Are all scientists this stupid?

[Doug Huffman]

The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper, Verlag von Julius Springer, 1935

I do not think positivists are likely to respond any differently to my own attempts to analyze 'experience' which I interpret as the method of empirical science. For only two kinds of statement exist for them: logical tautologies and empirical statements. If methodology is not logic, then, they will conclude, it must be a branch of some empirical science -- the science, say, of the behavior of scientists at work.

This view, according to which methodology is an empirical science in its turn -- a study of the actual behavior of scientists, or of the actual procedure of 'science' -- may be described as 'naturalistic'. A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an 'inductive theory of science') has its value, no doubt. A student of the logic of science may well take an interest in it, and learn from it. But what I call 'methodology' should not be taken for empirical science. I do not believe that it is possible to decide, by using the methods of an empirical science, such controversial questions as whether science actually uses a principal of induction or not. And my doubts increase when I remember that what is to be called a 'science' and who is to be called a 'scientist' must always remain a matter of convention or decision.[DH emphasis]

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[PT111]

Rodbender, thank you for sharing those stories. I have some but not quiet that dramatic. I also understand the thoughts of Tawnos on why things happen in this way and cannot really explain it but it does. For me God answers every prayer, it is just that most of the time we are too busy praying or complaining to hear his answer. Many times he does not answer our prayers in the way that we want but he will give an answer. Lots of things happen that one person contribute to God and others just to random actions. Sometimes so manyof those random actions all have to come together for me to believe there is not someone controlling it.

Recently my wife retired from teaching and I was truly concerned about how she was going to handle it when school started back without her being involved. Without getting into details we wound up with a dog through about 10 but significany different random happenings. We decided to take this dog witout ever even seeing him or really knowing anything about him. We could not have found a dog that fits our personalities or lifestyle any better if we had searched all over for months. I call him our Gift from God as he has helped my wife to almost forget about teaching and helped her both physically and emotionally. As for me he is almost the son I never had.

 

[sFe]

Rodbender, thank you for sharing those stories. I have some but not quiet that dramatic. I also understand the thoughts of Tawnos on why things happen in this way and cannot really explain it but it does. For me God answers every prayer, it is just that most of the time we are too busy praying or complaining to hear his answer. Many times he does not answer our prayers in the way that we want but he will give an answer. Lots of things happen that one person contribute to God and others just to random actions. Sometimes so manyof those random actions all have to come together for me to believe there is not someone controlling it.

People all over the world get the same results praying to another God, multiple Gods, or no God at all.. There's just far too much ambiguity in it all for me.

 

[Tawnos]

Many times he does not answer our prayers in the way that we want but he will give an answer.

I liked today's Daylight Atheism about thinking critically. Your "god answers 'no' sometimes (most times?)" is the most powerful non-answer and avoidance of even considering an answer you dislike: that god doesn't answer at all. If the answers of god are indistinguishable from the non-answers, because the times a prayer is "answered yes" is statistically equivalent to those who don't pray getting what they want, then god adds nothing to the equation. If god adds nothing to the equation, why call it god?

 

[1245A Defender]

thank god

i dont believe in god, but i like the idea of having one...

couple years ago, a family went on a winter drive in the mountains, got lost, got snowed in!
searching parties were all over looking to save them.
i asked god to help them be found and saved.
the man finally decided to try to hike out and find help, to save his family.
his family was found the next day, and they were saved.
the man now needed to be found and saved.
I PRAYED!! i asked god to return this man to his family, he was trying to save his family.
he was found dead, frozen in the snow.

eta I WAS CRUSHED!


i cried...............

 

[irish52084]

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. ~Author Unknown

 

[rodbender]

Perhaps you should ask yourself some questions. For example, why would an omniscient being need you to pray before seeing your plight and knowing you need help? Why would an omnipotent being need to act through an intermediary rather than just fixing things? Why is it you recall so vividly the times this being came through, but not all of the other times when it sat idly by and did nothing?

My dad claims god healed him from testicular cancer. I wonder why god didn't just prevent the cancer in the first place. Seems much kinder than making someone suffer through chemotherapy.

Three weeks ago, our cat got out and ran away. I saw it once a few days after, and when I tried to get it I couldn't. Numerous times I've left the door open, called for it, left food out, etc trying to get it back. I'm sure my girlfriend, a Christian, has been praying to get the cat back, because it's one of the few things that helps with her depression. Still, the cat's not back, my girlfriend gets sad about it almost every day still, and if god exists, then (s)he's a jerk. This is just one very small example of needless suffering in a world that is supposedly under the guidance and control of a benevolent creator.

