Science and Evidence

@AkioTsukino
[quote] Nature. Any time you think something is going to happen before it happens in a way you think it will happen, even if the evidence suggests it will happen but it hasn't happened yet, that is faith[/quote]
Science, can make predictions before they happen by studying the element involved.
What you describe, if it is not a routine phenomenon, is clairvoyance. Faith doesn’t give you the ability to predict the future.
Like if you know it’s going to rain. You see dark clouds, you smell the damp air, You feel a cool breeze. It’s not faith that tells you it’s going to rain. It’s a quick assessment of conditions leading to a logical conclusion. Deductions from given information and past experiences.
Where is the faith in this ?
What you haven’t shown, is justification for having faith without a tangible reason.

@DocSavage [quote]Science, can make predictions before they happen by studying the element involved.[/quote]

"Element: 1. a part or aspect of something abstract, especially one that is essential or characteristic.

2. each of more than one hundred substances that cannot be chemically interconverted or broken down into simpler substances and are primary constituents of matter. Each element is distinguished by its atomic number, i.e. the number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms."

In the context you used you mean 1. Like when I was a kid and I took my radio apart? Never worked again. Kidding. Sort of.

[quote]What you describe, if it is not a routine phenomenon, is clairvoyance. Faith doesn’t give you the ability to predict the future.[/quote]

Not in the supernatural sense, but events are often foreseeable. I used meteorologists as an example earlier. If someone says if you jump off that cliff you'll die. It doesn't take a genius or god to figure that out, but it is faith. I have faith you'll die if you jump, I trust you will die.

Clairvoyance is an illusion, a magic trick with an emphasis on trick. "The supposed faculty of perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact." Magic is a tricky word. I like tricky words. The British informal expression is wonderful/exciting. It can also be used there and elsewhere hyperbolically. "It didn't disappear like magic!" Then there's "the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces." The emphasis on apparently. Performance art, illusionist. It's not real, it just appears real.

Many people, even Christians, think that God and demons can see into the future, but that isn't the case. The future doesn't exist. When God foretells something it means he either can see it happen from a logical perspective or that he is going to make it happen. So, fortune telling and that sort of thing was punishable by death because there is a supernatural element to it. Demons - according to the Bible now - I say, demons can deceive, manipulate and influence things. Highly intelligent extraterrestrial beings. So, though most witches, fortune tellers "ghosts" etc. are fake, it is possible for demonic influence. According to the Bible which I believe.

I know. You don't give a shit. Maybe someone reading does.

[quote]Like if you know it’s going to rain. You see dark clouds, you smell the damp air, You feel a cool breeze. It’s not faith that tells you it’s going to rain.[/quote]

It is. As I've described it above. Unbelievers tend to have difficulty with some words they imagine, for some reason, is exclusively applied to the supernatural. There isn't anything supernatural about faith. You can have faith (trust) in the supernatural but faith itself isn't a supernatural phenomenon. It simply means trust.

[quote]You see dark clouds, you smell the damp air, You feel a cool breeze. It’s not faith that tells you it’s going to rain. It’s a quick assessment of conditions leading to a logical conclusion. Deductions from given information and past experiences.[/quote]

Right, but you don't know for certain that it's going to rain. You can have faith in your experience and observations and logic but you can't be sure it will rain until it rains. As Paul said at Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Comparing translations descriptions of faith involve hope, evidence, conviction, assurance etc. https://biblehub.com/hebrews/11-1.htm

[quote]Where is the faith in this ?[/quote]

It's just trust. Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with all those silly things you hate. God, religion, supernatural, etc.

[quote]What you haven’t shown, is justification for having faith without a tangible reason.[/quote]

Your apparent confusion regarding the secular or natural possibilities, insisting on faith being supernatural or religious is causing that confusion. It's just trust. Confidence.

@AkioTsukino
Again I have to ask. What is the point you are trying to make between science and faith ? Each of the examples you cited have nothing to do with faith, nor for that matter demonstrate science as being unreliable. .
[quote] For now. We evolved. There was no flood. We are not religious because we don't believe there are any gods. We believe there are no gods. We have no way of knowing what a god is.[/quote]
Another definition of faith, is belief in something, despite overwhelming evidence against it. Or if you prefer trust in something untrustworthy.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]If there is no evidence for something, it need not be accepted as true.[/quote]

@revenant [quote]and I find that absurd. If you do not look for something, you will not find it. If you are unaware of the existence of xyz, you will not look for it even.[/quote]

Okay, this is much longer than I had planned. HEY! It's isn't my verbosity it's my curiosity and this stuff is paradoxically simple and complicated, redundant and essential. The shortcut to the conclusion is to go down to the separation in the text.

This is really the most fascinating thing to me, and I think it always has been. Thirty years ago when I became a believer at 27, I had no one to talk to about my beliefs. All of my family and friends were and still are atheists and they just didn't want to hear about it. They thought it was ridiculous just as I had always thought. But that had been the only thing that I did know about it. That it seemed ridiculous.

So, when I got online and discovered all of these public forums where this debate was taking place between believers and unbelievers (back then, in the mid to late 1990's there were many more than now) I always gravitated to the unbelievers. I had no interest in debating doctrinal disputes which actually is much more challenging, but I couldn't figure out why that is. I only recently figured out that it's because (I think) that they, the unbelievers, have this really weird way of looking at things. And it fascinates me like some mechanical anomaly that doesn't compute.

