Free will & omniscience...

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Dang it! I keep forgetting that rule about consequetive posting. I am used to addressing seperate replies in individual posts because this is how it is done everywhere else I post and, let's face it, If those three posts I made were all one big post, who would want to even scan it to see if I had a reply or question to them?!?


@Manus


No I do not agree that Jesus was necessarily a real person. In fact I think it likely he was based upon Appolynus of Tyanna who WAS said to preach of one god, love, peace and heal the sick etc. and WAS tried by the Romans for sedition and crucified. Unlike Jesus he is mentioned throughout Roman historical writings, whereas Jesus is only mentioned in what has been determined to be a fraudulent insertion into Josephus' writings as well as some mention(also questionable) in the writings of Tiberius.

In both cases the authors appear to be simply repeating what the commonly held beliefs were of the time concerning Jesus and Christianity.


Scientific method is not argumentum ad populi. Ad populi pertains to the notion that the quantity of people who believe something correlates to the likelihood of the claim/belief being true.
Science is simply a means by which anyone can examine the universe/world. It requires no faith and in fact faith can accomplish little or nothing in science.


Also, about evolution and such:

Sort of but in any case anatomy is not biology. One can study anatomy by digging up cadavers and cutting them open but one cannot sequence the G-nome that way or learn about mitochondrial DNA.

When Alexandria was sacked the first two-piston steam engine was also destroyed but that does not mean that modern auto-engineering is based upon the things going on in Alexandria.

It's not. Another misunderstanding on your part.

1) I never said Google was your friend(nitpicky but just want to illustrate how often you misread others here).

2)Leeching is a valid cancer treatment? Cite please?

3) Yes there were doctors before Darwin's time. There were no chemical weapons or insulin treatments or much that resembled modern biology in the slightest however.

Again, this is too vague to be of any use to me. What drugs were used by whom? What did they know or believe the drugs were doing exactly and how did they verify any of this?

Not having the article before me and no cite/refernce to the article I can offer no comment. I will say that homeopathic remedies(which I suspect you are hinting at) do not and can not work in the ways they are claimed to. Not only is there nothing in spider's legs to cure ADHD but even if there were, diluting those ingredients by mixing them with one million parts water would leave the concotion inert.

The mystic crowd hates hearing this but there is as yet NO EVIDENCE supporting the claim that accupuncture works. There have been no conclusive studies done which show that accupunture works to the exclusion of placebo and other possible explanations.
The reasons why most tend to think that accupuncture and reflexology and the like are accepted medical treatments is because they have been a part of our mainstream culture for so long now and the human mind tends to rationalise that "Hey if that many 'doctors'(as in someone who has a doctorate degree) practice it and that many people subscribe then it must be valid!"

The alternative medicine juggernaught has gotten so big bussinesswise that people like Orin Hatch have jumped on the bandwagon and started using their political clout to force these "treatments" into hospitals and the like(much like creationists forcing their mythology into science classrooms)...WITHOUT these things passing the standard reqired tests which the FDA demands.

A bad situation because some of these "herbal therapies" and whatnot are in fact dangerous and potentially fatal.

Nope. No evidence at all unfortunately. See above.

You said before that you were well versed in science. You even won an award for work in physics. Then how could you make THAT blunder??? A theory in science is not "an unproven idea" and theories NEVER, EVER become "laws". They are not rungs on a ladder of increasing certainty from "Wild Guess" to "Established law".

The theory of gravity NEVER became the LAW of gravitation. We STILL have the theory of gravity which explains how the law operates.

Same with evolution, only the law and theory of evolution is BETTER SUPPORTED by evidence than gravity is! So why do you believe in gravity but not evolution?

Micro and macroevolution ARE THE EXACT SAME THING AND THE EFFECTS ARE THE SAME FOR BOTH!

Please go back and read that again so you remeber it this time.

Example time:

Heiki crabs, hundreds of years ago looked like any other crab. A few began appearing with a strange mutation that left them with odd black markings on their shells. These markings looked vaguely like a sillouetted samurai helmet.
Superstitious fishermen began throwing back these "marked" crabs fearing they were the spirit ancestors of long dead samurai.

