Again, it does not matter whether something is believable or not. What matters is whether it works. If homeopathy works better than a placebo, it works, regardless of how it works. Unfortunately, homeopathy does not work better than a placebo, and it won't do so in the future, either.
This is really not particularly hard to understand. We know that homeopathy doesn't work better than a placebo not because we don't understand it yet and might understand it in the future, but because it quite plainly has no effect that goes above that of a placebo.
Although to be a fair study, it should also compare the effect of no placebo.
Okay, you basically just admitted that homeopathy is a placebo, because it would not be fair to only compare it with a placebo.
Yes. Placebos work. Homeopathy also works. They work exactly the same, i.e. they only work through the placebo effect.
Really. I don't get it. Given what you have written, you obviously realize that homeopathy is nothing but a placebo. So... you just can't admit it to yourself?
As for your "energy" theory: It really doesn't matter how something works. There are a ton of medications where we don't exactly know how they work. The only thing required is that it works better than a placebo. And we can easily test this with almost perfect accuracy for any kind of "alternative medicine".
It really doesn't matter who pays for a study, as long as it's done correctly. What's more, there are a ton of independent studies on homeopathy. It doesn't work.
By the way, I really, really wouldn't go to a chiropractor who doesn't have a real medical degree. Manipulating one's spine is kind of dangerous, and there are many documented cases of otherwise healthy people who died as a direct result of chiropractic treatment.
There is medicine available today of which we are not sure how it works. But we do know that it works. Theoretically, the same could apply to homeopathy
This would be a valid argument if you could cite a single study which showed that a homeopathic remedy performed better than a placebo in any situation. As far as I know, every study on the subject has come to the opposite conclusion.
I don't understand what part of my reasoning you disagree with. Of course there's no good study that shows that homeopathy has outperformed a placebo. The point is that we had to do the studies in order to know; we couldn't just look at how homeopathy is supposed to work and declare it bullshit on that ground alone.
In theory, homeopathy could have worked. We tested it, and it didn't. We know that it doesn't work because we tested it, not because we decided that it couldn't work even before testing it.
(although many who call themselves atheists are actually just holding out for evidence
Most do. People are atheists because there is no evidence for god, not because they somehow believe in the absence of god the way religious people believe in his existence. If there were convincing evidence that god existed, atheists would obviously accept that evidence.
Well, if you send me a bunch of money, I'll make sure you get to heaven once you're dead. Not convinced? Well, the evidence I offer that I can hold my end of the bargain is exactly the same your church offers:-)
I actually don't disagree with you when you say that not all christians prey on fear of death. However, the evidence shows that fear of death is an important factor of why christianity is so popular, especially certain kinds of christians - catholics and evangelicals come to mind.
When you say that "christianity" doesn't, I'm not sure what you actually mean by that. When people say "christianity", I think of the catholic church. And they absolutely do prey on the fear of death.
$PERSON is sick, recieves a blessing from $CHURCH_LEADER, and is immediately healed. (I've seen this one myself, from both sides of the wound... scoff if you wish, as it's anecdotal evidence, but I can't deny what I've experienced.)
Why would I deny this? I'm sure it's true. It's also why we have control groups in studies.
People like you, who appear to believe $RELIGION is meaningless, want people like me to ignore these experiences. What are you offering me that is so compelling that I should ignore things I've seen with my own eyes?
I'm not offering you anything. I'm asking something of you: I'm asking you to use your brain. I'll explain:
Isn't "test a hypothesis and see the results" the very cornerstone of science? Why should I ignore the results I've seen?
Because what you've seen is not useful data. You're deceiving yourself if you think that you can trust your own eyes. Here's an example: A friend of mine is convinced that females are unable to park cars properly. Interestingly, almost every week, he tells me a new story about a woman he's seen trying - and failing - to park a car. His world seems to be utterly filled with femals who can't park! Similarly interestingly, I hardly ever see this happening. In my world, females seem to be able to park cars just fine. Does this mean we live in different worlds? No. The reason for this discrepancy is confirmation bias. If you have a predetermined belief (he thinks girls can't park, I think they're no worse than men), you will always experience things that confirm your pre-held belief.
