Loftus's use of Cognative Dissonance in his book "Chrisian Delusion"

Festinger

This was a comment on the CADRE blog

Anonymous said...

I have put in ever possible keyword to find a response to a particular argument, but nothing has come up. That argument is chapter 12 in Loftus's "The Christian Delusion." That chapter argues that Jesus was a doomsday prophet who predicted that the world would end very soon. When the world did not end, and he was crucified, the apostles used cognitive dissonance to come up with the resurrection story. I have searched all over this blog for a response to that argument and have found nothing. Therefore I must conclude that there is no response to the argument.

6/27/2011 06:27:00 PM

Metacrock said...

I haven't read Lofuts book, and I don't mean to insult you, but I have to assume your rendition of what he says is accurate so I will assume so.

First of all, the eschatology of the early is clearly put into Jesus mouth. Was Jesus really saying the world will end soon, or was the early chruch expecting to hear it so they didn't see anything wrong reflecting their expectations in the spin they put on his words?

Remember Jesus is probably the only such prophet who actually admitted he didn't know the day or the hour. Maybe he was also hinting that he didn't know the century.

The idea that it was the failure of the world to end that triggered the resurrection story is pretty illogical considering the vast body of testimony to the fact that they preached he resurrection from the earliest movement. See Helmutt Koester Ancinet Christian Gospels(1992) where he demonstrates that the story of the empty tomb circulated in writing as early as AD 50.

see my article in Holdings defending the Resurrection where I defend Koester's view and harmonize it with Raymond Brown's view.

Cognitive dissonance is not something one uses, it's not a game plan or a warranty, it's something that uses you; a psychological process. It doesn't make any sense to say the failure of the eschatology expectations was the cause of their cognitive dissonance and not Christ's death itself.

There's no reason to assume and no way to prove that cognitive dissonance would issue force in the form of belief in the resurrection and not in the eschatology expectations. Although such expectation were hart of the Judaism of that day, it could as easily be that the communal living and the immediate expectations of Messiah's return were part of the reaction to his death, not "making up" the resurrection.

There's not doubt they had some cognitive dissonance, it's a natural psychological reaction. You can't control or predict what will result form it. Even Lotus's book writing could be cognitive dissonance in reaction to his lose of faith.

Moreover, cognitive dissonance was one of the first counter theories I thought of when I got saved. I considered it because at the time I was a sociology major, and we had just read Leon Fetinger's When Prophesy Fails for some class. That was the work that established the theory of cognitive dissonance. I considered it as a counter to the resurrection as I was in the throws of thinking through my conversion to Christ. One of the major reasons I rejected it is that Festinger contaminated his data. He had infiltrated a flying saucer cult. The cult kept running past the dead line for the end of the, but world every time it proved wrong they became more committed rather than less. That's because, the theory explains, they were so committed they had to rationalize their commitment by becoming more committed. Festerger brought in so many other infiltrating psychology students he was actually bolstering the group and giving the reason to assume their message was spreading. So he actually kept things going. That's not cognitive dissonance that's encouragement.

That might explain why they "mad up" the resurrection if that's what happened, but it doesn't explain why others believed it. The basic arguments about the necessity of a known empty tomb in order to procure belief obtain here. So the use of the theory doesn't really explain anything. Furthermore, apart from the Apostles the committment senero is backwards. The committment for most of the early chruch came before their hopes dashes, not after. First they believed the resurrection then they committed all their goods to live communally then the end of the world failed to come. By that time the theory of the resurrection part of their initial commitment so that doesn't even explain most of them.

Atheists continue to embarrase themseleves with Fine Tuning

The argument on Fine tuning thread on CARM, here, they went on to totally embarrass themselves with three other threads.

A point about fine tuning

The fallacy about Fine tuning

there was another I can't find.

They never did actually argue with the issues of the argument. They did get some people who tired to make more substantive arguments. Mat Hunter kept putting up links to his pages where he posts may scientific paper supposedly disproving it. He Also admitted it doesn't disprove it it's just a start. Yet he continues to not say how.

Spacemonkey continued to refer to some mysterious he thought he won but would never say what. Fireproof Ashes continued to try make me redefine my argument over and over again never quite satisfied with it due to some arcane nuance.

The real attempts were made by HRG and Troxel. Troxel being the slanderer from the ridiculous attempt to show that I don't understand Amaro article, and his BS on the fine tuning broke down into another go at the Amaro thing. His performence was the most ridiculous. The other's picked it up and began gonig wih it. Before I get to that I must deal with HRG.


HRG made the most sophisticated seeming arguments. I say "seeming" becuase like most of what he does I suspect is meaningless and just a smoke screen but he has the mathematical training to make it seem that it's really saying something. These are just his standard tricks. He quotes Victor Stenger fisrt. Stengetr a real physicist but he's a gung ho apologist and he's not exactly them most objective person.

Before he got on to red marbles he was arguing that the distribution curve of probability is small in the sense of the physical space of the universe, but small physically doesn't equal improbable. just becuase there are few places in the universe life might develop then that doesn't mean that it's super unlikely that they would. I argued that the argument doesn't say that. The argument is about hurtles one after another. That's what the evidence says. Some of those hurtles involve the whole universe, such as it's flatness or the plank density, so it's not about where in the universe life can develop, many of them are universal.

Then he pulls out his major strategy argument from analogy. He cliams his analogies are only illustrating his ideas. This red marble analogy is supposed to be illustrating the filed distribution thing he did above. Yet not only do the other atheists begin to treat it like a proof but HRG does as well. They totally misconstrue the point about the analogy, what it's for, why it has to reflect the argument.

HRG:post 1

Let's assume that we have just pulled a red marble out of an infinite bag full of marbles (we know nothing about the distribution of marble colors in the bag). What does this observation indicate in your opinion - that red marbles are rare in the bag, or that they are frequent ?

Once you have answered the above question, please consider that we have pulled a life-friendly (well, somewhat life-friendly) universe out of the bag of all universes. What does this indicate: that such universes are rare, or that they are frequent ?

(When answering this question, please do not confuse small size with small probability).

Originally Posted by Metacrock

bad analogy. here's a better one

you have several hundred bags. Each bag has thousands of marbles, only one red one to a bag. you have to get a red from each bag and you only get one try per bag!

HRG

A bad analogy, since you don't know that there is only one red marble to a bag. You confuse small size with low probability.

This answer demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the argument. My analogy reflect perfectly what the argument is and his does not. HRG is assuming that we don't know any of the variables, we don't know the probability. We can have many chances to make life. He's not dealing with the fine tuning argument. The argument says there are several series of things that have to stack up exactly right, we do know many of them. We can estimate them. This opened a rash of argument where HRG demanded "we don't know the exact numbers on probability then the argument is no good." That's clealry foolish because who cares if the chances of life forming in a given instance are 1 in 1,0000, 000, ooo, vs 1 in 1000,000,000,0000,000,000? Either way it's totally improbable. They want to make as though if we can't prove conclusviely that it's the latter set of zeroes than life is just as good 50/50. Taht's foolish, it's not that hard to tell that vastly improbable.

These are things that are touted by real physicists, major physicists they have data to back them up and so on. They are not ID guys, although it may be an ID guy connecting the info and making the website. I also quote Andre Linde from the Scientific American article.





Ray Collins,Fine tuning Design Argument
Center for Science and Culture.

The Center is an ID source, while I'm not in favor of ID I use this explanation to clarify what is meant by fine tuning. All the different mechanisms to attend to life in that example are like the target levels in fine tuning.

