Posted by Hemant Mehta in My favorite Christian TV personalities…
I have to stay up pretty late to watch Jack van Impe and his wife Rexella on TV in Chicago, but it’s well worth it when I do. Not only do I get to hear the news, I get to hear Jack recite the (memorized) Bible verses that are pertinent to the story and hear that the Second Coming is imminent at the same time! It’s much more amusing than the paid programming for exercise machines on the other channels.
Interspersed with the apocalyptic messages is his cohost wife, Rexella (which will one day be the name of my daughter) van Impe, who sets up the questions and plays the “Christian wife” character on his show.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you must. And they’ve made it easier by offering free video podcasts of their show! You can get it through iTunes by subscribing to: http://www.jvim.com/tv/jvipresents_video.xml.
Speaking of exercise infomercials, you can get the best of that and fundamental Christianity by watching Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club, talk about leg-pressing 2000 pounds. Or that feminism encourages women to become lesbians. Or that God isn’t in Dover (Actually, I agree with him on that one). Or anything else completely absurd.
I have yet to meet anyone, Christian or otherwise, who takes him seriously. I can’t understand why anyone so criticized and just plain crazy can still take in enough money to stay on air for so long… what’s the matter with you people?!
3) Kirk Cameron
Kirk and I have a fun history, going back to the 40 minutes we spoke back in February, 2006 (Part 1, Part 2), where he and his radio show co-host Todd Friel told me I was a liar, blasphemer, and adulterer. After the interview was over and I hung up the phone, Kirk and Todd told their listeners I was a fool. They then spent time talking about “why a Hemant exists.” A Hemant??? I’m a thing now?!
Of course this is an isolated incident. And it’s on the radio. So why is Kirk on the televange-List? Because he and other co-host Ray Comfort also have a video series for their show in which one episode entitled “The Beauty of a Broken Spirit” specifically discussed how to witness to atheists.
I’ve been to atheist events where clips from this video were shown just to amuse the audience. You would think if you want to produce a video about talking to atheists, you would take into account how atheists might respond (Because there *are* responses to everything they say). However, when you watch this video, it’s obvious they think there is no way to rebut their claims. Which makes it hilarious. Ok, the whole banana thing helps, too.
2) Benny Hinn
He was my first televangelist addiction. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He just touched peoples’ foreheads (or swung his jacket at them or just waved his hands through the air), said the magic words, and they were saved! Who cares that he never releases the peoples’ medical records, or that he spends the money raised through his ministries on his lavish lifestyle, or that he dodges questions on Dateline? This guy knows how to captivate an audience. Other pastors used these God-Works-Through-Me methods before Benny, but no one has done it as effectively.
Just for amusement, this website has a nice list of Benny Hinn prophecies that have gone unfulfilled.
1) Joel Osteen
I love Joel. My mom loves Joel. He’s so charming and funny. No crazy prophecies made or miracles seen. He doesn’t even ask for money. When he travels cross-country to speak, admission is $10 (only because he needs to charge something to prevent mass chaos). He just tells you how to use Christian morals to live your life positively. And it turns out some of the Christian morals he espouses are no different from the morals of most atheists I know. Help others, spend time with your loved ones, etc. Sure there’s a Bible verse thrown in there every now and then, and sometimes he does talk about waiting for God to answer your prayers (when I’d rather talk about taking action), but still. You can ignore those bits and get to the secular message pretty often.
Ok, so his wife is pretty hot, too, but it’s a testament to Joel that I’ll watch his broadcasts and not pay much attention to Victoria.
It’s sad that most of the criticism on Joel has come from the Christian community. They say he preaches Christianity-lite and avoids saying anything controversial (when the Bible makes it clear what stance to take), but those are also the qualities that made him the pastor of the biggest church in the country.
Is there anything I find bad about him? While he doesn’t talk about controversial issues in church, it’s not clear that he thinks about them at all, period. On Larry King last year, his most frequent answer to theological questions seemed to be “I don’t know.” Either he’s way too humble or he just ignores anything that might raise an eyebrow.
[tags]Televangelists, Way of the Master, Todd Friel, The Beauty of a Broken Spirit, atheist, atheism, Jack van Impe, Rexella Impe, Pat Robertson, Kirk Cameron, Benny Hinn, Dateline, Christian, Christianity, Joel Osteen, Victoria Osteen, Lakewood Church, Larry King[/tags]
I always get a kick out of watching “Praise the Lord” on TBN. It’s like a hangout for all my favorite televangelists. I give the TBN crew some credit… you can watch their shows online!
http://www.tbn.org/index.php/2.html
[...] The Top 5 Televangelists By Randy According to some atheist. This entry is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Leave a Reply [...]
And then there’s the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN, which also stands for The Blasphemy Network).
Nice work Hemant
But you are too generous with Osteen
Jim,
I’d be interested to know why you think that. I am no expert on televangelists but having watched/heard (to some extent at least) all five that Hemant has listed, I find that Osteen is the only one who strikes me as reasonable and non-fanatical individual.
Raghu
Osteen defintely gets the Mr Toastmaster award for best and (certainly least offensive) speaker but he is robotic to say the least and most of what you hear from him comes direct from Tony Robbins.
I mostly just feel sorry for him- He is the front man for a huge operation- he looks like a lost kid.
Those are all the rsame reasons he is so popular as well
I agree. He may be unoffensive, but he still has absolutely nothing to say. His message is devoid of any substantive commentary on injustice, poverty, war, racism, etc. — or even the things that usually raise the hackles of fundamentalist televangelists. He’s a severely uneducated, uncritical young man who was in the right place at the right time with a the least offensive message, the best marketing money can buy and an audience of people who don’t want to think–just hear trite solutions to their everyday problems.
Hi Hemant,
Have you ever watched any of these televangelists, and if so, what’s your opinion?
Robert Schuller
Joyce Meyer
TD Jakes
Doreen– I haven’t seen any of those people on TV yet, though I might have caught a glimpse of Schuller before. I have read a lot of Joyce Meyer’s writings in Charisma magazine (and there are billboards in Chicago everywhere from a recent event she put on with a Christian band, Hillsong… if she can fill an arena, she can’t be too bad). And I’ve heard TD Jakes is a good speaker, but I haven’t seen him yet…
[...] It’s Joel and Victoria Osteen! AHH! [...]
[...] And if you still have money to spare, you can help Benny Hinn purchase a jet. Technorati Tags: Secular Student Alliance, atheist, agnostic, Humanism, Institute for Humanist Studies, Harvard University [...]
