This is all going to be important because it forms the background to my 1x1 debate with Occam. Occam is an atheist (stole a Christian name) on CARM. He was until recently one of the few atheists for whom I had great respect. I still respect him enough to debate him one on one. The see saw arguments bewteen them and me over the 200 Studies on religious experience have been bane of my life on the net. They are the fuel that keeps the fire going for my time on CARM. They will figure into the 1x1 debate. I will keep my readership posted about this 1x1 debate. I'll more about that on Monday.
I have provided them with the sources of all 200 studies I have bib on Religious A prori that lists all thew sources. They will not look one up. It's crazy. No debater in the country is asked carry ever original of every quote he uses he would have to tote a library with him. They really talk like they are helpless in a library when I suggest they actually go look up the studies.
Priceless, they go through the same ideological fire drill over and over again: This is a summary of the collective argument made by the CARM atheists on the 200 studies of religoius experience that I talk about, and have been talking about for years.
Atheists: you can't show us the studies.
I can't show most of them becasue they are not on the net. a good many of them were in articles in journals in the 70s, 80s, 90s, when most of that materiel was not on the net. Most journals weren't putting their articles on the net in teh 90s and the net wasn't goign good enough in 70s and 80s. I'm not sure there was a net in the 70s. I think it was in Bill Gates's garage or something.
I show a study that says "half the shrinks have had mystical experience the other half mostly think it's ok" I say "this shows that shrink don't think mystical experince is bad for you." they go "that doesn't say what you want it to.
it says "shrinks don't hate mystical and that's what I said it says. they are totally convinced "it doesn't say what you want it to." They can't get it out of their heads that I don't want it say "official finding God exists." That's their conception of the possible use a study could have in relation to God arguments. They can't concieve of building an argument from smaller arguments or using data from different studies to document a constructed idea. They are such intellectual giants they don't know how arguments work. That's always the hallmark of intellectually superior people they don't know how to argue. They can't get it out of their heads that what they want me to say and what I said are two different things.
Bottom line they would rather whine about how the studies aren't on the net and I can't show them all 200 then go look one up. This way they get to make it sound like I'm lying. They other why, if they look them up, they have to find out I'm right.So they are too helpless to work a library, they wont answer the arguments I give and they wont read the material I provide.
The chapter 11 in Hood's book, has everythihng you need to know to know the studies and how they are done and how the m scale works. I put it up 149 times (I've put it up twice more since the last count) not one of them has read it. But they still want you to think I'm not providing the information. They still talk as though I'm not willing provide anything.
it's back on Google books so you could read a condensed version of it now if you will.
I have a bibliography that shows most of the studies about 150 the other 50 are on Hood's CV. They wont look one of them up. It's up here on the board many many times, they just wont get them.
Hood's chapter in the McNamara book where he documents the stats on the universality argument.
this has been up time and time again they will not read it. You need to scroll to page 119 or use the link in the index.
They wont read any of this. the one's they read are the ones that I told them are not important and tangential but they use them becuase they find thing to twist out of shape and try to make into counter arguments. then they ignore what I aid about "these are not the good ones" and say stuff like 'see his best sutdis are no good." or "the good one's must be bad too."
Deist says seven studies have been seen here (put up on carm, but actually links to them) and don't say what I want them to. He wont name them.
(1) a study that was not part of the 200 but confirmed a study in the 200 the 200. The study that it confirmed was by Dale Caird. It says it confirms Hood's M scale. of course he's pretending that it doesn't confirm it but it did (and it wasn't one of the 200 anyway).
(2) Spanos and Moretti which Royce brought up and we argued about so long, through about 10 threads. None of them even reemmber why I used Spanos. It doesn't say God is real or anything and I never said it does. I used it because it answers the hypnotizablity argument and its says there's no pathology among people who have postive msytical expreinces. The sutdy does say that and those are the two reasons I use them.
He goes on telling the untruth that they don't say waht I said they say.
(3) Allman study says half the shrinks have had not of them think it's good for you and that's exactly what I said they say and they ay it.
he cant' name the other four.
It's just a big dumb game. These 200 studies blow away whole atheist world. if you take them seriously there need not be any atheists. they have to destroy them because they whole game is at steak.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Lat Stupid Atheist Tricks of 2013: glimpses of atheist ideology at work
Just a few anecdotes I was saving at the end of the year.
Originally Posted by Whateverman
Meta:
no it's the opposite. try to think now. why do they call it 'gap?' the argument is based upon a gap in knowledge. but I don't have a gap in knowledge. I know for a fact there can be no change where there is no time. that's not a gap it's a fact.
all three examples are like that. Read the words next time!
ironically he says next:
Whateverman:
"I stopped reading after this point." !!!
that's why you always get it wrong. you stop reading before the answer.
I think you do that because you are scared to death to see the answer.
Whateverman:
ps. note the implication above: God fits into places logic can't. Sure doesn't say much for the supposed logical arguments for God's existence...
Meta:
'
I stopped reading at this point.
another one: addition that he hates supernatural
Mark UK
I thought my contempt for the word "spiritual" couldn't get any more intense, but it does - every single time I read or hear it.
It's an utterly meaningless, soggy cabbage of a word, a placeholder for "I don't know".
Notice he can't read the word without feeling hate. what does say about brain washing?
third one is from Backup on CARM. They are attacking Danny for usnig a Quote suppossedly by James Madison but several historians have been unale to find it in Madison's papers.
