Dank, you might find this useful reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

Quote
Analysis paralysis or paralysis of analysis is an anti-pattern, the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome. A decision can be treated as over-complicated, with too many detailed options, so that a choice is never made, rather than try something and change if a major problem arises. A person might be seeking the optimal or "perfect" solution upfront, and fear making any decision which could lead to erroneous results, when on the way to a better solution.

The phrase describes a situation where the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits that could be gained by enacting some decision, or an informal or non-deterministic situation where the sheer quantity of analysis overwhelms the decision-making process itself, thus preventing a decision. The phrase applies to any situation where analysis may be applied to help make a decision and may be a dysfunctional element of organizational behavior. This is often phrased as paralysis by analysis, in contrast to extinct by instinct (making a fatal decision based on hasty judgment or a gut-reaction).
866  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 10:40:41 PM
Seeing oneness in the words god and universe is trapping me?

Is this still the joint from a couple years ago?

If you hold awareness and are able to conclude that you exist, you can also conclude that the universe exists.  If you can conclude through your awareness of your existence that the universe exists, you can conclude that the universe is aware.

Is god not an omnipresent form of consciousness?  Ie, the aware universe your awareness concluded to exist?

I've gotten progressively less heady with my philosophy. It's not so much that I believe anything different, but rather that the approach that I used to take (much more similar to yours) left me feeling frustrated, and I never made much progress with anyone.  Usually, the only people I impressed were those who wouldn't be able to tell the difference between fact and fantasy anyway, or women who swoon for heady guys, and I can tell you they weren't listening to me because of my wisdom.

I used to think that just by preaching about philosophy and meditation and truth with a (sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious) tone of subtle arrogance that people would go, "Wow! You really know something I don't! Teach me!"  Well, it didn't.  My intentions were mostly good, though of course there was some desire to seek recognition for my efforts of learning and practice.  I genuinely wanted others to benefit from what I knew.  Edit: I still act this way from time to time, as evidenced by my posts here.

Then I realized after a few years that not only was I not getting anywhere with people, but I was deluding myself into thinking that what I was doing was actually useful.  Perhaps at times it was as I believe my style of presenting information appeals to a certain type of person, but I realized that there were a lot more productive ways that I could be spending my time, facilitating good and spreading good vibes.

People just don't typically get good vibes from people who keep spouting the same thing like a broken record, no matter how true or important it might be.  Find another method.  Yours isn't working.  
867  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 09:39:14 PM
God = all.  Universe = all.

Does the universe exist?

Are you aware?

Why did you make this post?  I'm genuinely curious as to what benefit you think this post serves.

My responses:  Okay.  Okay. Yes. Yes.

...So?

Edit:  Dank, I think you're addicted to this type of philosophizing, like a drug.  I don't believe it's liberating you from anything, but trapping you further.
868  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 09:30:13 PM

Now, children. I know it hurts a little when you find out that there isn't much (if any) substance to the things that you believe. But YOU ARE ALIVE! You have the opportunity to shake your childishness off, and to move ahead in the direction of REAL TRUTH.

Don't fail me now. I have pointed you in the direction where you can find TRUE life, and love, and fulfillment. Grab hold of the things I have shown you. Run with them. LIVE!

There were those in this forum who told me it was useless to try to save you. Others suggested that I was only casting my pearls before the swine. But rather than simply accept their words, I pressed on, in the hopes that I could somehow show some of you the way. And I have succeeded with some.

Don't fail yourselves, now... now that you are so close to finding out the truths of the Bible. Jesus would love to have you with Him in His kingdom. Throw off the foolishness of your childish ways, and grow up into eternal life!

Smiley

You sound absolutely ridiculous.  There's no possible way that you speak like this in person.  It's phony and disingenuous and you know it.

I also expect you to apologize for your condescending attitude.  You're not fooling anyone into thinking you're superior with your "Now, children" nonsense.  The only reason you're resorting to the "childish" tactics is because you have nothing constructive to say to support your arguments.

I'm taking (i.e. wasting) my time trying to actually respond point-by-point to your posts.  Furthermore, while you're far more deserving of a condescending attitude than others here by virtue of your horrible social graces and your delusional narcissism, I'm genuinely trying to educate you here and help you learn something.  I assume the reason nobody else is doing the same thing is because everyone realizes you're as dense as a concrete wall within a few seconds of listening to you.