[...] So I was watching one of my favorite televangelist podcasts last night: Jack Van Impe Presents. (You can watch it, too. The audio can be downloaded here and video can be downloaded here.) [...]
[...] My buddy Kirk Cameron. It’s been so long since we’ve spoken… [...]
[...] A Plasma TV. To watch Joel Osteen. [...]
Dear Sincere Persons in search of the “truth contained in the Holy Scriptires,
Looking aroiund on the internet using as search criteria Osteen and money after last night having watched parts of the MSNBC program Scarborough Country “In God We Trust” and I think you will all be hearing more about the program. I stumbled upon this sight. So I will comment one time and cease my involement here.
Do these all fit into the category of religious leaers that are referenced to in verse 3 of the following Bible verses, 2 Timothy 4:1-5, quoted from the
“The Holman Christian Standard Bible
2 Timothy 4:1-5
4:1Before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, I solemnly charge you:
4:2
proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.
4:3
For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, 4:4will accumulate teachers for themselves
They will turn away from hbecause they have an itch to hear something new. earing the truth and will turn aside to myths.
4:5
But as for you, keep a clear head about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
The Holman Christian Standard Bible
& The New International Verson states verse 3 this way:
“3For the time will come when people will not put up with healthy doctrine but with itching ears will surround themselves with teachers who cater to their own need.”
& The New Simplified Bible states ve 3 this way:
“3 For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine. Having their ears tickled, they will accumulate teachers who follow after their own lusts.
Yes I think they ticle the ears. Do YOU?
Wam Christian Love,
A. Nonymous
Aside from the fact that you have your facts about evolution twisted, your “openminded” approach is fundamentally incorrect. You will never be convinced that there is a God because you have already made the decision to not believe. You have decided to put your faith into a theory that upon close inspection, does not withstand scrutiny.
Until you withhold your conclusion, you will continue to fall into the same trap that so many other non-believers fall into. Your science is based on the process of result first, and works its way backwards, instead of letting the natural progression of ideas take place from the beginning. Whenever the latest evolution idea is refuted, as it always is, Darwinists scramble to come up with another explanation. Your faith in this theory is unshakable. This is not how true science operates.
When you insist on money to drag you into an environment that requires an authentic desire to participate, you destroy the prospect of real discovery. It is the sole purpose of free will to choose to follow God. The decision to follow God is critical. Nobody can force you to believe. But you put your faith in a science that doesn’t exist “yet”…The creation “dilemma” will “eventually” be solved in the “future”. How convenient for the atheist.
Nobody owes you an explanation, not for $10 or any any other amount. If you would trade your condescending, cynical approach for an honest one, with sincere intentions, you would discover the power of God.
I hope you choose to direct your faith more wisely…
I find it funny that your so interested in the christian message && think joel osteen trys to reach out to people like u who would probably be offended at the more controversial messages. Do u think that this interest could be u just looking for God…&& have u ever actually been to a meeting of benny hin or joel osteen? if not how do u know the power isnt real?
what do u think of this? i found it on joel osteens website
WE BELIEVE…the entire Bible is inspired by God, without error and the authority on which we base our faith, conduct and doctrine.
WE BELIEVE…in one God who exists in three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to this earth as Savior of the world.
WE BELIEVE…Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for our sins. We believe that salvation is found by placing our faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross. We believe Jesus rose from the dead and is coming again.
WE BELIEVE…water baptism is a symbol of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ and a testimony to our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
WE BELIEVE…in the regular taking of Communion as an act of remembering what the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross.
WE BELIEVE…every believer should be in a growing relationship with Jesus by obeying God’s Word, yielding to the Holy Spirit and by being conformed to the image of Christ.
WE BELIEVE…as children of God, we are overcomers and more than conquerors and God intends for each of us to experience the abundant life He has in store for us.
[...] Support from an Atheist I have to be up front and admit that I’ve never been a fan of Joel Osteen as a teacher. I know he has a huge following but a huge following doesn’t prove that he’s a sound teacher regarding the truth. Although it does mean that people find his message and/or his style attractive. I’m not fond of him because I think his message, whether he intends it to be this way or not, is geared toward the proclaiming the good news of the Christian message at the expense of neglecting the bad news. The book of Acts is very consistent in the declaration of the bad news followed by the good news. Nobody’s really fond of the bad news but the good news really isn’t good news unless the bad news is understood. I’ll be much more likely to follow through with my doctors prescription if instead of telling me “it’ll make you feel better” he informs me that while I may feel fine now I have a great deal of pain ahead of me if I don’t follow his advice and I’ll be fine if I follow the prescription. Now all of a sudden the good news makes sense.I thought it was funny then when I came across a blog entry about televangelists from an atheist (Hemant) whose blog I read from time to time. He lists his top 5 from the perspective of how entertaining they are and his #1 televangelist is Joel Osteen. [...]
la la la la la….. uh oh….
Atheist ppl… eww
:p just kidding.
im glad you are ‘Friendly’ and to be friendly one must have friends.
but not too glad you are all Atheist. I wonder why the rejection?
well anyway you are going to face Him. And it does take more faith to be an Atheist than to be a Christian. You just ignore the facts! how lovely!
“well its not scientifically proven”
That saying is funny lol. Dont get me wrong Atheist are great!(except denying the Creator) especially when i see one get saved! now that is AWESOME!
Age,
Thanks for the drive-by. Not clever, not original, not even accurate. Just a quick demo of your profound ignorance about atheists. Go drive-by somewhere else. Being friendly doesn’t require tolerating abuse. You sound drunk. Come back when and if you actually want to say something intelligent and intelligible.
Just a quick note from a friendly believer. Forgive me for not spending a whole lot of time on your website because this is just a quick observation. I notice that even though you and a lot of your readers are non-believers, why then do you spend so much of your time fixated on somehting that you don’t believe in.
Hi greg, I’m glad you’re a friendly believer. There are several friendly believers who frequent this site and they are all welcome.
Your question is a reasonable one, and one that is often asked by new visitors to blogs such as this. There are as many reasons why atheists talk about religion as there are atheists, but in general it’s most often because of how some of the practitioners of various religions effect their lives. Things like slandering atheists, shunning them, firing them, threatening them, beating them and even killing them. Then there are the social issues, such as doing all the above to their gay friends, treating women as second-class citizens, compelling everyone to pay taxes for religious causes, activities and organizations, attempts to compel science teachers in public schools to teach myths, attempts to destroy the First Amendment and establish a theocracy, and on and on and on.
Many atheists here come from backgrounds of strong religious belief, and their journeys to atheism were often started by very painful experiences and then included even more painful experiences. So they have a lot of things to work out by talking with each other.
