I have a copy, last chance to claim!
Peter Ashby
latest book.
So, after asking many people here to do so and receiving no reply here
is a last chance:
If Dawkins's arguments are irrational as has been claimed ad nauseum
then Please! cite me one. Since I know have a copy page and paragraph
number will suffice, no tedious copying required.
NB: I will respond only to relevant examples, they should also include
an explanation of why the example is irrational (or any other heinous
sin).
Peter
--
Add my middle initial to email me. It has become attached to a country
Prai Jei
<1hp4601.11q7yja1x2vdu1N%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk>:
> For my birthday I received a copy of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's
> latest book.
>
> So, after asking many people here to do so and receiving no reply here
> is a last chance:
>
> If Dawkins's arguments are irrational as has been claimed ad nauseum
> then Please! cite me one. Since I know have a copy page and paragraph
> number will suffice, no tedious copying required.
>
> NB: I will respond only to relevant examples, they should also include
> an explanation of why the example is irrational (or any other heinous
> sin).
>
> Peter
>
I picked up a copy in a bookshop to look at. (Unclean! Unclean!) The chapter
heading "The Great Prayer Experiment" caught my attention and I was able to
skim the first paragraph where D*****s cites one of those experiments where
one group was prayed for while a control group was not.
I am a great believer in intercessionary prayer, having had one personal
demonstration of instant fulfilment thereof. (I have relayed the story here
before but if anybody needs to know the details I can repeat them.) When I
lead the formal intercessionary prayers in church I make sure that the
petition for the sick and suffering includes *all* those in need of prayer.
So all I can say in reply to Prof. D is, sorry for spoiling all these
experiments by implicitly including all the control groups, but my duty to
God comes first.
--
Terms and conditions apply. Batteries not included. Subject to status.
Financial commitment required. Always read the label. Keep out of children.
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Trevor Jenkins
> For my birthday I received a copy of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's
> latest book.
And have some virtual jelly babies to celebrate your recent
belated/on-time/future birthday.
Unfortunately I don't anticipate being able to read Dawkins' book of
several months --- probably not until June next year when the pile of
translating/interpreting textbooks should have reduced to zero. I did note
that a couple of Borders in my locality had a half-price offer on it last
week. If they continue the offer this week, which as Amazon.co.uk also now
list it as half-price, then I'll pick up a copy for my after-graduation
reading pile; though I'm more likely to buy Alistair MacGrath's 2004 book
"Dawkins' God" instead. MacGrath being a molecular biologist and
theologian at Oxford.
Your comments over in uk.philosophy.atheism concerning Ted Haggard with
his denounceation of homosexual activity and his recent admission to
having involved in such acts himself make for some interesting musing. If
we follow your line of reasoning that those who vociferously criticise a
topic are secretly indulging in these things themselves then Dawkins is
clearly a closet theist and his constant atheistic bleating is merely a
coverup for what he really believes. ;-)
Regards, Trevor
<>< Re: deemed!
Peter Ashby
Which bit of the group told they were being prayed for got worse did you
not get to? Anyway the idea that anecdote trumps a statistically valid
sample is so funny I may fall off my chair.
Gareth McCaughan
> Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
...
>> I am a great believer in intercessionary prayer, having had one personal
>> demonstration of instant fulfilment thereof. (I have relayed the story here
>> before but if anybody needs to know the details I can repeat them.) When I
>> lead the formal intercessionary prayers in church I make sure that the
>> petition for the sick and suffering includes *all* those in need of prayer.
>>
>> So all I can say in reply to Prof. D is, sorry for spoiling all these
>> experiments by implicitly including all the control groups, but my duty to
>> God comes first.
[Peter:]
> Which bit of the group told they were being prayed for got worse did you
> not get to? Anyway the idea that anecdote trumps a statistically valid
> sample is so funny I may fall off my chair.
Peter, I think you've misunderstood PJ's point. He's saying:
the people in all the groups will have been prayed for, even
if the experimenters only requested prayer for the people in
two of the groups, so prayer could be "effective" without
its effects showing up in this study.
I'd like to distinguish two versions of this suggestion.
1. That all three groups will have been prayed for at least
a bit.
2. That all three groups will have been prayed for roughly
the same amount.
I expect #1 is true. But then, everyone is prayed for at least
a bit, at least in the sort of general terms PJ is talking about.
If he's suggesting that this is enough to spoil experiments
like the one Dawkins wrote about, then it seems to me that it
also suffices to "spoil" all intercessory prayer: whoever you
might be praying for is surely being (however vaguely) prayed
for by other people.