First of all there is an appeal to authority that you would think would be more prevalent in believers. But then there is this weird way of looking at "evidence." It's not what you might think. I used to think that this was just their way of saying "my beliefs are better than yours because yours are silly, and mine aren't because 1.) you can't prove yours and 2.) mine can be explained." And you would assume that they are so enamored with science because that is the basis for their discovery. But that isn't actually true. Science investigates the unexplained. It tries to explain the unexplained. We know this works, but why or how does it work? If something is explained science is done with it, no more need of it. And science can and has had some pretty strange explanations.

So then I thought, well, it's confirmation bias. The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. I thought that they used science as confirmation of their disbelief, as a sort of crutch because they are afraid of the unknown, or looking silly. They need concrete answers - to think there are concrete answers and then conversely there are silly people. I'm not silly. It's groupthink and a false sense of intellect and comfort to them.

But then I noticed that they really didn't think that way. They really didn't care about evidence as defined as "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid." You can see this by their refusing any evidence that contradicts their misinformed opinion, not only about God, the Bible, spirituality and the supernatural, but also secular events like the holocaust, 9/11, the Covid pandemic. If evidence were really important to them, they would, like me, eventually say "hold on a minute" when spiritual, or at least secular knowledge - the science - didn't compute. Didn't add up. But they don't. At all. In fact, they become not only dogmatic about those things but also will ignore the real evidence as defined above either not to look silly or wrong which no science minded person should fear.

What they really mean when they say "evidence" is accepted explanation or ideology (the science of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy) and narcissism (thinking very highly of oneself, needing admiration, believing others are inferior).

[sep]

The result is that they will deny rather than explore evidence unless it confirms their belief out of fear. The problem with all of this is that it isn't anything new. And more importantly, after living half of my life as an unbeliever and the other half as a believer I can safely say nothing about it is any different one from the other.

I'm afraid that the only conclusion I can draw is that these unbelievers are - well - human! Not unlike ourselves.

I know. I know. This is a remarkable discovery, but I should have known all along. Bastards.

@AkioTsukino You're literally describing believers, not atheists. I've noticed the same thing about you guys - confirmation bias and a tendency to fall for conspiracy theories that match your own preexisting beliefs.

Having participated in many religious discussions, I'm aware of the "evidence" that believers present, along with the refutations. Part of the problem is confusion between evidence and conjecture. When we ask for proof of God's existence, an honest theist will say that there is none; God's existence can only be inferred from observations, which could also lead to the opposite conclusion. This is why the Bible says people are saved by faith, not knowledge. Kierkegaard said that if a man succeeded in proving the truth of Christianity beyond any possible doubt, by doing so he would have destroyed it, because he would have made faith impossible. No one has faith that 2 + 2 = 4. Knowledge is a different form of understanding than faith.

Another mistake theists make is to accuse atheists of having "faith" in science. What they're doing is confusing faith with trust. I don't have faith that the theory of natural selection is true; I [b]trust[/b] that the people who have studied this are on the right track, and the academic systems that vet them are rigorous. It would be like you trusting that your pastor attended a legitimate seminary and his explanations of the Bible are in line with your denomination's positions.

And of course people we disagree with are human. We need to remember that so we don't start killing each other over these disagreements.

@DocSavage Belief in a god requires only veneration, even if the person doesn't know that and that only, is exactly what it means to be a god. Creation or destruction or anything or nothing else may or may not be involved.

[quote]From there it grows. That something must have put us here for a purpose. [/quote]

No. Most gods aren't claimed to have created or having a purpose. Out of ignorance of what it means to be a god you conflate all with one. If you're going to elaborate on the meaning be more specific. Zeus? Shiva? etc. You shouldn't lump all gods together any more than you would science.

[quote]That purpose must have some higher agenda, because it’s beyond our understanding, therefore god must be a higher level of intelligence, with greater morality, etc. etc.
Religion itself serves as uniformity. Bringing people together for a common cause, so god has other uses . But from a social, historical point of view. Gods are whatever we make them to be.[/quote]

The idea of man creating gods beyond their understanding is very unrealistic, it only fits your own agenda. The one you perceive in the intellectual/moral dilemma which was really created to support itself in the first place much like your own misinterpretation of theism. Someone once said: "You know you've created your own gods when it turns out it hates all the same things you do."

@BlueSkyKing [quote]If I choose to label myself it’s freethinker.

Evidence is detectable, measurable, and can be tested repeatedly by anyone. You can also add falsifying to the procedure. It’s methodology at the core. Truth is in testing and truth demands to be tested. [/quote]

Could the same not be said of imagination? If not the free thinkers have a lot of explaining to do because they let the ball drop on that one. Methodology and mythology are kindred spirits in that regard.

[quote]We’re all children of The Enlightenment and that way of thinking is here forever.[/quote]

That would explain a great deal.

@AkioTsukino [quote] Methodology and mythology are kindred spirits in that regard.[/quote]
You couldn’t be more wrong.

@redredred Exactly, we even have more proof that the Fae Folk exist than any deity.

@Ynotisay [quote] Said the guy arguing over and over on this thread to try to convince others that belief carries more weight than science. [/quote]

Who is? Where?!

[quote]Seems like science and best available facts might be the enemy of belief, huh? Yeah. It is.[/quote]

You're a little bit of a smart ass, aren't you? I am too, but I'm usually not so smug and pretentious about it. Yeah. You are.

[media=https://youtu.be/jsLUidiYm0w]

@AkioTsukino It's ok tiger'. You're totally free to live in whatever world of make believe you want. YOU lose because of it but, you know, feeeeelings. They appeal to some. But it's when you guys start saying you're right there's where I jump off. So yeah. I'm the smug one. Sure thing. Get off yourself dude.

@NativePortlander1970 Maybe a trauma as a baby? Until 1989 science thought babies couldn't feel and so anesthesia wasn't used during surgeries.