So it really isn’t so much a fixation about “God” if that’s what you mean. Most atheists don’t actually spend much time talking or thinking about that per se. It’s more about a constant struggle against the destructive effects of some people who think that their belief in God gives them the right and the obligation to force these things upon everyone.
I hope you visit again and interact with us. We are all, the friendly believers and friendly unbelievers, eager for more respectful understanding all around.
That’s one of the problems I’ve always had with “Drive-By Conversion” attempts; the perpetrators always seem to think that their arguments are completely new, that nobody has ever heard them before and that nobody in the world can possibly refute them. Well, it’s really quite simple: the idea of defending a theory is not new, and it’s not illogical, either. When someone “attacks” a theory–evolution, for example–it is natural to want to examine the theory from different angles to make sure there is no way for it to hold up. If we just abandoned a theory every time someone attacked it, we wouldn’t have a lot of the technology we do today–for it’s this very reasoning process that allows us to make such progress.
And sadly, the “attacks” being made on concepts such as evolution are anything but scientific; for example, when it was said in one of the comments here that “evolution works backward from a conclusion,” I beg to differ; there is no doctrine in history that tells us evolution happened. It is a theory invented by Charles Darwin based on scientific observations he made in his life. The Bible is a book that was supposedly written with divine inspiration, and it lays everything out and attempts to explain everything–starting with a conclusion, and leaving us humans to sort out the facts.
It has been interesting to have conversations with athiests, your site appears to have civil people open minded and willing to discuss the issue of faith. I believe it was a couple posts back some one said they tire of hearing christians give the same old lines… do you think christians might tire of hearing the same old lines from athiests? people can only browse so many athiest sites before they feel compelled to respond. Believe me believers have heard just about every “Argument” against God as you have heard “arguments” for God. there is nothing here being said that isn’t being said a hundred sites over. most arguments com from a few placed athiest: Dawkins, ect. now to be fair most christians take their arguments from a few placed christians: c.s. Lewis, blase pascal ect. the idea that your smarter than simple minded “believers” is arrogance and isn’t really that civil. As one of your bloggers pointed out most of you have had painful experiences with the church and the rejection is emotional. Christians however have had a different expirence and their attachment is equally emotional. I would challange you to be honest, you have rejected God because of the emotional baggage not because your smarter than those whom believe.
Well, for one, I’d be a liar if I said that; I never “rejected God” because I’ve never “experienced God.” I hear about him every day, but all of the “irrefutable evidence” everyone seems to have always turns out to be based on interpretation (see: Kirk Cameron). One who doesn’t believe in God doesn’t always do so because of “rejection;” There are as many reasons for not believing in God as there are for believing in Him.
All hostile remarks aside, though, I’m not really interested in “proving religion wrong.” I can’t speak for everyone, but I am personally interetsed in doing whatever I feel is right. I watch religious TV because I am honestly interested in hearing the “other side’s” perspective; I am willing to hear people out on matters of faith and God, because if Christianity is provably “right” or “true,” then I want to know. But I haven’t seen anything to even suggest that. I am severely disappointed when someone takes a legitimate attempt at conversation, wads it up, and throws it away, all in the interest of spouting a tired argument (as the drive-by attempt here tried to do).
I am fairly new to the atheist community, so I haven’t actually read any of the popular “atheist leaders” books (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens), though I have plans to, simply because I want to know what everyone is talking about. When I say something, it’s usually because I thought of it myself, and if it isn’t, then I heard it from someone else, thought about it, and decided I agreed with it because it was an accurate representation of my thoughts. Which really serves my point—if I think of or hear an idea that happens to already be popular opinion, but then try to act like it’s some magical quote that will make religious people “see the light,” people will be irritated with me. Drive-by conversion attempts are just like that. If that user had approached this conversation in a more intelligent manner, I might have humored him/her instead of going on the offensive. But he/she gave me no reason to humor him/her, as he/she did not say anything that lead me to believe he/she was interested in a two-sided conversation.
On a closing note, conversation and interaction is not always about saying something that nobody has ever said before; sometimes it is about collecting ideas and sorting through them in the interest of serving a common cause. In Hemant’s case, the blog is an attempt to start conversations between religious people and atheists and to help them to better understand each other. So naturally, you’re going to see a lot of familiar ideas here.
And if you see a familiar argument, by all means, feel free to address it. Just don’t make the same mistake Mr. Driveby made; as long as you’re relatively sociable, I don’t think most people will mind.
I would challenge you to actually ASK atheists why they are atheists, rather than coming up with your own answer and then imposing it upon us. I don’t do that to theists, and I don’t appreciate it when they do that to me.
And I would never presume that I am “smarter than those who believe.” No way.
Mike,
I agree with you that the basic arguments on theist and atheist blogs are often repetitive, and for the most part those which are an attempt to prove or disprove the existence of God is futile, given the caveat that believers include in their definition of God that he is outside normal existence, not subject to any effects of time and space, and not subject to cause and effect. That is why most mature atheists dont’ waste their time with such discussions.
I take exception to your proposition that these arguments come from authors such as Dawkins, Harris, etc. on one side and C.S. Lewis, Pascal etc. on the other. These arguments boil down to a single, simple exchange that is older than history: “Believe what I say,” vs. “Show me first.” This has gone on since the Stone Age.
When you said,
I think you were referring to my comment not far above. That was just one part of a response to the question about why atheists spend time discussing religion at all. For you to take that and spin it to imply that atheists have made an “emotional” decision, implying that it was not a rational, well-considered decision is not correct or fair. As others here have suggested, please ask us about ourselves, don’t tell us about ourselves.
“These arguments boil down to a single, simple exchange that is older than history: “Believe what I say,” vs. “Show me first.” This has gone on since the Stone Age.”
I think this simplifies a complicated situation. I don’t think it quiet boils down to: Those of you who are willing to believe with no proof, and those of us who demand evidence and use our brains.
The fundamental problem is: what is evidence? Most athiest I have spoken with demand “empirical” evidence. (this might be because they have committed to a materialistic universe) Others are willing to examine or take into account evidence that is more difficult to interpret.