Collins give concrete examples:

A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:

1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)

3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)

4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )

5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)

Imaginatively, one could think of each instance of fine-tuning as a radio dial: unless all the dials are set exactly right, life would be impossible. Or, one could think of the initial conditions of the universe and the fundamental parameters of physics as a dart board that fills the whole galaxy, and the conditions necessary for life to exist as a small one-foot wide target: unless the dart hits the target, life would be impossible. The fact that the dials are perfectly set, or the dart has hit the target, strongly suggests that someone set the dials or aimed the dart, for it seems enormously improbable that such a coincidence could have happened by chance.

Note that the examples are coming from major physicists such as Paul Davies and Barrow and Tippler who are not creationists.

An example from an article interview with Andre Linde
Tim Folger, Discover, "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator:
Multiverse Theory."

Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.

The article seems to imply that fine tuning is beaten by the multiverse theory but that will be dealt with on the next page. In setting that up they do demonstrate the problem.

Andre Linde invented inflationary theory. He is to a theist and he is not an apologist for anything. He takes FT seroiusly but he's seeking to answer it not to support it. Years ago he did an article Scientific American.

Adrei Linde,Scientific American. Oct 97

a) something from nothing

b) Flatness of Universe

"A second trouble spot is the flatness of space. General relativity suggests that space may be very curved, with a typical radius on the order of the Planck length, or 10^-33 centimeter. We see however, that our universe is just about flat on a scale of 10^28 centimeters, the radius of the observable part of the universe. This result of our observation differs from theoretical expectations by more than 60 orders of magnitude."

c) Size of Universe--Plank Density

"A similar discrepancy between theory and observations concerns the size of the universe. Cosmological examinations show that our part of the universe contains at least IO^88 elementary particles. But why is the universe so big? If one takes a universe of a typical initial size given by the Planck length and a typical initial density equal to the Planck density, then, using the standard big bang theory, one can calculate how many elementary particles such a universe might encompass. The answer is rather unexpected: the entire universe should only be large enough to accommodate just one elementary particle or at most 10 of them. it would be unable to house even a single reader of Scientiftc American, who consists of about 10^29 elementary particles. Obviously something is wrong with this theory."

d) Timing of expansion

"The fourth problem deals with the timing of the expansion. In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. But how could all the different parts of the universe synchromize the beginning of their expansion? Who gave the command?

e)Distribution of matter in the universe

"Fifth, there is the question about the distribution of matter in the universe. on the very large scale, matter has spread out with remarkable uniformity. Across more than 10 billion light-years, its distribution departs from perfect homogeneity by less than one part in 10,000..... One of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology was the 'cosmological principle," which asserts that the universe must be homogeneous. This assumption. however, does not help much, because the universe incorporates important deviations from homogeneity, namely. stars, galaxies and other agglomerations of matter. Tence, we must explain why the universe is so uniform on large scales and at the same time suggest some mechanism that produces galaxies."

f) The "Uniqueness Problem"

"Finally, there is what I call the uniqueness problem. AIbert Einstein captured its essence when he said: "What really interests ine is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." Indeed, slight changes in the physical constants of nature could have made the universe unfold in a completeIy, different manner. ..... In some theories, compactilication can occur in billions of different ways. A few years ago it would have seemed rather meaningless to ask why space-time has four dimensions, why the gravitational constant is so small or why the proton is almost 2,000 times heavier than the electron. New developments in elementary particle physics make answering these questions crucial to understanding the construction of our world."

Now Linde is confident that the new inflationary theires will explain all of this, and indeed states that their purpose is to revolve the ambiguity with which cosmologists are forced to cope. The Scalar field is suppossed to explain all of this; but these inflationary models are still on the drawing board. Moreover, he never says where scalar fields come from, what makes them, and indeed never illustrates how they solve the initial problem of where it all came form in the first palce. Finally, it seems that scalar fields would be a design feature that should troulbe Linde as much as the initial problems, since he compares them the circuit breaker of a house which keeps the uiverse from heating up too fast before it can expand. Moreover, they might be argitrary necessiteis (see argument I).


So what we see here in these facts there are real scientists with real data who are willing to say we do know some of the probabilities. Moreover, if you look at the data presented above it does form a kind of gauntlet where you have to get my each guy with a tomahawk one at a time before you can get through the tunnel and survive. Its' not a matter of places in the universe but the whole universe is also at steak for life bearing properties. Obviously you only get one chance. For example if the plank density was off but a little bit then the universe might be 12 feet wide and no life is possible. That one factor would kill the chances of life in the entire universe. There are many such factors. For that reason we should construct an analogy whereby you get one red marble per bad because that represents the one chance for that universe.

Then HRG argues that we don't know how many marbles are in the rest of the bag. That's right but it's going to be more than six. We have billions of stars each star is a chance for al ife bearing plaent (of couse you can elmiatne a bunch of them because they are not the right kind fo stars but each one could be the right kind at the outset and so each one is a chance). We have as many marble per bag as we have stars in the universe. We may not know the number but we know it's big. They want to use not knowing to turn it around and say "o that mean sit could just be 50/50 and life is really a toss up. Its' never going to be that likely. It will never be 50/50. That would mean there are only two chances for life in a universe.

The thing is the more chances for life the less likely it is to obtain. Why? Becasue most of chances are not gonig to pan out. The more chances the greater the odds against it. Sl if you have two marbles one white and one red (red = life) you have a 50/50 chance. It's one in 2. So that's pretty good. Life at that stage is probable. You get 10 marbles, one red (becuase there's only one chance to get past the life killing conditions in plank density or whatever) then ife is one in ten. less likely. You have 300 marbles it's one in 300.

There are going to be a lot more than 300 marbles. As I said every star is a chance for life, becasue it could become the kind of star we have and develop an earth like planet, or some other kind of life. Since the odds are against any particular chance it's not going to be that all those chances are good. With several of the make or brake examples as above that's a reason to limit the red marbles to one per bag (one per universe). It's not that the red mrables are life per se but the successful attribution of life.

The atheist contained to insist that the analogy with unlimited red marbles and unlimited other colored marbles was more apporiptate and that getting the red ones increased the chances for life (as though there could be more than one chance with some of those make or break deals). The contined to assert that I didn't understand the analogy and this told me they can't follow an argument. If can't see how we do know the odds on a lot of the examples because they are produced by scientific data, and we can't assign more than one chance per bab because with the make or break issues if you break then you have to start a new universe, the life chances of that one are gone.

They just see what they want to see. They just contract the analogy to suit their argument then insist that i don't get it. They all profess to believe that analogies don't prove things but hen they fight for their analogy tooth and nail as though it is itself the proof. I continued to say the function of analogy is to illustrate a point. the analogy si thought up by the person making the argument, not to prove the argument, but to clarify what it means. Actually this means Algonquians are hard, and dangerous it's better not to use them. They should be used sparingly and carefully. Its' an old familiar trick of HRG's to argue form analogy as though they are proof. They can be very persuasive if the person is too lazy to follow the argument and the analogy gives him an image he latch on to.

The image of the limitless bounty of the life-sustaining grab bag of the universe, is exactly the way they want to believe the universe is. things are just popping up out of nothing, no God need apply, it's just a cornucopia of life coming about by random chance. For people who are too lazy to clink on a link and read a chapter that seems like real proof.

Atheist Propaganda Machine Warms up For Slander

I just got through with a major ordeal. The Dawkies laid out a slander campaign trying to destroy my reputation because I've had some very effective arguments they could not answer. They laid about several things but it began with this one character "troxel" who was angry because I bested him ni verbal combat. he tried a couple of vendettas that didn't work then he hit upon a minor discrepancy. IN an article the writers says "the unspiriutalized person is the sick soul." Me means by that that the old Freudian notion that reilgion is sickness is wrong and has been overturned, religion is good becuase it conveys spiritual truth, the unspirtial person is the sick one." I said "unbeliever" is the sick soul. the Dawkies thought I meant "non Christians." So they said I took it out of context. I meant pretty much what the guy in the article meant, I mean the kind of believer in spiritual reality like the author of the article was advocating. The stage set over that issue all of them viyed to prove that I don't understand the article, when it is exactly what I've been saying for years. They do't know what I say because they don't listen.

