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PTR
10.2.5
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10.2.6
Creation according to the Bible.
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Post by
327928
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Post by
588688
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Post by
gamerunknown
My issue is that too many people, especially the more vocal ones on forums, are too quick to say "this is impossible".
According to all the evidence, it is "impossible". But that's a layman's term. Once we discover falsifiability and fallibility (and the problem of simple enumeration), we discover anything is possible, but not everything is worth considering. I'd be more concerned that there are people that want it taught in science classrooms than that they dismiss it without providing the accurate scientific precepts that make it not worth considering.
Though I am glad that nobody as of yet has made the appeal to consequences. If we recall the other thread, MyTie said that people didn't want a logical argument from him, they wanted him to fully accept gay sex as moral and that went against his beliefs. In this thread, we're expected to be entertaining a relativistic hypothesis as an abstract possibility despite the repeated references he's made to believing the Bible literally and homeschooling his child.
Here, I'll be consistent: I'm perfectly fine with labels on science text books that illustrate that evolution by natural selection is "just a theory", as long as they're applied to all theories: including gravity, atomic and germ theory. Wouldn't want kids to conflate indisputable facts and mere theories.
Post by
Skreeran
Though I think it makes more sense for their to be a god, and I'd rather there is. I believe that if anything, there is a deity that created the universe and everything, and is responsible for evolution. Maybe outer space is the afterlife, and stars are souls? More likely that "heaven", if it exists, is another dimension altogether....
What?
Post by
Azazel
Though I think it makes more sense for their to be a god, and I'd rather there is. I believe that if anything, there is a deity that created the universe and everything, and is responsible for evolution. Maybe outer space is the afterlife, and stars are souls? More likely that "heaven", if it exists, is another dimension altogether.
Wait, what?
Post by
Squishalot
... Wow, ok, so I didn't expect my comments to be butchered that far, by both Sinespe
and
MyTie.
Something about that sentence seems wrong to me. Primarily, I think, because in the context of a science class I do equate intelligent design to homoeopathy and astrology -- things which are possible if you accept a certain premise (Existence of (a) god(/s); Water Memory; etc.), but which have the whole of science against them at this point of understanding.
You're missing my point completely. I don't want to teach ID in a science class. I'm saying that just because we don't teach ID in science doesn't mean that we should be encouraging people to dismiss the possibility of it. I can teach someone to be tolerant of possibilities and understand what we need to demonstrate something to be impossible, without explicitly teaching intelligent design or astrology or anything else that has little / no evidence.
Squish: I'm not saying anything about teaching kids the possibilities, but that we should at least acknowledge them to ourselves.
Not quite. I'm saying we should be teaching kids about the fact that possibilities exist and that not everything is black or white. That being said, yes, the only way we can do that is if we acknowledge that possibilities exist in the first place.
An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
These are things that should be taught in school.
I disagree. I don't believe there are any grounds to dismiss anything without evidence. "Acknowledge that it has limited possibility, and ignore it" - sure. "Dismiss it as impossible" - no way.
And before you harp on the difference between dismissing and ignoring, I would like to point out the initial motivation for my coming into this debate - the fact that most people equate dismissing to be "Creation is impossible because of this and that", as opposed to "Creation is possible but extremely unlikely".
According to all the evidence, it is "impossible". But that's a layman's term.
"Impossible" is a technical term that is the opposite of "possible" - i.e. 'is not possible'. Should we be encouraging the use of a colloquialism that is applied incorrectly? Absolutely not. Why should we change the definition of 'impossible' to meet an incoherent impression of its use, rather than teach people to use the term correctly?
I'd be more concerned that there are people that want it taught in science classrooms than that they dismiss it without providing the accurate scientific precepts that make it not worth considering.
Again, ignoring what specific content is actually being taught in the classrooms, I would want people to be taught what the definitions of 'possible' and 'impossible' are, and what logical conditions are required to support those labels. I thought I expressed this fairly clearly originally, but I guess not.
Post by
91278
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Post by
Squishalot
You have to provide evidence for assertions. If you don't do that, your assertions are baseless.
See my comments to asakawa about the difference between 'ignoring' and 'dismissing'.
Why not just teach how to follow the scientific method and how to argue with logic? -- let the issue of impossibility sit implicitly.
Because it's obviously not working - look around Off-Topic for examples of people claiming to follow the scientific method but are too quick to use the 'impossible' word.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
pezz
Aren't we talking about things which should be taught in epistemology class now?
Post by
204878
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Post by
588688
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Post by
OverZealous
Though I think it makes more sense for their to be a god, and I'd rather there is. I believe that if anything, there is a deity that created the universe and everything, and is responsible for evolution. Maybe outer space is the afterlife, and stars are souls? More likely that "heaven", if it exists, is another dimension altogether....
What?