Let me give you an example of evidence that is “difficult to interpret” At night I tuck my children into bed kiss them on the forehead pray with them and say I love you. Now in a materalistic love is nothing more than a word that represents a phycho-chemical reaction that is mainly chemical in nature. There is nothing one can point to that is “love” it does not exist externally, it is internal. Now I would certainly agree that some of our emotions are chemical in nature but I have a difficult time buying it completely. I have a difficult time accepting that in totality. Now your going to say: I’ve heard that argument before, sure you have and you’ve even agreed that that feeling is powerful. What I am pointing to is that feeling of not wanting to accept that our emotions are purely physical or chemical. That is the “difficult to interpret” evidence. The complexity of the situation creates doubts in my mind. Now this doubt can be shoved away, but it is evidence although it is evidence that is difficult to interpret.
My problem with materialism is that its too perfect, it’s too easy. If you knew me you would know I hate answers that are too perfect too simple. However, some times the simple answers are not all that simple and the most “complex” answers are really simplistic. Bottom line: There is evidence it is there… it’s just how we examine it and interpret it. No evidence ever speaks for itself it always requires interpretation.
Mike,
When you say,
First let’s clear up the tone. I never said nor implied that believers don’t use their brains. That kind of insult has no place here. If you have encountered people who do that, I’m sorry to hear that, but I can’t help that. Please don’t characterize me along with them.
I agree with you that evidence requires interpretation. Such interpretation has to have as much credibility as the evidence itself. It should follow a logical sequence that anyone can understand. If I say that a horse footprint in the Sierra Nevada is evidence that a small town dogcatcher in Iowa is a pedophile, you’re going to immediately demand my step-by-step explanation before you accept that as evidence.
To me, saying that your desire to think of love as something beyond a psycho-chemical reaction is evidence that an invisible, inaudible and intangible supreme being exists and is watching over us is as big a leap over logical sequence as the one I just described. To me, it is evidence about you; evidence of the complexity of your character. It suggests that you have a sensitivity toward human feelings, that you value love as a virtue and that you would not want to see it’s importance diminished or dismissed as a strictly mundane phenomenon. I wouldn’t either, it should be revered. But if you ask me to share your leap over logical sequence in interpretation as a “leap of faith,” I couldn’t accept your leap toward the conclusion of god’s existence any more than you could accept mine that the dogcatcher is a pedophile.
Every day you make important decisions: when to cross a busy street, whether a defendant is guilty or innocent, should you buy or sell stock. You wisely demand materialistic evidence and straight-forward interpretation for such things every day, but not for the existence of god. Our only difference is that I don’t relax my standards for any topic. To be clear, I’m not implying superiority, just difference.
Your example of your loving your kids presents a good example of my viewpoint. I think there is very clear external existence to love. There’s an old saying that kids spell love t-i-m-e, meaning the time you actually spend being physically with them and interacting with them is their best evidence that you love them; all the things you do for them, especially with them. If you were not around for your kids, if you remained invisible, inaudible and intangible, if their mother could only reassure them that you love them, wherever the heck you are, but you gave them no clear, physical, straight forward, unambiguous, undeniable presence in their lives, needing no “interpretation” at all, they would not be very well nourished by such abstract, vacuous love.
Mike, like you I am suspicious of any world view that is too perfect, too pat, too sewn-up. It smacks of deceit. And so I can understand your problem with certain presentations of materialism. I keep my mind open for evidence for all sorts of ideas, but I think my standards for evidence and it’s interpretation are not unreasonable. My problem with supernatural interpretations of the world around us is that it also can be far too convenient to just stick God into all the cracks and gaps in an argument, like spackle covering the serious flaws in a crumbling wall.
For me, the evidence for something as important as God’s existence should not be “difficult to interpret,” especially for a god who supposedly really wants us to believe in him. It should be easy, obvious, straight forward, unambiguous, and simple. It should not require people to bend logic into an absurd pretzel and try to interpret the absence of evidence as if that is evidence, and that the difficulty in interpreting the evidence is in itself also evidence. That is silliness turned upon itself. I’m open to it when and if I’m presented with good evidence and a good interpretation.
Richard Wade: By the way your tone is actually quite pleasent. I will admit I’ve had conversations with athiest where the tone was less than pleasent… thank you. Notice I did not say that love or my expression of it to my children was evidence for God. What I said was:
Let me give you an example of evidence that is “difficult to interpret”
I never claimed it was evidence for or against God. I was providing it as an example of evidence that it difficult to interpret. How does love fit into a mechanistic universe? That is a fair and honest question. I don’t think it “destroys” atheism but neither do I think it should be over looked. The question of love and emotions is a difficult question theist struggle less with it than materialist but theists have their own struggles: Theodicy for one.
You stated that an argument :”It should follow a logical sequence that anyone can understand.”
That’s an interesting statement. Logic, as you know has many different faces. What is logical in one context is not logical in another. If you’ve ever gone over sea’s than you know what I’m talking about. Different cultures have different things that seem “logical.”
Is it possible that what would appear to you as “illogical” might actually be logical given a certain set of presuppositions?
If your familar with Wiggetestine than you know that language is less about correlation to “objective reality” than it is about relationships. In other words the symbols / words we use in our minds are fuzzy not clear. This situation becomes more difficult the moment the words are spoken. This is why kierkegaard did not believe in direct communication only indirect.
This may also be one of the reasons humans work best with symbols instead of direct contact. In other words: art (which is less direct than science), may speak to a human in a more “direct” way than science or philosophy (which is more direct)
Now how does this play out for our conversation? When talking about highly developed ideas like “God” the more direct one speaks about God the less clear God becomes. This could be a picture for why things like this appear contradictory to you. It’s because it is and is not. Now before you flip out and say I’m chasing rabbit trails please do you home work and check up on what Wiggettestene wrote. (Not that you don’t know or havn’t read him It’s just that in my expirence with “rational athiest” this is just about where the conversation get’s derailed.
(Groan) Oh crap, I’m in a conversation with a philosophy major. Mike, do you mean Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN? Of Tractatus, On Certainty, and all that? It took me several minutes of Googling the three ways you spelled it, “Wiggetestine, Wiggettestene” and on the other thread, “Wiggettenstein” before I realized you probably mean Wittgenstein. I read some articles about him several months ago when I tangled with another philosophy major. My overall impression was that he built elaborate, intricate arguments to say that basically it’s just about hopeless for anyone to understand anyone else. Well, gee whiz, he provided good examples even as he wrote them, so if the reader couldn’t actually grasp his meaning, he got a demonstration instead.
Whatever.
I have a tough time not resenting being told to “do my homework” on an assignment by you. I think that if someone can’t explain an idea in simple terms, then he just doesn’t understand it very well himself. Resorting to jargon, esoteric and dense philosophical works, and (misspelled) philosopher name-dropping is what “derails” a conversation for me, rather than someone not being familiar with some arcane philosophy.