Originally Posted by backup
Notice, he tells us Leadership.com does disinformation. So that means if it was cited it would be one of thier lies. So does that support it that it's not cited? Clearly that's an indicument too. So damned if you damned if you don't.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Is American Beleif in God in Decline? Half Americans don't believe with Certinty and 1/4 are agnostic or atheist?
this is dated 1/4/14. that will be important latter when we have 15 articles on Religious A priori:Bogus Atheist Social Sciences dealing with different levels of poll results.
Here we go with more distortion of the stats on God belief. It is so important to atheists to believe that they really are secretly the majority becuase they do believe in appeal to popularity. How do they cope with the fact that they are unpopular? They pretend they are not. They do everything they can to forge statistics. I've seen them claim all Hindus are atheist. I've seen them claim all other religions are atheists that are not Christian. I've them claim that Christianity is so divided that it's an amalgam of one billion smaller religions and thus atheism outnumbers each one individually. That's right. that's about as lame as you can get. Talk about living in denial.
An article in something called "liberty voice"[1] half of Americans don't believe in God "with certainty," and a quarter are atheist or agnostic.[2] So 2% could be atheist the rest of the quarter agnostic. They could count as agnostic people who believe in God. The article doesn't say "half don't bleieve in God at all" It says "with certainty." So depending upon how certain certain is they could be calling the Southern Baptist Convention "uncertain," because they haven't gone into the arena to fight lions yet. While this article uses a couple of good sources that are important to observe (Harris poll and NPR) it's primarily catering to an atheist audience to get ratings. That in itself tells us something, that there is a strong enough niche for atheist thinking that it can be used as a market. It also tells us that the article itself is merely propaganda. The general point of the article is that belief in God is declining in Ameirca. Several categories have gone down 5-8% such as certinty about God or belief in Chrsitmas as religious holiday.
The newest poll, released earlier this week, supports previous research, including a study done by PEW which showed that a third of young people were not affiliated with any specific religion. PEW also released a new study this week showing that half of all Americans do not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday.
In general, belief in the supernatural of all kinds declined significantly over the last eight years. The drop off in such beliefs were as follows: The Devil (four percent drop), resurrection of Jesus (five percent drop), virgin birth (three percent drop), miracles (seven percent drop), survival of soul after death (five percent drop), Jesus being the son of God (four percent drop), creationism (three percent drop), witches (five percent drop) angels (six percent drop) and heaven (seven percent drop). Belief in God overall dropped eight percent since 2005. There were two areas of supernatural belief that rose one percent each: belief in UFOs and belief in ghosts.[3]Atheists are really making a big thing out of the rise of the 'nones.' The None category means no affiliation with an established religious institution they are treating it like it's the rise of atheism itself. The Pew study of recent vintage shows that the atheist segment of none is still less than 5%, more like 2 or 3% and has not risen significantly in the last several years.[4] The segments that have risen include believers in God. About of them are believers in God, the rest are don't know (agnostic).[5]
The article uses two serious sources, Harris poll and NPR, and three Joke sources, or what I consider to be jokes but which are put over as serious, Huff post, which has become a shameless wasteland of propaganda for atheism, and The Blaze. I'll deal with the Joke sources, then the serious ones.
Joke sources
The source she sites from Huffington is on the Religion page by
The article is mainly about the secular attitude toward Christmas taken by half of Americans who know longer see it as a religious holiday. Their source is Pew study. [6] The pie chart for the report shows 92% do Christmas. Of that 51% find it a religious holiday, 32% cultural, 9% both/other. We have a bit of a math problem here. Not only does that not make 100% but it doesn't come close to half who think Christmas is not a religious holiday. It's also pretty Ambiguous as to how important the changing Mazeways are regarding Christmas. Is the dropping off of Christmas a big religious holiday, if it's even happening, really indicative of loss of faith in God? While the atheist cheer leaders are jumping up and down going "Yes! Yes!" I don't think so. Not to the extent atheist hope. There was a time when Christmas was regarded as less important than the Holiday for various saints.
Granted this, taken with the rise non affiliated young people is important and does definitely single changes it's far from certain what the changes mean. It's a shifting of the Maze ways. Changing of the Mazeways is not necessarily bad even for belief. The theory of the Mazeways was by Anthony Wallace (b 1923--), one of America's major anthropologists at one time. The developed a theory of social change and political and religious change and social revitalization around the concept of maseways. Mazeways are "mental maps that join personalities with cultures and therey illustrate how individuals embrace their culture, conduct everyday life and cope with illness and other forms of sever personal or cultural stress." [7]
The Blaze article is shameless propaganda. They even use the Monty Python image of God form the Holy Grail movie. They sight the Harris poll as saying belief in God is down to 75% from 82% a few years ago.
then they just sight a list of beliefs that are "down."
No analysis. all from the Harris poll. These article show us how the material reverberates around the net uncritically with no analysis, used by various entities to gain readership and plays into the hands of atheists for propaganda.Belief in miracles, heaven and other religious teachings also declined in the latest poll, as follows:–72 percent believe in miracles, down from 79 percent in 2005;–68 percent believe in heaven, down from 75 percent;
–68 percent believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God, down from 72 percent;–65 percent believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, down from 70 percent;–64 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death, down from 69 percent;–58 percent believe in the devil and hell, down from 62 percent;–57 percent believe in the Virgin birth, down from 60 percent.[8]
The serious sources
Harris poll. Both of the Joke sources used the Harris poll
Evolution is not a contradiction to belief in God so that does not correlate with a lose in belief. What is the methodology of the Poll?