Not that I think outerspace is the afterlife and stars are souls.......though it would be an interesting idea, it obviously can't be true. If there is an afterlife, a heaven and a hell, then they would be different dimensions altogether. Although, I think if any religion is right,
it's christianity due to the evidence supporting it
, but there are a lot things in the christian bible that don't make sense to me. So because of that, I can only be agnostic.
Evidence such as? One of the main arguments against religion and the belief in deities is that there is very little "evidence". And anything you can say about Christianity and the Bible can (basically) also be said about for example Islam and the Qur-an.
Post by
588688
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Post by
Adamsm
On the one hand, there's things like demonic possessions that seem 100% legit, and these possessions support christianity, and there's so many ghost stories I've heard that I believe to be true (like on ghost hunting shows they go out to investigate hauntings, and find subtle voices on their voice recorders, which, if you've heard them, are clearly real). Then there's things in the christian bible that don't make sense to me, such as it basically spitting on the already proven fact that all races descended from african black people, by saying that people were created by a "god" and were white (at least, that's how the bibles I've seen depicted them.....). Then there's evolution, which seems to me to make tons of sense, and it also spits in the face of the christian bible's idea of creationism. So because of that, I can only be agnostic.Except you know....multiple religions having demons in them, so saying that all possession can only be done by Christian demons is a little much, since there are stories about exorcists who go into a situation they aren't prepared for and get torn to shreds by the possessed as they have no fear of the Christian God. Also, Ghosts are not tied to one group, and in fact, Christianity denounces ghosts as not being able to exist(since you know..that would mean not everyone goes to either Heaven, Hell or Limbo when they die).
Post by
gamerunknown
Uhm, did I post a response here that was deleted? I thought I posted a moderately decent response that didn't target anyone, but I can't find it. Perhaps I was in the process of typing it and my dad went on the computer, since I went to help my sister take her stuff to university. He told me I was a bastard because I told him that Genesis was wrong when I was like 10 due to something I read in a comic from a newspaper...
At any rate it was along the lines that children should be taught the proper mechanism of falsifiability and that it is worse that they have an incorrect conception of the term "theory" than the one "impossible".
Post by
asakawa
An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
These are things that should be taught in school.
I disagree. I don't believe there are any grounds to dismiss anything without evidence. "Acknowledge that it has limited possibility, and ignore it" - sure. "Dismiss it as impossible" - no way.
And before you harp on the difference between dismissing and ignoring, I would like to point out the initial motivation for my coming into this debate - the fact that most people equate dismissing to be "Creation is impossible because of this and that", as opposed to "Creation is possible but extremely unlikely".
"Harp on"? Squish please, you know better than to say something silly then derisively give the counter argument yourself. I don't care why you came to the thread and I don't care what
you've
decided "most people" think "dismissed" means (are you catching all the logical fallacies in your statement?).
The phrase "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." clearly means,
come back to me when you've got a reason for me to even consider this
and you know that. The whole point behind the 'flying spaghetti monster' or the 'orbital teapot' is to demonstrate why we dismiss that which is asserted without evidence. Everyone here does this with every religion they don't believe in. We dismiss Norse gods or Greek gods (though we enjoy the stories very much!).(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
204878
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Post by
MyTie
The phrase "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." clearly means,
come back to me when you've got a reason for me to even consider this
and you know that. The whole point behind the 'flying spaghetti monster' or the 'orbital teapot' is to demonstrate why we dismiss that which is asserted without evidence. Everyone here does this with every religion they don't believe in. We dismiss Norse gods or Greek gods (though we enjoy the stories very much!).
Have you dismissed the possibility of life on other planets? How about a cure for cancer? What about love? The next time someone tells you that they love you, you should dismiss them, because there is no physical evidence for the existence of love.
I find it amazing how quickly people dismiss things they don't want to acknowledge as possible, with the excuse that they have no evidence for it, but at the same time, base their lives on that which there is no evidence for.
God is as real as love. We have evidence of neither, but both are more powerful and valuable than you can possibly imagine.
Post by
865056
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Post by
MyTie
There is proof of love. There are chemicals present in the brain when people feel love, like testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, serotonin, and a few others. This can lead to obvious physical and emotional reactions, which count as further evidence of love.
This is proof of a physiological reaction to stimuli, but doesn't reveal what caused the stimuli. Sure, something did, but was it love? You can elicit the same chemical reactions with food that you can human relationships, but humans feel quite a bit different about their offspring than they do a scoop of butter brickle. If your argument that love is simply a chemical reaction, then that is provable. I'm talking about something deeper. I'm talking about the self sacrificing, all enveloping love that moves people to feats of near impossible actions. Do I stop loving my wife when I get mad at her and don't have those chemical reactions? Do I fall out of love at a certain age, when those chemicals are no longer present? Are we really that shallow?
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