Parts of your last comment have begun to resemble word salad. You talk about “evidence that’s hard to interpret,” but you don’t clearly say evidence for what. You’re babbling about how being direct is really being indirect, and how being indirect is really being direct. If you’re trying to demonstrate “fuzzy” communication, you’re doing a good job. You said, “The more direct one speaks about God the less clear God becomes.” Well duh. There’s a simple and obvious explanation for that. Please don’t give me the “all logic is relative to it’s cultural context” routine. Please try hard to be straight forward and not play word games and mind games. If you want a PhD level repartee on epistemology then I’m not up to it. Not qualified and not interested. As I have often said to other people in these kinds of conversations, I’m not interested in truth, I’m interested in honesty. Honesty is about you and me not playing games, not pretending we’re smart, just stating our views in frank, simple terms.
I will reprint the paragraph containing my essential opinion from my earlier comment, since you ignored it completely. If you have any coherent, honest response to offer about it, great. If you’re gonna hand me things like the “how can we know what we know and how can we know if we’re knowing that right there” nonsense, or quote any dead guys, then let’s forget it. Here’s what I said earlier:
And the e comes before the i in atheist.
Richard Wade:
Please don’t dismiss Ludwig W. because of Mike B.’s interpretation, he’s actually quite a fun read. (If you’re crazy like me)
I think one of most profound things he ever said was “When it comes right down to it, we all just have to get through life the bloody hard way”
No divine shortcuts or cheat sheets, but at least we have each other.
monkeymind, I like him better already. Thanks.
Athy, athier, athiest….
LOL Eliza, that’s good. I never thought of that. How athy are we anyway?
As to the spelling: I apologize I’m not sitting down with my dictionary I’m actually just pecking out the words not trying to win a spelling contest. Forgive me.
No, I am not a philosophy major. I have my degree in History. I do enjoy learning and reading and W is interesting to me.
As to your tone. I preferred your last post it seemed more pleasant.
Now as to your post.
“For me, the evidence for something as important as God’s existence should not be “difficult to interpret,” especially for a god who supposedly really wants us to believe in him.”
It should not be difficult…. Why? What about life is easy? For me cancer should be easy to deal with… Everybody gets sick, everybody dies…. what’s the big deal… (just because YOU think it should be easy it does not follow that it ought to be or that it is…) Gravity should be easy to understand. How dare scientist make it more difficult to understand than: what goes up must come down.
“It should not require people to bend logic into an absurd pretzel and try to interpret the absence of evidence as if that is evidence, and that the difficulty in interpreting the evidence is in itself also evidence.”
I’m not bending logic, actually I’m trying to employ it. I’m encouraging people to look beyond the “obvious” answers and try to see deeper. The flaw in your logic is this: evidence is that which I can see touch or test. If what ever is presented to me is not presented in this manner (empirically verifiable) than it is by definition not evidence. That would be true IF we lived in a materialistic universe. To my knowledge no one has proven that we live in a purely materialistic universe. Therefore the method of testing is, by design, only able to test that which is physical in nature. Try to scientifically test love… we end up breaking it down to chemicals. ie something we CAN test…. think about it… our whole scientific process is is developed this way. Only that which we can test is real…But what if empiricism CAN’T tell us everything. What if it’s limited?
What if we are more than chemicals that bounce into each other… Is it possible Richard? Is it possible that science might have limitations?
You also wrote :
“My problem with supernatural interpretations of the world around us is that it also can be far too convenient to just stick God into all the cracks and gaps in an argument, like spackle covering the serious flaws in a crumbling wall.”
I agree sometime Christians use “it’s a mystery” or ” God did it” too easily however… don’t some pretty notable scientist do the same thing?
Ask Carl Sagan what he thinks of DNA seeding?
Ask scientists to explain the mechanism that created DNA?
“it also can be far too convenient to just stick God-” Convenient? What does honesty have to do with convenience? Do you honestly think that people were just sick of “asking those pesky hard to answers questions” and so to save time went: “gee whiz wouldn’t it be much easier to make up some God so it would make all this work?”
Mike, Sorry about my tone in my last comment. I get annoyed when I think someone is talking in circles and obfuscating. If you don’t think you were, then skip it, my apologies.
Well if the universe is more than materialistic, the only parts where anything has been proven are the material parts. Whatever the alleged non material parts may be, they are only described by people who claim to have some special vision, some special insight that others lack. If I don’t see something beyond the material, then I’m either blind or it’s not actually there. If you see something beyond the material, you either have a sense that others lack or you’re imagining it from wishful thinking. People who claim to see what others cannot see have a long, ugly history of fraud. Some may sincerely believe what they claim, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually right, and there have been far too many mystical hucksters for me to not look askance at them all.
The flaw in your logic is to imply that because “no one has proven that we live in a purely materialistic universe” then therefore the non-materialistic must exist. Nuh-uh. Isn’t that one of those fallacious arguments that are so old they have latin names? Sorry, your reassurances, no matter how eloquent are not and never will be enough. They can be just the words of another guy with something to sell. The more intricate, complex and multi-level your explanations for why you don’t have any empirical evidence, the less convincing you are.
It once again boils down to the very first thing I said that you responded to. I said that it’s a timeless exchange between “Believe what I say,” vs. “Show me first.” Now between you and I it has become, “Consider believing what I say,” (followed by long, complicated musings on what is reality, what is truth, what is knowledge, what is love and what is God) vs. “Show me first.” All that talk weighs nothing. It’s vibrating air. It appears to me to be just stuff to fill up the time during the long, long embarrassing absence of God.
You keep bringing up love as if it’s some kind of talisman, something that will cause me to flinch at the possibility of it being denigrated into only materialistic terms. Hey, I’m a sentimental, romantic guy. I cry at movies, sigh at novels about love, loyalty, sacrifice and heroism. I’ve been Cupid’s fool over my wife for the last 37 years. Love may someday indeed be explainable in only chemical/pycho-sexual terms but don’t worry, that won’t really reduce human beings’ fondness of it or our fascination with it, or our daydreaming that somehow it’s more. I do not see any less beauty in love and life by seeing things as devoid of supernatural aspects. I can accept that DNA can come up with some pretty wonderful things. I don’t need to think that it’s added to us from the outside by a non-material deity; it doesn’t spoil the mood. Scientists can have their mystical and romantic streaks. That’s okay with me. It makes them healthier people. They’re usually careful not to mix up sentiment with science.
Of course science and empiricism have their limitations. They’re tediously slow and haven’t told us everything. But I don’t think that what they haven’t told us should be filled in by prophets and preachers with nothing to back up their claims but more claims about the claims. What we don’t know should remain not known until when and if we do know.