That being said, I would appreciate if you would honor my posts with the same respect that I honor yours (when you're just spouting ignorance rather being a complete jerk, that is).  You really ought to consider the fact that you might be correct in your beliefs about God and Jesus, but have a completely irrational basis for those beliefs.  As it turns out, you do, and I've been explaining why.  It isn't a matter that's up for interpretation.

One of the worst qualities in a person is when they absolutely refuse to accept they're wrong in spite of black-and-white evidence.  If there actually are people who were converted by you, I feel especially sorry for them because you have misled them with not only information that is false, but is so plainly and absurdly false that I have trouble finding the words to express how appalling it is.   What's even more appalling is that you are proud of it.

To summarize, you're proud to be wrong, proud to misinform others, proud to be ignorant and unwilling to adapt to new information that doesn't mesh with your (flawed) beliefs about science and logic.  You're proud to be insulting, condescending, and then accuse others of acting childish when no better description could be ascribed to your own self.
869  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 04:48:36 PM
There is no proof that the Bible is the only printed word of God.
If you question BADecker on the integrity of the Bible, he will freak out because you are attacking his dogma.
BADecker is not willing to discuss anything that could contradict his dogma, and he likes it that way.
Decksperiment wrote several pages trying to get this point across, among others...

Huwt youw itty, bitty, feewings, did I?   Grin

I pierced your dogma.

Life is about, at times, feeling comfortable. So, since I am not adverse to you feeling comfortable, I won't object to your statement. But, so that I feel comfortable, neither will I accept it.

Smiley
No need to blindly accept what I say; do your own thinking, and consider the FACT that Jesus never put pen to paper, that Paul never was a "follower of Christ", that Creationism cannot actually explain the anomalies mentioned.

Quote from: Ayn Rand
Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: “Who am I to know?” he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”

You can hardly feel good about yourself if you are wandering around in a self-induced mental fog.

Does somebody pay you to write this stuff?   Grin

No amount of smileys will hide the fact that you are extremely sensitive to this subject matter and result to passive aggression when you no idea how to respond  to someone.

The idea is to get people to be saved, even atheists, even new agers. Jesus suffered a lot on the cross that day. He did it for me. He did it for you. He did it for everyone. He doesn't want anyone to be lost.

How does one respond with the truth while, at the same time, not alienate? bl4kjaguar might be lost, but the fact that he is still answering shows that there is hope. Notice that his answers don't have much of a thread of logic to them. But he still tries. There is still hope.

Smiley

I hope you're not implying that you're the one responding with truth.  You aren't.  Your threads intentionally avoid logic, and you make no indication that you want to learn why your arguments carry absolutely no weight.

All of your posts in this entire thread could have been summed up as "I believe in the Bible, no matter what" and it would carry just as much weight as everything else you've said.   Actually, it would carry *more* weight because it would be one of the only factual things that you've stated.

Quote
Notice that his answers don't have much of a thread of logic to them.

Project much?
870  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 04:16:43 PM
There is no proof that the Bible is the only printed word of God.
If you question BADecker on the integrity of the Bible, he will freak out because you are attacking his dogma.
BADecker is not willing to discuss anything that could contradict his dogma, and he likes it that way.
Decksperiment wrote several pages trying to get this point across, among others...

Huwt youw itty, bitty, feewings, did I?   Grin

I pierced your dogma.

Life is about, at times, feeling comfortable. So, since I am not adverse to you feeling comfortable, I won't object to your statement. But, so that I feel comfortable, neither will I accept it.

Smiley
No need to blindly accept what I say; do your own thinking, and consider the FACT that Jesus never put pen to paper, that Paul never was a "follower of Christ", that Creationism cannot actually explain the anomalies mentioned.

Quote from: Ayn Rand
Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: “Who am I to know?” he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”

You can hardly feel good about yourself if you are wandering around in a self-induced mental fog.

Does somebody pay you to write this stuff?   Grin

No amount of smileys will hide the fact that you are extremely sensitive to this subject matter and result to passive aggression when you no idea how to respond  to someone.
871  Other / Off-topic / Re: Seals are raping penguins and scientists don't know why on: November 21, 2014, 05:03:41 AM
Quote
In one incident, a seal attempted to copulate with a penguin, then ate it.

Now this is an interesting statement that raises many important questions.
872  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 02:43:11 AM


Try telling that to all the kids in grade school, high school, college, medical school, etc., who are virtually forced to study evolution as though it were some kind of logical process, if not the absolute truth behind all life.


Quote

Probably, yes. But why would a religion that tries to ignore the whole idea of religion even mention anything about religion at all?


