Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

Snow Dog wrote: I don't think any of us care what the church decides.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 09 2010 at 14:02

Dean wrote: Well no. Both cases are not exact at all - that's why the comparison is fallacious. However, since you well never "get this" there is no point continuing this line of argument.

Padraic wrote: What if he's blind?  What if the visitor recited Vogon poetry?  WHAT THEN??!!

Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: A stone age man living in the tropics would have no concept of snow and would not have the language or vocabulary to understand it, however the existence of snow would be verifiable by the tropical caveman retracing the route of the temperate-climate visitor so the experiment to prove its existence is perfectly possible. No, he doesn't have a boat. He can use the visitor's boat (or climb a mountain). The visitor left already, and there are no mountains on the island high enough to have snow. Then the idea of snow has no value to him - it was a nice fireside story that entertained him while the visitor was there, but now he's gone it has no further use, so he does not need to believe or disbelieve it, nor prove or disprove.

Edited by Snow Dog - December 09 2010 at 13:32

Dean wrote: The comparison is a fallacious one, which is the point Mike made.   A court finds a defendant "not guilty" which is the same verdict as a doctor saying "we don't know what cured this person"   The church declares this (doctor's) verdict as proof that "God did it", which is the same as saying the defendant is innocent because the court could not prove he was guilty.   You have now acknowledged that a court cannot find a defendant as innocent, we are saying the church cannot prove a miracle.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 09 2010 at 13:46

thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: A stone age man living in the tropics would have no concept of snow and would not have the language or vocabulary to understand it, however the existence of snow would be verifiable by the tropical caveman retracing the route of the temperate-climate visitor so the experiment to prove its existence is perfectly possible. No, he doesn't have a boat.

He can use the visitor's boat (or climb a mountain).

Dean wrote: A stone age man living in the tropics would have no concept of snow and would not have the language or vocabulary to understand it, however the existence of snow would be verifiable by the tropical caveman retracing the route of the temperate-climate visitor so the experiment to prove its existence is perfectly possible.

No, he doesn't have a boat.

Dean wrote: That's so far away from the original point that Mike was making as to put it in an entirely different country on an entirely different planet in an entirely different solar system in an entirely different galaxy in some entirely different universe in someone's badly written fantasy novel that lies unread and forgotten in a remainders bin of long lost books in some tiny backstreet bookstore in an entirely fictitious town in an imaginary country on a non-existent planet circling some dreamt-up sun in a galaxy far far away.   But in essence you agree with the point he was making, so that's okay.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 09 2010 at 12:31

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Dean wrote: Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Not correct everywhere Dean, in USA and I believe in UK the only two veredicts are Guilty and Not Guilty, there's no innocent veredict  Juries never find defendants innocent. They cannot. Not only is it not their job, it is not within their power. They can only find them "not guilty." Hugh Duval  I believe only in Scottland they have a Non Proven verdict. Don't know about the rest of Europe. Iván At least you now acknowledge (in this thread) the difference between not guilty and innocent - which was the point Mike was making. Dean, I'm saying that each and every case is a guess in certain degree, almost never a judge or a jury can have 100% of evidence of the guilt or innocence of a person, no matter what science does. Iván

That's so far away from the original point that Mike was making as to put it in an entirely different country on an entirely different planet in an entirely different solar system in an entirely different galaxy in some entirely different universe in someone's badly written fantasy novel that lies unread and forgotten in a remainders bin of long lost books in some tiny backstreet bookstore in an entirely fictitious town in an imaginary country on a non-existent planet circling some dreamt-up sun in a galaxy far far away.

Paravion wrote: It would be a disaster to assert and accept that all unexplainable phenomena is ' a miracle'. Surely we need curiosity and further investigation.  In linguistics, explanations are in many cases impossible. (theorist speak of theories with varying degrees of explanatory force)   There's no explanation as to why English allows            Peter loves Mary  but not           *Peter love Mary  We can't explain why Greenlandic has only 3 phonemic vowels and Danish 9.     But it's highly likely that it's not because God wants it that way. A lot of 'phenomena' just has no reason - so it currently seems.  Also, it's presumptious to think that humanity (at present and future stages) is capable of explaining and grasping all the complexities of the world. But it's stupid, lazy and far worse to invent some fairy-tale like explanations involving Gods and miracles in order to make sense of the world.

This is (in a roundabout way) basically the point I was trying to make a few pages back. I've never asserted that unexplained phenomena are divine miracles. I only claim that unexplained phenomena happen. All too often I see atheists employing the logic that something can't have happened if we don't have an explanation for it. Pat quite rightly pointed out (although it was tongue in cheek) that it is foolish to say that something has happened which is impossible. I think in many cases it would be wiser to say "X is not impossible" rather than "X didn't happen."

Let's take the original example of the coworker whose wife had a vision of Jesus. If one of my loved ones who I trust completely swore that they had seen something like this, I would tend to believe them, rather than laugh at them and call them delusional or a liar. That doesn't mean that I would believe what they saw was a divine message, but I would believe they saw something. When this point was brought up here, those on the atheist side had a good chuckle at the poor ignorant people and their impossible beliefs. They instantly concluded that nothing extraordinary had happened.

You can admit the possibility of extraordinary events without being a theist. I hear the complaint that such claims cannot be verified in laboratory settings, which is fair enough, but if the vision was what it appeared to be, then wouldn't you expect it not to repeat itself on command? By it's very nature, such a vision would be reluctant to manifest itself on command.

Also, there was a time when many of the phenomena we now take for granted couldn't be verified in labs and had to be believed as hearsay. Would it be irrational for a stone age man living in the tropics to believe in snow, even if he;d never seen it, just taking the word of travelers he encountered? Such a person wouldn't possess the science to verify the claim.