All sorts of questions as yet unanswered by science are not very good “evidence” for supernaturalism. They’re just unanswered questions. It’s not a good strategy to bolster an argument for the non-material by using as yet unanswered questions as if the gaps in our knowledge is evidence. That is a constantly shrinking set. Yeah, yeah we don’t know how DNA got started yet, but we know a lot of things that we formerly didn’t. When somebody eventually makes a self-replicating complex molecule in the lab from basic early Earth chemicals, that will be one less hiding place for God.
I have enjoyed our exchange, but I think that we will just have to agree to disagree. I do not want to take away a single belief or notion of yours, or sway you to see things as I do. My sole purpose is to make myself and my views understood. I need to concentrate on my real world needs and responsibilities and get some time away from this infernal machine.
Keep loving, regardless of it’s nature.
I think we can agree to disagree. However, there are a few things I would leave you with: First, I am not the only one who has to “defend” You are proposing a universe that is devoid of God, That’s fine but for me to accept that position YOU need evidence that I would accept, and your position need to be scutinized as much or more than the “theistic” position. Your proposing a universe that is explainable in purely materialistic ways. Science has done some pretty amazing things but it hasn’t done all that it’s promised. It can help us get to London faster (via Jet) but can it help us manage our time better? Science can describe the creation of a baby. But can it tell us how to be good fathers. Science does a wonderful job of making machines like this one I’m typing on but does it show me how to communicate with others better? IF you read Thomas Kuhn and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions you would know that even science it’s self is constrainted to the philosphy and world view of those who are using it.
You accuse me of taking “gaps” in my knowledge and “applying” it to God. I have no problem believing that there may be a mechanism that God used to “create” DNA However, your faith in science is as blind as my faith in God. Where is your evidence that science ever will discover the mechanism? Where is your evidence that science will: “eventually makes a self-replicating complex molecule in the lab from basic early Earth chemicals, that will be one less hiding place for God.”
Where is your evidence that that is even possible and more to the point: Your very words betray you… ”
Why wouldn’t someone MAKING “self-replicating molecules” be evidence for necessity of a creator instead of evidence for the lack of one?
IT wouldn’t and what more this only serves to demonstrate just how committed to your position you truely are…
You believe with little evidence that some day some one will do all these things it’s faith… you have faith, blind, trusting, close your eyes and jump faith that science will solve these pesky problems for you. So lets do away with “those of us who use our brains, and those of us willing to go on: I believe.”
I hate to intrude on such an interesting discussion, but allow me to give my simple (but effective, I think) mindset with regards to why I don’t believe in the supernatural:
(1) Take away the Bible. Take away the Quran. Take away all of the Holy Books. What do we have to show that God exists, then? What do we have to even suggest it? We have vague notions of a creator, but not as a single scientific theory that stands out—rather, the idea of a creator in this context is simply another theory that may or may not have any bearing. There are ways to suggest that it might be true, and ways to suggest it might not. Not enough evidence to even consider it (or throw it out), so it really has no place in my rationale (though I admit I’m open to the possibility, if someone shows me evidence that is not subject to interpretation). The fact that someone wrote a book while claiming divine inspiration is not enough to inspire me to change my entire belief system.
(2)
This is where the vagueness comes in; science is about precision, about being exact. As long as you give a set of describable factors with distinct natures (as opposed to a vague generalization that encompasses a large number of possible precise factors), it is possible to scientifically explore a situation. To use your analogy about managing time—the reason it is flawed is because “managing time” is a general concept. It encompasses many smaller factors, such as, “What would you consider a good use of time?” These are things that are subject to interpretation and differ from person to person, therefore their definitions will not be universal or exact. Your analogy is, I imagine, similar to trying to prove scientifically who the world’s greatest musician is/was; it’s simply not a scientific matter in and of itself (though it is comprised thereof).
It’s the same with “being a good father,” although there is one major difference—there are proven, objective child-rearing tactics that are shown to have positive impact throughout the child-rearing process….but again, the exact degree of those processes is subject to interpretation; you should love your child, but how much love should you show? Would constantly showering your child with praise, regardless of the actions of the child, make him/her feel like he/she could get away with doing anything to anybody? Would this detriment the child in the future?
All of which is why I disagree with your idea that science is itself a world view. Simply put, science is not a “biased worldview” but a process by which one determines set factors, a process that actually requires a pre-set worldview by which to calculate those factors—one cannot scientifically test a particular factor or set thereof without a pre-existing definition of those factors, determined by the discretion/worldview of the scientist conducting the experiment; if one were to test an object’s efficiency, then first “efficiency” must be defined as a solid term—it is necessary to destroy vagueness and narrow all the factors down to an exact definition.
That’s about it for now….I eagerly await your reply, if any
I quite enjoy this discussion already!
Well yeah, but that’s because it keeps making new promises continually. There’s never going to be a point when ’science’ is complete and we all say “Hm. What should we do now?”
As an aside, religion has promised some even-more amazing things, but it hasn’t really ever demonstrably done anything. Of course, you could attribute that to a materialistic frame of reference. But honestly the word “materialistic” doesn’t mean anything: material is by definition that which exists; materialism is the belief that only material exists, and hence that only that which exists exists. It’s nothing more than a tautology, which is why you’ll (almost) never hear someone describe him/herself as a materialist: it’s (almost) always introduced in the ad hominem form “you’d see it my way, if only you weren’t a materialist.”
Before science, the concept of time wasn’t even defined. Without science, the idea of managing time doesn’t even make sense. Also, before science, the idea of “managing time” didn’t make sense, since all time was necessarily spent sleeping, hunting/gathering, and eating: in a subsistence world, there’s no time for anything else. And let’s not forget that we’re not just getting to London faster–we’re getting there alive. Before jets, we would have gotten to London via a boat (for most of the way) and many people would have died on the way. Before boats, most people wouldn’t be able to get to London in the first place.
Yes. First off, on the physical side, we’ve got things like nutrition and vaccination. On the mental side, we’ve got psychology and education. These things aren’t the exclusive property of science, but the other disciplines are using scientific ideas to reach their conclusions.
Yes. Through the study of logic and rhetoric.
Because they would be made by carefully replicating early-Earth conditions, thus showing that they would have arisen naturally in an Earth-like system.