Quote
No? My idea isn't to bolster arguments. My idea is to set down some points that will help you and others clarify for yourselves - that is, instigate valid internal arguments within yourselves - about why or why not God or evolution or something else might be valid. I see from your discussion that it is working. I also see that you have very subtle ways for evading the point.

Smiley

1)  Evolution is misunderstood if it's proposed as a cause for life itself.  No teacher or professor or scientist has any business associating evolution with the cause for life.

2)  The scientific method isn't a religion, it's a theory about knowledge acquisition, i.e. it is a specific method used to acquire certain types of knowledge.  Religion is not a method of anything, but instead is a belief system. 

3)  What point am I evading?  I'd like to know so I can respond to it directly.
873  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 21, 2014, 02:29:42 AM
Here's a nice article about scientific hypotheses: https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Hypotheses_Forget_About_It

looks like it is very interesting reading material.  sadly, I don't have a membership. if you would be so kind to PM me a copy and paste, it would be read and appreciated.   Wink  I won't tell if you don't.

You know, it's strange.  I was able to access the entire article online, but when I clicked my own link that I pasted I couldn't access it either.

Here's the quoted text, again I have no idea why it was accessible in full via Google but not upon clicking the hyperlink:

Quote
Hypotheses? Forget About It!

So says our philosophical science correspondent Massimo Pigliucci.

Newton famously said “hypotheses non fingo,” meaning, “I frame no hypotheses” – a rather startling position for a scientist to advocate. Isn’t science precisely the activity of constructing and testing hypotheses about the natural world? Certainly this has been the view of influential philosophers of science such as Karl Popper. Popper said that scientific hypotheses can never be proven correct, but they can be falsified, that is proven wrong. For Popper, science progresses through the successive elimination of wrong hypotheses. Many scientists proudly ignore philosophy, but Popperian falsification is one of the only two philosophical concepts you are likely to find in an introductory science textbook. (The other is Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigms. This is rather strange, since Kuhn was a fierce critic of Popper.)

I came across a delightful paper by David Glass and Ned Hall – the first a biomedical researcher, the second a philosopher – published in a rather unlikely place, the journal Cell (August 8, 2008). As its title states, the main point of the paper is to provide readers with ‘A Brief History of the Hypothesis’. This makes it a must-read for young (and perhaps not so young) scientists. But what caught my attention in the paper is Glass and Hall’s suggestion that, contrary to Popper’s conception of science, scientists would be better off replacing hypotheses with two other guides to their research: questions and models.

Let me explain. Half of the problem with hypotheses was mentioned above: there is no way to conclusively prove a hypothesis correct, because there is always the possibility that a new set of observations will disprove it. The bad news is that, unbeknownst to most scientists, philosophers have also made a very compelling argument that hypotheses cannot be decisively disproved either. Falsification doesn’t work, because one can always tweak the hypothesis enough to accommodate the initially discordant data, or question some of the ancillary hypotheses, or even question the accuracy of the data itself. (This is not as far fetched as it may seem given the complexity of the machinery used nowadays to produce scientific data, from particle colliders to genomic sequencers.)

What now? Glass and Hall advise us to go back to the basics. Science is really about asking questions, they suggest: “it would seem that a question is the appropriate tool because the question, as opposed to a hypothesis, properly identifies the scientist as being in a state of ignorance when data are absent.” Right! I became a scientist because science has the power to answer questions about nature. Questions can be formulated in either open-ended or very specific ways, and both ways can provide guidance for fruitful empirical research. Besides, as Glass and Hall also note, in many fields of modern science one would not even know how to begin to formulate sensible hypotheses. For instance, in the field of genomics, it’s easy to ask questions: how many genes are there in the human genome? How much does the human genome differ from that of other primates, and in what ways? But what sort of hypotheses could one possibly formulate to replace such questions?

Genomic research is highly explorative, so it is natural to base it on well-thought-out questions. Even when research is more advanced and less explorative, Glass and Hall contend that hypotheses still will not do, as they can’t be proven and they can’t be disproven. Instead, here we need models of the phenomena under study.

Unlike a hypothesis, a model is constructed after some of the data is in, and then the model is used to predict new data. A model can be statistical or directly causal in nature, mathematical or verbal, but its predictions are probabilistic and always subject to refinement.

