The Atheist Problem with Prayer: prayer studies vs emprical miracles

We can always expect atheists to be on prowl to mock and ridicule prayer. They really have no choice to but reject it and clutch at straws to keep from believing the thousands of stories that come out every years of answered prayers. They have to reject it. It's only their ideology that prevents their addition that they have no intention of examining the facts. A particular study has been bandied about as "proof that prayer doesn't work." This study is ironic because to accept it's validity they actually must accept the validity of previous studies that show prayer does work. Since atheists are usually pretty dishonest they can't distinguish between different kinds of evidence, so they act as though this one studies disproves even empirical results.
Friendly Atheist

Study Concludes Intercessory Prayer Doesn’t Work; Christians Twist the Results

Posted by Hemant Mehta in General on May 15th, 2009 |

I was reading an article in Christianity Today and one of the paragraphs made me do a double-take. I couldn’t believe anyone was actually writing it… it was incredible how much fact-twisting was going on.
First, a bit of background.
It’s no surprise that prayer can have a positive effect on those who believe in it. If you pray, it can relax you and make you feel better. If you know others are praying for you — that others care about you — you feel better and your body might actually respond to that positivity. None of this has anything to do with a god answering (or even listening to) the prayers. It functions more like meditation. Prayer can have a calming, healing effect for those who buy into it.
But what happens when others pray for you and you are unaware of it? To no atheist’s surprise, this has never been shown to work.
This idea has been tested repeatedly — usually, the studies have flaws. And even when the results show that the intercessory prayer has no effect on anyone, those who believe in it will look at the hits and ignore (or rationalize) the misses.

Funny he should mention flaws, because that's going to be a key issue with me. The so called "faults" he's talking about are mainly about the inability to control for outside prayer. The irony is back ten years ago when there were about 14 studies that proved prayer worked,* the major athist argument was you can't control for outside prayer. These were all done the same way, double blind and so on. The major atheist argument was that you can't control for outside prayer. The study athesits now run around touting as a disproof of prayer is one that is invalidated by the same argument it depends upon controlling for outside prayer. Rather than understand that if they accept their anti-prayer study they have to drop the major argument against Byrd and Harris and the pro-prayer studies, they try to invalidate the pro prayer studies on irrelevant grounds that basically amount to guilt by association.


Here's the "big study" that disproves all prayer:
also from the article above:

Three years ago, a multi-million-dollar, controlled, double-blind study was conducted to test intercessory prayer.
The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) found two major results:
1) “Intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications.”
2) “Patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse.”
Fared worse?! Even I was surprised by that. So were many Christians — this didn’t sit well with them.

This new article from Christianity Today, though, offers a rationalization I’ve never heard before. You can tell they’re really straining to find a silver lining…[this is quoting Christianity today]

Ironically, STEP actually supports the Christian worldview. Our prayers are nothing at all like magical incantations. Our God bears no resemblance to a vending machine. The real scandal of the study is not that the prayed-for group did worse, but that the not-prayed-for group received just as much, if not more, of God’s blessings. In other words, God seems to have granted favor without regard to either the quantity or even the quality of the prayers. By instinct, we might selfishly prefer that God give preferential treatment to those who are especially, deliberately, and correctly prayed for, but he seems to act otherwise.[end quote]

True to his character, God appears inclined to heal and bless as many as possible.

This prefectly rational explanation the atheist calls a "rationalization." Of cousre he does, his ideology demands that he not think reasonably about it but that he use it to attack. That's what atheism is about. Nothing could be more reasonable. What the quote actually says is that we can't study prayer the way we would a drug in a field trial. The reason the mystical experience studies I use don't make this mistake is becuase they have the sense to study the effects, they don't try to get inside the experience itself. These studies must actually assume that we can control God's will and control for what God does as well as for outside prayer.

What do I mean by outside prayer? The study has two groups, experimental group and control group. You blind the study so that neither the participants nor the researchers even know who is in which group. That way they wont treat them differently based upon expectations. So in this case it means the control group is not prayed for the experimental group is prayed for. Then you look to see if there is a difference. Back ten years ago when I used to argue these studies all the time I was actually rationalizing the answer on the control because I felt it was so important to have studies since atheists are always flapping their gums about no empirical proof. I was rationalizing. It was only latter that I was able to force myself to take a good hard look at the rationalization and then I stopped using the arguments. But the current crop of atheists are not willing to face the honest truth. How can you double blind and say no one in group A will be prayed for? How can you know people not connected with the study aren't praying for them? Their friends know they are sick. How can we be sure no one of them has one friend, or how can we know one guy on the freeway doesn't pray for everyone in the hospital every time he passe it on his way home form work? Christians do things like that. So there's no way to ever control for outside prayer.
Friendly Atheist man wants to Claire its' Christianity today that is rationalizing but look at his own rationalization. He's twisting the facts, as surely as he says Christians do. He has to ignore the problems of controlling for God's will and for outside prayer. He's twisting because the says the pro prayer studies have flaws but he's not begin honest about what they are. He is in a catch 22. He must either give up his study and admit you can't control (his study depends as much on controlling outside prayer and Byrd or Harris did). If he denies the problem and says they can control for outside prayer then he must accept that Byrd, Harris, and at least eleven other studies show that prayer works.*
Friendly Atheist above:

So the fact that the prayers had no effect on the sick? Don’t think about that, say Gregory Fung and Christopher Fung, the authors of the article. Instead, they want you to consider that prayer works because the un-prayed-for people didn’t die a horrible death.
That’s one way of ignoring the evidence when it’s staring you in the face.

What's obvious here is that the concept of double blind prayer study is a problem. Not prayer that is disprove, clearly , it is the ability to conduct a double blind and control for the will of God and outside prayer. One of the major problem with atheists taking this is a rationalization is that they don't know what prayer is about. They think prayer is just for getting stuff if it doesn't get you somethign one time then it doesn't work. This is because they refuse to study about the meaning of Christian theology or to understand what Christianity is about. Since they don't want to know they can't figure out what they are doing wrong with the criticize the wrong end of prayer. Far from disproving prayer this study disproves the ability to study prayer as thought it's a drug that has to work every time.

Friendly atheist:

There’s gotta be a perfect analogy for this somewhere. What comes to mind?

to be honest what comes to my mind first is that you are not idiot. I suppose that would be one of those uncalled for comments that is sure to send Hermit comment the comment box. But he did ask.


The better method of "proof" for prayer is empirical evidence. Prayer is something that can be studied empirically in terms of result so we don't need double blinds. There are no cotrols on them anyway so they can't be good double blinds. Empirical is better because it's there, if you have the evidence its' obvious. There's another atheist argument, one that says we just look at the good stuff and ignore the misses, that's "hit rate."

"Paradoxical" on CARM

I think it gives them the notion that they "could" have some control over things that are beyond their control. By way of just one example, I think they know that they personally can't control whether or not a loved one dies, and it is comforting to think that a being can grant that loved one a reprieve. If that loved one is deathly ill, and the believer prayed very hard that he or she would live, and he or she recovered, the believer chalks it up to a prayer being answered, and spreads the news so that others can feel empowered by this being that he and his friends believe in. This gives solace to society as a whole, and is useful to the human psyche. Humans don't want to think that life is random and there's nothing they can do to change what will be. Since they are not God, they want to think they can have a direct pipeline to Him and have him grant favors. That is the next best thing to being God, and gives that person perceived power that they wouldn't otherwise have without the prayer belief.

It matters not that billions and billions of prayers go unanswered or ignored. If there was even just ONE person out of a billion that got well after prayer, that would be all a believer would need. As for the outher 999,999,999,999, either they didn't pray enough, pray right, or it was God's will.

My opinion is that prayer gives humans the illusion of power that they do not possess by using an imaginary God to give it to them

The problem here is it doesn't take into account empirical miracles and it doesn't consider the complexity of veriables. In other words you don't need the hit rate because you are not dealing with something that is supposed to happen every single time. You are dealing with a will that can decide case by case if it wants to work or not. If scietnfiic studies on partcial excellorators had a theory about sub atomic pascals having minds of their own there would be no way to study them and no one would have evdience for the existence of any of them. Its' only when we can assume a stable situation that we can study it. That's why we have to go case by case. If a cause violates what we know nature on it's own produces then, and only then, do we have reason to believe there's really evidence of answered prayer. God goes case by case deicding if he wants to act. So we must go case by case deciding the chances of this or that happening according to probability. The veriables are far too complex to ever expect to be able to analyze the outcome short of something that really challenges our understanding of how nature behaves.

A leg is broken. We pray, we x-ray, the leg is not broken anymore. Within a half an hour the leg went from broken to not broken, this is something nature just doesn't ever do in our experience. That would be empirical evidence of a miracle. It would require a double blind. It wouldn't even try to control for anything because it doesn't have to. The only thing it would control for is making sure the X-Ray is not a fraud. I don't now of a case this dramatic but I do know of several that are close enough that they count as evidence of prayer working. The scientific study of miracles at Lourdes, France, the shrine to Mary of the Catholic chruch is very good. The ruels are strict and they are administered by major medical researchers of Europe.



MODERN MIRACLES HAVE STRICT RULES

BY DAVID VAN BIEMA

The paradox of human miracle assessment is that the only way to discern whether a phenomenon is supernatural is by having trained rationalists testify that it outstrips their training. Since most wonders admitted by the modern church are medical cures, it consults with doctors. Di Ruberto has access to a pool of 60 - "We've got all the medical branches covered," says his colleague, Dr. Ennio Ensoli - and assigns each purported miracle to two specialists on the vanquished ailment.

