Proof Doesn't Matter

[darkrobe]

On a semi related side note that wont seem obvious at the moment. has anyone seen the movie pitch black? with vin diesel, its the prequel to the chronicles of riddick.

[Naesala]

Posting mainly to watch the thread, but I'll go ahead and say I agree with BP's side of the argument. The point about history in particular is good. When it gets down to it, you have to accept things as true in science as well. Without axioms science falls appart.

[darkrobe]

haha. i guess that might have killed the conversation a bit. anyway in the movie. there is an iman and he has a chat with the main character, and tries to convince him that there is a god.. well ill let the quote speak for itself.

Imam: Because you do not believe in God does not mean God does not believe in - .
Riddick: Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe? Got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God... And I absolutely hate the fucker.



A very intense exchange. My point being, even if you had a clue that god existed. You have nothing on this being to tell you about what he wants from you. You say youve seen demons and exorcisms and thats proof that god  exists. If god created the world, he created demons too. they are part of his creation. maybe god is furious with that priest for exorcising them.

You say youve prayed and your prayers have been answered. what about people whos prayers god doesnt answer. does god love you and hate them. or maybe god causes cancer, and the reason that person was saved was because god forgot to pay attention that day.

Terrible unexplained things happen too. If i proved that god was responsible for all the terrible things in the world that went unexplained, would you listen? It goes both ways, everyone selects knowledge based on what they want to hear and what supports their point of view. You arent more open minded because you can believe in miracles. your just closed minded in a different way.

I think thats enough of my two cents for tonight.

[Pineapple]

I'd like to pop back in and say that if I had been exposed to jmdt's experiences, then I too would believe in God, just as how, after reading about enzymes in my textbook, I would write a messy explanation about how enzymes and substrates for my high-school lab report if my data correlates with the textbook's explanation.

[OldTrees]

Thought experiment:
A person lost a limb and is astounded at it growing back. After making sure this person is safe doctors rule out all their hypotheses. An unknown force caused this regeneration.

Now I ask you:
Does the force have a mind? Yes (Alien, God), No (Physical force), or Too little information
Is the force divine? Yes (God), No (Alien, Physical force), or Too little information

If you answered Yes or No, please explain what evidence exists in the example that lead to your conclusion.
If you answered Too little information try to describe a possible piece of evidence that a modified example would provide.

In my opinion these types of questions are not related to the evidence in these types of examples.

[Jenkar]

Who says their isn't proof that God exists?

As a kid from a family of penticostal missionaries and ministers, I have seen a number of strange things in my life and heard stories of occurances my family members have seen or some even more bizzare.  I have seen a number of people 'healed' of various things: cancers, blood clots in the brain, loss of hearing, etc.  When I say healed, I mean the person went to the doctor and had an x-ray, MRI or other documentation that they had a major problem, were prayed for for healing, and when they returned to the doctors all tests showed that whatever ailment thay did have was complely gone.  I've seen it dozens of times.

If we want to go even further.  I've seen an exorcism before.  I saw a little tiny 5 foot woman's eyes turn pitch black, her veins get a black color and she speak crazy things in the voice of a man until the demon was removed.  I've heard stories from my parents, uncle, and other friends of a demon that possed a 5 year year old boy and the small boy whipped 4 grown men before my uncle was able to perform an excorcism.  My cousin who was a missionairy has tons more stories like this.

This is just scratching the surface of things and I'm too busy to go further, but there is plenty of proof God exists.  People just don't look for it and ignore it when they see it.

Meh. Again, this proves nothing. On the one hand :
-All those were things that we do not understand yet, but will eventually.
On the other :
-All those are supernatural.

I daresay i would aplaud if you can give me something that sways either way.

I'm a scientist; I look at evidence objectively.

When a person has stomach cancer and is having surgery in 3 days, I pray for that person to be healed by the power of Jesus, and the next day at the doctor x-rays show that the cancer just dissapeared, what other conclusion can I come to other than the fact that God may have had something to do with it.  Cancer just doesn't dissapear by itself.  Cancer by definition is out of control cell growth.  If left untreated cancer cells just don't stop, they keep multiplying such that thay will eventually kill you.  So my question is, if I pray to my God for something impossible to happen and it does happen, then what other conclusion is their that my diety is not only real, but took care of whatever issue it was I had?

If one does not keep an open mind to the possibility that a God may exist, one will reject any indication that it may be true.  I've seen too much proof to not believe God is real.

What DD and OT said. I'm not rejecting the possibility of god (heck, i do believe). I'm rejecting what you said as an argument for god's existence.

Btw : ''if I pray to my God for something impossible to happen''
Prove it's impossible and it's not a lack of science that we have (i'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that i do not believe that option has been eliminated yet.

[darkrobe]

Thought experiment:
A person lost a limb and is astounded at it growing back. After making sure this person is safe doctors rule out all their hypotheses. An unknown force caused this regeneration.

Now I ask you:
Does the force have a mind? Yes (Alien, God), No (Physical force), or Too little information
Is the force divine? Yes (God), No (Alien, Physical force), or Too little information

If you answered Yes or No, please explain what evidence exists in the example that lead to your conclusion.
If you answered Too little information try to describe a possible piece of evidence that a modified example would provide.

In my opinion these types of questions are not related to the evidence in these types of examples.

I think my question is good too. If someone spontaneously lost a leg for no reason that anyone could see. say he was in a room full of people and he was just standing there one second and the next he was lying on the floor bleeding to death. would you take that to also be proof of gods existence?

[OldTrees]

Thought experiment:
A person lost a limb and is astounded at it growing back. After making sure this person is safe doctors rule out all their hypotheses. An unknown force caused this regeneration.