It is the very dynamism of models which makes them powerful intellectual tools in the scientific quest for knowledge. Glass and Hall write: “eliminate the ‘hypothesis’ term and substitute the ‘question’ for settings where experiments are performed before sufficient data exist, and the ‘model’ for situations where the scientist is working with sufficient data to produce a construct that can be tested for inductive [predictive] power.”

In fields which rely heavily on statistical analysis, such as biology and the social sciences, some scientists have already moved away from hypothesis testing to model comparisons. It used to be that statistical tests were rigidly set up to pit a simple (some would say simplistic) ‘null hypothesis’ (nothing’s happening) against an alternative, catch-all hypothesis (there’s something going on here…). Slowly but surely, people have figured out that this is not particularly productive, and recent years have seen a steady increase in the use of statistical software that can pit several alternative models against each other, with analytical methods that can tell which ones are more likely, given the available data.

The funny thing about all this is that a few years ago the US National Science Foundation made a ‘philosophical’ move in their guidelines for grant proposals. They explicitly asked scientists to do away with questions (the traditional way to frame grants) and to replace them instead with the more ‘solid’ concept of hypothesis. So now a prospective grant applicant can be seriously penalized if she does not put her proposal in a way clearly contradictory to Newton’s dictum (I venture to say that citing Newton as a reference will not help). But this is what happens when scientists pay so little attention to philosophy that they are a few decades out of date with the philosophy of science literature. Maybe we should mandate Philosophy of Science 101 for all graduate students in the sciences.

© Dr Massimo Pigliucci 2009

Massimo Pigliucci is Chair of the Philosophy Department at City University of New York, Lehman College, and is the author of several books, including Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations Of Evolutionary Biology (Chicago Press, 2006). His philosophical musings can be found at www.platofootnote.org.
874  Other / Off-topic / Re: Yoga and meditation can reshape your brain on: November 20, 2014, 10:30:37 PM
http://thespiritscience.net/2014/11/05/yoga-meditation-can-reshape-your-brain/

Quote
You can physically change your brain through Yoga and Meditation.  Science has found Neurobiological evidence to support what meditation experts have been claiming for years; That people are healthier and happier when they meditate.

“Neuroscientist Sara Lazar’s amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress."

The area of the brain that controls emotions, empathy and compassion actually grows in the brain when you practice yoga and meditate.  The region of the brain connected to our feelings becomes bigger and there are more connections there.  That is why meditators are more able to connect with the world around them, love everyone and are more able to find happiness.

Also the parts of the brain that respond the most to stress gets smaller with meditation.  This means that anxiety and depression naturally fade with a meditation practice.

How many of you incorporate meditation in your lives?  Is there anything you find helpful during meditation?

Namaste

Yes, I find this to be very true.

When I practice yoga, it's like "going home" - getting back to my roots, in a sense.
Some also describe that as "being grounded".

This is a great description that I identify with strongly.  When I meditate, it feels remarkably natural and always has since the first time I tried almost a decade ago.  I don't mean that I was naturally good at it, but more like that whenever I meditate it always feels like exactly what I should be doing. 

It's wonderful to just 'be' and let that be enough to satisfy you Smiley
875  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 20, 2014, 10:20:58 PM
Here's a fantastic article about theories, and about how various disciplines (i.e. philosophy, and its abstract and empirical children, mathematics and physical science respectively) differ in their capacity to explore different kinds of theories.

Go here: http://ctmu.org/ and click "here" at the end of the first bullet point to get to the article.

I guarantee that religious and scientific-minded alike will learn something from reading it.
876  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 20, 2014, 10:14:14 PM
These responses are exactly the thing that I am talking about. Point them in the other direction. Point them at evolution, big bang, and old-age universe.

Let me pick on evolution. Evolution suggests that things have gone from a very simple state to an extremely complex state over a long period of time. What do we see in the universe and nature around us? Let's list some of them. We see:
1. Extremely great complexity;
2. Cause and Effect in everything;
3. Continual entropy;
4. No evident method for evolution to be happening;
5. A fossil record that shows that in the past there were more than 3 x the number of species than we see alive today;
6. A fossil record that doesn't conclusively show evolution.

Putting all these things together as simply stated above doesn't prove God. Yet these things are part of the reason that men of science have to twist math and nature in laboratories just to get something that they can suggest might appear to be evolution.

That's human laboratories, not nature's "laboratory." They aren't the same. Men need to make very controlled "situations" to get what they want. Nature shows what exists.

The 6 things mentioned above make two very apparent points:
A. We simply don't know for a scientific fact about how things came into being. We are still at base one;
B. Of all the things that we can logically surmise about where we come from, God in all strong probability holds the top position.