New York, N.Y. - December 16, 2013 - A new Harris Poll finds that while a strong majority (74%) of U.S. adults do believe in God, this belief is in decline when compared to previous years as just over four in five (82%) expressed a belief in God in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Also, while majorities also believe in miracles (72%, down from 79% in 2005), heaven (68%, down from 75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (68%, down from 72%), the resurrection of Jesus Christ (65%, down from 70%), the survival of the soul after death (64%, down from 69%), the devil, hell (both at 58%, down from 62%) and the Virgin birth (57%, down from 60%), these are all down from previous Harris Polls.
Belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, however, while well below levels recorded for belief in God, miracles and heaven, is up in comparison to 2005 findings (47%, up from 42%).[9]
Methodology
This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States November 13 and 18, 2013 among 2,250 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.While representation of the poll is scientifically determined, while some times the shift to using computer sources means a more acute poll (shift to cell phones as opposed to ground lines) but that doesn't mean that a poll done entirely on line is representative. If one atheist knew about it they could probably get an army of atheists to answer it. Harris interactive is a market reserach firm:
All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.
Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
- Harris Interactive, headquartered in Rochester, New York, is a market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries, across countries and territories through North America, Europe, and Asia. ...[10]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Interactive
The Harris poll is contradited by Gallup:
"PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 9 in 10 Americans still say 'yes' when asked the basic question "Do you believe in God?"; this is down only slightly from the 1940s, when Gallup first asked this question."
Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said "yes." That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Gallup stopped using this question format in the 1960s, before including it again in Gallup's May 5-8 survey this year.[11]
The chart shows 92% still say "yes" to the question do you believe in God? [12] The poll was done in 2011. It's doubtful that it dropped that much in two years. As the quote tells us it's down from the 40s. That means back in the God fearing 1940s fewer Americans believed in God than they did in the sinful postmodern 90s, or the scary Godless oughts. That means it fluctuates and some changing is not a sign of decline. It could well be that the difference is accounted for in the inaccuracy of representation by doing it form market reserach panels and on line.
The Gallup source states that when alternatives such as expression of doubt, qualification of confidence, or other kinds of belief are compared the belief for God goes down a bit. For example when asked do you believe in God or a universal power or spirit 80% say God 12% say universal spirit. At the same time only 6% say neither. 1% say other 1% say no opinion. That shows how the way the question is ask matters and it makes me think the Harris question was not asked directly in terms of "do you bleieve in God?" It also shows the atheist segment is still down around 6% which is the liberal end of my estimate.[13]
Pew study on the rise of the "nones" (see fn 3-4 below) also disproves it:
In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)[14]It says atheists are "nearly" 6% but the chart they provide shows they are not up to 5% and may not be be up to 4%. That's a far cry from the exaggerations made by Blaze and Huff post. It's less than Harris polls would predict. I think the differences in questions is a good explanation. When Gallup asked "do you bleieve in God" they got a higher answer for "yes" then they broke up the notion into alternatives such as "God or a higher spirit of some kind." This tell us that there is a segment that is willing to call their transcendental signifier something other than God but it's close enough that they wil accept calling it God if they have no other alternative.
There is a pew study done in conjunction with PBS and religious ethics weekly that finds 68% of the nones believe in God (2/3) 37% classify themselves as "spiritual but not religious."[15] Overwhelming this group says they are not looking for a religion they don't like organized religion. Clearly the mazeways of modern society are changing and producing formations undreamed of by our ancestors. Yet bleief in God is not declining. The notion of "higher power" is getting at the concept of God. See my essay on how atheists have to cover up this fact but it's pretty well proved. When people say "higher power" they mean God. The alternatives people are offered such "some form of spirit" is really another way of saying "God."[16]
One thing we must always be careful with is the media will always pawn off no affiliation with not believing in God. When I Google "what percentage believe in God in U.S." I get the rise of the nones article and other articles taht rae based upon it. They all talk like "none" means none believe in God. It does not.
See Metacrock's blog on Wednesday for analysis of the None's and the changing of the mazeways.
sources
[1] Liberty Voice was formerly a the Las Vegas, Nevada-based Liberty Voice was The Guardian Express.This leads me to conclude that this article is a publicity stunt to get circulation. not affiliated with the famous Guardian in New York.
[2] Rebecca Savastio, "Nearly Half of Americans Do not Believe in God 'With Certianty'--a Quarter Are Atheist or Agnostic.
[3] Ibid
[4] Staff, "Nones on the rise," PewResearch Religion and Public Life Project. Octo 9 (2012). Online reseource: http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/ accessed 1/6/14.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Jaweed Kaleem "Chrsitmas, a non religious holiday for half of Americans, Pew Survey finds." Huffington Post, Religoin section. (Jan 5, 2014). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/christmas-non-religious_n_4453828.html?utm_hp_ref=religion accessed 1/5/14.
the Pew study sited in that Dec 8, 2013.
[7] Ilias Sabbir, "Theory of Revitalization Movement by Anthony Wallace." Academia.edu.
on resource http://www.academia.edu/839547/Theory_of_Revitalization_Movement_by_Anthony_F._C._Wallace accessed 1/4/14.
[8] Staff Writer, "Poll American's Belief in God is on the Decline." the Blaze, December 17 (2013).
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/12/17/poll-americans-belief-in-god-is-on-the-decline/ accessed 1/4/14.
[9] Staff, "Americans Belief in God, Miracles, and Heaven, Declines--belief in Darwin's theory of evolution rises." Harris Interactive. Harris Polls (Dec. 16, 2013). On line resource.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1353/Default.aspx accessed 1/5/14.
