Electric Skeptic
Well-known member
Wow...exactly what could be said to you by any number of people you've conversed with on these forums.
Scientific evidence for Christianity
- Thread starter The Pixie
- Start date
SteveB projects his own faults and failures more than any other ten people combined. Sad.
@SteveB, how about we try it this way. If I were asked what I think is the best piece of scientific evidence for something, I would respond roughly as follows:
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for quantum theory is what happens to electrons in the "double slit" experiment.
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for general relativity is what happens to clocks at high altitude vs. low altitude.
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for evolution is the twin nested hierarchy in genotype and phenotype.
...and so on. (If I'm wrong about the particulars here, it doesn't matter; I'm just indicating what I think is a proper form with which to respond to the question.) And obviously, once I've said that, I should be prepared to explain what I'm referring to, and why it's such good evidence. So how would you complete the sentence,
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for Christianity is...?
If you think sentences of this type are not a good way of at least roughly conveying what kind of evidence supports your theory, please feel free to use your own.
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for quantum theory is what happens to electrons in the "double slit" experiment.
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for general relativity is what happens to clocks at high altitude vs. low altitude.
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for evolution is the twin nested hierarchy in genotype and phenotype.
...and so on. (If I'm wrong about the particulars here, it doesn't matter; I'm just indicating what I think is a proper form with which to respond to the question.) And obviously, once I've said that, I should be prepared to explain what I'm referring to, and why it's such good evidence. So how would you complete the sentence,
The strongest piece of scientific evidence for Christianity is...?
If you think sentences of this type are not a good way of at least roughly conveying what kind of evidence supports your theory, please feel free to use your own.
Hypatia_Alexandria
Well-known member
I think you have just uncovered someone employing a logical fallacy. Perhaps @SteveB can tell us all how we repeat the experiment?
He'll be happy to tell you how much red dye is needed to make red water. Very sciency.I think you have just uncovered someone employing a logical fallacy. Perhaps @SteveB can tell us all how we repeat the experiment?
SteveB
Well-known member
Indeed. I didn't say you didn't know what your views were, for why you started this thread.
I stated that you don't know what the truth is, regarding your views for starting this thread.
This is all about confirmation bias P.
You only want to confirm your existing beliefs, which you've repeatedly demonstrated in your responses, and comments to my posts here.
Perfect example.
Since you only want to achieve your own biases, and confirm your preconceptions, this is proof you don't actually give a rat's tail in hades about the truth.
So, why would I continue to feed your wet dreams, and let you feed in BS, when the Truth is so much more nutritious?
I am performing in agreement with your biases, and preconceptions.....
It's no wonder why you keep falling flat on your face.
Biased much?
Blinded by your need to win, no matter how bad it makes you look?
You're still batting 0.000.
So, I'm confirming to you that I'm going to follow Jesus, no matter how bad your beliefs are?
Sounds like I'm doing it right then.
And in your need to be right, you were unwilling to read what I stated later, that cleared that up, even though I posted it for you?
Wow....
I did give you the means to get evidence of God, for yourself, but you just ranted on--- in fulfillment of your biases-- refusing to take the time to learn.
So, this is why those biases, and preconceptions are bad, and wrong.
Until the truth matters more to you than your biases, and preconceptions, you'll just keep shooting yourself in your various body parts.
Like N, and T..... the de-intellectualization process has started in you.
Yes, I do.
I went one better--- I gave you the means and wherewithal to get your own evidence, because you've previously proven than all the evidence in the cosmos won't convince you he's real.
Keep it up P..... your biases are preventing you from actually knowing the truth.
Well, as I do have a public, state university education in physics, and have been learning to follow Jesus for the past 43-1/2+ years, it strikes me that your lack of a formal education in science is glaringly obvious, and your biases and preconceptions are what are directing your beliefs-- not Truth.
To someone who actually IS delusional.... yes. I would.