The article in question is "Psychology, Psycho analysis and Religious Faith," by Jorge W.F. Amaro.

Troxel tried to blow i up into a larger issue saying that I take everything out of context.

Originally Posted by troxel

Nope that is not why. I was just bored with your constant referring to studies that you continuously abuse and distort to conform to your extremist views.

Meta:

(1) you have no valid reason for claiming I abuse anything.

(2) the major researcher who invented the m scale read my book when it comes out it will have his statment on it saying it's good. So you have no basis for that calim since the major guy who the studies says i understand them and got them right.

(3) you have not read a single one so you don't have anything to compere it to.

(4) no one else here has read one either but me.

I just focused on one example and I am simply amazed that you cannot see what was wrong with it. It is though you are missing awareness of what is a common academic standard - you don't misrepresent your sources.

I see what's wrong with it.You don't understaned the article. you don't understand what was by the terms so there's no way you can know that my use of them was wrong.

you are fling in the face of obvious quotes because you don't know the background you don't know theology. So typical. So man times a little arrogant ignorant hooligan who think he knows it all because he knows very little.

It also provides a great demonstration how you fail to measure up to what Amaro would qualify as a spiritualized person.

like you not understanding what it's about? you would include all atheists as spiritual when most of them are diametrically opposed to everything in the article that is spiritual.

you know you are wrong you don't don't understand stop the pretense. You have not disproved my interpretation. you a't. I will contact Amaro and he will tell you himself don't don't' get it.

Simple question that you have yet to answer. Are atheists and materialists within the category of unbeliever?

I did answer it. you are too dense to think about my answer. you don't understand my answer. you don't know what the article is about so you don't understand the answer.

In Amaro's conception of the world categories of materialist and theist and atheist are all wrong, all irrelevant. To him atheist and theist are just metaphors, god is a metaphor. The one for him who is not spiritual (how many times did I point this without quotes? at least four) the non spiritual is the one who thinks the metaphor is a problem or a pathology and that being religions is bad.

Proof: If that's not the case then why is he talking about Eliade and Jung and all that stuff? The statement "the nonspiritual person sis the sick soul" you don't even get the significance of it.

It's significant because Freud thought that religious people are sick. Religion is a result mental problems. The point of the article is to say Frued si wrong the religious person is not sick, the sick person is the unspectacular one who can't open to the possibilities of reality. those possibilities are defend in terms of Jung and Elaide which otherwise he has no reaosn o talk about them.

the vast majority of atheists don't accept those things. When he says atheists are included in spiritual he's not obviously n ot saying all atheists, he's excluding one's like Freud and those who would reject the metaphors of religion. Otherwise it makes no sense to speak of the sick soul. He is saying "no not the religious person who is sick its' the person is not open the possibilities.

that includes most of the atheist on carm.

Where? Where does he exclude reductionists? Please provide the quote where he excludes reductionists.

His provided definition does not exclude reductionists - that is yet another distortion by you.

that proves to me that you don't understand the meaning of any of the terms that you are throwing about. you don't understand the point of the article.

of course a reductionist would fall into the category of those who reject the Jung and Eliade thing as "new age" and "unproved" and. He says several things about scinece that show, (I told you to look at my signature that is such a quote) that applies to the reductionists.

you just don't understand the ramifications of the article because you don't understand the history of ideas involved the labels he uses.

On and on. Will you stop assuming you know things that you can't. But let me restate:

you think that theology and history of ideas are things I can't know ou have a sad school coming. this stuff is exactly what I know. The things in that article are right up my alley.l This is my "line of country." ' This is what I studied. I've spent 30 years studying it. Stupid to say I can't it this is what I do know. I may not know much else but I do this stuff.

hey don't look now this is exactly what people learn in theology school and in history of ideas. It's called Intellectuality and I spent my life on it.

Troxel

Yes I think wishing or fantasizing about torture, killing or great harm on another individual is wrong if not evil - a sign of a sick soul.

That is his understanding of what the article says. Yet the author doesn't say it and it makes all the talk about Freud seem unintelligible and without purpose.

The point of the article is to say Freud is old hat, his views on religion as neurotic and sick are wrong, the sick soul is the one who can't think past the literal and undersatnd he metaphor of higher power.

If that's not it would not make any kind of sense for him to talk so much about "omnipotence." I wonder if Trox actually read the article? I would bet he just found a few buzz words and read a passage or two with words like "atheist" in them. He has really bothered to figure out what the article is about.

notice that in this last post he dismisses he idea that I can know about the issues because and the history of the ideas, as though it's never occurred to him that schools and disciplines have histories that can b studies and that ideas one supports have logical connections and ramifications that can be studied and anticipated.

Some who doesn't mess with an intellectual life doesn't understand doing that.

It wold make no sense for him to spend so much time talking about Jung and Eliade if they were not his models for spirituality. They tie in that way based upon what he says about them.In discussing them he uses the capital B for "Being." Eliade was a friend of Tillich, and Tillich got a lot of his latter ideas from Eliade. Of course he was also very familiar with Jung.

Therefore, the kind of thing Tillich is doing is right in there with Amaro and his concerns, because he was clearly a Jungian and and Eliade fan. Tillich's main struggle was against reductionsm and it's a safe bet that the reductionist is the sick soul for Amaro. That would totally in keeping with the things he says about scinece.

this is what Amaro says:

"Religious faith and religion offer the idea of absolute, of a total and finished truth that has not been achieved by science since ancient times. "

(1) that's the kind of stuff that you guys poo poo all the time when I bring it up and that you call "new age." It's not new age but I've seen atheists on CARM call it that.

(2) That's what Tillich was saying. That quote I just quoted could come right out of Paul Tillch.

so it's obvious for Amaro the unspiritualizaed person might be a reduction but he would deferentially be the kind of person who can't accept religious truth as metaphor for a transcendent reality.

"We know that even in physics the theories are relative and questionable as to their universal reach, such as the laws of gravitation and the quanta, which have not been integrated in a single theory for macro and microcosm. --"

that might single to us that a reductionist would not be happy with this guy. IN fact Mat has stated in response to that very quote that I don't know anything about scinece.

I think this proves pretty well that I was totally vindicated to change the terms in the quote form "unspirtiualied" to "unbeliever." In fact I didn't do it I refereed to the quote that way. I also did that by accident. I didn't intent to change the term I slitted. I guess it's just that what I think it means came through. I still stand by that interpretation.

there's o way a rational person can think I took it out of context.

atheist slanderers have created a mythology about me, with no evidence and no reason and not one of them reading a single study, they have just made up that I take everything out of context any time I quote stuff that's obviously a lie. I just proved its a falsehood here.

no 21 (in the thread)

looking for knowledge
(that's a screen name)

Yes I admit I did not read it and i won't lie about it. I did not read it because I know that I am not good enough to understand nor criticize anyone in that subject. However, I am very sure Trox & Hermit & the rest had read it thoroughly. because: (answer this honestly)

I doubt that any of them read it. But they quickly formed a ridicule gauntlett with about 20 of them coming one after another going "he always takes stuff out of context," "He's so dishonest." I disproved their position on ever single issue they wont acknowledge one issue.

From the Amaro article.

The unspirituialized, and the Dawkie

Religious faith and religion offer the idea of absolute, of a total and finished truth that has not been achieved by science since ancient times. We know that even in physics the theories are relative and questionable as to their universal reach, such as the laws of gravitation and the quanta, which have not been integrated in a single theory for macro and microcosm.