This is why people used to sacrifice animals or humans in order to gain help from the gods and influence the weather. As far as they could tell, it actually worked!
There are many more such factors. Humans have a tendency to see causation where there's not even real correlation, they are susceptible to the placebo effect, and so on. The result of all of this is that your own experience is a very poor predictor of reality.
This is also why science takes great pains to remove these factors when testing things. If you want to know whether pain medication helps, you don't just give it to people and see whether they feel better. They will always feel better, regardless of whether you give them actual medication or a simple sugar pill. Likewise, religious people will always feel that religion actually helps, and offer anecdotes. However, in both cases, there is absolutely no evidence of any primary effect. The fact that you can eat a sugar pill and then feel less pain does, of course, not mean that the sugar pill is a pain killer.
Likewise, the fact that you have a good life does not mean that religion granted you this.
It may also be due to the fact that it's easy to adapt a story to reality once the reality is known. Did anyone make the prediction that this evidence would be found before it was actually found? If so, were the details (when this would have happened, how many people were still alive, whether animals were also affected and so on) also correct?
His point was that even a dog can observe a ball and figure out where it flies to. It's simple causality, and it's not the same as making an actual prediction. Figuring out that eating pig makes you sick does not predict microbiology, just like a dog catching a ball does not predict Newton's laws of gravity.
I still find it hard to believe that you're actually serious. I find it difficult to accept that even a deeply religious person would claim that the bible actually predicts that microorganisms can cause disease. You are basically telling me that Pasteur could have read the bible instead of doing experiments, and that he would have come up with the same theories?
This is patently absurd and ridiculous.
Your logic is akin to saying "writing a story involving the stars in the sky is the same as building a spacecraft in order to fly to mars." The fact that you observe shining dots in the sky does not mean that you have predicted space travel. Likewise, observing that some people who live clean don't get sick as often does not mean that you have predicted microbiology.
Much of the bible was written by the main participants.
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone claim anything like this. Most of the stories in the bible were written hundreds of years after they supposedly happened. Even the new testament contains no stories written by anyone who lived at the same time as Jesus supposedly lived. The Gospel of Luke, for example, was written 80 to 90 AD. The earliest manuscripts we have of it are from the 2nd or early 3rd century.
Oh, is your point that there is something wrong with science because new discoveries sometimes contradict earlier theories, and because it doesn't claim to know the ultimate truth of Life, the Universe, and Everything? If so, you simply don't understand what science actually is. I agree with mdwh2: You'd have a point if your computer were built based on "truth" you have found in the bible.
I have no idea how anything you say contradicts what I said. In fact, i pretty much agree with what you said in this new post here, and wrote the same thing in my post to which you have replied. Yet you end with "your position is wrong".
I specifically said that truth is not part of science. I specifically said that failure is part of science. Yes, abandoning earlier theories is absolutely integral to science.
I don't understand what you're trying to say, or how anything you say contradicts anything I have said.
Yeah, you are right, this particular form of ID can be used to make predictions. Of course, these predictions actually falsify the theory, as you point out, which explains why ID is usually intentionally formulated in such a way that it can't be used to make predictions.
You may as well claim that doctors prey on the fear of disease.
Of course, and sometimes they do. The difference is that doctors actually help you when you catch a disease, while religion can't help you when you catch death.
"Religion is a way of conveying real world knowledge, just like science."
Science is not "a way of conveying real world knowledge". Books or web sites or audio tapes are "a way of conveying real world knowledge". Science is a way of gaining real-world knowledge.
"Frequently, both in religion and in science, the humans behind it all get it wrong"
But that is the point: Science doesn't assume that it is right, and doesn't pretend that it is right. In science, you observe, construct a hypothesis, test the hypothesis (where you either disprove the hypothesis or not, but hardly ever prove it), discuss the results, and go back to step 1. Note that failure is part of this, but "truth" is not.
"Since most of the religious sorts have been modded into oblivion, I'm curious what sorts of predictions you're looking for"
Any useful prediction would suffice. My original point was that ID pretends to be scientific, but does not add anything useful to science. It's not a valid scientific theory because it can't be used to make any kind of verifiable prediction.