I don't see any reason to believe #2.
There are other objections theists could make to these studies:
that God might go out of his way to avoid being "seen" by them
for some reason, that only very personally directed prayer has
much effect, etc. I doubt that objections like this would have
been raised if the study had shown that the people prayed for
had better medical outcomes :-), but they do have some force.
Whether there's a coherent view of the matter that suffices to
de-fang the results of this study and others like it *and* that
makes sense of the widespread Christian practice of broad
intercessions for (say) "the church throughout the world"
isn't entirely clear to me; probably there is, but it might
have to be a bit of a kludge.
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc
philip....@ntlworld.com
> In uk.religion.christian on 20 Nov 2006 21:54:08 GMT,> Message-Id ?
>
> }that those who vociferously criticise a
> }topic are secretly indulging in these things themselves then Dawkins is
> }clearly a closet theist and his constant atheistic bleating is merely a
> }coverup for what he really believes. ;-)
>
Possibly those who vociferously criticise it :-) Those of us that laugh
at it probably not though.
Phil
Peter Ashby
> In uk.religion.christian on 20 Nov 2006 21:54:08 GMT,
> Trevor....@suneidesis.com (Trevor Jenkins) wrote:
>
> }If
> }we follow your line of reasoning
>
> Message-Id ?
For the record I do recall making a vaguely similar point wrt Ted
Haggard in iirc u.p.a.
However your demonstration of the falsity of Trevor's attempt was good,
well done.
Gordon Hudson
news:1hp4601.11q7yja1x2vdu1N%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk...
I published this before but it may be relevant as it shows the futility of
militant athiesm.
I have nothing against aithiests but why do they have so much hatred?
Is it possible to prove the non existence of God?
This is a bit like trying to argue that there are no snakes in the wild in
Ireland.
This is a long held belief, but you would have to look under every stone and
in every bit of undergrowth to be absolutely certain.
You would also have to be looking in all the possible places a snake could
live at the same time in case it was moving around.
Any rational person would agree that you can't prove without doubt that
there are no snakes in Ireland.
Therefore, you can't prove that there is no God.
Furthermore, because God is spirit its much more difficult to find God than
a snake.
You need to have spiritual antennae to detect spiritual things just like you
need a radio to detect radio signals even though they are around us all the
time.
Its not possible to prove the non existence of God unless you can explore
the spiritual realm fully.
Peter Ashby
> "Peter Ashby" <pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk> wrote in message
> news:1hp4601.11q7yja1x2vdu1N%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk...
> > For my birthday I received a copy of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's
> > latest book.
> >
> > So, after asking many people here to do so and receiving no reply here
> > is a last chance:
> >
> > If Dawkins's arguments are irrational as has been claimed ad nauseum
> > then Please! cite me one. Since I know have a copy page and paragraph
> > number will suffice, no tedious copying required.
> >
> > NB: I will respond only to relevant examples, they should also include
> > an explanation of why the example is irrational (or any other heinous
> > sin).
> >
> > Peter
> >
> > --
> > Add my middle initial to email me. It has become attached to a country
>
> I published this before but it may be relevant as it shows the futility of
> militant athiesm.
> I have nothing against aithiests but why do they have so much hatred?
Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
p1.
When you step away from religion and strip the scales from your eyes you
see a continuum in the thought processes from ordinary churchgoers to
those who flew those planes. It runs through things like protests
against Jerry Springer the Opera (and Life of Brian) as well as Beshti.
It runs through well meaning people wanting their children taught
pseudoscience. These are by no means typical theist behaviour but the
thought processes that lead people to these places are those common to
all theists. We atheist have divested ourselves of them, we have found
it makes us no less moral, no less loving , no less caring, but far, far
more aware of the laws of unintended consequences and that the road to
hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
> Is it possible to prove the non existence of God?
> This is a bit like trying to argue that there are no snakes in the wild in
> Ireland.
>
> This is a long held belief, but you would have to look under every stone and
> in every bit of undergrowth to be absolutely certain.
> You would also have to be looking in all the possible places a snake could
> live at the same time in case it was moving around.
> Any rational person would agree that you can't prove without doubt that
> there are no snakes in Ireland.
> Therefore, you can't prove that there is no God.
>
> Furthermore, because God is spirit its much more difficult to find God than
> a snake.
> You need to have spiritual antennae to detect spiritual things just like you
> need a radio to detect radio signals even though they are around us all the
> time.