Being devoid of something is not an inherent property of anything. But it’s almost a fair argument. For example, it used to be thought that space was permeated by aether that electromagnetic waves passed through and science was able to conclusively prove that the aether didn’t exist (in a meaningful sense of the word ‘exist’). If you can define a single property that a universe with god would have that one without god wouldn’t have, science could do the same thing here. Of course, every such attempt at this in the past has failed: prayers to God succeed at the same rate as chance, life evolved without the need for a designer, life molecules were created by natural processes without the need for a creator, and we already know theoretically (if not yet experimentally, due to the difficulty of recreating the harsh conditions) that life molecules can assemble themselves into self-replicating strands without the hand of a god.
Note most importantly, we didn’t know these things until we tried them. Now that we have tried them, we do know them. Theists for the most part, on the other hand, claimed to know these things before they tried them and persist in their believes despite the introduction of evidence to the contrary.
This is applying a gap, by the way. Science has demonstrated that DNA leads to complex life and that there is a mechanism leading to the formation of DNA, so you say that God used that mechanism. Then we’ll push a bit further and show that that mechanism arose naturally and you’ll shift your view to the idea that God influenced the natural principle that caused the mechanism to arise naturally. And so on. You claim that we need to present evidence you would accept for our position, but if you’re willing to keep pushing God back like this in an infinite chain, there really is no such thing as evidence you’d be willing to accept. And the fact that you think that the evidence regarding an unobserved phenomenon needs to be scrutinized more closely if it suggests that the phenomenon doesn’t exist than if it suggests that it does is the perfect example of why this is true.
Tim D and Miko, thanks for taking up the response to Mike B. He’s a nice enough guy and for the most part the interaction moves along. I’m exhausted and discouraged by foolishly tangling elsewhere with a narcissistic, passive-aggressive person and I really need to take a break from this futility.
Mike B, out of politeness I should at least give some kind of response and then I have to stop. Please continue with the others.
First of all I don’t have to defend my stance of not believing. I just sit around minding my own business and other people come to me and propose all sorts of things they want me to believe in. Believe in God. Come to their church. Bring money. Believe in Sasquatch. Come to their club meetings. Bring money. When I politely ask them for proof or even evidence of their claims a few of them try to put the burden of proving their claims false onto me, like you just tried to do. That’s ridiculous. There are an infinite number of possible dumbass claims. Why should it be up to me to disprove them all? The claim maker has to do the proving. I never say that I believe there is no god. I say that I don’t believe there is a god. That’s an enormous and very important difference. I don’t do the mental activity called believing, a persistent assumption of the truth of something in the absence of acceptable evidence.
I don’t know who promised what, but it wasn’t me, and I never bought it. Maybe Walt Disney in “Our Friend the Atom” said some utopian-sounding things, but that was just propaganda.
I don’t accuse you of anything. There’s no crime or tort here. My impression is that that’s the way you think, and I just don’t think that way. You and I just have a different set of criteria for believing. You are willing to assume the truth of something in the absence of contradictory evidence. I am not willing to assume the truth of anything in the absence of supporting evidence.
I’m not some starry-eyed science devotee who thinks the way you try to characterize me. There is a difference between having confidence and having faith. I have confidence in a way of thinking that has been demonstrably successful in solving problems and follows a simple, understandable method. I don’t have faith in a way of thinking that has not solved any problems better than leaving things to chance and has a method that remains unexplainable, and gives power to an elite class of people who claim to posess mysterious special senses and insight.
As for the abiotic DNA thing, I’m not 100% sure that will ever be done. I read something recently that sounded like interesting research, but who knows? Probably eventually, maybe not in our lifetimes. If it ever is done it will have to be reproducible and explainable before I accept it. Will it cause people of faith to lose their faith? Of course not. They just won’t use that “gap” in their arguments. They’ll go on to the next unexplained thing. No matter how much we learn there will always be an inexaustible supply of unexplained things. If you want to call that “mystery” okay, fine. I just call them unexplained things.
You retry that same “you really have faith, nyah nyah nyah” taunting ploy in your last paragraph, adding the remark about those who use their brains and those who don’t. I asked you once before not to characterize me as someone who suggests that you don’t use your brains, but there is that chip on your shoulder again. I know you use your brains. I know you’re smart. I don’t hold you in disdain. I don’t characterize believers as stupid. Please get over whoever it was who insulted you in that way, and don’t attribute that to me.
Mike, please enjoy conversing with Tim D and Miko. They are decent people and I don’t think they will stoop to insulting you. I wish you all the love your heart can hold. Now I’ve really gotta get outa here.
Richard, thanks for engaging with me in this conversation… I usually hate doing this because the web does not foster true communication. However, every once in a while, against my better judgment, I try to engage in these conversations. I usually get frustrated because instead of dealing with people usually sides are taken and instead of dealing with people we deal with sides and it usually digresses into a he said she said.. unproductive name calling.
Now to tim:
tim wrote:
“As an aside, religion has promised some even-more amazing things, but it hasn’t really ever demonstrably done anything.”
What does this have to do with faith in science? Obviously you don’t have any confidence in God why would I ask you to do that? I’m questioning this:
” These things aren’t the exclusive property of science, but the other disciplines are using scientific ideas to reach their conclusions.”
Exactally! Science has become the ultimate test for what is believable. You can contest that us “religous” people don’t trust it, regardless this statement displays your undying confidence ie faith in the scientific process.
As to your response to my questions: You totally missed my point. The scientific method is essentially good for this: “I put thus and so into a jar and it did thus and thus” What it has not done is provide any guidance as to how to live fuller lives. How to be good parents: Lets try your scientific process on child raising: In the 70s science was convinced that boys were boy only by socialization in other words we made boys act like boy and so they were. So “science” told us that we were limiting our childrens possibilities. thus the whole line of gender neutral toys. These went over so poorly that you don’t see them much anymore. Now “science” tells us that genetics (which is the currently flavor of the day) is the most influencial component in our childrens lives. Now I know “science” is about growing knowledge but forgive me when I question “science” when the track record is so poor.
“Science” has given us wonderful toys to play with but it has also destoryed our ability to know how to properly employ it. Look at the atomic bomb, genetic engineering, social engineering ect.
As Michael Foucault pointed out most other fields have adopted the most “successful” method thinking, hoping it will be just as “successful”. The problem as Derrida pointed out is that the language we employ in our discussion is inherently “fuzzy”
You essentially ignored the purpose of these comments because (I can only assume) it seems obvious to you that “science” is successful. But how are we rating success? Science has helped us live longer, but is it helping us live better? You seemed to ignore this question in favor of your tautological argument about materialism. In your definition than where is Justice? Where does justice exist in the physical world. You can’t find it. That’s why all you can say is that Justice is a culturally created concept that we all seem to agree upon. But Justic isn’t real, it’s just a culturally agreed upon idea.