I'm not concerned about what I appear as to people who actually ARE delusional. I can only present them with the truth, What they do with it is entirely up to them.
Or.... in your case--- entirely up to you.
Exactly.
The evidence is that you'll meet, and know God. And in knowing him, in meeting him, the quality of the evidence is unimpeachable. the evidence is defined in the bible. It's been in the bible for the past 3500 years. The reason that learning the whole bible is important, is so you can see the means, methods, and manner of the evidence, and how it unfolds, and becomes increasingly recognizable in the lives of those who engage him on his terms.
Because I believe that you, as a human being, are mature enough to choose what you want, and what matters more to you.
My question is--- why would you want anything less?
Bias and preconceived notions, based on false beliefs, false premises, and poor judgment.
No, I have plenty, but you, and others have proven that you don't believe that evidence is evidence, as you believe evidence should be, so you've rejected it, due to your biases, and preconceived notions.
So, in other words, you're a lazy bum, who isn't able to feed himself.
Solomon described people like you.
A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl,
And will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.
The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road!
A fierce lion is in the streets!”
14 As a door turns on its hinges, So does the lazy man on his bed.
15 The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.
16 The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can answer sensibly.
So.... me having a problem?
No..... it's pretty clear to me that you are. As are all the other atheists who keep following the atheist party line.
At this point, I have to ask---- is this how you really want to be viewed?
An entire lineage of people who is a nation, and who are scattered the world over. Aka, Israel, and the Jewish people.
The rocks in your garden.
the plants and trees who give you oxygen to breathe.
the faculty for thought, and reason
Water
Air
minerals
love
friendship
on and on the list goes...
pretty much everything that exists.
again. your bias, and preconceptions are rife with self-delusion.
Yep.
Again, you're more than welcome to be lazy, or your can grow up, and get over yourself, and take responsibility.
The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road!
A fierce lion is in the streets!”
14 As a door turns on its hinges, So does the lazy man on his bed.
15 The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.
16 The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can answer sensibly.
Because your self-delusion prevents you from actually seeing the truth?
15 The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.
16 The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can answer sensibly.
15 The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.
16 The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can answer sensibly.
What does that even mean?
I started this thread to give you a chance to show you have the scientific evidence you pretended to have.
I fully admit that I never expected you to actually produce it, but that did not prevent you from doing so and proving me wrong.
As I said on the other thread, this was a test of my hypothesis.
It is about confirmation, but not about confirmation bias.
Yes, I wanted to confirm my existing beliefs, but I did so in a way that allowed for that belief to be proved wrong.
This is how science is done, Steve! Scientists devise a hypothesis, then make predictions based on that hypothesis. Then, as I have done here, they test the hypothesis.
Einstein's relativity predicted a certain orbit for Mercury that was not what was expected from Newtonian physics. His hypothesis made a prediction, and he was able to test that to confirm the hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that you are full of BS, and I used that to make a predictions that was not expected if you are not full of BS. My hypothesis made a prediction, and I was able to test that to confirm the hypothesis.
Correct.
Leading to the conclusion that they are right.
If you failed to do what I expected - by actually supplying the scientific evidence you pretended to have - I would have to modify those beliefs.
No, Steve. I am right.
That is the bit you are missing here. You just admitted you are "performing in agreement with your biases, and preconceptions". In science, we would consider that an accurate model. I.e., my preconceptions are actually right.
That is not the issue of the thread.
But despite numerous long posts you just cannot give the scientific evidence you pretended to have, can you?
So where is it?
It is just a fantasy in your head, Steve!
That is not one better. That is failure.
You claimed to have scientific evidence, but the fact is you have none, so we see these pathetic rationalisations.
And yet you think positrons bounce off electrons!
Actually I have a Ph.D. in science from a top UK university, which is why I do not make glaringly obvious mistakes like saying positrons bounce off electrons.
So you think I should find that imaginary evidence for you?