>
> Its not possible to prove the non existence of God unless you can explore
> the spiritual realm fully.
The flaw in this argument is the same as the flaws in the arguments put
forward in favour of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Any snakes
in the wild in Ireland would have to form a viable breeding population,
one is insufficient. Such a population has to eat something and may be
eaten itself. Snakes as they grow must shed their skins, also they leave
egg debris behind when they hatch. They also leave characteristic spoor
indicative of their feeding habbits (bones, bits of insect carapace
etc).
So the hypothesis of snakes in Ireland has many, many more implications
than the one you imagined in the above. These may not be obvious to a
non specialist which is why arguments like the above are seductive to
the layman who does not think about all the features I have outlined
(which have their own implications of course).
Simon Woods
> Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
> when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
> series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
> Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
One can imagine a radio advert playing an exert from Mozart's Requiem
with the same catchphrase!
Simon Woods
> In uk.religion.christian on 21 Nov 2006 04:45:15 -0800, "Simon Woods"
stet
Peter Ashby
John Lennon's Imagine would be a better choice I fancy. On a more modern
vein Roger Waters's What God Wants would do too.
Trevor Jenkins
> {R} <nos...@spam.nium.org> wrote:
>
> > In uk.religion.christian on 20 Nov 2006 21:54:08 GMT,
> > Trevor....@suneidesis.com (Trevor Jenkins) wrote:
> >
> > }If
> > }we follow your line of reasoning
> >
> > Message-Id ?
>
> For the record I do recall making a vaguely similar point wrt Ted
> Haggard in iirc u.p.a.
Twas a little more than "vague"; it was downright gleefull.
> However your demonstration of the falsity of Trevor's attempt was good,
> well done.
It seems to me that in addition to throwing out any belief in a god
atheists also throw out their sarcasm detectors.
Regards, Trevor
<>< Re: deemed!
moderator for uk.religion.christian
>There was a bigoted moralizing fuckwit <snip>
This is personal abuse, which is not permitted by the charter. You'll
be set to manually moderated status for two weeks. Please use this
time to remind yourself of the charter of uk.religion.christian, and
to learn how to remain within its terms.
--
Moderator for uk.religion.christian
Debbie Herring, Sheffield
articles go to : uk-religio...@usenet.org.uk
moderator is at: uk-religion-ch...@usenet.org.uk
charter : http://www.usenet.org.uk/uk.religion.christian.html
meta-FAQ : http://www.anweald.co.uk/uk.religion.christian.metaFAQ.html
Views expressed in this email are my own and are not
necessarily those of the University of Sheffield.
Paul Wright
> I published this before but it may be relevant as it shows the
> futility of militant athiesm. I have nothing against aithiests but why
> do they have so much hatred?
I think part of it maybe the ex-smoker effect, where people who've given
up smoking are always the most vehement anti-smokers. There was an
interesting point made about the anger of ex-Christians on the Richard
Dawkins site recently. I discussed it on my blog:
<http://pw201.livejournal.com/67602.html>
I think part of the anger is actually anger at oneself for being fooled,
directed against religion instead. But I do think religious teachers are
partly culpable, too, and it's not surprising that some ex-religious
types feel anger towards them.
> Is it possible to prove the non existence of God?
No. Neither is it possible to prove the non-existence of the Invisible
Pink Unicorn (PBUHHH).
Atheists like Dawkins aren't saying they've proved that God does not
exist, merely that the evidence (or lack of it) makes them think it's
very unlikely.
> Furthermore, because God is spirit its much more difficult to find God than
> a snake.
> You need to have spiritual antennae to detect spiritual things just like you
> need a radio to detect radio signals even though they are around us all the
> time.
Ah, but you Christians cannot prove the non-existence of the Invisible
Pink Unicorn, either. Because, you see (or rather, you don't) She is
Invisible. As the IPU's creed puts it "By Faith we know She is Pink, by
Reason we know She is Invisible, because we cannot see Her."
--
Paul Wright | http://pobox.com/~pw201 | http://blog.noctua.org.uk/
Reply address is valid but discards anything which isn't plain text
Quasin
>
> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
> was not allowed.
>
> Sorry.
>
Any living human being. Similar to libel rules.
The dead and imaginary are fair game.
And although some say God is neither dead nor imaginary,
you'll be glad to know God is fair game. :)
Peter Ashby
> In uk.religion.christian on Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:04:55 +0000, moderator for
> uk.religion.christian <deb...@cybertheology.net> wrote:
>
> }On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:32:06 +0000, {R} <nos...@spam.nium.org> wrote:
> }
> }
> }>There was a bigoted moralizing fuckwit <snip>
> }
> }This is personal abuse, which is not permitted by the charter.