[10] https://www.google.com/#q=what+is+harris+interatcive%3F
[11] Frank Newport "more than 9 out of 10 Americans Continue to believe in God." June 3 (2011).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/americans-continue-believe-god.aspx
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Pew Study "Rise of the Nones" (above fn 4).
[15] Ibid.
[16] Metacrock, "Atheists Try to Deny That 'Higher power' refers to God." Atheistwatch (June 25, 2012). http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-carm-more-stupid-atheist-tricks-post.html accessed 1/6/14.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
God Arguments May Encourage Atehist Not to Believe
God arguments make atheists more resolved not to believe. This is how it works. They have an argent in which they get their asses kicked. they get them kicked bad. they have nothing to say to this argument that even half way slows it down. The next they are doing a victory dance and acting like they saying "we beat that" then form then it's "your arguemnt are no good,t hey have all beaten."
It's so obvious when atheists are losing and they know it. Certain things happen and I've gone through this so many times I can predict when it will come. here's what happens:
(1) they start getting real beligerant
(2) they begin attacking my spelling
(3) they start attacking things I've done in the past.
at that point I know they know they got their you know what's kicked they are seeking some recompense.
Why? Because they don't care what's true. they don't look at the logic of an argument as being meaningful. They only look at it as a survival test. they say something this: "I got through this one if I can turn this down no argument will ever convince me."
God arguments just become a way of inoculating them against belief.Arguments are really for the believer. The help sort out the nature of God and they help clearify certain theological issues, they ground us in a logical justification for belief so it's not all subjective.
They will probably never covert atheists atheist just don't at the argumentation process, or indeed logical thought itself, as a means of understanding truth. Atheist are paradigmatic.
It's the paradigm that has to be gone after becuase that's what they relate to.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Atheist Propagadna and Religious Experience
Perhaps nothing scares atheists like feelings. They scared to death of
religious experience arguments. Nothing raises their hatred like talking
about religious experiences. Daren Brown is some sort of British stage
magician who has a new stage act
supposedly inducing religious experiences. Atheists waste no time in
arguing that this is proof that such experiences are just accidents that
mean nothing. He states "I examined the Placebo effect and proved just
how powerful fear and faith can be." Of course he assumes that because
there is a psychological process that produces faith that then there's
no object of faith beyond that process that has any real bearing on
life. This is really no different than the one's who claim to stimulate
parts of the brain to induce religoius experiences.
In calling it "placebo" he's trying to set up the suggestion that it's unreal, it's unnecessary, God is the great cosmic sugar pill. Then he totally ignores the nature of real placebo. It's only for medicine, there's no evidence that such suggestive keys can manipulate us apart from expectation. All the things that he does in relation to evoking the psychological process are manipulative means of setting up the association. Yet most religious experience of the sort called "mystical" is not expected. In about half the time it's experienced in childhood, and much of the time mystical experiences contradict the doctrine of the experincer. If it was a real placebo it should confirm expectations. Placebo work by expectation. They don't work by challenging expectations. Calling it a placebo is wrong and improper and it's probably only done to evoke the concept and prepare the atheist to inoculated against emotion by making her suspicious of religious feelings.
He sets up several incidents before the main show (the phony atheist conversion) that are intended to get across the idea that suggestion works powerfully and most such feelings as one associates with the supernatural are also just manipulation. He makes people feel afraid by putting them in a room alone after reading to them some satanic right supposedly form the eleventh century. People are turned on by a sense of dark mysterious and ancient. He gave people a fake drug which is no more than a sugar pill and by getting them to believe in it I got them to make dramatic changes in their lives. Of course he doesn't follow them in their lives or do a longitudinal study to determine if the changes are really transformational (dramatic, positive, and long term). He has no real control and no real way of determining if he's given anyone a real experience. Empirical study has demonstrated that religious experience is real, that's transformational, and that there is a way to determine real experiences from phony ones. No there is no proof direly that it's caused by God but this can be argued successfully by paying attention to what can be proved and using it with logic. It is the M scale that provides us with that means of verification for religious experience and it's been validated by a half dozen studies around the world.
His psychological explanation for the process is typically convoluted and not well throughout. He does an experiment that shows people in private when not watched lie about their mistakes. The idea is tp show that there's a presence in the room no one cheats. If people are given a idea of supernatural presence they act more moral. It is asserted that there are evolutionary reasons why we developed the idea of a supernatural presence. Don't want to be outcast form the tribe so we can reproduce. divine presence would ensure the sense of being cought out. God is made up to make us be moral. In other words like Foucault's take on the Panopticon the prisoners are learning to watch themselves. The problem here is he's convoluted several different reasons in to one.
First of all, if we feel a sense of presence that in itself is reason to assume we feel it. It doesn't have to be the result of needing a moral campus and inviting an invisible God. the illustration itself shows cave men ostracize a guy because he lied. So the fact of how people treated each other would be the reason for moral behavior and the fear of being rejected by the tribe and not being allowed to make would be enforcement enough, why make up an internal watch dog to do the job as well? If one has not felt experiences one doesn't know what they are. why invent a psychological process to evoke them then try to explain them. The fact that one has had such experience itself the reason to believe in the reality of such experiences, then the need to explain it comes out of having the need. The idea of ancient cave men trying to produce a sophisticated psychological technique for evoking some experience they haven't had is ridiculous and if they had it, it has its own reality.If they had it prior to producing the process of evoking it then it is real.
Brown is certain that the experience explained by psychology. He asserts that these kinds of experiences come from big religious rallies with hyper suggestibility but there's no basis for that assumption. He's not using M scale studies to determine what percentage of religious experience is privately induced and percentage comes out of the big hyper rallies. Here's a clue, with half coming in childhood they are not coming form big rallies.