The commonality here is not really religion, it's poorly reasoned or researched comments. Make a poor comment about Linux and the people will be even more vicious. It's not about religion. You're not being persecuted any more than a Windows user who makes an uninformed comment about Linux is being persecuted.
Frankly, I don't quite understand the argument you're making. Sure, the christian god is by most definitions not provable, and also not disprovable. You yourself put it correctly: "So what?"
So... what?
I'm not quite sure why a Unicorn (or Russell's teapot) are bad analogies, though. They exist to explain a specific concept, namely that religious people can't put the burden of proof on atheists because, as you yourself say, it's by definition impossible to prove that god doesn't exist. It doesn't matter whether the definition for a unicorn includes the fact that it is so powerful that you can't find it. Where exactly atheists stumble here I do not understand.
I guess the pertinent point is this, though:
"I'm still not sure why this is such a big problem."
It's a problem because religious people make it one. I honestly don't have a problem with people who go to church every sunday, pray before they go to bed and send the pope money. It's their life and their decision. I do have a bit of a problem when they deny scientific facts, and indoctrinate their children with their misguided ideas. At this point, they are harming an innocent child. And I do have a huge problem if these pious asshats start to force their ideas on other people, by putting them into laws, and by forcing schools to teach their bullshit. At this point, they aren't only harming themselves or their kids, they are harming society.
Sure. First, you need to say some kind of magic prayer. To access the scroll containing these one-in-a-million magic words written by a 6000 years old chinese sacred man which will restore your life to incredible glory and get rid of sock gnomes, you need to go through our 10-step-program. Actually, just contact my accounting department for further information.
You are right that "suddenly" was the wrong word to use, since it implies that Mary had a baby with Joseph, and that fact was then changed to match the earlier religion's story.
This is most likely not what happened. It's very likely that Mary never actually existed. The passage you quote was probably adapted from an earlier religion, and the new testament was then written to match the foretold virgin birth.
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Again, it does not matter whether something is believable or not. What matters is whether it works. If homeopathy works better than a placebo, it works, regardless of how it works. Unfortunately, homeopathy does not work better than a placebo, and it won't do so in the future, either.
This is really not particularly hard to understand. We know that homeopathy doesn't work better than a placebo not because we don't understand it yet and might understand it in the future, but because it quite plainly has no effect that goes above that of a placebo.
Although to be a fair study, it should also compare the effect of no placebo.
Okay, you basically just admitted that homeopathy is a placebo, because it would not be fair to only compare it with a placebo.
Yes. Placebos work. Homeopathy also works. They work exactly the same, i.e. they only work through the placebo effect.
Really. I don't get it. Given what you have written, you obviously realize that homeopathy is nothing but a placebo. So... you just can't admit it to yourself?
As for your "energy" theory: It really doesn't matter how something works. There are a ton of medications where we don't exactly know how they work. The only thing required is that it works better than a placebo. And we can easily test this with almost perfect accuracy for any kind of "alternative medicine".
It really doesn't matter who pays for a study, as long as it's done correctly. What's more, there are a ton of independent studies on homeopathy. It doesn't work.
By the way, I really, really wouldn't go to a chiropractor who doesn't have a real medical degree. Manipulating one's spine is kind of dangerous, and there are many documented cases of otherwise healthy people who died as a direct result of chiropractic treatment.
There is medicine available today of which we are not sure how it works. But we do know that it works. Theoretically, the same could apply to homeopathy
This would be a valid argument if you could cite a single study which showed that a homeopathic remedy performed better than a placebo in any situation. As far as I know, every study on the subject has come to the opposite conclusion.
I don't understand what part of my reasoning you disagree with. Of course there's no good study that shows that homeopathy has outperformed a placebo. The point is that we had to do the studies in order to know; we couldn't just look at how homeopathy is supposed to work and declare it bullshit on that ground alone.
In theory, homeopathy could have worked. We tested it, and it didn't. We know that it doesn't work because we tested it, not because we decided that it couldn't work even before testing it.
(...) atheists have some sort of faith
They don't. Atheism is the absence of faith.
(although many who call themselves atheists are actually just holding out for evidence
Most do. People are atheists because there is no evidence for god, not because they somehow believe in the absence of god the way religious people believe in his existence. If there were convincing evidence that god existed, atheists would obviously accept that evidence.
