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

Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: I don't quite see how you can describe dismissal of the accounts as being unscientific when plausible scientific explanations are put forward and equally dismissed by those who believe the experiences were "real". I don't dismis any plausible scientific explanations. The theory that all these people are just nuts or hallucinating or whatever, even in cases where the person in question has shown no signs of mental instability or even imagination, is not something I can easily swallow without looking into it further, however. Scientists insist that none of these accounts are genuine, not because they have investigated them, but because they refuse to admit the possibility of anything they don't understand. I believe in some cases, people are experienceing real phenomena. This is not to say that what they are seeing is real, but something is causing them to see something. Even if it is a case of halluciation, there must be a root cause, and isn't that in itself worth investigating rather than just waving it away as unimportant? Without subjecting the person to controlled scientific investigation it is impossible to validate any claim, yet over the years there have been many serious investigations and even more less serious (by which I mean non-academic rather than comical) studies into all manner of paranormal phenomena (into which we must group divine visitations as being a paranormal activity since it is by definition para (beyond) normal), none of which have been demonstrated to be real in any form. All known cases of hallucination have been explained by scientific means as being natural phenomena created within the subject and none have been shown to be of external influence or control - this is not dismissal or waving it away as unimportant - especially if they are the result of psychosis or some other clinical condition (or "just nuts" if you prefer). This is a lose-lose situation for science of course - if  a doctor treats the patient with anti-psycotic drugs and the divine visitations continue this is taken as proof that they are real (not that the drugs didn't work) but if they cease this still isn't accepted as proof that the visitations were an hallucination, but that the drugs have blocked the reception of the divine message.   The danger for the scientific community is when a plausible explanation cannot be found that is 100% conclusive and irrefutable. In normal scientific investigation this is perfectly acceptable, but in the lay-world this is misinterpreted as proof that the phenomena is real. The case of miracles is one prime example of this - just because science cannot give a conclusive explanation of why a cancer goes into remission this is taken as proof of divine intervention and a miracle cure - which is a fallacious assumption.

I think a lot of what you say is very wise, Dean, and I would never claim that personal experience is "proof" of anything.
I would just like the scientific community to display a little humility sometimes. Just once I would like to hear someone say "There are phenomena which the current state of science cannot fully explain."
It's not the conclusions I object to so much as the attitude underlying those conclusions.

^ And you think your internet connection is crashing for reasons which science can't explain?

thellama73 wrote:   I think a lot of what you say is very wise, Dean, and I would never claim that personal experience is "proof" of anything. I would just like the scientific community to display a little humility sometimes. Just once I would like to hear someone say "There are phenomena which the current state of science cannot fully explain." It's not the conclusions I object to so much as the attitude underlying those conclusions.

Lightning wasn't able to be rationally explained at one point. That didn't make it a miracle. 

That's not true. We can't explain what gives particles their mass, but we can assert that it's not because the Saints won the superbowl. The fact is that a supernatural explanation is going to be less plausible than any natural one, so rationally you wouldn't make the deduction of miracle. 

thellama73 wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ And you think your internet connection is crashing for reasons which science can't explain? I think that crashing computers are not functioning "exactly as predicted." If that were true, it would be possible to design computers that never crash, because you would be able to accurately predict every situation under which it would crash and correct for it.

Crashing computers are invariably caused by something explainable, generally poor software rather than any hardware failure - in most cases a PC crash is the result of two pieces of software trying to do something and getting in each others way. While we can design software to be immune to that, (code-out the inevitable bugs that exist in a few megabytes of code), the cost of doing that is prohibitive - the Pareto principle applies as much in software design as it does anywhere else, though the figures are generally 10:90 rather than 20:80 (they find 90% of the bugs in the first 10% of the debug time). The result is all software has bugs and in multitasking operating systems the chances of two bugs in two pieces of software occurring simultaneously is simply a question of probability. Throw the odd under-performing virus into the equation and it's a wonder that PCs work at all.

Edited by Dean - December 04 2010 at 13:21

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: thellama73 wrote:   I think a lot of what you say is very wise, Dean, and I would never claim that personal experience is "proof" of anything. I would just like the scientific community to display a little humility sometimes. Just once I would like to hear someone say "There are phenomena which the current state of science cannot fully explain." It's not the conclusions I object to so much as the attitude underlying those conclusions. I know that miracles are hard to believe, but even when medical science has admitted that some miracle healings have absolutely no explanation, atheists have said (even in one of this threads) "Yes, healing without explanation happens, but it isn't a miracle". They are ready to admit they don't know how a person got cured (for example) of a cancer beyond any cure, but not admit the possibility that this can be a miracle. If they can't explain it...Why can they assure it's not a miracle? Iván

thellama73 wrote:   I think a lot of what you say is very wise, Dean, and I would never claim that personal experience is "proof" of anything. I would just like the scientific community to display a little humility sometimes. Just once I would like to hear someone say "There are phenomena which the current state of science cannot fully explain." It's not the conclusions I object to so much as the attitude underlying those conclusions.

They're pretty stupid doctors then if they're going to say something that has happened is impossible. You probably shouldn't listen to people like that.