Water can be found in different states, such as solid, liquid and gaseous, but from a chemical point of view it shows a non-variant, that is, in every state it is still made by two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.

Philosophy, anthropology, mythology, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and related fields can produce different and specific concepts that nevertheless show hidden non-variants, which may contribute for more inclusive truths.

Is that what reductionists say? do reductionists say that truth can be found in many fields? Do you know what they say? How many of you have read something by a person who is a philosophical reductions? Do the atheists on carm believer that other fields can give us good knowledge too besides scinece? That's what the article says do they believe that?

Amaro:

Reality and absolute truth are perceived in different ways according to the beliefs of the several schools of thoughts. The empiricists understand we can capture truth by means of our senses; the intuitionists that intuition would be that tool; while idealists trust reason; those belonging to the historical dialectic materialism group believe in the research methods of their theory; the religious believers accept faith and revelation; and so on. Every group has its own tool of omnipotent power.

Still, we can notice a non-variant in all those methods to grasp legitimate truth and reality, which is the idea of an omnipotent power. This non-variant is the omnipotence function elaborated by each of the theories developed by different philosophers.

what that says is each school has it's own method and they are all good they all something to offer and what they all have in common is the "omnipotence" (an attribute of god) which is a metaphor for transcendent truth.

Is that what reductionists believe? Isn't that an idea your average reductionist would puke if he heard it? Do carm atheists believe that? how many times have atheists on carm called that "new age" in a derisive way when I've advocated it?

How many atheists here believe in omnipotent power?

Archetypes are universal elements pertaining to the faculties of imagination and creativity. They have no specific content and have been inherited since ancestral times.

do reductionists believe in arche types? If you know what reductionism is then you know they don't.

Religion is the – voluntary or involuntary – relationship between the person and the absolute and most powerful value, be it positive or negative. This overpowering psychic factor is named God.

how many of you read that and think "Yea he's really got it that' good! I'm for that" be honest now! almost none of you. The kind of thing I've said over and over again and get spit in the face for saying it every time. you know you guys don't believe that.

so clearly reductionists would be an example of a kind of thinker he would call unspritiuailzed,a nd so would the carm atheist. the dawkie.

the paper was published in 98 before the 2004 surge of "new Atheism" he's not including the new atheist fundie thing it. There's no reason to think that. when he says "atheist" are included in spiritualist me means Buddhists or Marxists or people who mediate he's not talking about Harris and Dawkins.

he goes on with several statements about scinece and it's short comings.


Here's a good one:

The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding.

How many times a day do CARM atheists ridicule the supernatural? He clearly accepts that term as meaningful,. how many of you do? come on now be honest. It's true he says you can find it in both (that is nothing new for me, Abraham Maslow said that I knew that before 98 before my first post on CARM). he clearly does not mean either all atheists or all religious people.


are you guys content to accept that view and say "ok I'll believe in the supernatural now as long as atheists can be included?" sure we'll see in the coming the weeks if any of you can live with that because i'm not going to let it go.

I am right on this issue, the unspiritual is the unbeliever, not in conventional sense of institution but in the sense of the thing the metaphor points to.

thread on fine Tuning proves my point about Atheist incedultiy

The Fallacy of Fine Tuning, CARM 6/18/11

only about five out of 4o were actual arguments. most of those were up (like 34) before the other five were up. So most of the thread was atheist homing and hawing and Mat Hunter going "I am a scientist so I know more than yu do, so you have to be wrong." That's all, he didn't make a single argument. This is totally absurd. The amaing and laughable thing is that after 40 posts they are not even embarrassed. they are saying things like "you are complaining." Insread of making arguments!

They had a link form Stingers website, but I wont put it up here because ever time I get in it my computer frezes up. I'm sure that's nothing they meant to do.


I offered counter evidence by quoting Andre Linde form my Doxa site where I have my own fine tuning argument. Linde is a major phsycist he was one of the inventors of inflationary theroy.

Adrei Linde,Scientific American. Oct 97

http://www.sciam.com/specialissues/0...0398linde.html
[explaining problems with the BB for which the new inflationary model is propossed. The first problem listed above--that the universe pops into exitence out of nothing] I don't think the link there works anymore, the original article as in:
Scientific American oct 97

a) something from nothing

b) Flatness of Universe

"A second trouble spot is the flatness of space. General relativity suggests that space may be very curved, with a typical radius on the order of the Planck length, or 10^-33 centimeter. We see however, that our universe is just about flat on a scale of 10^28 centimeters, the radius of the observable part of the universe. This result of our observation differs from theoretical expectations by more than 60 orders of magnitude."



c) Size of Universe--Plank Density

"A similar discrepancy between theory and observations concerns the size of the universe. Cosmological examinations show that our part of the universe contains at least IO^88 elementary particles. But why is the universe so big? If one takes a universe of a typical initial size given by the Planck length and a typical initial density equal to the Planck density, then, using the standard big bang theory, one can calculate how many elementary particles such a universe might encompass. The answer is rather unexpected: the entire universe should only be large enough to accommodate just one elementary particle or at most 10 of them. it would be unable to house even a single reader of Scientiftc American, who consists of about 10^29 elementary particles. Obviously something is wrong with this theory."



d) Timing of expansion

"The fourth problem deals with the timing of the expansion. In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. But how could all the different parts of the universe synchromize the beginning of their expansion? Who gave the command?



e)Distribution of matter in the universe

"Fifth, there is the question about the distribution of matter in the universe. on the very large scale, matter has spread out with remarkable uniformity. Across more than 10 billion light-years, its distribution departs from perfect homogeneity by less than one part in 10,000..... One of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology was the 'cosmological principle," which asserts that the universe must be homogeneous. This assumption. however, does not help much, because the universe incorporates important deviations from homogeneity, namely. stars, galaxies and other agglomerations of matter. Tence, we must explain why the universe is so uniform on large scales and at the same time suggest some mechanism that produces galaxies."



f) The "Uniqueness Problem"

"Finally, there is what I call the uniqueness problem. AIbert Einstein captured its essence when he said: "What really interests ine is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." Indeed, slight changes in the physical constants of nature could have made the universe unfold in a completeIy, different manner. ..... In some theories, compactilication can occur in billions of different ways. A few years ago it would have seemed rather meaningless to ask why space-time has four dimensions, why the gravitational constant is so small or why the proton is almost 2,000 times heavier than the electron. New developments in elementary particle physics make answering these questions crucial to understanding the construction of our world."



Now Linde is confident that the new inflationary theires will explain all of this, and indeed states that their purpose is to revolve the ambiguity with which cosmologists are forced to cope. The Scalar field is suppossed to explain all of this; but these inflationary models are still on the drawing board. Moreover, he never says where scalar fields come from, what makes them, and indeed never illustrates how they solve the initial problem of where it all came form in the first palce. Finally, it seems that scalar fields would be a design feature that should troulbe Linde as much as the initial problems, since he compares them the circuit breaker of a house which keeps the uiverse from heating up too fast before it can expand. Moreover, they might be argitrary necessiteis (see argument I).

Linde agreed that fine tuning is true but he didn't want to believe in God. he proposed in that article that it could be explained by skylar fields. He didn't really explain it he gave us another puzzle to work on.

Every single atheist repose for 40 posts was nothing. some examples:

The great scientist posting at CARM Hunt:

To be honest meta, your physics isn't that hot, and your understanding of it is even worse, let this one lie.

none of this post may be used without the authors permission.

"I know more than you do leave me alone." that' the most he said on the whole thread. He made several other posts to me and never said anything else. This is a real post he did:

Leave science to the scientists meta...

that's the whole post. never made a single argument, never talked about a single scientific fact.