Then he goes through an elaborate production to produce a fake conversion in an atheist woman. He dose this indirectly without mentioning God. He uses several techniques such as tapping his fingers while they talk about her father to make her associate emotions the sound of the tapping with feelings of fatherly love. In several ways he evokes feelings of powerful father figure to bring atheist to believe. Establishes rapport. learns about her father. The woman is unconsciously processing, core religious belief evoked that God has plan for us and pulls strings to help us. No direct mention of God was made the woman made the connection to God herself through feelings of the father figure (tap tap tap). Brown says things that imply a grand plan, talk about things going wrong for a reason. sense of awe and wonder. Talks about the stars and space, evokes being cherished with awe. The woman describes her experience as "all the love in the world had been thrown at me. I pushed it away by not letting it into my life." Now she sees it's so stupid and she sees through it.
He says "I feel douty bound to make sure you understand that the postive stuff you got through this is not religious belief." This is what he tells her latter after they brought back befoer the audiecne. She's already been debriefed. He says explicitly "it certainly didn't come form God." The result of this elaborate dog and pony show is that we are supposed to come away with the grand feeling religion has been totally exposed and deconstructed and unraveled we see close up who fake it is there's no need for it. Of course the Brit media is opporating from the assumption that atheism is the standard, the grounding for society, the status quoe. The Audience is pre slected to reflect this idea. So one's going to challenge it.
It is a dog and pony show, he has no longitudinal study, no double blind, no control, he has no scale to measure the nature, depth, or effect of experience. He has no theory of religious experience to play it off of. That is all very crucial without that he's proved nothing. He can't guarantee that what she experienced is even a religious experience. One clue to that question is she says nothing about undifferentiated unity. she didn't say that she felt an all pervasive presence. She felt there's a plan and a purpose and she's cared for but that doesn't prove that it's the same religious experience that W.T. Stace talked about (see my link above on M scale).
The real problem is without a control there's no way to know if he isn't just evoking the we are given by God to be able to find him. The fact that he's evoking some of them doesn't prove that they are merely a matter of manipulation. There was no guy tapping when I got saved. Any associations that were evoked alone in my living room had to be coincidental or accidental rather than arranged. To say that there's a psychological process that enables to internalize the value of belief in God is hardly a denunciation of the reality of validity of that process. So there is a psychological process and we can manipulate it. I also had a need for a father figure, and guess what, I had a father. Saying that having a psychosocial need disproves the reality of the solution is just foolish.
That's like saying you have proved that love is just a psychological trick becuase when you when you do things to make them think they are loved they respond emotionally. He's giving all the ques that God would give us to guide into a relationship with him, thus they respond becuase it's put in them to respond. The only real test of the validity of such feelings is the long term change and production of positive experiences and behaviors resulting from it. Plenty of studies establish that this is the case with mystical experience. It's not been proved that it is the case with phony evoked experiences.
Essentially there is a psychological process to conversion. it make sense that there would be becuase if God wants us to have a personal relationship with him then there must be affects which would draw us into a psychological state that is conducive to that relationship. Those affects are not hard to find because we all know about them, the they things that motivate us and turn us on. So he merely found them and induced them in cleaver ways.
In calling it "placebo" he's trying to set up the suggestion that it's unreal, it's unnecessary, God is the great cosmic sugar pill. Then he totally ignores the nature of real placebo. It's only for medicine, there's no evidence that such suggestive keys can manipulate us apart from expectation. All the things that he does in relation to evoking the psychological process are manipulative means of setting up the association. Yet most religious experience of the sort called "mystical" is not expected. In about half the time it's experienced in childhood, and much of the time mystical experiences contradict the doctrine of the experincer. If it was a real placebo it should confirm expectations. Placebo work by expectation. They don't work by challenging expectations. Calling it a placebo is wrong and improper and it's probably only done to evoke the concept and prepare the atheist to inoculated against emotion by making her suspicious of religious feelings.
He sets up several incidents before the main show (the phony atheist conversion) that are intended to get across the idea that suggestion works powerfully and most such feelings as one associates with the supernatural are also just manipulation. He makes people feel afraid by putting them in a room alone after reading to them some satanic right supposedly form the eleventh century. People are turned on by a sense of dark mysterious and ancient. He gave people a fake drug which is no more than a sugar pill and by getting them to believe in it I got them to make dramatic changes in their lives. Of course he doesn't follow them in their lives or do a longitudinal study to determine if the changes are really transformational (dramatic, positive, and long term). He has no real control and no real way of determining if he's given anyone a real experience. Empirical study has demonstrated that religious experience is real, that's transformational, and that there is a way to determine real experiences from phony ones. No there is no proof direly that it's caused by God but this can be argued successfully by paying attention to what can be proved and using it with logic. It is the M scale that provides us with that means of verification for religious experience and it's been validated by a half dozen studies around the world.
His psychological explanation for the process is typically convoluted and not well throughout. He does an experiment that shows people in private when not watched lie about their mistakes. The idea is tp show that there's a presence in the room no one cheats. If people are given a idea of supernatural presence they act more moral. It is asserted that there are evolutionary reasons why we developed the idea of a supernatural presence. Don't want to be outcast form the tribe so we can reproduce. divine presence would ensure the sense of being cought out. God is made up to make us be moral. In other words like Foucault's take on the Panopticon the prisoners are learning to watch themselves. The problem here is he's convoluted several different reasons in to one.
