Religion or Atheism? An open forum.

[MMI]

Those are your rules. A believer says, if you have faith, no evidence is necessary.

Then you say you don't believe. You claim no evidence is necessary to support your position. Likewise, I don't believe in capitalism: no justification of my stance is needed.

You say there is no evidence, but that is only because you reject what is offered. Yet you trot that same evidence out as tending to support the naturalist position. What? Hard proof for religions, but only evidence "tending to support" science (and that's only in your opinion). By the way, when did you verify Einstein's theories, or attend the CERN experiments? You must have seen them ... unless you are simply relying on what you have heard. How do you know I am real, scientifically, or that you are?

It is not a cop out to claim god is beyond science. That is what a god, by definition, is. At the very least, the uncaused cause, and what is your basis for saying the supernatural cannot interact with the natural. How can you prove that?

[Thorne]

Those are your rules. A believer says, if you have faith, no evidence is necessary.

Yeah, that's why they're called believers!

Then you say you don't believe. You claim no evidence is necessary to support your position. Likewise, I don't believe in capitalism: no justification of my stance is needed.

Justification is not evidence. But in fact you don't need either. It is quite possible to believe, or not believe, without either evidence or justification. That's what they call 'faith'.

If you elect NOT to believe in capitalism, it would be foolish of me to require you to prove non-capitalism. It would be impossible for you to prove that capitalism does not exist. You could provide all kinds of evidence which SUGGESTS that it does not exist, but that would not constitute proof. I, on the other hand, could provide a lot of data which shows that it DOES exist, and works to one degree or another. I could show documentation, make predictions based on capitalist principles, provide testable evidence for you to examine. I cannot prove it exists, since it is basically an intangible construct, but I can show that it is very probable that SOMETHING which we define as 'capitalism' seems to be there.

You say there is no evidence, but that is only because you reject what is offered.

I haven't been offered any evidence! I've heard anecdotes of believers, but that's not evidence. That's still just faith. I've heard claims that someone cannot conceive of the universe just blossoming into existence without some sort of Creator, but that's not evidence either. I've seen claims which says, "Look, we did this experiment, over and over, and it always comes out with this result, and the only possible conclusion is God," but in every case I've heard about the results were tainted by pre-existing bias, or by a lack of understanding of science. I don't reject claims of evidence out of hand, I try to explain WHY it does not constitute evidence for what is claimed.

Hard proof for religions, but only evidence "tending to support" science.

I never asked for hard proof of religion. Just testable evidence.

By the way, when did you verify Einstein's theories, or attend the CERN experiments?

I have done some study of some of Einsteins theories, those that I could understand, and I have seen data which supports them. Read about the history of the precession of Mercury, and the story of the planet Vulcan, for example. (Yes, it was once hypothesized, by scientists, that a large planet orbited inside the orbit of Mercury. It was named Vulcan, after the Roman God, not Spock's home planet.)

As for CERN, no, that stuff is WAY beyond my understanding. But it is NOT beyond the understanding of other scientists who are NOT involved in those experiments. THOSE scientists are reviewing the data, repeating experiments where feasible, and in general confirming or denying the results coming out of CERN. Yes, I have to trust the scientists on this, I admit that. BUT these scientists have hard data, actual evidence which undergoes rigorous testing. What evidence do the priests have?

How do you know I am real, scientifically, or that you are?

Actually, I don't know for certain that you ARE real. To me you're simply words and letters that appear on a screen. But I'm willing to take you on faith.

As for myself, I can test myself, stick myself with pins to see if I'm there. Study myself in a mirror. So yeah, I'd have to say that I exist. But you'd have to come over to visit if you want to see the evidence. I warn you, it won't be pretty!

It is not a cop out to claim god is beyond science. That is what a god, by definition, is. At the very least, the uncaused cause, and what is your basis for saying the supernatural cannot interact with the natural. How can you prove that?

I didn't say that the supernatural CANNOT interact with the natural world, but that if it DOES interact it should leave evidence. What I did say was that IF the supernatural cannot, or does not, interact with the natural world, then its existence is moot. It has no bearing on our existence or our lives. If you claim that there is some kind of supernatural component which is a part of us (a soul, for example) then I would ask for evidence of this component. If it is within us, a part of us, then it is interacting with the natural world and there should be evidence for it.