Well, if you send me a bunch of money, I'll make sure you get to heaven once you're dead. Not convinced? Well, the evidence I offer that I can hold my end of the bargain is exactly the same your church offers :-)
I actually don't disagree with you when you say that not all christians prey on fear of death. However, the evidence shows that fear of death is an important factor of why christianity is so popular, especially certain kinds of christians - catholics and evangelicals come to mind.
When you say that "christianity" doesn't, I'm not sure what you actually mean by that. When people say "christianity", I think of the catholic church. And they absolutely do prey on the fear of death.
$PERSON is sick, recieves a blessing from $CHURCH_LEADER, and is immediately healed. (I've seen this one myself, from both sides of the wound... scoff if you wish, as it's anecdotal evidence, but I can't deny what I've experienced.)
Why would I deny this? I'm sure it's true. It's also why we have control groups in studies.
People like you, who appear to believe $RELIGION is meaningless, want people like me to ignore these experiences. What are you offering me that is so compelling that I should ignore things I've seen with my own eyes?
I'm not offering you anything. I'm asking something of you: I'm asking you to use your brain. I'll explain:
Isn't "test a hypothesis and see the results" the very cornerstone of science? Why should I ignore the results I've seen?
Because what you've seen is not useful data. You're deceiving yourself if you think that you can trust your own eyes. Here's an example: A friend of mine is convinced that females are unable to park cars properly. Interestingly, almost every week, he tells me a new story about a woman he's seen trying - and failing - to park a car. His world seems to be utterly filled with femals who can't park! Similarly interestingly, I hardly ever see this happening. In my world, females seem to be able to park cars just fine. Does this mean we live in different worlds? No. The reason for this discrepancy is confirmation bias. If you have a predetermined belief (he thinks girls can't park, I think they're no worse than men), you will always experience things that confirm your pre-held belief.
This is why people used to sacrifice animals or humans in order to gain help from the gods and influence the weather. As far as they could tell, it actually worked!
There are many more such factors. Humans have a tendency to see causation where there's not even real correlation, they are susceptible to the placebo effect, and so on. The result of all of this is that your own experience is a very poor predictor of reality.
This is also why science takes great pains to remove these factors when testing things. If you want to know whether pain medication helps, you don't just give it to people and see whether they feel better. They will always feel better, regardless of whether you give them actual medication or a simple sugar pill. Likewise, religious people will always feel that religion actually helps, and offer anecdotes. However, in both cases, there is absolutely no evidence of any primary effect. The fact that you can eat a sugar pill and then feel less pain does, of course, not mean that the sugar pill is a pain killer.
Likewise, the fact that you have a good life does not mean that religion granted you this.
It may also be due to the fact that it's easy to adapt a story to reality once the reality is known. Did anyone make the prediction that this evidence would be found before it was actually found? If so, were the details (when this would have happened, how many people were still alive, whether animals were also affected and so on) also correct?
SO your wanting religion to be science now, but this thread is about religion interfering with science.
No, the original point was that ID pretends to be science.
His point was that even a dog can observe a ball and figure out where it flies to. It's simple causality, and it's not the same as making an actual prediction. Figuring out that eating pig makes you sick does not predict microbiology, just like a dog catching a ball does not predict Newton's laws of gravity.
I still find it hard to believe that you're actually serious. I find it difficult to accept that even a deeply religious person would claim that the bible actually predicts that microorganisms can cause disease. You are basically telling me that Pasteur could have read the bible instead of doing experiments, and that he would have come up with the same theories?
This is patently absurd and ridiculous.
Your logic is akin to saying "writing a story involving the stars in the sky is the same as building a spacecraft in order to fly to mars." The fact that you observe shining dots in the sky does not mean that you have predicted space travel. Likewise, observing that some people who live clean don't get sick as often does not mean that you have predicted microbiology.
Much of the bible was written by the main participants.
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone claim anything like this. Most of the stories in the bible were written hundreds of years after they supposedly happened. Even the new testament contains no stories written by anyone who lived at the same time as Jesus supposedly lived. The Gospel of Luke, for example, was written 80 to 90 AD. The earliest manuscripts we have of it are from the 2nd or early 3rd century.