First of all, if we feel a sense of presence that in itself is reason to assume we feel it. It doesn't have to be the result of needing a moral campus and inviting an invisible God. the illustration itself shows cave men ostracize a guy because he lied. So the fact of how people treated each other would be the reason for moral behavior and the fear of being rejected by the tribe and not being allowed to make would be enforcement enough, why make up an internal watch dog to do the job as well? If one has not felt experiences one doesn't know what they are. why invent a psychological process to evoke them then try to explain them. The fact that one has had such experience itself the reason to believe in the reality of such experiences, then the need to explain it comes out of having the need. The idea of ancient cave men trying to produce a sophisticated psychological technique for evoking some experience they haven't had is ridiculous and if they had it, it has its own reality.If they had it prior to producing the process of evoking it then it is real.
Brown is certain that the experience explained by psychology. He asserts that these kinds of experiences come from big religious rallies with hyper suggestibility but there's no basis for that assumption. He's not using M scale studies to determine what percentage of religious experience is privately induced and percentage comes out of the big hyper rallies. Here's a clue, with half coming in childhood they are not coming form big rallies.
Then he goes through an elaborate production to produce a fake conversion in an atheist woman. He dose this indirectly without mentioning God. He uses several techniques such as tapping his fingers while they talk about her father to make her associate emotions the sound of the tapping with feelings of fatherly love. In several ways he evokes feelings of powerful father figure to bring atheist to believe. Establishes rapport. learns about her father. The woman is unconsciously processing, core religious belief evoked that God has plan for us and pulls strings to help us. No direct mention of God was made the woman made the connection to God herself through feelings of the father figure (tap tap tap). Brown says things that imply a grand plan, talk about things going wrong for a reason. sense of awe and wonder. Talks about the stars and space, evokes being cherished with awe. The woman describes her experience as "all the love in the world had been thrown at me. I pushed it away by not letting it into my life." Now she sees it's so stupid and she sees through it.
He says "I feel douty bound to make sure you understand that the postive stuff you got through this is not religious belief." This is what he tells her latter after they brought back befoer the audiecne. She's already been debriefed. He says explicitly "it certainly didn't come form God." The result of this elaborate dog and pony show is that we are supposed to come away with the grand feeling religion has been totally exposed and deconstructed and unraveled we see close up who fake it is there's no need for it. Of course the Brit media is opporating from the assumption that atheism is the standard, the grounding for society, the status quoe. The Audience is pre slected to reflect this idea. So one's going to challenge it.
It is a dog and pony show, he has no longitudinal study, no double blind, no control, he has no scale to measure the nature, depth, or effect of experience. He has no theory of religious experience to play it off of. That is all very crucial without that he's proved nothing. He can't guarantee that what she experienced is even a religious experience. One clue to that question is she says nothing about undifferentiated unity. she didn't say that she felt an all pervasive presence. She felt there's a plan and a purpose and she's cared for but that doesn't prove that it's the same religious experience that W.T. Stace talked about (see my link above on M scale).
The real problem is without a control there's no way to know if he isn't just evoking the we are given by God to be able to find him. The fact that he's evoking some of them doesn't prove that they are merely a matter of manipulation. There was no guy tapping when I got saved. Any associations that were evoked alone in my living room had to be coincidental or accidental rather than arranged. To say that there's a psychological process that enables to internalize the value of belief in God is hardly a denunciation of the reality of validity of that process. So there is a psychological process and we can manipulate it. I also had a need for a father figure, and guess what, I had a father. Saying that having a psychosocial need disproves the reality of the solution is just foolish.
That's like saying you have proved that love is just a psychological trick becuase when you when you do things to make them think they are loved they respond emotionally. He's giving all the ques that God would give us to guide into a relationship with him, thus they respond becuase it's put in them to respond. The only real test of the validity of such feelings is the long term change and production of positive experiences and behaviors resulting from it. Plenty of studies establish that this is the case with mystical experience. It's not been proved that it is the case with phony evoked experiences.
Essentially there is a psychological process to conversion. it make sense that there would be becuase if God wants us to have a personal relationship with him then there must be affects which would draw us into a psychological state that is conducive to that relationship. Those affects are not hard to find because we all know about them, the they things that motivate us and turn us on. So he merely found them and induced them in cleaver ways.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
New Pew Study: Atheism NOT Increasing in World Population
Pie chart: Pew Study
Recently I put up an article about a study that showed that atheism had was now at 13%of the world population. Now I find another study to call that one into question. That would be the Pew Study on Global Religious Landscape. I had reason to doubt the first study, which was done by an organization calling itself Gallup International. Its' not affiliated with the Gallup Poll in America. Here's why I doubted it:
(1) the study was done by the rouge Gallop international which is a company started by people who were kicked out the real Gallup organization.
(2) they assumed northern Eruope is heavily atheist and Greely's study shows it's not. now a new study shows it's not. We will see the new study smashes the myth of Northern Eruope as atheist strong hold.
(3) they also assumed Japan was 70% atheist, In many other studies Japan is 80% Buddhist. That just doesn't add up becuase even though atheists try to claim all Buddhists as atheists Buddhists have told me that ti's only in America that that thinking makes sense and that real Asian Buddhists would never accept being called atheists. Besides what sense does it make to think of "atheist" in the conventional sense we know when dealing with a culture that thinks of deity in such a radically different way than we do. If any of you have studied eastern religion you know what I mean.
The New study shows 16% unaffiliated with any religion.
Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.