>
> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
> was not allowed.
>
> Sorry.
>
> {R}
Mind you I think all your terms are fully justifiable in the case of
Haggard.
Gareth McCaughan
> When you step away from religion and strip the scales from your eyes you
> see a continuum in the thought processes from ordinary churchgoers to
> those who flew those planes.
There is also a continuum in the thought processes from ordinary
political activists (of whatever stripe) and those who flew those
planes. Terrorism is a complicated business, and even when al Qaida
do it it's political as much as it is religious. Being on a continuum
with appallingly evil people is, unfortunately, part of being human.
If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing
evil deeds, and it were only necessary to separate them from the
rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing
to destroy a piece of his own heart?
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Gareth McCaughan
> Simon Woods <simonwo...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Peter Ashby wrote:
>>
>>> Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
>>> when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
>>> series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
>>> Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
>>
>> One can imagine a radio advert playing an exert from Mozart's Requiem
>> with the same catchphrase!
>
> John Lennon's Imagine would be a better choice I fancy. On a more modern
> vein Roger Waters's What God Wants would do too.
I think you miss Simon's point, namely that one example
of harm done by religion isn't much evidence of anything;
without religion we might perhaps have kept the World
Trade Center, but we'd have lost Mozart's Requiem.
Richard Dudley
> Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
> when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
> series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
> Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
> p1.
What do you imagine Dawkin's response might be to a picture of the
Hiroshima skyline, shown intact in September 1945 with the byline
'Imagine a world without scientists'?
Richard
Simon Robinson
> uk.religion.christian <deb...@cybertheology.net> wrote:
> }This is personal abuse, which is not permitted by the charter.
>
> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
> was not allowed.
>
> Sorry.
Fair enough.
But why would you want to post personal abuse of a non-involved third
party anyway? What purpose does it serve?
Kendall K. Down
Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
> There are other objections theists could make to these studies:
How about the one that answers to prayer are not dependent upon the number
of prayers offered? Can these alleged experiments guarantee that no one in
the not-prayed-for group has prayed for themselves?
God bless,
Kendall K. Down
--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia's premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================
Kendall K. Down
Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> I picked up a copy in a bookshop to look at. (Unclean! Unclean!) The chapter
> heading "The Great Prayer Experiment" caught my attention and I was able to
> skim the first paragraph where D*****s cites one of those experiments where
> one group was prayed for while a control group was not.
Assuming that Dawkins considers such "experiments" valid and significant,
there's your irrationality straight away. Here's some of the reasons why:
1. God is a person, not a slot machine. Prayers are not answered
automatically.
2. In all cases of healing recorded in the Bible, the person healed had to
have faith. Do these experiments attempt to discover whether any of those
prayed for lack faith, or any of those not prayed for have faith? God is not
going to heal someone without faith or not heal someone with faith, just to
keep the experiment statistics going.
3. Valid prayers always conclude with "Thy will be done": have the
experimenters some way of determining what God's will in the particular
cases is?
No doubt there are other reasons.
Trevor Jenkins
>
> > ... <snip>
>
> This is personal abuse, which is not permitted by the charter.
Didn't we have a instance a few years ago where someone leaving in the
abusive words when commenting was also put on moderated status? Could be
interesting if the moderator has to put the moderator on moderated status
for doing the same thing. ;-)
Regards, Trevor
<>< Re: deemed!
Gareth McCaughan
In this case, the answer seems to be: justification of
Peter A's alleged glee about Ted Haggard in another forum,
presumably with the aim of defending atheists from a
charge of general schadenfreude or something. This doesn't
seem to have been a great success :-), but it seems like
a reasonably clear purpose.
John Blake
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>I think you miss Simon's point, namely that one example
>of harm done by religion isn't much evidence of anything;
>without religion we might perhaps have kept the World
>Trade Center, but we'd have lost Mozart's Requiem.
Mozart's Requiem is beautiful, but I would rather be deaf to all music
if by that those who were killed in the Trade Centres had lived.
JB
Gareth McCaughan
> 1. God is a person, not a slot machine. Prayers are not answered
> automatically.
Of course. The question is whether they are answered at all.
No one would have reckoned the results negative if people being
prayed for had done dramatically better but not all been
instantly and completely healed.
> 2. In all cases of healing recorded in the Bible, the person healed had to
> have faith.