I said:Originally Posted by Metacrock

You know what? a funny thing about logic? Its' not a logical argument to say "your understating of X is no Good, therefore, my argument is true and your answer isn't." that's not an argument it doesn't prove anything.
In fact that's a fallacy called ad hominem it means you are arguing against me and not against my views.

Catbarf says:

post 7

Do you REALLY want me to start pasting in all the many, many, many, many times you call atheists stupid, or unable to think, or brainwashed, or dogmatic, or ideological, or Orwellian, or uneducated? Do you really need that to recognize your own ridiculous, blatant hypocrisy?

What does one have to do with the ohter? I make a post saying "you are not arguing arguments you are just saying little quips so he says a quip, and threats to talk about stuff I've done he doesn't' like. Is that supposed to prove something?

Originally Posted by Metacrock

Look , how does that change this thread hU? you don't have a single argument no one does but me.

i documented fine tuning and your side has not made a single argument agaisnt it..

who cares what I said last week. that's just dust in the wind, this is this thread not last weeks. you don't have an argument!

again trying to get them to actually argue something.

CaptainObvious

you are making an ad hom argument.

You're basically pointing out all of the reasons that people dismiss you.
No one has an argument but you? I think you've just reduced yourself to troll status.

Consider the stupidity of this. I'm making an ad hom becaus I say they haven't made an argument? I swear amost every popst to that point was like the one by catbarf. Only one post, a single link had any content that was the Original post. Yes some how that makes my recogizing their poor arguemnt ad hom. why? obviosuly the don't know what the words means. They think it's any time you talk about them. Then he says there are the reasons they don't like me what does that mean? Does it mean because I point out how bereft of logic their arguments are, becasue I insult them (where was I insulting them to point out the they weren't arguing?) or because he's claiming my stuff is content less as I accused theirs of being: to that Isay merel read my website and my blog and my boards and tell you think that. Absoltuey assigning.

I said:Originally Posted by Metacrock where is the arguent sonny child. where is it? where?

go down the row post by post. every single one of them in htis thread they are all name calling and dmeanding hat "we must be right" not a one o hem makes a single argument.

he says: CaptianObvoius

Unfortunately, I have looked at your posts Meta.

what does that mean?

It goes n this way for 40 posts. finally Fireproof Ashes cam along and we a nice little argument, no insults, it didn't last long. The only other content in it Gary Harris arguing about argument from analogy, and someone else arguing over mislabeling "fine tuning." really no substance at all.

What was this about? I know what it was. it was an attempt to set up what I call a "ridicule gauntlet. That's a whole bunch of atheist go one after another mocking and ridiculing a Christian This one never got off the ground. Even though they had a of contentless crap in the thread they never really that insulting because I made such a stink about how they wree just giving a content less posts. the few attempts such Harris's analogy I shot down fast so nothing ever got going and they couldn't really cut lose without


Atheism is not for thinking people. they are not in it to learn things or find turth. They are in it to take revenge for their poor self esteem. They want to get even they want to feel powerful, some are just plain trolls. They are not thinkers and they are not interested in what's true.

Atheist Bait and Swtich

Simple concept: I said "belief is rationally warranted, I am not trying to prove God exists, just that belief is rational," then I make an argument; and the atheist say "your argument didn't prove God exits."



Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

Second bait and switch that atheists pull. I go "I argue for rational warrant for belief, not absolute proof." Sometimes they go "I don't think religion is irrational." Sometimes not but the thing they always do is wind up the argument saying things like "there's no proof for your God, you didn't prove it."

I say "I don't argue for proof" and they say "you didn't prove it." Does anyone see the problem with the picture? they are switching the goal of the argument from warrant to proof.

Now the ball is in the other court. I've given good solid logcial reasons why I believe in God. They are not reasons why the atheists believe, or course not. They don't have to be. they my reasons. They can't disprove that to me. nothing they say is going to make me think that God is not real.


They are going to come and say "O but have the burden of proof."

NO I don't for two reasons:

(1) I have met my prmia facie burden by providing a rational warrant

(2) atheist ideology depends upon demonstrating the superior rationality of atheism over belief in God. If my prima facie warrant stands they have failed because I've proved it's rational to believe, which their ideology says it's not.

don't let them pull the switch and say "It's your burden of proof" I didn't argue proof.

Essentially they have to now show why my prmia facie stand is not good enough.



Documentation on the validity of PF case:

quote:


Prima Facie Justification.


heory of Knowledge lecture notes.
G.J. Mattey
Philosophy, UC Davis
originally posted under the Thomas Reid Project


"Far from concluding that our senses are "fallacious," Reid placed them on the same footing as memory and reason, though they are "undervalued" by philosophers because "the informations of sense are common to the philosopher and to the most illiterate. . . . Nature likewise forces our belief in those informations, and all the attempts of philosophy to weaken it are fruitless and in vain."

"Reid pointed out that when we fall into error regarding the objects of sense, we correct our errors "by more accurate attention to the informations we may receive by our senses themselves." So the "original and natural judgments" that are made on the basis of our constitution lose their original justification in the presence of additional information. Contemporary philosophers call this kind of justification "prima facie," a term from law which describes an initially plausible case that could prove to be entirely implausible given further evidence. A belief of common sense, then, is justified "on the face of it."

"According to the doctrine of prima facie justification, one is justified in accepting that things are the way they appear, when

* it does appear to one that they are that way, and
* there is no reason to think that something has gone wrong.

[Ibid]

"But if there is such a reason, one's justification is "defeated." Thus prima facie justification is "defeasible."

"For Reid, our beliefs about physical objects are justified by sense-experience, which he took to be a product of the interaction between the senses and physical objects. Twentieth-century philosophers have been somewhat more cautious, however, and have followed more closely the account of perceptual knowledge given by Reid's predecessors such as Descartes, Locke and Hume: that what justifies our beliefs about physical objects is a mental state such as:

* looking like something is red
* a sensation of red
* seeing red-ly"

"For example, what justifies a person in believing that he sees something red is that it looks to him as though there is something red. The mental state of that person is one in which there is an appearance of red, and just being in this mental state is enough to give prima facie justification to the belief that he really sees something red. On the other hand, what confers justification might be a belief about how things appear."

So every single athist the thread did exactly what I said they would do. They pull the old switch and argue "your argument didn't prove God exists."

no 2
Larger Minded

The following will hopefully illustrate for you, by way of parable, why the "rational warrant for theism" line of reasoning fails to live up to its billing for so many of us:

I posit that mankind communes with the lesser animals by way of a connective spirit force called the tiergeist. The tiergeist pervades all aspects of our existence and explains why humans and animals have been such great cooperators throughout their respective histories. Without getting in touch with this spirit force, our lives are devoid of fulfillment and we suffer for it. The tiergeist allows for connectivity with animals at a spiritual level, and this demonstrates that it is a core element of all consciousness in the universe. Getting in tune with one's connection to the tiergeist can have enormous, quantifiable benefits in one's life, such as improved health and happiness.

After telling you all this about the tiergeist, your reaction is simple: "Bu*****t."

I insist that it is true, but you demand evidence.

Very well, then....

I point you to the work of the Baker Medical Research Institute in Melbourne, where they conducted a study of more than 5,000 people and showed that those who own pets have significantly lower cholesterol and blood pressure than those who don't. Furthermore, "pet therapy" is a common practice in the professional long-term care of senior citizens, as a means to increase their daily exercise and ease their sense of loneliness. As if to put the case to bed, I refer you to a 2003 study published by the Gerontological Society of America, that shows an exceptional increase in longevity and a resistance to cancer among dog owners versus the general population.

Now, I grant none of this is direct proof of the tiergeist - no such proof could ever be had, of course - but clearly I have provided a rational warrant to believe in it.

Or have I....?