Today ALL Heiki crab are so marked. This happens because the "marked" crabs had a quirk/mutation which turned out to be advantageous in their environment in that their natural predators did not go after them. The unmarked were not so fortunate.

A mutation can just as easily kill off a species as enable it to survive(see the ongoing saga of the peppered moth). Over millions of years these gradual changes "pile up"(eg. webbed feet become flippers,a slightly longer neck becomes a terrifically long neck etc).

Theories often get revised. Ones as well established as Natural selection are pretty much never completely falsified. The anti-evolutionists of today are analogous to the flat earthers of yesteryear.

www.talkorgins.org/

Go there and study. You have some incredible misunderstandings about evolution and science in general.


@ Chevalier:


But do you see my point about goblins/gremlins and God ? To a believer in God, all the anecdotes about miracles, peoples' lives changed, etc. are profound evidence but NO anecdote about meeting fairies or a different god will be convincing.

Also, no head examination will not disprove the person who genuinely believes in fairies anymore than it will disprove God to a believer. You do not have to be insane to believe in fairies(as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would attest). You just have to have a strong desire that such things be true. An emotional or psychological investment if you will(same with gods).

To sum up my overall point: The same evidence you can present for believing in God can be just as easily presented for fairies, invisible pink unicorns etc.. We have no way to seperate the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

Skepticism is about nothing if not consistency. When I, as a skeptic conclude that the existence of gremlins is not likely due to no independent evidence which I can scrutinise adn infer their existence from, I must do the same for God. I cannot give God a free pass because my mother or 83% of the country would like me to.

God belief is more accepted/popular yes...but more rational? Nope...not even by a tiny bit.

[ January 20, 2004, 21:02: Message edited by: RuneQuester ]

 

Sorry Blackthorn. I tried but somehow these things always get sidetracked. I will let manus or CHev start a thread about evolution if there are still some questions or challenges they wish answered.

 

Oh my, no thanks. In fact I felt like answering questions when it came to relations between faith and evolution.

At this point we've gone far from the subject and are essentially discussing the probability of existence of God in the light of science - which has nothing to do with supposed contradiction between free will and omniscience.

Therefore, I don't think it'll get us any further if I reply - I essentially maintain my points unmodified, anyway.

Edit: Kudos to Laches for the correction. Damn, I was so tired pecking away replies, I hit my keys too lightly.

[ January 21, 2004, 02:45: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Every so often, a quote screams out and begs to be used as a signature quote. Unfortunately, you can't use sigs on this board.

So, I move BTA, Tal, or whomever to please make this quote the official motto of the Alley.

Thank you.

 

Agreed with chev and Laches.

I actually did mention omniscience waaaaaay back there, but I think it was over-looked (Hell I hardly noticed it when searching for the damn thing). I'll re-post the quote in case anyone may be interested.

 

All I was shooting for with the free will vs. omniscience things was for someone to attempt a rationalization which cleared up or got around the paradox in a way which the human mind could grasp(i.e. made sense) without invoking a "maybe God can do the nonsensical" type argument.

I realize that, if God existed in some extra-planar/omnidimensional way in which he was not constrained by anything(which again is something no human mind could grasp) then he could possible create square shaped circles or move towards you while getting further away or see "all of time" simultaneously and non-linearly etc. but until our minds are progressively evolved to a point where this makes sense(assuming such a thing even feasible) I cannot assent to any of these sorts of invocations as being rational.

Always an interesting discussion though.

 

Well, that's because faith isn't meant to be fully rational. It wouldn't really be faith

Where faith should be rational, is lack of internal contradictions and the general sticking-well-together of the dogma.

However, that you're well-versed in theology, doesn't make you a good believer. I wonder how many professors of theology are weak to strong atheists. Or how many men have degrees in theology of different religions than theirs.

While we may pretty well discuss theology, there's a gap we can't jump over. That gap is belief. Theology makes no sens of its own. It is only an exercise for one's mind without belief. Especially as it begins with several axioms shaping the core of a given religion.

However, it's been very nice to discuss and I'm still willing to provide any answers I can to those who ask. Great thanks to our gentle audience for... well.. being gentle. A rare quality, recently.