Now I ask you:
Does the force have a mind? Yes (Alien, God), No (Physical force), or Too little information
Is the force divine? Yes (God), No (Alien, Physical force), or Too little information

If you answered Yes or No, please explain what evidence exists in the example that lead to your conclusion.
If you answered Too little information try to describe a possible piece of evidence that a modified example would provide.

In my opinion these types of questions are not related to the evidence in these types of examples.

I think my question is good too. If someone spontaneously lost a leg for no reason that anyone could see. say he was in a room full of people and he was just standing there one second and the next he was lying on the floor bleeding to death. would you take that to also be proof of gods existence?

No. I would not take that as evidence for or against the existence of a God. That is merely evidence that a unknown force occurred. There is no evidence in that example that would imply the force has a mind or is divine. Neither is there evidence that the force does not have a mind or is not divine. The evidence does not speak on the existence/non existence of a God.

[darkrobe]

Thought experiment:
A person lost a limb and is astounded at it growing back. After making sure this person is safe doctors rule out all their hypotheses. An unknown force caused this regeneration.

Now I ask you:
Does the force have a mind? Yes (Alien, God), No (Physical force), or Too little information
Is the force divine? Yes (God), No (Alien, Physical force), or Too little information

If you answered Yes or No, please explain what evidence exists in the example that lead to your conclusion.
If you answered Too little information try to describe a possible piece of evidence that a modified example would provide.

In my opinion these types of questions are not related to the evidence in these types of examples.

I think my question is good too. If someone spontaneously lost a leg for no reason that anyone could see. say he was in a room full of people and he was just standing there one second and the next he was lying on the floor bleeding to death. would you take that to also be proof of gods existence?

No. I would not take that as evidence for or against the existence of a God. That is merely evidence that a unknown force occurred. There is no evidence in that example that would imply the force has a mind or is divine. Neither is there evidence that the force does not have a mind or is not divine. The evidence does not speak on the existence/non existence of a God.

  lol oldtrees. I didnt mean for you to answer it. i meant that in addition to answering your questions. i would hope that people would answer mine. exactly for the answer you just gave. If someone spontaneously losing a limb wouldnt be evidence of a god, why would spontaneously regrowing one be evidence. But now youve given away my sinister plan.

[Scaredgirl]

I'm a scientist; I look at evidence objectively.

When a person has stomach cancer and is having surgery in 3 days, I pray for that person to be healed by the power of Jesus, and the next day at the doctor x-rays show that the cancer just dissapeared, what other conclusion can I come to other than the fact that God may have had something to do with it.  Cancer just doesn't dissapear by itself.  Cancer by definition is out of control cell growth.  If left untreated cancer cells just don't stop, they keep multiplying such that thay will eventually kill you.  So my question is, if I pray to my God for something impossible to happen and it does happen, then what other conclusion is their that my diety is not only real, but took care of whatever issue it was I had?

If one does not keep an open mind to the possibility that a God may exist, one will reject any indication that it may be true.  I've seen too much proof to not believe God is real.

As a scientist you should know something about causality. Just because you do something, and something else happens at the same time, does not mean there is any kind of relationship between the two incidents. Falsely assuming causality is one of the biggest fails a scientist can do, and in your example you are doing just that.

If you want to test your theory, you should pray for 1000 different people with cancer to see if you can recreate the miracle. It is very likely that it won't happen again. If you use the logic of God existing because he answered your one prayer, you should use that same logic and think that God probably doesn't exist because those 1000 prayers did nothing. Logically speaking, if one prayer worked and 1000 failed, it's much more likely that the first prayer working was just two separate things happening at the same time without any kind of causality. The problem is that for a person who experiences something like that, the effect is so emotionally powerful that he or she loses all rational thought and will believe pretty much anything.

If you look at statistics, religious people suffer just as much disease and bad luck as everyone else. If prayer works, why doesn't it show up in the statistics? Are the statistics lying? I don't think so. It's much more likely that prayers do not actually do anything unless you happen to pray for the right thing at the right time, aka being extremely lucky. If I pray for rain and 1 minute later it start raining, was it God answering to my prayer. Maybe. But the more likely explanation is that it would have started to rain even without the prayer.

I see people use the words "open-minded" a lot. I think we should make a distinction between having an open mind and blindly believing in something. Do you believe in Easter Bunny? If you say no, does that make you close-minded? Nope, it makes you rational. Just because religions are more popular and socially acceptable than belief in Easter Bunny, does not mean believing in religion makes you "open minded" and believing in Easter Bunny makes you crazy.

[Naesala]

The mistake people are making here is assuming that a prayer means that something will happen when it is, in fact, a request. Just because I ask that someone loan me a dollar doesn't mean it will not happen, nor does it mean that person does not have a dollar to give.

[OldTrees]

The mistake people are making here is assuming that a prayer means that something will happen when it is, in fact, a request. Just because I ask that someone loan me a dollar doesn't mean it will not happen, nor does it mean that person does not have a dollar to give.

Indeed this is an important mistake to point out.

However there is something interesting to note from here. Lets say I ask a cloaked figure for a dollar. The cloaked figure does not give me a dollar. You ask the cloaked figure to give you a dollar. The cloak figure gives you a dollar.

2 possibilities:
1) The cloaked figure is a non sentient robot who was programmed to respond to the command "give".
2) The cloaked figure was a person that decided not to give me a dollar and to later give you a dollar.

From our limited information we have no way of knowing which of these possibilities occurred. The desc on the words show the parallel back to prayer.