The demographic study – based on analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers – finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010. In addition, more than 400 million people (6%) practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. An estimated 58 million people – slightly less than 1% of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.1
At the same time, the new study by the Pew Forum also finds that roughly one-in-six people around the globe (1.1 billion, or 16%) have no religious affiliation. This makes the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population. Surveys indicate that many of the unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs (such as belief in God or a universal spirit) even though they do not identify with a particular faith. (See Religiously Unaffiliated.)
The unaffiliated includes those who believe in God. It doesn't say what percentage believe in God so it could be only 3% thus 16% unaffiliated and 13% of those atheist with 3% believers in God. The study doesn't say but there are reasons to think this is not the case. The best one is that the statistic of 16% tallies with the old data from Adherents.com,* they said half the unaffiliated believed in God. There's no real reason to think that changed if the 16% over all figure didn't change. Moreover, the Pew study lists percentages of atheists in each area and show for individual counties what percentage believe in God, "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults. ." On a world map showing distribution where a given religion is majority it shows for all of Europe Christianity is the majority although for Northern Eruope barely so. The majority of unaffiliated live in Asia-Pacific region because of China. which due to the communist history has the most atheists. "The religiously unaffiliated are heavily concentrated in Asia and the Pacific, where more than three-quarters (76%) of the world’s unaffiliated population resides. The remainder is in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%)." That's interesting because it puts unaffiliated at 12% in Europe, which according to many atheists sources such as Zuckerman is counted as "the atheist countries." That tally s with Greely who puts hard core atheism at no more than 10% in Norway. Of cousre fora ll of Europe the unaffiliated percentage is smaller than it may be for any particular country. This is unaffiliated so some of them believe in God. The study doesn't delineate atheists much at all.
Pie chart: Adherents.com
Monday, December 16, 2013
Arguments vs. Facts
I keep hearing this really dumb idea that "we don't want arguments we want facts that prove things." They seem to have adopted this tactic as a new mantra along with "there's no proof for your God." It reminds me of one of my favorite Monty Python things about the "argument clinic." "Argument is an intellectual process by which one lays out a logical heuristic in favor of a proposition, not the automatic gain saying of anything he other fellow says." "Yes it is." Sounds like CARM. I wonder if people who make this distinction between argument and facts understand what argument is.
The problem is, as with all English words, there many meanings and they are determined by context. When logicians say "argument" they mean something as different in the context of logic from when a historian says "argument" as Black Adder from real history. In general when we have people making arguments for the existence of God, the context in which this discussion arises, they are usually going to be people who have read William Lane Craig or Plantinga, and who are given to the emulation of philosophers and philosophical thinking. In that context the definition is going to be closer to that of the "straight man" (Michael Palin) in the Python sketch linked above; the heuristic supporting a logical proposition.
Many atheists speak as though this is just BS, it's just like saying "I deem that X = Y because I like X, and it has sanctifying grace and it reminds me of my geography teacher in eighth grade." Of course they just skip right over the fact that many such arguemnts are attempts to plug scientific facts into propositions confirming belief in God. I have had three major arguments spanning huge threads about the fine tuning argument. In the first one atheists went 40 posts wit out saying anything more substantial than "that's no good, that's not scinece, I don't like that." Every single post I made was about scientific facts, most of them were quoting a scientist named Andre Linde (on Doxa) who is an atheist but you took Fine tuning seriously enough to write an article several years ago (Scientific American, Oct 97) listing many of the more obvious problems facing the formation of life in the early development of our universe.
This argument is all about facts, it contains thousands of facts. Of course their reaction to it was something "this is stupid. this doesn't prove anything." I have a feeling that what they mean by "a fact that proves something" is something DNA. They want to find God's fingerprint or hair sample, but it has to be so obvious the it can't be questioned. Of cousre they can always question. Like the EPCEP thing, it's just another excuse to raise the bar as soon as the request facts are produced. The fact that half of my God arguemnts turn upon scientific facts (in my list of 42 arguments) doesn't even mean anything to them. What they really want is a done deal, something they can't even begin to question that totally prove it so they are forced to believe and they can't possibly be mistaken.
The idea that you have a fact that proves soemthing and you don't have to make an argument to show how it proves something is ludicrous. That's arguments are, they are connecting links that move from evidence to conclusion and explain things.Arguments are not tricks or emotional tirades that seek to lul one into a frame of mind apart form facts. Arguments can be based upon logic, they don't have to be based upon empirical evidence, but you can't make empirical evidence "prove" something without making an argument.Even if you could somehow pull back the curtain of reality and see God at the controls, so to speak, you would still have to make an argument that this si God and these are the controls that govern the universe, just pulling back the veil itself wouldn't do it.
The only potions atheists embrace are those shaped by arguments. They think that when they say "there's no proof for your God so I have no rational reason to believe" that they are making a statement of fact that needs no elucidation and is transparent when spoken. In point of fact that in itself is an argument.All the atheists potions are the result of argument and not of facts.
Science data is not self explainable or self revealing. It only means something when you shape into an argument and make it mean something.
Facts do not announce themselves as such. Nature is not festooned with little tags that say things like "scientific data, by nature." "This is a scientific fact." There is no scientific data until we transform qulia into data by the process of scientific study. No one just stduies raw data by itself. Economists don't collect dates on coins in the economy, sociologists don't count the number of bricks in housing projects, geologists don't count the grains of sand on the shore, then let it go at that rejoicing that they have found scientific facts. Data is put into context of "meaning" through interpretation. Data always must be interpreted and the complexity of the world means there can be more than one interpretation. This is a very simplistic source but I think anyone naive enough to think that scinece is just a pile of facts needs this level of simplicity:
Understanding Science: How
Science Really Works.