In other words, if the way "god works" is indistinguishable from "god doesn't work, but I like to think he does", then what good is the hypothesis? Seems to me that such a being would have no problem showing its existence, especially if it "loves the world" and wants all to be "saved".

The answer to the questions you ask me is in the Bible. He wants us to seek Him. He will not come to our aid most of the time unless we ask Him to. Why He came to my aid in the first experience without my asking, I ain't got a clue, but I KNOW He did. I remember lots of times He said NO to my prayers.


As far as your girlfriends plight, I don't know why He won't help her. Maybe it's something she's said or done in the past. Don't know. Maybe she is not as faithful as she or you think (God knows your heart).

Reminds me of the time Peter saw Jesus walking on water. He said he wanted to do it and Jesus told him if he had enough faith that he could. Peter got out of the boat and was walking toward Jesus on the water. When he realized that he was walking on water, he got a bit nervous (had some doubts) and crashed into the water and cried out for Jesus to save him, which He did.

I know that God answers all prayers, sometimes that answer is "NO". Like Morgan Freeman said in the movie "Bruce Almighty". "Since when do people know what they really need?" If I pray for something and it doesn't come, I just shrug it off and move on. He knows what I need and if He says NO, oh well.

 

[rodbender]

You're saying they should "they need to keep their trap shut as to how many they will find....or could find or maybe find." I was commenting that doing so would mean making no hypotheses, no testable claims. You know, treat science like a religion.

Did I say it wasn't worth looking into.....Duh, no. All I 'm saying is that until they know they need to keep their trap shut as to how many they will find....or could find or maybe find. When they speculate in public, they put pressure on themselves to prove their theory. That's when they start using huge fudge factors to prove it, which proves nothing.

See highlighted in red.

 

[rodbender]

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. ~Author Unknown

He may be glad it was not discovered who said it. He may have found out that he is WRONG.

 

[PT111]

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. ~Author Unknown

"If ever you want your prayers answered get up off your knees and do something about them". ~ Levi Stubbs on The Four Tops Live Album

This does not mean don't pray rather take action on the answer God gives you in your prayers. He will not do it for you but show you how and give you the chance.

 

[Haz.]

i dont believe in god, but i like the idea of having one...

couple years ago, a family went on a winter drive in the mountains, got lost, got snowed in!
searching parties were all over looking to save them.
i asked god to help them be found and saved.
the man finally decided to try to hike out and find help, to save his family.
his family was found the next day, and they were saved.
the man now needed to be found and saved.
I PRAYED!! i asked god to return this man to his family, he was trying to save his family.
he was found dead, frozen in the snow.

eta I WAS CRUSHED!


i cried...............

G-Day mate.

Yes, thats sad. Happenes all the time here. People go tripping off across the Nullabor plain, or down the Bird Vill track, break down, and then start walking looking for help. Next day or so the vehicle is found and the driver either dead some miles away or never found at all. Rule is, stay with the vehicle. Also, I suppose believers could ask this question. Is God in the habit of answering prayers of unbelievers?

 

[eye95]

G-Day mate.

Yes, thats sad. Happenes all the time here. People go tripping off across the Nullabor plain, or down the Bird Vill track, break down, and then start walking looking for help. Next day or so the vehicle is found and the driver either dead some miles away or never found at all. Rule is, stay with the vehicle. Also, I suppose believers could ask this question. Is God in the habit of answering prayers of unbelievers?

Prayer is an act of faith. I have faith that God answers all prayer. The problem is that we don't always recognize the answer because we get what we need, not necessarily what we want.

"You don't always get what you want. But, if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need."--The Rolling Stones.

 

[oak1971]

The Drake equation and similar efforts are really a list of factors that would be necessary for life (or civilized life) to exist elsewhere in the universe. The numbers assigned to the various factors a wild guesses and some factors are ignored--I would say thousands of factors, maybe more.

For example, consider our Moon. No one pays to much attention to its role in life developing on the Earth as we know it today. If it were not there, or too much closer, or too much farther away, the wildness of our tides (or the lack of them) would have dramatically changed life on our planet, delayed its development by eons, or prevented its development altogether.

How about the magnetic field that blocks much of the dangerous radiation from the Sun while allowing the right amount of the right kinds of radiation through? That's a function of the iron in our core.

These stabs at calculating probabilities are just so much arrogance, which is the real problem with many scientists, not stupidity. They just don't know when to say that they don't know.

