Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Evidence?

As I'm trying to point out, your antipathy for one thing.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's a twofer - personal incredulity and God of the gaps.

What do you mean by personal incredulity? God of the Gaps? Don't need them.....since every scientific statement is or is about a model, No scientific statement can be said to be comprehensive.

sorry to piss on your bonfire.

[OH MY WORLD!]

You know Shaker, if you dropped some of that ugly arrogance, you might be able to fit through your doorway and go to church yourself.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Do you understand the difference between being shown to be wrong and being abused? You do get quite a lot of abuse as t a reaction to your own dishonesty and abuse, but primarily you get arguments that destroy your position (when it is possible to tell what your position is) and comments showing your posts to be evasive and dishonest.

No arguments have yet destroyed my position.

You aren't the first to suggest they have though but as always when challenged they can't seem to produce the goods.

[Shaker]

You know Shaker, if you dropped some of that ugly arrogance, you might be able to fit through your doorway and go to church yourself.

No thanks, I'm allergic to nuts.

[Shaker]

What do you mean by personal incredulity? God of the Gaps? Don't need them.....since every scientific statement is or is about a model, No scientific statement can be said to be comprehensive.

sorry to piss on your bonfire.

What does this irrelevant mess have to do with the conversation so far, exactly? You claimed an experience of God (#7296), I asked you how you know that it is (#7297), you said the inexplicability of any other reason (#7305). This, exactly as I said, is your personal incredulity of any alternative explanation (any or indeed every one of which would be more rational and more likely than invoking a supernatural entity as a pseudo-'explanation' as bluehillside said in #7308) and plugging a gap with God. Hence the twofer.

What the waffle about scientific statements and scientific models has to do with this I've no idea.

[Leonard James]

We since found out that her original sponsor could not make it, and Flora chose Fran as a last minute replacement, even though she did not know for sure if she was coming to the service.

Since you frequently attend it was hardly an enormous coincidence, was it? 

[Alan Burns]

To be fair though, that's because he's utterly impervious to reasoned argument, sitting in his own little bubble repeating the same things over and over, never once showing any sign of having taken on board a single thing anyone has said to him.

I have read nothing in the replies to my posts which contradict what I have stated.  There have been some alternative explanations, and many labels such as "God of Gaps", "assertion", "non sequitur", "personal inredulity" etc.  But nothing which directly shows I am wrong in what I say.  So there is still no credible alternative for me.  As the Psalmist so aptly put it:  In God alone is my soul at rest.

[Shaker]

I have read nothing in the replies to my posts which contradict what I have stated.  There have been some alternative explanations, and many labels such as "God of Gaps", "assertion", "non sequitur", "personal inredulity" etc.  But nothing which directly shows I am wrong in what I say.  So there is still no credible alternative for me.  As the Psalmist so aptly put it:  In God alone is my soul at rest.

You rarely, if ever, offer anything to contradict, in the way that you could be contradicted if you said that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1445, for example. You assert long and loud but offer absolutely no back-up of your beliefs (and remember; beliefs is exactly what they are, not items of knowledge) - your near-constant invocation of the completely undemonstrated concept of free will, for example. Otherwise it's pretty well bald assertions and one fallacy after another and that's about it, as a quick look back through recent pages of this thread has just reminded me. To point out an example of a fallacy is by definition to demonstrate that the person committing it is in the wrong.

[Leonard James]

I have read nothing in the replies to my posts which contradict what I have stated.

I'm afraid that is not true, Alan. What you mean is that you refuse to accept the natural explanations that have been offered to you.

I understand that, like the psalmist, you prefer a romantic interpretation of your experiences, but please don't insist that you haven't read anything which contradicts what you believe.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What does this irrelevant mess have to do with the conversation so far, exactly? You claimed an experience of God (#7296), I asked you how you know that it is (#7297), you said the inexplicability of any other reason (#7305). This, exactly as I said, is your personal incredulity of any alternative explanation (any or indeed every one of which would be more rational and more likely than invoking a supernatural entity as a pseudo-'explanation' as bluehillside said in #7308) and plugging a gap with God. Hence the twofer.

What the waffle about scientific statements and scientific models has to do with this I've no idea.

Shaker
There is no scientific evidence for a God Free ontology.
Methodological materialism therefore does not and indeed cannot give such evidence.
All your arguments against God are not based in science but your belief in a philosophy itself not
Demonstrable by science.

Should this change please let us know.

[Shaker]

Shaker
There is no scientific evidence for a God Free ontology.

I thought you were the one who regularly says that science doesn't do God? (The polar opposite of what Alan claimed yesterday - take it up with him).

You know as well as I do that the methodological naturalism of the scientific method omits, ignores, leaves out gods, angels, demons or any form of the so-called supernatural. You can get your panties in a wad as usual about the philosophical materialism with which you're so obsessed, but you know this perfectly well.

Additionally, I think you've been spending too much time around Hope, as you've pinched his favourite negative proof fallacy. Nobody but some theists, it seems, considers the lack of evidence against something to be in any way demonstrative or suggestive of anything - amongst the ranks of the rational, evidence for is what counts.

Methodological materialism therefore does not and indeed cannot give such evidence.

Evidence of what? Some alleged or asserted thing for which you can't even provide an alternative methodology of your own?

[torridon]

I have read nothing in the replies to my posts which contradict what I have stated.  There have been some alternative explanations, and many labels such as "God of Gaps", "assertion", "non sequitur", "personal inredulity" etc.  But nothing which directly shows I am wrong in what I say.