Evaluating an idea in light of the evidence should be simple, right? Either the results match the expectations generated by the idea (thus, supporting it) or they don't (thus, refuting it). Sometimes the process is relatively simple (e.g., drilling into a coral atoll either reveals a thick layer of coral or a thin veneer), but often it is not. The real world is messy and complex, and often, interpreting the evidence relating to an idea is not so clear-cut. To complicate things further, we often have to weigh multiple lines of evidence that are all relevant to the validity of a particular idea.That process contains a number steps that are not only very similar to argument but that also require argument when interpretations vary. Just interpreting data requires a form of argument sense one is making a connection from sign to conclusion based upon a logical association involving a claim. In the argumentation theory of Stephen Toulmin data is part of the grounds or a claim. The warrant links data and other grounds to a claim, legitimizing the claim by showing the grounds to be relevant. The warrant may be explicit or unspoken and implicit. It answers the question 'Why does that data mean your claim is true?' That process is just like the process through which one assertions the significance of any given data in hypothesis testing.
Tests typically generate what scientists think of as raw data — unaltered observations, descriptions, or measurements — but those must be analyzed and interpreted. Data become evidence only when they have been interpreted in a way that reflects on the accuracy or inaccuracy of a scientific idea. For example, an investigation of the evolutionary relationships among crustaceans, insects, millipedes, spiders, and their relatives might tell us the genetic sequence of a particular gene for each organism. This is raw data, but what does it mean? A long series of the As, Ts, Gs, and Cs that make up genetic sequences don't, by themselves, tell us whether insects are more closely related to crustaceans or to spiders. Instead, those data must be analyzed through statistical calculations, tabulations, and/or visual representations. In this case, a biologist might begin to analyze the genetic data by aligning the different sequences, highlighting similarities and differences, and performing calculations to compare the different sequences. Only then can she interpret the results and figure out whether or not they support the hypothesis that insects are more closely related to crustaceans than to spiders.
On a more sophisticated level we can see that entire scientific project rests upon "paradigms" which in effect are arguments. Science changes when the paradigm is no longer able to adsorb and explain or dismiss anomalies that cause us to question the paradigm. This is part of the thory of Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn was the biggest name in history/philosophy of scinece for several decades, even beating Popper (the 60s-90s). When the Postmodern project fell apart in the 90's Kuhn went down with the ship even he was only tangentially related to Postmodernism. I think we can argue that Kuhn's fortunes have risen again as I predicted at the time they would. I see much more Kuhn related material, he's still in universities. One such class is that of Professor Frank Pajares, Emory University. He prepares an online study guide and his summary of Kuhn's first chapter in Structures of Scientific Revolutions runs as follows:
Kuhn begins by formulating some assumptions that lay the foundation for subsequent discussion and by briefly outlining the key contentions of the book.
- A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs (p. 4).
- These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" (5).
- The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
- Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like" (5)—scientists take great pains to defend that assumption.
- To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5).
- Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5).
- A shift in professional commitments to shared assumptions takes place when an anomaly "subverts the existing tradition of scientific practice" (6). These shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions—"the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science" (6).
- New assumptions (paradigms/theories) require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the reevaluation of prior facts. This is difficult and time consuming. It is also strongly resisted by the established community.
- When a shift takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory" (7).
In other words science is like a status quo of a governmental regime or one might liken it unto the negative in policy debate round, it is the status quo, the way we view the world. If it is going to change it must do so because it can no longer answer crucial questions (absorb anomalies) that must be answered to continue to assume the received view of the world. Kuhn himself tells us:
"scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes replaced in whole or in part by a new one..." (Thomas kuhn The Structure of scientific Revolutions, 92). "The choice [between paradigms] is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter as they must into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses it's own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense...the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." The Structure of Scientific Revolutions(94)In section X we shall discover how closely the view of science as cumulative is entangled with a dominate epistemology that takes knowledge to be a construction placed directly upon raw sense data by the mind. And in section XI we shall examine the strong support provided to the same historiographic scheme by the techniques of effective science pedagogy. Nevertheless, despite the immense plausibility of that ideal image, there is increasing reason to wonder whether it can possibly be an image of science. After the pre-paradgim period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between competing schools of scientific thought. Cumulative anticipation of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development.The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested. Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise. [ Structures...92-94]The simplistic concept that science is a pile of facts that prove the truth of all reality as long as we peruse the proper scientific methods is just a fantasy. There is no neat simplistic choice between fact and argument. Expecting to test the validity of God belief on the basis of the belief to conform to the norms of scientific is equally stupid. This is why I do not argue for the existence of God. All of my arguments I bill as "rational warrant for belief" simply becuase God is beyond empirical data. It would be as absurd to expect to prove god empirically as it would be to prove reality itself empirically. If you remember what I've said in the past about basic epistemology, that cannot be done. No one has. The only thing that was every produced along those lines is a epistemological judgment based upon warrant. Every time I argue it out with atheists to this point they say proudly and triumphantly "I can rest assured with a very good implication of what I know based upon the probability suggested by empirical data." I love to deflate that line when I say "that's what I get with my God arguments."
(see my entire summary of Kuhn Here)
That's all they have to do, all we need is a rational warrant becasue the gap there between absolute certainty and warrant, which even the atheists admit they can't fill, that's the gap one leaps over in a leap of faith. The atheist has just admitted he leaps over it too. So the big fortress of facts that seems so assuring in atheist rhetoric is really just propaganda sloganeering.
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