That is the essence of it. They can't possibly know all the variables, but can't stand to have that interfere with their grand theories. So they make up data to fit their model.

 

[merc460]

Wow, so god intervened by having some guy help you fix your truck, making you hallucinate, making your account balance not follow fundamental math, and keeping you from getting a ticket? Amazing.

How about not letting the truck break, changing your ex's mind before you go on a driving bender, giving you a bigger paycheck so your math works out, and making your speedometer work? Too easy or obvious for the big guy?

If He was just to give everyone these things, we would all be just a bunch of spoiled brats running around. We have to have FAITH he will do what is best for us, not what we want for us.

 

[Tawnos]

If He was just to give everyone these things, we would all be just a bunch of spoiled brats running around. We have to have FAITH he will do what is best for us, not what we want for us.

BS, if we were indeed created perfectly by a perfect creator, we would never have such desire to be brats. In fact, we could start with simple things like abject, meaningless suffering (amputees, for example), and move from there. God could at least prevent suffering without blatantly understandable purpose... That is, if it existed and had any power whatsoever.

Face it, your idea of god is petty, and the fact rodbender justifies his idea of god being a dick is no better than the biatch who wrote the secret who said that people who are victims of a tsunami are sending out tsunami vibrations into the world.

This topic has strayed wildly, and I'm done with it. You want to read about the "god" of the bible? Look at Hitler, Stalin, and other such petty dictators, add together, and multiply times a thousand. You'll have a good first-order approximation of "god". An approximation much closer to the true nature of the fables you believe than whatever you've decided "scientists" do wrong.

 

[rodbender]

"If ever you want your prayers answered get up off your knees and do something about them". ~ Levi Stubbs on The Four Tops Live Album

This does not mean don't pray rather take action on the answer God gives you in your prayers. He will not do it for you but show you how and give you the chance.

That's not the way I understood it.

 

[rodbender]

There once was a professor at a college. He was an atheist through and through. He would always ask his students on the first day if they had a belief in God. Several would raise their hands every year. He would then ask if God created everything. To which the students would reply "Yes". He then would say that if God created all, then God created evil and why would a loving God create evil.

One year there was a student who in turn asked the professor if there was such a thing as darkness. The professor replied "Of course". The student then explained that there is no such thing as darkness. Darkness was a man made word to simply describe the absence of light.

Then he asked if there was such a thing as cold. The professor again replied in the affirmative. The student again explained that there is no cold, that it is a made up word to describe the absence of heat.

He further explained that there actually is no real evil. It is simply a man made word to describe the absence of God.

 

[PT111]

"If ever you want your prayers answered get up off your knees and do something about them". ~ Levi Stubbs on The Four Tops Live Album

This does not mean don't pray rather take action on the answer God gives you in your prayers. He will not do it for you but show you how and give you the chance.

That's not the way I understood it.

Along about the same time as the album was a song by Janis Joplin about wanting a Mercedes Benz. You can kneel down and pray for a MB all day waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and give you the keys to one. Or you can use your God given talents to go our and work for one. You could also try entering contests to win one hoping that God will have your ticket drawn. Either way you have a much better chance of getting one by following His guidance than waiting for a miracle. In your case God told you to go home. He helped you with the warranty on your truck. In both cases it took action on your part as well as God's. God will tell you what to do but He won't do it all for you.

As for how Levi Stubbs meant it I don't know but I do know that it is a statement that we all need to follow every day.

 

[Venator]

Prayer is an act of faith. I have faith that God answers all prayer. The problem is that we don't always recognize the answer because we get what we need, not necessarily what we want.

"You don't always get what you want. But, if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need."--The Rolling Stones.

So god is a poor communicator and sometimes gives us something we didn't ask for. Doesn't sound omnipotent to me.

 

[eye95]

So god is a poor communicator and sometimes gives us something we didn't ask for. Doesn't sound omnipotent to me.

If you cannot talk to me about my religious beliefs without disrespectful snark, I won't bother replying back again. For this post, I will choose to overlook your rudeness and answer as though you had intellectually asked whether prayers being answered differently is a result of God not understanding the prayer:

God understands what we ask for. God understands what we need. When we pray, we may ask for something specific, but we are really expressing a need, even though we may not know what that need is. God will provide for that need. I have absolute faith in that.
______________________________

You may choose not to believe in God, and I will not disrespect you for that choice. Please do not disrespect me again for my choice.

(BTW, my remarks about how prayer works would be directed solely at those who have faith in God and prayer and who would find my remarks relevant. Those who do not have such faith should logically find my comments irrelevant to their lives--and that's OK.)