Although nature may not prove God from the things listed above in the simplistic form they are listed, they point to God more than any other popular idea, and maybe more than any other idea whatsoever. It's self evident.

Smiley

Okay, so, let's look at this statement you make:

Quote
Putting all these things together as simply stated above doesn't prove God. Yet these things are part of the reason that men of science have to twist math and nature in laboratories just to get something that they can suggest might appear to be evolution.

While I'm not suggesting that there haven't been poor experimental methods (and, by the way, experimental methods are different from the more general scientific method), and while I'm also not suggesting that some scientists mistakenly commit unnecessary fallacies by intentionally trying to fit data to match a hypothesis, can you point to a single example of this with regards to evolution?  I'm not saying they don't exist, but I have the impression that you're saying things without ever having the awareness to recognize specific examples as they arise.

If you can't find an example with regards to evolution, then I'll accept another concrete example of where "men of science...twist math and nature in laboratories."

Quote
The 6 things mentioned above make two very apparent points:
A. We simply don't know for a scientific fact about how things came into being. We are still at base one;
B. Of all the things that we can logically surmise about where we come from, God in all strong probability holds the top position.

A)  Correct, we have no concrete scientific facts about how things came into being.  Fortunately, that has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.  Evolution is *only* concerned with exploring the biological and environmental processes that lead to adaptive changes in the genome.  It has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, nor does it ever attempt to explain the origin of life.  Evolution also makes no comment about religion.

B)  I, too, believe God is the most probable and logical cause of the Universe, but your arguments in no way support this.  Your reasoning continues to be shockingly horrible.  You can be correct for the wrong reasons, and you have demonstrated more wrongful reasons to believe in something than I imagined possible from someone who clearly can read, speak, and write the English language.  Simply put, you haven't put forth one legitimate argument for the necessary existence of God, nor have you put forth one legitimate counterargument to evolution, except in a few recent posts where you have obviously begun piggybacking off the ideas of others.
877  Other / Off-topic / Re: Would you sell your soul for BTC? on: November 20, 2014, 07:17:29 PM
I remember seeing at least one or two people selling their souls on this forum for BTC a couple years ago.  It's already happened lol.
878  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 20, 2014, 07:16:07 PM

Good post, although the only thing I would say is that you should remove the "(yet)" from your post as empirical methods of study can never possibly conclude about that which cannot be observed.  For that we have philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics.

Oh come man. Have some faith. (pun intended) New branches and disciplines of science are regularly being created as time goes by.  And also lots and lots of theories are postulated in science not by what we can see, but by what we can't see.  If I remember for a long time that was the case with dark energy and dark matter, thus the "dark" in their name.  Just because it isn't directly observable doesn't mean science can't dabble around the subject and rule out other reasonable possibilities one by one.    

You're speaking here to the difference between the generally inductive process of the scientific method as a whole vs. the deductive process that occurs during individual scientific experiments.   Yes, you are correct that many scientific hypotheses are about unobservable phenomena, but those scientific hypotheses are always based upon the results of other empirical observations.  Those observations then lead us to inductively hypothesize about what caused the events that are observed.  

For example, when an apple falls from a tree and we see other things falling, we can inductively hypothesize that there is likely some unobservable law (gravity, as it turns out) responsible for these allowing these objects to 'fall'.  From that hypothesis we deduce an experimental design to test the strength of our hypothesis which is either accepted or rejected.

The observation of falling objects to create the hypothesis of a law that allows objects to 'fall' was, in itself, an informal experiment.  The hypothesis of this informal experiment is that if something is dropped then it will fall, and we've already tested that hypothesis informally because, on Earth, we always see things fall when dropped.  

What science cannot do, however, is test a purely abstract hypothesis, i.e. a hypothesis that itself was born out of non-empirical ideas.  For those hypotheses, we have the aforementioned, more abstract disciplines I spoke of earlier.  God as a hypothesis is purely abstract, and while such hypotheses are beyond the scope of science, they are not beyond the scope of philosophy.  From a philosophical standpoint, all you need to do to prove the existence of God is to ascribe a definition to God and logically argue whether such an entity must exist by necessity (or, conversely, that it cannot possibly exist, or perhaps even that it is not possible to conclude whether such an entity exists.