REVENG

okay... but so what? i don't find a belief in something that has no evidence of it's existence to be really rational, even strings has some sort of maths supporting it even if it is all theoretical.

what has your god got again? oh yeah nothing, at least nothing that would point to god as an answer over something natural. even your studies can at most show that mystical experiences affect lives which after all your repeats of posting the same drivel over and over, no one doubts.
whether they support a rational warrant of belief is a matter of something outside the belief, namely the gods existence. without that the belief is not above the level of believing elves affect farm equipment if you pave over their homes.
no matter how hard you push, believing in something that has no evidence isn't ever going to be rational, you call holler and bad mouth me all you like, beliefs don't magic god into existence.

36
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

that's begging the question. I have demonstrated over and over that there are good logical reason to bleieve. you have not show any of them down. to show me that they aren't good you must shoo them down. when will you do it? you haven't yet!

stop the truth by stipulation and prove soemthing.

REVENG

lol what? i don't think you have a clue what begging the question means, in fact i'd say all of your claims either are begging the question or special pleading.
If you really understood those terms you would show me by laying the argument and demonstrating it. You wouldn't just do this chest thumping thing I am I am so smart. I am better than you. If you were really better you would make the argument.

Meta:

You can't prove any of that. My arguments are not begging any questions are. you come out and say "there's' no proof for your God" I just gave you ne and you did not answer it. that's you begging the question.

you say "there are not arguemnts for God" I just go through winning two. no one disproved TS or the sublime, throughout that the tread right up to this day 90% of what they said is "i don't understand this." So how can they beat it when they don't understand it? you did not make an argument that beat it. no you did not!

THAT IS YOU BEGGING THE QUESTION!

anyone can thump his chest and say "your arguments are just x y and z" proving it is another matter. You are afraid to debate me 1x1. you didn't take my challenge so you really don't believe you can beat my arguments.

oh and no, you haven't demonstrated any good logical reasons to believe, again you use fallacious arguments and brow beating attacks to make your case.

PROVE IT! PROVE IT! if we tried to talk all our opponents to death what war would we have won? You don't prove it, if you could you would have a don't have an argument

you don't make a single argument, you spout the same lame slogan over and over.

howling how you have 200 studies and we have none, doesn't prove anything you say right,
that's silly. that just saying empirical scientific data doesn't prove anything. I know you really believe it doesn't. you don't believe in scinece you don't believe in proof. these are just Little games to play while you mock and ridicule. you only care science when it supports you.

what kind of a thinker would say "your studies don't prove nut'n!??" hu? that's just saying "science ant no good it support me." The studies prove what they say. So my premise form which i made my arguments is proved, becasue my premise is what the studies prove, the one's you are too lazy to read, remember?

so science disproves your world view and you don't have the integrity to even check it out! you have the Gaul to say that I'm betting the question!

REVENG

it merely means you have 200 studies that can be used or twisted to anyone liking since none of them attempt to support what you want them to.

Meta:

you don't know that you are only assuming because they disprove your junk world view. You don't have the integrity to even read one. I doubt that you really care what scinece says.

REVENG

also other than saying you have 200 studies and a few flawed logical arguments such as your argument over necessity of god, which is flawed when you comprehend what time is at its core, why arguments do you really have?

Meta:

that's not an argument. you are making proclamations not arguing. snow me why.
why should i? i'm not claiming anything,


no 40
Originally Posted by CaptainObvious View Post
Is this meant to be taken seriously?

Meta:

Since major logicians take Stephen Toulmin seroiusly why can't you? It's Toulmin who said there's a warrant. It's Toulmin who said you don't need to prove an hypothesis if you have a warrant to believe it. Why si that so teerible?

you don't have an argument against any of my arguments. all you ever do si spout the same incredulity your brain washed comrades also spout. do you really expect me to take you seriously?

*you are afraid to debate
*you can't make an argument
*every argument you makes is based upon begging the question
*the only argument you can offer is that of incredulity
*you have not a single specific disproof of any of my arguments
*too lazy to read one single study.

you expect to must mouth a bunch clap trap about "your arguments aren't any good" that's suppossed to prove something even though you have no argument to back it up.

you expect me to take that seriously?

every single atheist in this thread has done exactly what I predicted.

(1) they beg the question assuming there just can't bea god so no God argument could ever be good.

(2) not one of them gives a specific reason why my arguments fail

(3) the argument incredulity and make a bunch of proclaimations about it

(4) they call my arguments names.

(5) most importantly, they do the bait and switch they say "your arguments don't prove God."

a couple tried to assert that ratinoal warrant is not good but they can't really say why.

Look at the one that just goes "do you exect us to take this seroiusly." Obviously, that's nothing but incredulity. Everyone in the thread is like that.

Vicious lying athiests

apologist confronts atheist on message board

on carm they were discussing the imbecilic atheist idea that Christain can't accept losing God arguments. I recalled a time years ago when I got an open minded atheist (yes,one of the few) to huge a tournament and the theists cleaned house on the atheists.



Originally Posted by Metacrock

the one time I had a judge for my arguemnts (an atheist, Ian Laite form U. of Swansea philosophy department) he said i won every argument.

Of cousre they couldn't stomoch that. they had to do something to discredit it so three of them cooked up a little lie.

MFFJM2

Can you explain how this is possible when there is no Department of Philosophy at the University of Swansea..?

University of Swansea

The University of Swansea, in Wales, actually only offers two interdisciplinary undergrdauate degrees remotely having to do with philosophy, called Philosophy, Politics, and Law (PPL); and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). PPL is an interdisciplinary BA program designed for both liberal arts and students interested in law. PPE is an interdisciplinary BA program designed for both liberal arts and students interested in economics. Academic staff from the Department of Political and Cultural Studies and the Departments of Economics/Law deliver the PPE and PPL programs, respectively. There is no Philosophy Department at the University of Swansea.

mat hunt post 8 on thread

Having did a bit of googling, there is no Ian Laite at Swansea university, the name Ian Laite does exists and it is linked to someone who is an atheist. I think that we have shown that meta has lied...

notice this college graduate says "saving did ab bit of goggling" I guess he spent so much time in scinece he just didn't learn any grammar.


post 9 KCDad says:

Meta is making stuff up again?

that's a favorite tactic fo McCarthy, red baiters, KKK and other flakes and atheists to add "again" as though It' just so standard. I've so well known as a liar I've caught making stuff up so many times.

So looked at Sawnsea, since I knew I was right and said this:

you guys are such bad researchers. You looked that up hoping to prove I'm a liar and in fact I have proved that you can't research.

This is the entire that I made, nothing has been taken out. I gave no reason why I quoted it. I just quoted it. That way they had to make their own stupuid conjectures,and stupid they were:

http://www.edgewaysbooks.com/8th/Swansea.pdf

to
The Vice Chancellor
University of Wales, Swansea
Singleton Park, Swansea. SA2 8PP
copy to
Mrs Anne Edwards, Secretary
Dept of Philosophy
from
Edgeway Books
The Stonehouse
Bishopstone HR4 7JE

Dear Professor Davies,
I am told that the Swansea Philosophy Department is to be closed.
Philosophy is the heart of any university and how any institution can
call itself a university without philosophy I can hardly imagine. As it
happens, over the last half century or so the Swansea department has
been very distinguished, the only department in the Swansea arts
faculty to rise far above the ordinary provincial university level. I
report this not only as common knowledge but as a judgement I was
well placed to make for more than thirty years, having had numbers
of friends in that department from Rush Rhees and Peter Winch
onwards, and having for years worked in a department that had a
specially designed joint honours degree with Philosophy, which
numbers of graduates would say was a genuine university education.
The closure of the department cannot fail to signal that University
of Wales Swansea is, as the newspapers say, dumbing itself down;
and when the better sixth-form teachers realise what has happened
this cannot fail to have an adverse impact on the quality of student
applications to the surviving departments.
yours sincerely

read the whole doc you see it had not yet happened by 2004 but apparently has since. I knew Ian ("Socrates") around 98-2000.