I previously said:
This is what someone who claims he has "a public, state university education in physics" thinks is scientific evidence? No wonder he think positrons bounce off electrons!
Tetsugaku
Well-known member
But no actual degree, right?
I finally figured out what Steve's method here reminds me of: the legendary student who, given the assignment of discussing Chinese philosophy, fulfilled it by looking up "China" in the dictionary, then looking up "Philosophy," and combining his information: "Chinese philosophy is the attempt to discern through reason the most important truths of life, as practiced by the people who live in the region bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the east, the Himalayas on the west..." This of course can give you basic information on what China is and on what philosophy is, but not on actual Chinese philosophers.
Similarly, when asked to discuss the scientific evidence for Christianity, @SteveB answers the question by telling us (in his first post) what he thinks "scientific evidence" is ("examine [hypotheses], work through the details of the experiment, check the data, and then using the same equipment, procedures, instruments, etc..... perform the experiment"), what he thinks "Christianity" is ("Christianity is Jesus, not institutional religion"), and combining his information.
This, of course, gives us nothing on actual scientific evidence for Christianity.
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Five Solas
Active member
Good stuff, Pix. Do you mind disclosing the field? If you do mind, I get it....
Electric Skeptic
Well-known member
Okay, unrelated but since you guys are talking about degrees, I'll throw in the story I love to tell about my wife.
Some years ago she got a BSc from an Australian university and then did an Honours year at another. During that Honours year she did a lot of experimental work. She was working with a number of zoos regarding their efforts to preserve mammalian sperm for artificial insemination of their animals, so that a kangaroo in Sydney could, effectively, mate with a kangaroo in Perth a lot more cheaply than flying one of them to the other. She did a lot of work on techniques for freezing and subsequently thawing with a view to which way yielded the highest quality sperm at the end.
Anyway, for that joyous year I got to tell anybody who asked about us "I'm in computers. My wife is in sperm."
No problem, it was chemistry.
Prove there is no evidence
Here is a start-
Gen 1 - 1 In the beginning
Jastrow wrote, “There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications—in science this is known as ‘refusing to speculate.’”
In an interview, Jastrow went even further, admitting that “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. . . . That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”
Jastrow was not alone in evoking the supernatural to explain the beginning. Athough he found it personally “repugnant,” General Relativity expert Arthur Eddington admitted the same when he said, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”
Dr. Robert Jastrow—who until his recent death was the director of the Mount Wilson observatory once led by Edwin Hubble—to author a book called God and the Astronomers. Despite revealing in the first line of chapter 1 that he was personally agnostic about ‘religious matters,” Jastrow reviewed some of the SURGE evidence and concluded, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”
Robert Wilson—co-discoverer of the Radiation Afterglow, which won him a Noble Prize in Physics— observed, “Certainly there was something that set it off. Certainly, if you’re religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.” George Smoot—co-discoverer of the Great Galaxy Seeds which won him a Nobel Prize as well—echoed Wilson’s assessment by saying, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”
In God and the Astronomers, Dr. Jastrow explained why attempts to prove an eternal Universe had failed miserably.“Now three lines of evidence—the motions of the galaxies, the laws of thermodynamics, and the life story of the stars—pointed to one conclusion; all indicated that the Universe had a beginning” (1978, p. 111).
Dr. Jastrow himself admitted when he wrote: The lingering decline predicted by astronomers for the end of the world differs from the explosive conditions they have calculated for its birth, but the impact is the same: modern science denies an eternal existence to the Universe, either in the past or in the future (1977, p. 30, emp. added).
As Jastrow observed: About thirty years ago science solved the mystery of the birth and death of stars, and acquired new evidence that the Universe had a beginning.... Now both theory and observation pointed to an expanding Universe and a beginning in time” (1978, p. 105).
[Sir] Arthur Eddington, the most distinguished British astronomer of his day, wrote, “If our views are right, somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the winding up of the universe.”