Clearly you haven't been reading people's responses then.  For instance, you repeatedly claim that God reveals himself to all who seek him, yet many posters have informed you that they sought and found no such revelation.  This shows your understanding is flawed, wrong.  You can't seem to accept the experience of other people.

[Shaker]

Clearly you haven't been reading people's responses then.  For instance, you repeatedly claim that God reveals himself to all who seek him, yet many posters have informed you that they sought and found no such revelation.  This shows your understanding is flawed, wrong.  You can't seem to accept the experience of other people.

... least of all people who have had a belief in a god and then simply lost it. This simply does not seem to compute with Alan.

[Alan Burns]

I'm afraid that is not true, Alan. What you mean is that you refuse to accept the natural explanations that have been offered to you.

Len, just to remind you of my thinking on this:
The natural explanations you have offered involve literally billions of apparently random beneficial mutations in DNA to produce the vast complexity of life.   No one can come up with a realistic probability of these beneficial mutations occuring by chance.  But my alternative explanation of God using His power of free will to induce these events has some credibility when you realise that human free will can show that this universe is not determinate, and that intelligent design can and does occur.

Your explanation is an alternative, but it does not rule out the possibility (or probability) of mine being true. 

[Shaker]

Len, just to remind you of my thinking on this:
The natural explanations you have offered involve literally billions of apparently random beneficial mutations in DNA to produce the vast complexity of life.

Yet again you completely fail to grasp the simple power of natural selection, which is cumulative - it isn't a shuffling of an impossibly vast deck of cards every time, but a process that builds upon and keeps building upon whatever has been successful before. Do you really not get this? Richard Dawkins is especially good on this point in The Blind Watchmaker.

No one can come up with a realistic probability of these beneficial mutations occuring by chance.  But my alternative explanation of God using His power of free will to induce these events has some credibility when you realise that human free will can show that this universe is not determinate, and that intelligent design can and does occur.

Assertion piled upon assertion as usual, with a liberal dash of unevidenced speculation about free will and suchlike. To be worthy of the name an explanation actually has to explain, Alan, not simply assert with some airy-fairy wavy-handy twaddle.

Your explanation is an alternative, but it does not rule out the possibility (or probability) of mine being true.

There's a name for that fallacy, you know 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I thought you were the one who regularly says that science doesn't do God? (The polar opposite of what Alan claimed yesterday - take it up with him).

You know as well as I do that the methodological naturalism of the scientific method omits, ignores, leaves out gods, angels, demons or any form of the so-called supernatural. You can get your panties in a wad as usual about the philosophical materialism with which you're so obsessed, but you know this perfectly well.

Additionally, I think you've been spending too much time around Hope, as you've pinched his favourite negative proof fallacy. Nobody but some theists, it seems, considers the lack of evidence against something to be in any way demonstrative or suggestive of anything - amongst the ranks of the rational, evidence for is what counts. Evidence of what? Some alleged or asserted thing for which you can't even provide an alternative methodology of your own?

And by evidence we would of course be talking about material evidence.
Your argument therefore comes round full circle I,m afraid.

[Shaker]

And by evidence we would of course be talking about material evidence.

I don't know of any other kind. 'Material evidence' is a redundancy, like johnny canoe's 'godless atheists' - just 'evidence' will do.

Do you know of any other sort? And if so, how do you claim to know it?

[Alan Burns]

- your near-constant invocation of the completely undemonstrated concept of free will, for example.

The fact that science can't come up with a source of free will does not in itself show that free will does not exist. 

Free will does exist in the mind of (almost) every sane human being - just try asking a few of them.

[Shaker]

The fact that science can't come up with a source of free will does not in itself show that free will does not exist.

No, but that's an argument for absolutely anything you might care to dream up, isn't it? We need explicit evidence for to take something seriously.

Free will does exist in the mind of (almost) every sane human being - just try asking a few of them.

Ad hominem and ad populum/numerum together - you really are racking them up today, Al.

Do you really think that these are sound, logical, rational points you're making? Seriously now, Alan.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't know of any other kind. 'Material evidence' is a redundancy - just 'evidence' will do.

Do you know of any other sort? And if so, how do you claim to know it?

Non material "things" cannot be measured and yet we deal with them every day.
Therefore if you are going to insist on material evidence being the only sort then there is actually no way of measuring that assertion. Your argument thus is circular.
As for the word material becoming redundant. That is the equivalent of saying truth is redundant and is merely you doing the shuffle. Material evidence is material evidence.

Please let us know if that position changes.

[Shaker]

Non material "things" cannot be measured and yet we deal with them every day.

This 'we' referring to material beings, of course.

What sort of thing did you have in mind, by the way?

Therefore if you are going to insist on material evidence being the only sort then there is actually no way of measuring that assertion. Your argument thus is circular.

No it isn't.

As for the word material becoming redundant. That is the equivalent of saying truth is redundant and is merely you doing the shuffle.

This is another one in fluent Vladese that I can't make head nor tail of.

I notice that you forgot to answer a question in my previous post. I'll repeat it here for you:

Do you know of any other sort [of evidence other than material evidence]? And if so, how do you claim to know it?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

This 'we' referring to material beings, of course.

So what?

If it can!t be expressed in terms of SI units........It isn't material....

[Shaker]

So what?

So the non-material things to which you alluded (but didn't specify) are still dependent upon material beings for their perception, evaluation and measurement.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

So the non-material things to which you alluded (but didn't specify) are still dependent upon material beings for their perception, evaluation and measurement.

Non material things cannot be measured. If they could they could be expressed in SI units.
However your current line of argument is not established by methodological materialism.
There is no material explanation for your assertion.