The Glade 4.0

There's not enough /eyeroll to adequately respond to this post.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

[Italics added]

In fact, that's the only counter you need to the "flying spaghetti monster" stupidity.

"Argumentum ad absurdium." It's just a fallacious as any of her counters.

Which is why it's called "belief" or "faith."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Arathain and Diamondeye:

How about this ...

Stop telling other human beings you know their motivations better than they do.

I mean, seriously, the only thing in this thread so utterly stupid as to evoke Diamondeye's cute little demotivational snark ...

The fact that you two are trying to tell Talya you know better how she thinks than she does.

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Arathain, is it your claim that anecdotal evidence is equally as valid as scientific evidence?

So, I thought about this, and no, I don't know how/what she thinks for sure. That could have been stated better. That said, her statements regarding what she "knows" about the beliefs of others is equally silly.

Thus, to clarify, I suspect her statements are motivated by nothing more than either a trollish attempt to piss off a group she doesn't care for, or a desire to settle her own insecurities. But no, I can't know this.

Oh, and by the way:



In light of your indignation above, this is one for the books.

Is that really what you took from this statement?



I'm only saying that there is more credible evidence for Christianity than the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

One really doesn't need to go beyond the historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed vs. some guy saying he just made up a monster.

Now, as far as the value of anecdotal vs. scientific evidence:

The nature of the question (faith, the nature of existence, science) is such that you cannot place value on one more than the other. You see, the importance of each depends on the answer. IF God exists, then he would operate outside the bounds of science, and thus scientific evidence would have to be less valuable. IF God does not exist, then scientific evidence would be more valuable.

Arathain:

Having suspicions about her motivations is fine; declaring her motivations is not. And, to be honest, the whole internet pop-psychology thing is way overplayed these days.

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Thanks for the approval. Good advice, you know.

I guess our only disagreement is point of view based. I wouldn't consider God to be outside of the scientific realm.

Stop telling people to stop telling people how they think. You make this excuse every time you're called on your bullshit, and now you're bringing it up for Talya just because you like Talya. You're constantly telling people what they think, so shut the **** up about it. Talya has made it extremely clear to anyone with a functioning brain why she thinks what she thinks, and for that matter so have you. If your asinine question to Arathain and I was the stupidest thing in this thread before, it's just been surpassed by your attempts to tells us we can't observe someone's obvious motivations, nor notice patterns after interacting with them for years. You've been using this excuse to cover up your trolling for ages, and it's done.

Furthermore, that was all in response to blatant name-calling and antagonism, and really isn't serious argument anyhow. Your attempt to criticize me while ignoring her behavior is exemplary of your complete hypocrisy. You do the same thing pretty much any time Arathain, Aizle, or Theriov posts too, just going out of your way for a excuse to be critical. Pretty much any time you criticize anyone on this basis, or anything else related to how they post, you need your face smacked until you get it that you don't do this. You don't have privilege to tell people their behavior is unacceptable. You are out of line and stepping way over your bounds.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's not really a point-of-view matter though. I mean, if you're saying that if there is a god (small 'g') then he would be scientifically verifiable or disprovaable and subject to the laws of the universe, you can think that, but since Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all postulate a God that is not subject to scientific observation, verification, or disproof, then you're just talking about a hypothetical god that really isn't in dispute in the first place. I don't know how other religions exactly feel on the topic, but I doubt Hinduism (for example) would claim that any of their gods exist within the physical universe.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think it's very much a point of view matter but I also recognize that you and I will never share that same POV.

My thought is that we only consider things we don't understand to be supernatural and that throughout history we have only removed things from that list, never added to it. I understand the logic behind disassociating God with the natural world, but I have never thought that to be the case, even as a believer. I have always thought God to be intrinsic to the natural world, inescapably connected to it. Whether you're talking about the leather on your shoes or the dark matter we can't see or detect, it's all still natural.