They apply criteria established in the 1700s by Pope Benedict XIV: among them, that the disease was serious; that there was objective proof of its existence; that other treatments failed; and that the cure was rapid and lasting. Any one can be a stumbling block. Pain, explains Ensoli, means little: "Someone might say he feels bad, but how do you measure that?" Leukemia remissions are not considered until they have lasted a decade. A cure attributable to human effort, however prayed for, is insufficient. "Sometimes we have cases that you could call exceptional, but that's not enough." says Ensoli. "Exceptional doesn't mean inexplicable."

"Inexplicable," or inspiegabile, is the happy label that Di Ruberto, the doctors and several other clerics in the Vatican's "medical conference" give to a case if it survives their scrutiny. It then passes to a panel of theologians, who must determine whether the inexplicable resulted from prayer. If so, the miracle is usually approved by a caucus of Cardinals and the Pope.

Some find the process all too rigorous. Says Father Paolino Rossi, whose job, in effect, is lobbying for would-be saints from his own Capuchin order: "It's pretty disappointing when you work for years and years and then see the miracle get rejected." But others suggest it could be stricter still.

There is another major miracle-validating body in the Catholic world: the International Medical Committee for the shrine at Lourdes. Since miracles at Lourdes are all ascribed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, it is not caught up in the saint-making process, which some believe the Pope has running overtime. Roger Pilon, the head of Lourdes' committee, notes that he and his colleagues have not approved a miracle since 1989, while the Vatican recommended 12 in 1994 alone. "Are we too severe?" he wonders out loud. "Are they really using the same criteria?"

Reported by Greg Burke/Lourdes
Copyright 1995 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
The Lourdes miracles are a good argument. They are much stronger than those double blind studies. There are a lot of good arguments and good info available on my miracles page on Lourdes. (Don't pronounce the s). There are also protestant miracles. There are three main prolems wtih this info:

(1) it's old
(2) It's assocaited with a faith healing ministry, the faith healer (Kathryn Kulhman ministry)
(3) book's out of print although recently has been re-pulished in a new form that I have not seen.** Kullman ministry asked Dr.Richard H. Casdraoph to verify several of the healing and he uses his his entire staff of medical technicians and consulting doctors to help. This is not as well founded as the Lourdes miracle committee, but it's not bad.

The Casdroph book goes into great deatail on every case. Since these were not the actual patients of Casdroph himself, there are 3 tiers of medical data and opinion; Casdroph himself and his evaluation of the data, several doctors with whom he consulted on every case, and they very from case to case, and the original doctors of the patents themselves. The patients gave their permission and were happy to provide the medical data on their healing since they were all people who had written to the Kulhman ministry with words of their healing. Not all of them were healed immediately in the meeting. Some were healed latter when they got hom.Naturally no one had a x-ray machine standing by at the faith meeting to crank out results like a x-rox copy, so all of them took some period of time to see the results. Not all of them were toally healed immediately. But all the cases were either terminal or incurable and all of them, within a year, returned to full health and pain free existences.

Dr. Richard Steiner, of the American Board of Pathology, head of department of Pathology Long Beach Community Hospital reviewed several of the slides. William Olson, American Board of Internal Medicine and head of Isotope Department at Long Beach Community Hospital, and several radiologists form that Hospital also consulted on the rest of the cases.


1)Reticulum cell Sarcoma, right pelvic bone.
2)Chronic Rheumatoid Arthritis with Severe Disability
3)Malignant Brain Tumor (Glioma) of the left Temoperal lobe
4)Multiple Sclerosis
5)Arteriosclerosis Heart Disease
6)Carcinoma of the Kidney (Hypernephroma)
7) Mixed Rheumatoid Arthritis with Osteoarthritis
8)Probable Brain Tumor vs Infarction of the Brain
9)Massive GI Hemorrhage with GI shock (instantly healed)
10)Osteoporosis of the Entire Spine

All of these people were totally healed of incurable or terminal states. The one commonality they all have is that they were at some point prayed for by the same person, Kulhman. Let's look at a few examples:

1)Lisa Larios: Cell Sarcoma of the right Pelvic bone.