I purposely didn't comment on what the quote proved, because I wanted to show that they can't draw obviosu conlucions. what conclusion do they draw? that because the guy's name is Ian that I'm trying to say he's the same guy> Now they have to think I'm pretty stupid to think that Robinson can pass for Laite. Why would I do that? It's a really ditsy thing to think so because they think it they are sold on it.

I said in two other posts he was not a full professor and that the was a graduate student, why would he be the senior lecturer as that guy is.

after they tried to intermittent that as saying this is him.
that doesn't' prove he was Ian Laite. Ian that i knew was not senior lecturer he was a graduate student who taught as an instructor.

of course they dredge that up again after I corrected them as though the correction never took place.



post 20 by KCDad

Originally Posted by Metacrock

meaningless drivel. you have been bested why don't you stop before you lose all credibility. you tried to make out that I'm laying about Ian Laite and that didn't work you got your head handed to you.

Here is KCDAD:

You tried to pass off some anonymous letter that you didn't know was signed by a former Professor as being written by "a friend".

that is a total absolute lie. I never said anything about the person writing that letter being Ian Laite. I quoted it because it disproved his assertion that Swansea never had a philosophy department.


MFFJM2 post no 10

Meta, please note that I never suggested you were lying. I simply asked how it was possible for someone from a Philosophy Department that doesn't now exist to write that you're the greatest debater since Socrates. You've provided the explanation that the Philosophy Department had been removed from the University of Swansea some years ago, and this person "from the University of Swansea" was really just a graduate assistant. Well, that explains it then.


So a graduate assistant, (in a Philosophy Department, from a University in Wales, that has since removed the entire department from the curriculum), who at the time he wrote you had no advanced degree, was so impressed with your debating ability (this was apparently discovered on line, right..?) wrote and told you that you were the greatest thing in debate since sliced bread. Well, now I see why you wanted to share those kudos with the rest of us. Very impressive.

Wait a minute did say he had an advancd degree? Of course if he was a Ph.D. candidate he had a Masters degree. That's not what my post said. It's quoted at the top it just calles him:Ian Laite form U. of Swansea philosophy department. It didn't say he taught, didn't he had a degree or untying. I think he did teach, I taught as a graduate student. I had an adavnced degree but not a Ph.D. The whopping lie is here:

wrote and told you that you were the greatest thing in debate since sliced bread.

I never even vegly implied that. I merely said that judged the debates and the theists all won.

They are lying little shit holes, they are not decent people, they no morality becasue they sold their sold and turned their backs on god. They are willing to lie and ruin reputations and do anyting it takes, to hurt religoius people and destroy religion. How much longer shall we all these ignorant uneducated savages to push us around? they are so brain washed by thier ideology they have no respect for truth of any kind. Its' all just they can get if people get hurt that's ok as long the ideology prevails.

Another Nail in the Coffin of The CARM Atheists Medacity about my Studies Validating My Experince of God Arguments

This is a post in the thread on bait and switch, by Mary Jane.

http://forums.carm.org/vbb/showthread.php?57332-atheist-bait-and-switch&p=1730779#poststop

I have a huge body of scientific work that validats my experince of God arguments. CARM atheists have done everything they could think of to discredit, obfuscate, and ignore that body of work except actually read some and argue fierily about it. I put up a link to a book chapter over 147 times two people read it and one claimed he didn't understand it the other attacked something in it that the author was attacking to, only the atheist thought he was beating up on the author.


This is another pointless claim by MJ to create the impression that she's read the studies that I talk about. Again, she has not read them. All she's doing is confusing a summary article by Mohan with a study. There is a Mohan study, but she hasn't read it. What she read was an article by Mohan that is not a study. By this she actually twisted all the statements around on the assumption that i have to be wrong so what I say is false so they must mean the opposite.

On that premise she just goes wild trying to create impressions that have no bearing on reality.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

the 200 studies that none of your will read, and that you can't come to grips with totally blow your position away.

They establish the co-determinate of God on the same kind of grounds that you establish any scientific fact.

LOL. Except a lot of us HAVE READ THEM and our positions remain entirely unblown.

what she points to here is nothing but a discussion about the summary article that is not a study. This is does nothign to prove that she read a study. Besides that he's acting so triumphant about reading a study (which she did not do) one study! there 199 more to go that she clearly hasn't read (if she read one).

Perhaps we can tackle this again, since you didn't answer the last time.
Ok. Let's get this cleared up once and for all.

The 200 studies that Meta likes to mention all the time and bring up in every thread, no matter what the subject is, are as follows:

Yea lets do take the opportunity to clear things up.

MJ:
134 'studies' is a reference list (bibliography) copied from an article by Mohan on the use of spirituality in counselling. There are very few actual studies in that bibliography.

Factual error 1: I never said there were 134 studies on the bib to the Mohan article (she admits here the Mohan reading is an article). I used the Bible as a partial list of studies because there are many on it. I never claimed a number nor did I ever claim that it was a major list.

Factual Error 2: the statement that there aer few studies is totally untrue and totally at odds with the fact. Most of the entries in the bib are studies.

Factual Error 3: She is confused about the nature of the list because there is no one source published that contains all the studies I speak of when I say "200." That figure is my own form my bib in my book that's not out yet. I use a a couple of the bibs from articles as references because they contain several of the studies. I never said the whole is compiled from just Mohan.

MJ
It is mostly populated by articles, reviews and religious texts. The list can be found here. Meta, of course, still includes these references in his list of 200 studies and accuses me of 'nitpicking' when I point out that they're not.

This is total confusion on her part. it's true the Mohan article is an article so it has reference to many kinds of literature. I never claimed the Mohan article bib is the basis of my list of 200. It contains many of them (not 134 I don't think) but they also come from any other source,s bibs and other things I've read (as any researcher will d0). The link she lists there is my source on Athistwatch and it's just the Mohan bib. I put it there for reference so that people have something to consult when they want some sources on the topic. It is a really good bib.

MJ
It's easy claim that you've got 200 empriical studies when you redifine empirical study to include religious texts, articles and reviews. There's also a question of how relevant the very few studies are to his claim, as he won't explain what he's trying to prove with those studies.

Here we have another statement at variance with truth. The allegation that I redefine "empirical study" to include religious texts" is a bit of mendacity that is calculated and absurd. It's based upon untruth, certainly not upon any claim I made. I have said in the post nothign more than the fact that the all the 200 are peer retrieved academic studies in academic journals. I think we see here who really understands what a study is and what it's not. I was a sociology major in undergraduate school. I conducted a study for class in my sophomore year when I took a graduate level class on research methods in sociology. I was a college debater, in the 1970s. That meant reading hundreds of studies over the course of one year, every year for all four years of college. In NDT style policy debate f that time one either learned to cope with study methodology or one never won any debates.

moreover, there are no religious texts on many of the bibs I use, I think she got that becasue some of the studies involve TM. She confusing TM with a religious text. Who knows, who knows where people get these things. I think if I recall there was a source on the bib that seemed to written by a swami or something, but it wasn't part of the 200 it was just on Mohan's bib. She's assuming that Mohan's Bib is like 90% of my studies and it's no where near the case.