In her book, The Fire in the Equations, award-winning science writer Kitty Ferguson wrote in agreement.
Our late twentieth-century picture of the universe is dramatically different from the picture our forebears had at the beginning of the century. Today it’s common knowledge that all the individual stars we see with the naked eye are only the stars of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and that the Milky Way is only one among many billions of galaxies. It’s also common knowledge that the universe isn’t eternal but had a beginning ten to twenty billion years ago, and that it is expanding (1994, p. 89, emp. added).
In 1929, Sir James Jeans, writing in his classic book The Universe Around Us, observed: “All this makes it clear that the present matter of the universe cannot have existed forever.... In some way matter which had not previously existed, came, or was brought, into being” (1929, p. 316).
-Dr Guillermo Gonzales: "Like Einstein, most astronomers of the early twentieth century, including the young Hubble, believed in a static and eternal universe. Even after Einstein conceded his error in the late 1920s, many scientists would not accept the implications of an expanding universe-namely, that it can into existence sometime in the finite past."
The Privileged Planet, Gonzales & Richards.
- Einstein later chided himself for introducing his famous fudge factor in order to make his theory fit. He called the addition of his cosmological constant “the greatest blunder of my life.” (cited by Richard Morris, The Fate of the Universe, New York: Playboy Press, 1982, p. 28) He wrote: “The mathematician Friedmann found a way out of the dilemma. His results then found a surprising confirmation by Hubble’s discovery of the expansion (of the universe).” (cited by Barry Parker, Creation—the Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, New York & London: Plenum Press, 1988, pp. 53-54). After this Einstein wrote not only of the necessity for a beginning, but of his desire “to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thought, the rest are details.” (cited by Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality—Beyond the New Physics, Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985, p. 177).
LOL - prove it
Electric Skeptic
Well-known member
Prove he made such a claim. Hint: he didn't. You screwed up.
[/QUOTE]
However, I am responding to highlight your own double standards. SteveB claims to have a university education in physics. SteveB also claims I have a "lack of a formal education in science". You do not ask him to substantiate those claims. Why not?
Because you hold Christians to one standard, and non-Christians to another.
We have many discussions about morality on CARM, and in all those Christians claim they have a single morality. Posts like this that expose Christian double standards show all such claims for the BS they are. In fact, ferengi, I would say you are one of the best arguments against Christianity on CARM.
I prefer not to.
However, I am responding to highlight your own double standards. SteveB claims to have a university education in physics. SteveB also claims I have a "lack of a formal education in science". You do not ask him to substantiate those claims. Why not?
Because you hold Christians to one standard, and non-Christians to another.
We have many discussions about morality on CARM, and in all those Christians claim they have a single morality. Posts like this that expose Christian double standards show all such claims for the BS they are. In fact, ferengi, I would say you are one of the best arguments against Christianity on CARM.
Is this the real ferengi? All kidding aside, it is great to see you actually post something with substance. Keep it up!
Though I see much of it came from here...
The claim that every effect has a cause is a tricky one. It is known from quantum mechanics that things happen spontaneously. A great example would be radioactive decay; certain atoms just spontaneously and randomly fall apart.
And we can be pretty sure it is spontaneous and random but it follows an exponential decay, exactly as would be predicted for spontaneous and random.
All that said, the atoms fall apart in a sense because of the laws of nature. Does that count as a cause? Well maybe...
All of that applies to what happens inside the universe. What about outside the universe or before the universe. we have no idea.
The scientist concludes "we do not know". In contrast, the Christian concludes Christianity is true, the Muslim concludes Islam is true, etc.
Now you may be saying that Genesis 1 predicts that we would find that the universe had a begining, but it gets a load of other stuff wrong. Daylight is created first, then the Earth, then plants, and it is not until day four that the sun is created. And I am not going to get into the timescale and the firmament.
Prove it.
I know - because you have no evidence for your claims.
Why am I required to?
Prove it. Then prove this is wrong if I did do this.