Larios didn't know she had cancer. She had developed a great deal of pain in her pevis and was confined to a wheel chair, but the doctors had not found the evidence of the tumor at the time her mother took her to hear Kulhman. Yet, when Miss Kulhman said "someone over here is being healed of cancer, please stand up" she stood up without knowing why. She had already started feeling a strange heat in that area and had ceased to feel pain. She went up onto the stage and walked around without pain. She was than "slain in the spirit" which is that odd thing when the healer pales his/her hand on the forehead and the person falls over in a faint. It took some time to receive the next set of x-rays becasue she only learned after the meeting some days latter that she had cancer. Than the next set of x-rays showed vast and dramatic improvement. It would still be some time,almost a year, before her pelvis was completely resorted. But she did return to full health. The Catholics wouldn't except this miracle because it could be confused with a normal remission. The power of suggestion can be ruled out because the heat started before she was called to the stage, and because she didn't even know she had cancer, but responded to a call for healing of cancer. The first dramatic improvement which was immediate within a few days, and walking on the stage is not characteristic of remission. Casdroph has the medical evidence from several hospitals to which she had been taken.

3)Mrs. Marie Rosenberger: Malignant Brain Tumor.

"Three things make this case an exceptionally excellent example of divine healing. 1) medical evidence of the case includes biopsy proof of the malignant nature of the tumor. The slides were obtained from Hollywood community Hospital and reviewed by the head pathologist at Long Beach community Hospital who confirmed the diagnosis of malignant astronomical or glioma class II. 2) When the healing occurred Marie Rosenberger was down to 101 pounds and was expected to die."

The healing began to manifest immediately and by the next morning was evident. She received no further drugs or medication from that point on. 3) The third thing that makes the case good is the long term nature of the healing. Her diagnosis was in 1970 and by the time Casdroph wrote the book in 76 she was still healthy and happy with no sign of the disease since the healing (which was in 1971 one year after the diagnosis).


8)Anne Soults: Probable brain tumor vs. Infarction of the brain.

"This lady's brain abnormality was well documented by the standard diagnostic techniques and she was seen by man specialists. Electroencephalographic study was performed in each of her hospitalizations.The repeat study dated January 6th reported 'abnormal EEG suggesting left temporary pathology, there is no significant change since 12/27/74.'...the clinical impression was that of brain tumor and her symptoms suddenly and completely disappeared following a visit to the Shrine service."

When she went to the service an unknown christian placed his hands on her shoulders and prayed for her. The symptoms immediately vanished and subsequent tests found that the abnormality had disappeared. This is not normal remission. Remission does not mean that the symptoms immediately vanish.

9)Paul Wittney Trousdale:Massive GI Hemorrhage.

Trousdale was a prominent civic leader and builder in California in the early 70s. On December 12, 1973 he was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Sana Monica with massive hemorrhaging which required many transfusions.His wife called Reverend John Hinkle to his bedside, they prayed and he was instantly healed. All the medical values returned to normal and he went on to live a normal and productive life, engaging in athletics and sports. Subsequent examinations revealed no abnormalities.

10) Delores Winder: Osteoporosis of the Complete Spine.

"Mrs. Delores Winder presents us with an unusual case of severe, chronic, disabling pain secondary to Osteoporosis, which her physicians tried to relieve by five different spine operations. The patients symptoms had begun early in 1957. By 1962 she had worn a full body cast or brace of some sort...although at the time of her healing she was in a light weight full body plastic shell. Although she did not believe in instant miraculous healing she attend a lecture by Miss Kulhman in Dallas on August 30. 1975.She was miraculously healed beginning with a sensation of heat in both of her lower extremities.She has been resorted to full health, wears no barce or support, takes no medication and has completely normal sensations in the lower extremities. This is unusual becasue the spinathalamic in the spinal cord had been interrupted on both sides, and in such cases the resulting numbness is usually permanent."

The real problems that I have with atheists and they way they deal with prayer is they can't bring themselves to modrate the criticism. It's either out and out mockery or they feel they have to totally accept. They don't seem to regard keeping their mouths shut until the evidence is really good as an option. They also make no effort to understand the point of prayer. they can only deal with the surface level. They can't make the effort to understand what prayer is and thus undestand why the answers are not rationalizations, but they only want to focus on one thing, the surface level, did you get what you want? it never occurs to them that's not the point of prayer. I will deal with these factors and more next time.

*one study has been disproved. Wirth the study on invetro, Wirth himself has been proved to be a fraud. That's where atheists argue guilt by association. I've seen them try to invalidate the studies that Wirth wasn't even connected with.

**

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.
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.

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.

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.

1. A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs (p. 4).
1. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" (5).
2. The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
2. 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.
3. To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5).
4. Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5).
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).
1. 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.
2. 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]
(see my entire summary of Kuhn Here)

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."

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.

Arguments vs. Facts: The Atheist Fortress of Facts Expossed.

 



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.
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.

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.

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.

1. A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs (p. 4).
1. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" (5).
2. The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
2. 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.
3. To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5).
4. Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5).
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).
1. 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.
2. 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]
(see my entire summary of Kuhn Here)

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."

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.