I think that is extending the definition of natural in order to preclude the supernatural; in order to make God subject to the laws of nature and science by manipulating the words used. I understand you are not doing that intentionally, but that's what has been done by others in the past. As for what we have and haven't discovered in the past, that really means little. We're in the infancy of discovery.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Indeed, that's partly my point. Look at how much we know and have learned, and it's still only the beginning. "Knowing" a god doesn't seem like an impossibility after extrapolation.

Well, I wouldn't really consider him anything. He's an unknown entity. So then it really becomes: IF he exists and IF he doesn't comply with known science, then you couldn't put very much weight on scientific evidence.

That's all I'm saying. You have to know the nature of God in order to answer the question. Obviously, this is an inherent problem. The end result is good scientists should not waste their time with it. The best a scientist should hope to achieve is "the universe could theoretically exist without the need for a God", which of course proves nothing about his existence.

Nothing is, strictly speaking, impossible, but lack of impossibility doesn't really by itself mean much to me. I feel that part of the problem is that we have discovered a great deal, and have become exceedingly impressed with our ability to do so, and frequently lose sight of the fact that we have a great deal left to discover -far more than we can imagine. Of necessity, we have therefore not yet bumped up against the point where reality simply says "no, you cannot go farther that way; it is beyond your ability to discover."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This.. although the scientist should append "within the limits of our capacity to make observations about the problem" to that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye and Arathain:

Taly and I have discussed religion, faith, and spirituality at length for years. She and I have negotiated our terms and definitions. My first post in this thread points out that science is currently leaning toward an Origin of Life that invalidates the majority of Christian mythology and dogma, even as allegorical as Genesis and Deuteronomy happen to be. After that, I asked a series of questions designed to establish or at least begin a discussion in which we come to an agreement on terms.

We is inclusive of everyone: the forum needs a discussion on your definition of evidence, proof, and material evidence, because that's obviously a point of disagreement between you two and other posters. Asking what you mean by something is in no way asking you not to mean whatever you mean.

The statement you guys keep taking out of context though, that's neither insult nor psychobabble. I can, and am capable, of flatly stating, "God is." My definition of "God" is known to the forums -- God is the totality of all knowledge and information. My particular form of agnostic pantheism is loosely Christian because I choose to follow a predominantly Christian moral set. You two, however, have yet to participate in that discussion with Taly; you have not come to an agreement on terms in contention or even attempted to.

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Even if you consider them to be scientific matters, God, religion, faith, and such are irrelevant scientifically because they can't be used to make predictions.

Yes because the original latin word for science lexsīəns roughly translates to, "things used to make predictions."

The first sentence from the wikipedia page:

I've discussed these issues with Talya for years too. I don't really care what definitions you and she worked out; no one here is privvy to them. However, I do have a lot of experience hearing from her one-on-one. You are not special in that regard.



No. We don't need such a discussion. What we need is for people to stop engaging in special pleading and circular argument in order to disqualify evidence as evidence. There is no point in having the conversation at all; no one here would ever accept that anyone held a definition of evidence that wasn't advantageous to them. We do, however, need you to stop trying to control the conversation here. No one needs your help.



You cannot say this. You have no basis to know what conversations we may or may not have had with Talya. Furthermore, your hypocrisy and double standard of behavior stands. Your history of trying to defend femaless on the forum is subtle, but real. That's normal male behavior, but unfortunately disqualifies you from telling me or arathain anything; apparently "telling someone what they think" bothers you, but gratuitous comparisons of other posters to suicide bombers for saying things one disagrees with is fine. I guess it helps if it's the sexy redhead that says it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye:

I'm not trying to control the conversation. I'm asking questions. Stop trying to tell me what I'm doing; it won't work.

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No. I'll tell you anything I want, any time I damn well please. Stop asking questions. You don't ask me questions. When you earn that privilege again, I'll tell you. You can start by not antagonizing select people over and over again.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."