MJ
Then there are studies done by Wuthnow and Noble on the long term positive effects of mystical experience. They found that those who had such an experience were more self-actualized then they were before. The study doesn't say where the experience comes from or how those who've had it fare against those who have not.

here we have two distinct falsehoods, lets break them down and answer them one at a time:

(1) doesn't say where the experiences came from.

this false impression has been attempted many times by atheists on carm. The fallacy that a scientific study has to speculate about the existence of God or it's not proof of the value of the experience. That's just bilge water because it doesn't make any sense, it's a contradiction to the very concept of study design (since you can't design a study for the transcendent) you can't expect scientist to speak outside their domain. Hood says in his text book this very thing "It is not our place as scientist to assumptions about the existence of God." That's a close paraphrase.
That argument is null and void anyway becuase the result of the experiences and their context are two of the major reasons to attribute it to the divine, you don't need some guy in a white lab coat to say "yea that's really God." The individual logician should be angel to handle any logical inference without appeal to authority to tell him/her how to think. This is one of the few things the atheist gang on carm actually has to argue agaisnt the studies. So it has become a mantra.

(2)how those who've had it fare against those who have not.

yes it does say that, he does compare. This is a proof that she hasn't read Wuthnow. There's no way one could mistake this. If you read the study you see table after table where the comparisons are made. Very First page of the article, page 59, first line of the sumary:

This article presents evidence from a random sample of the San Fransisco Bay Area on some of the difference bewteen people who claim to have had intense peak experience and people who have not had such experiences!"

Obviously this is a comparison between two groups, experiences and on experiences. If she read the study why didn't she see that? Moreover, in the table on 66, it speaks of the categories in which the people are put and they comprise: response to peack experience item yes within one year (had the experience) yes but not in a year, yes but not lasing, no but would like to, no but would not care to. on 67 there's a table comparing "high peakers," "average peakers" and "non speakers." That's obviously a comparsion between those who have and those who have not had the experience. On 68 a reference to a table with the same distinctions. agan on 69, 70, 72, 73.

how could anyone read the study and miss this stuff?

on 65 he says "the data indicates that the peackers do differ on these kinds of questions from non peakers." Obviously then they are comparing those who have the experience with those who do not.

btw on one measure, "life is very meaningful" there's a 30% difference between high peakers and non peaksers for finding life meaningful with 68% of high peakers finding it very meaningful and 35% of non peakers finding it so.


MJ

They are not more self-actualized then those who haven't had an experience; they are more self-actualized THEN THEY WERE BEFORE THE EXPERIENCE.
6/10/11 Mary Jane
http://forums.carm.org/vbb/showthread.php?57332-atheist-bait-and-switch&p=1730779#poststop

clearly we have seen this is not the case in Wuthnow's study. If it was that would not be a bad study result becasue it's obviously relevant that one improves after the experience; that's the whole idea. It's not the case that they only comapred peakers to themselves as I just demonstrated Wuthnow compares both to each other.

the link that she links to is her own post on carm where asserts with with no backing.

MJ
Then there's Maslow's 'peak experience' that has nothing to do with anything religious or mystical - shown by a study with a 1000 participants in San Diego (some were atheists who've had these 'peak experiences').

This is a major distortion of the facts and misconception. It only demonstrates that she has not read the literature, especial not Maslow. She's confused about what Maslow was doing. He himself was an atheist that doesn't mean that he had the kind of snide religion hater attitude that many "new atheists" do today. He was one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century and he knew enough to keep his feeilngs away from his data. that peak is a euphemism for mystical one can gleam immediately from reading the book. He was including religous experinces and in fact he knew that the vast majority of peakers were religious. He said "the atheist and the believer can do quite a long way together down the path (of mystical experience) before they must final separate." He knew he was including both.

the concept that an atheist and a Christian can both have these kinds of experiences and one cal it "God" and the other call it "nothing" is not amazing nor does it contradict theology or my argument. Vedantists (type of Hindu) experience god as a void. They believe in God and they are not atheists but they experience God the very same way atheists experience mystical reality, as a great void rather than a personality. Since the experience is beyond word, thought, or image, one must filter it through culture to talk about it, then it only makes sense that some have the capacity if they so pre disposed to deny that it's connected to "God." What they don't deny is that it's connected to the ground of being or ultimate reality.

The experiences can be interpreted in terms of anyone's doctrine, that's why doctrine is not really very important. What's important is expernice, and that's what the athist here are denying, an experience they have never had (perhaps some have).

Maslow said: "Anyone who cannot perceive the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic, is simply blind to an aspect of reality, as I think I have amply demonstrated elsewhere (54), and in Appendix I, fromPeak Experience" He's obviously including the mystical in with the peack experience since he sees it as "the sacred."

Here's a link to an online copy of his book on peak experience.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/maslow.htm


From that point we have to get into specific arguemnts the way I make them and that's for latter. We must bracket that, but the fact is she does not have an argument here by pointing out that a tiny percent of peakers are atheists.

MJ
I should add that I was taught in University that Maslow's ideas of self-actualization have fallen out of favor due to a lack of empirical support. More on that here if you're willing to read a whole book.

(1) That concerns the hierarchy of needs ont the peak studies
(2) Maslows research on peak was good but outdated by others who still hold his position
(3) his assertions about peak have been validated up tot he present
(4) He still has a discipline that he started himself and a discipline of supporters
(5) He's still revered as a classic

that is not a methodological incitement. It's also anecdotal because she has no studies to back it up. She has no source to back it up. I do. It says nothing about the validity of his studies. It's nothing ore than a political statement. The climate of pinon disfavors anything that doesn't load patents up with drugs and explain everything through chemicals but the discipline that Maslow began still has his supporters and his major preemies are still proved by many studies. That's talking about his hierarcy of needs not this studies on peak experince. Besides his studies were done in the late 60's and ealry 70s before even Muthnow and Nobel. His work became outdated with theirs. It was good gut it wasn't enough, they went further. The theory on hierarchy of needs has nothing to do with peak experince.

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadhb.html

"Maslow's theory remains a classic because rather than looking at psychology as strictly the study of the mentally ill, his theory was based upon healthy persons. And being one of the first humanistic ones, it has its share of flaws. "

MJ
Then there's the M-scale which, as I understand it, is used to measure the likeness of mystical experience cross-culturally. Basically, mystics in Sweden experience similar mystical experiences to mystics in India. That says a lot about human nature and thought processes, but nothing about the source of that experience.

this is a half backed understanding of it but it's not so far wrong that we can just let that go. The sloughing it off as human nature will not do. This is another CARM atheistism which is somethign the pulled out of a hat because they couldn't answer the research. They have to explain it somehow so they just ascribe it to human nature. If that were the case why don't all people have peack experience and get better? Moreover, the real issue is that the studies on the M scale found that throughout cultures around the world all the mystics are having the same experience. The attribute it to their own individual doctrines but when you remove the doctrinal terms and names they all read the same.

In other words if you compare muslim, Christian, Bhuddist, atheist, mystics and take out references to "Jesus," "Alah," Buddha," "the void" and just make it generic "undifferentiated univerity, pervasive presence of love" then they all read the same.

That's not really possible. Any vaild theory of psychology would have to tell us that such constructs are from culture. Innate ideas are not accepted in moedrn world. Innate ideas prove God a priori. You do't want this to be innate ideas of God if you are an atheist but that's what we are looking at becuase otherwise it has to be culture. If it's culture than that is totally unexplained because it can't be just the result of similarities in the mind. If there were true then why are languages different? why are cutlers different?

there are some similarities that result form just being human such as mothers love their babies and babies bond with the mother first. That's very different than a undifferentiated unity of all things appearing to someone in an experience of the world, and a overwhelming pervasive presence of love. Those clearly are not explained by the similarities of the human mind becuase we don't all have them.

Am I missing something Meta? Where's the other 50+ studies?

yes you missing a lot kido, But your basic false assumption is to think that Mohan's bib and my list are the same thing they are not. The 200 figure is ball park. Besides the bib for my book has about 150 but the rest of them are on Hood's Vita. He has done about 50-100 studies on this.