Oh, is your point that there is something wrong with science because new discoveries sometimes contradict earlier theories, and because it doesn't claim to know the ultimate truth of Life, the Universe, and Everything? If so, you simply don't understand what science actually is. I agree with mdwh2: You'd have a point if your computer were built based on "truth" you have found in the bible.
Did you reply to my post by accident?
I have no idea how anything you say contradicts what I said. In fact, i pretty much agree with what you said in this new post here, and wrote the same thing in my post to which you have replied. Yet you end with "your position is wrong".
I specifically said that truth is not part of science. I specifically said that failure is part of science. Yes, abandoning earlier theories is absolutely integral to science.
I don't understand what you're trying to say, or how anything you say contradicts anything I have said.
Yeah, you are right, this particular form of ID can be used to make predictions. Of course, these predictions actually falsify the theory, as you point out, which explains why ID is usually intentionally formulated in such a way that it can't be used to make predictions.
Please do provide examples of people who went to heaven or attained eternal life because they followed their religion's rules and/or paid them money.
You may as well claim that doctors prey on the fear of disease.
Of course, and sometimes they do. The difference is that doctors actually help you when you catch a disease, while religion can't help you when you catch death.
"Religion is a way of conveying real world knowledge, just like science."
Science is not "a way of conveying real world knowledge". Books or web sites or audio tapes are "a way of conveying real world knowledge". Science is a way of gaining real-world knowledge.
"Frequently, both in religion and in science, the humans behind it all get it wrong"
But that is the point: Science doesn't assume that it is right, and doesn't pretend that it is right. In science, you observe, construct a hypothesis, test the hypothesis (where you either disprove the hypothesis or not, but hardly ever prove it), discuss the results, and go back to step 1. Note that failure is part of this, but "truth" is not.
This comment is meant to be sarcastic, right? It's hard to tell with religious people.
"Since most of the religious sorts have been modded into oblivion, I'm curious what sorts of predictions you're looking for"
Any useful prediction would suffice. My original point was that ID pretends to be scientific, but does not add anything useful to science. It's not a valid scientific theory because it can't be used to make any kind of verifiable prediction.
The commonality here is not really religion, it's poorly reasoned or researched comments. Make a poor comment about Linux and the people will be even more vicious. It's not about religion. You're not being persecuted any more than a Windows user who makes an uninformed comment about Linux is being persecuted.
Or perhaps the people who wrote the bible changed and exaggerated what actually happened to further their own agenda.
Frankly, I don't quite understand the argument you're making. Sure, the christian god is by most definitions not provable, and also not disprovable. You yourself put it correctly: "So what?"
So... what?
I'm not quite sure why a Unicorn (or Russell's teapot) are bad analogies, though. They exist to explain a specific concept, namely that religious people can't put the burden of proof on atheists because, as you yourself say, it's by definition impossible to prove that god doesn't exist. It doesn't matter whether the definition for a unicorn includes the fact that it is so powerful that you can't find it. Where exactly atheists stumble here I do not understand.
I guess the pertinent point is this, though:
"I'm still not sure why this is such a big problem."
It's a problem because religious people make it one. I honestly don't have a problem with people who go to church every sunday, pray before they go to bed and send the pope money. It's their life and their decision. I do have a bit of a problem when they deny scientific facts, and indoctrinate their children with their misguided ideas. At this point, they are harming an innocent child. And I do have a huge problem if these pious asshats start to force their ideas on other people, by putting them into laws, and by forcing schools to teach their bullshit. At this point, they aren't only harming themselves or their kids, they are harming society.
Sure. First, you need to say some kind of magic prayer. To access the scroll containing these one-in-a-million magic words written by a 6000 years old chinese sacred man which will restore your life to incredible glory and get rid of sock gnomes, you need to go through our 10-step-program. Actually, just contact my accounting department for further information.
You are right that "suddenly" was the wrong word to use, since it implies that Mary had a baby with Joseph, and that fact was then changed to match the earlier religion's story.
This is most likely not what happened. It's very likely that Mary never actually existed. The passage you quote was probably adapted from an earlier religion, and the new testament was then written to match the foretold virgin birth.