Now some down right misrepresentations:
“Before science, the concept of time wasn’t even defined. Without science, the idea of managing time doesn’t even make sense. Also, before science, the idea of “managing time” didn’t make sense, since all time was necessarily spent sleeping, hunting/gathering, and eating: in a subsistence world, there’s no time for anything else.”
The stark arrogance of this statement should offend nearly everyone in this forum. What is stonehenge? What is a sun dial? Why do we have constellations? The utter arrogance of this statment is astounding! In other words people before watches were stupid and didn’t know anything, luckly for us “science” came along and “saved” us from our “hunting and gathering”.
“As an aside, religion has promised some even-more amazing things, but it hasn’t really ever demonstrably done anything.”
Do you know history at all? In europe who perserved the writings of the ancient world? Where was the center of learning up until about 1500? Now you can complain about how that learning was preserved but you have to admit it was preserved. More over one could make the case that a belief in a consistant and logical God allowed the intellectual stability to believe that the universe wasn’t random chance and provided the intellectual traction to believe in “laws”(But I won’t argue this point it’s just for interest)
“Because they would be made by carefully replicating early-Earth conditions, thus showing that they would have arisen naturally in an Earth-like system.”
If your refering to the SETI expirement a few years back: creating a few amino acids does not DNA or RNA make. that’s like finding a random D or and A and F and theorizing that Shakespears Hamlet was pecked out by a monkey. The amino acids have to put it in the proper order instead of getting: “This sentence makes a meaningful amino acid.” you get. “nt afcsi aeime hnukeian lteces ana g dmisomen.”
“If you can define a single property that a universe with god would have that one without god wouldn’t have, science could do the same thing here.”
Once again your assuming that because Science can’t proove it; that that is evidence that it does not exist. The point, as I said to Richard, is what if science has limitations?
“life molecules were created by natural processes without the need for a creator, and we already know theoretically (if not yet experimentally, due to the difficulty of recreating the harsh conditions) that life molecules can assemble themselves into self-replicating strands without the hand of a god.”
Actually all that has been proven is that life changes. That’s all “evolution” has been able to “prove”. I have to go i’ve been on here too long as it is.
,
Miko, you say:
Now, Miko, you must be familiar with the research that hunter-gatherers “work” only about 4 hours a day and the real crimp on time for relaxing and socializing came with the neolithic revolution. Also perhaps you may have heard of Csikszentmihalyi’s findings that the major human leisure time activity through the ages has always been mutual grooming and parasite control - i.e. nit-picking. Looking at some of the threads in this site, can you really continue to make the case for a view of history as the “march of progress”?
oops, removed double post
I’m not entirely sure what you mean, as I never typed that…..?
…and I never typed that, either….
Assuming you’re still talking to me, here…..I never said anything about religious people not trusting science. What I was trying to say was that science is not an ideology—like Christianity, for example—but rather, a means by which to reach a commonly observable conclusion; this is what makes science powerful to me, the fact that its conclusions are commonly observable by any number of people. If reached correctly, the results of a scientific experiment can be objectively seen by more than one person and are not subject to interpretation, as religious evidence is. This makes the conclusions reached by scientific reasoning much more accurate on the whole than conclusions reached by religious doctrines, which, to me, seem to draw conclusions from thin air, then bend scientific facts to support those conclusions. As such, religious conclusions tend to be obvious only to the person who reaches them initially.
Take a person who hallucinates as the result of a drug; he or she may believe that what he/she sees is real, even though it is not readily observable by anyone else. What religion does with the “prove it doesn’t exist, then,” argument is akin to the person who took the drug asking the person who didn’t take the drug to prove that his hallucination is not real.
This is what most (religious) people don’t seem to notice; science is a part of everything that we do as a society. 99 percent of the decisions you make in a day are a product of science. Creationists tend to portray “Science” as some kind of doctrine, but really, Science is defined simply as the following, also known as the Scientific Method:
(1) Make an observation.
(2) Form a hypothesis based on that observation.
(3) Test the hypothesis (experiment).
(4) Compare the results to the original hypothesis.
(5) Decide on a conclusion (interpret the evidence).
The method in which this is used in daily life can be something as simple as:
(1) My stomach hurts.
(2) My stomach must hurt because I am hungry.
(3) I will test this theory by eating. If eating makes my stomach stop hurting, then I can conclude that my stomach hurt because I was hungry.
(4) Eating has stopped my stomach from hurting.
(5) I can conclude that my stomach hurt because I was hungry.
That’s all science is; making observations, forming theories, testing them, and drawing a conclusion. In most cases, it must be done several times, and sometimes a separate experiment must be done with regard to the conclusions (if different ones are reached each time) to factor in their significance overall. Until a religious person shows me a method that is as consistently effective as this one, I’ll be sticking with science.
Im not going to argue what you did or didn’t write. I simply copied and pasted so… go back and re read your post….
As to science not being an ideology… Look at “form a hypothesis.”; hypothesis’ are based upon ideas what what one thinks may happen. Obvisouly you haven’t read Thomas Kuhn’s work (let me post this here… he’s not a christian… it’s not a christian appologetical work it’s philosophy) According to kuhn science is possibl only if someone provides a model with which to work ie paradigm. It is interesting that you think science is “rather, a means by which to reach a commonly observable conclusion;”
Ok than why do scientist themselves differ over how the “evidence” in interpreted?
If evidence speaks for it’s self and doesn’t require interpretation than why do some people see thing differently. What I am objecting to here is the implication behind your statement. If science is based upon “common sense” conclusions that are “open for anyone to find” than why here why now? How come only our “cultural west” has been able to produce this so well?
Lets take a short example: Newton physics and Einstein physics. This by the way is Kuhn’s argument, these two types of physics are not building one on top of the other einstein totally revolutionlized he field. He rearranged the way the information was preceived. His point was that science “needs a paradigm” with in which to function and work. Other wise you have random information that makes no sense….
Lets take evolution: Life changes… what about that observation makes it “common sense” to imply: “Since life changes there must be some order or law that guides this process”
It does not follow that there has to be an order or logic to the change. The theory of evolution works (as a model for the creation of life) ONLY if it is combined with a philosophical materialism that believes #1 the “laws of nature” are constant and #2 that we are able apprehend them correctly #3 there is nothing out side of these law’s that can influence the material universe. These assumption must be in place PRIOR to any discussion concering “science”
So, don’t tell me “Creationist portray science as some kind of doctrine” it is… The only way it will work is if it has such structure.