Speaking to my previous sentence, I personally like the approach taken by Christopher Langan who, instead of trying to inductively exploring the idea of God based upon evidence or trying to deduce God from a series of axioms, seeks to first remove layers of logical complexity in the Universe and see what remains when there are no more layers left to remove.  As it turns out, taking this approach, the case for God becomes incredibly strong.

Here's a nice article about scientific hypotheses: https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Hypotheses_Forget_About_It
879  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 20, 2014, 05:23:01 PM
This whole debate is stupid.

1. Human science is soooooo premature that humans don't even know how big the universe is, how does gravity and electromagnetism work and many other very very simple and basic parts of physics.  If science can't even understand the physical world that is observable, it really has no business commenting on the unobservable (yet), and anybody trying to use it to prove or disprove God's existence probably doesn't realize how silly they look.  Like a monkey trying to understand the complex grammar of a Shakespearean play when all it knows is sign language signs for simple verbs and simple nouns.  

2. Science at this early stage is inevitably usually wrong about most things that have been "proven".  Scientist are always right in their own mind until 10 or 50 or 100 years later another scientist comes along and shows that were magnificently wrong in a few assumptions.  

I am not arguing that there is or isn't a God here.  What I am trying to say is using today's science to discuss this topic is about as stupid as using first century astronomy and mathematics knowledge to explain why the Earth is bigger than the sun, why the Earth is flat, and just how far away the sun is as it rotates around the Earth.

1) Correct, science is not equipped to conclude about that which cannot be observed.  So yes, it's basically an irrelevant thread as there never could be empirical proof for God.  The debate should instead center around 'a priori' knowledge and not 'a posteriori' knowledge.

2) Correct, the continuing refinement of theories is why science is awesome for its intended purposes.

Good post, although the only thing I would say is that you should remove the "(yet)" from your post as empirical methods of study can never possibly conclude about that which cannot be observed.  For that we have philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics.
880  Other / Off-topic / Re: Scientific proof that God exists? on: November 20, 2014, 03:03:53 PM

Anybody can go look up what a dictionary says. What's the point? Words are constantly changing in meaning based on common usage. That's why we don't use a dictionary from the time of King James. That's why we have legal dictionaries that remain much in the meaning of the dictionaries at the time of the formation of the country, while popular dictionaries have words that look the same but often have a completely different meaning.

Why do you think that I attack science? How paranoid can you get? Science itself (yes, the science of your dictionary definitions) has determined over and over again that many formerly held "beliefs" about Evolution are, indeed false. Many of the things of Evolution were even proven to be fraudulent. Sound familiar? Sounds like religion and government and politics in a lot of ways.

You seem to need to learn that strict science is YOUR friend. It is pointing you away from the foolish falsehoods of political "scientific" scammers, to the truth of the Bible, but by deductive reasoning. Soon there won't be any scientific methods left to test for Evolution scientifically. They will ALL have proven that Evolution is scientifically impossible. Ever notice how the attempted scientific proofs for Evolution have been getting more and more abstract lately?

Smiley

A few other things:

I was saying that you use inductive reasoning every day of your life, and if you didn't you'd be a vegetable.  For example, you wouldn't know how to make cereal in the morning, because taking a spoon, bowl, milk, and cereal and putting it all together is an inductive process.

Yes, you are using deductive reasoning when you make statements about the Universe based upon the Bible, but that deductive reasoning is horribly flawed.  You use the Bible axiomatically as your starting point and from there try to deduce true statements about the world.  The problem is that logic does not permit the use of axioms to prove themselves.  So, you can't just start with the assumption the Bible is correct because assuming the Bible is correct does not necessarily make it so.  If I started with the assumption that Humpty Dumpty is true and tried to deduce true statements about the Universe, you'd call me crazy.  However, it's no different than starting with the assumption that the Bible is true.

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Soon there won't be any scientific methods left to test for Evolution scientifically.

There is only *one* scientific method.  There will never be more than one scientific method.  Your statement here makes no sense.

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Ever notice how the attempted scientific proofs for Evolution have been getting more and more abstract lately?

Uh, *every* scientific theory is an abstract statement.

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Science itself (yes, the science of your dictionary definitions) has determined over and over again that many formerly held "beliefs" about Evolution are, indeed false.

This is probably one of the best things about science.  As science is a method, science does not care what theories and conclusions are formed.  Science welcomes new evidence that overturns old theories. That's the beauty of it.  Science allows us to make more and more precise, refined theories as new evidence presents itself.  This is why we've come so far in technological development and in our understanding of isolated processes in the Universe.  This isn't a weakness, it's a strength.
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