That's simply not true, nor close to being true. Leaving aside
Hosea 11:3 as possibly metaphorical or something, we have
1 Kings 17 (the child was dead, or at least comatose, and
there's no evidence that he had any sort of
faith; the woman seems to have been positively
hostile)
Matthew 8:8 (no evidence of any faith on the part of the
centurion's servant, and no suggestion from
either the centurion or Jesus that it would
be necessary)
Mark 5:41 (no evidence of any faith on the part of the
girl, who was apparently dead at the time, and
no suggestion from either Jairus or Jesus that
it might be necessary)
Luke 9:42 (no evidence of any faith on the part of the
man's son, and no suggestion from either the
man or Jesus that it would be necessary)
Luke 22:49 (is it likely that the high priest's servant,
come with him to the arrest, had faith in Jesus?
There's certainly no suggestion that he had the
least expectation that Jesus would heal his ear.)
Acts 3:6 (no sign that the beggar even knew who these
people were, or that he had any sort of faith;
of course he was pretty thrilled *afterwards*...)
The most you can say about these is that there isn't an explicit
statement "X had no faith but was healed".
> Do these experiments attempt to discover whether any of those
> prayed for lack faith, or any of those not prayed for have faith? God is not
> going to heal someone without faith or not heal someone with faith, just to
> keep the experiment statistics going.
So much the worse for the alleged goodness and mercy of God.
> 3. Valid prayers always conclude with "Thy will be done": have the
> experimenters some way of determining what God's will in the particular
> cases is?
Nope. But then, neither has anyone who prays (barring
special revelation, which appears to be rare at best).
It would appear that the fraction of people in these
studies whom it's God's will to heal is exactly the same
as the fraction of people who (so far as we can tell)
would have got better anyway.
> No doubt there are other reasons.
I can think of at least one :-).
Peter Ashby
Nice quote, one of the things I have always like about Solzhenitsyn is
this attitude, Despite everything he went through he refuses to believe
in absolute evil. But then that is a religious concept isn't it? When
you believe someone is absolutely evil it is a short step to thinking
the world would be improved if they were absent from it and to couch a
fight in terms of good and evil. So amongst Islamists the US is The
Great Satan, and amongst neocons Islamists are just evil.
Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
people into occupied buildings.
John Blake
<host...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I have nothing against aithiests but why do they have so much hatred?
>
I don't think it is hatred, just a reaction to the disproportionate
degree of influence of religious organisations on the government and
the indoctrination of the innocent.
JB
Gareth McCaughan
> In message <87wt5p6...@g.mccaughan.ntlworld.com>
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> There are other objections theists could make to these studies:
>
> How about the one that answers to prayer are not dependent upon the number
> of prayers offered? Can these alleged experiments guarantee that no one in
> the not-prayed-for group has prayed for themselves?
Nope, but this objection has the problem that it basically
makes intercessory prayer (at least for healing) redundant.
You've said elsewhere in this thread that God heals only
those who have faith. You suggest here that if someone's
being prayed for then it doesn't matter how many people are
praying for them. I put it to you that anyone who has faith
will, unless actually comatose, be praying for himself
or herself, and therefore that if your proposals are right
then there is no benefit in praying for anyone else to be
healed.
Peter Ashby
I suspect he would refer you to a whole slew of quotes from people like
Robert Oppenheimer.
Gareth McCaughan
I hope the moderator already reads all her own posts before
they are allowed to reach the group. :-)
Revd. Eric Potts
>
> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
> was not allowed.
>
> Sorry.
Leaving aside the abusive words, many Christians would tend to feel
much the same as you.
I do, however, think there is another point to be considered as far as
the individual person is concerned. When you grow up in a world where
practices such as homosexuality are condemned, there is enormous
pressure to conform both in your own personal life and, if you are a
public figure, in your public utterances. Many people who are
fundamentally gay have married and put on a front, who knows at what
cost to themselves and also to their family.
But the inner person will always seek to "come out". Hence the
hypocrisy but also hence the personal anguish. This guy is not the
first to be outed, nor will he be the last.
And although we can justifiably condemn the hypocrisy, perhaps we
should also feel some sympathy for the man and for those close to him
who have been and are being damaged by all this. What hypocrisies might
there not be in our own lives, that are unlikely to emerge in such a
way because most of us are not public figures? And how far have we
contributed to the wrong condemnation that leads to such hypocrisies in
the first place.
Debbie
>In uk.religion.christian on Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:21:13 GMT, Quasin
><qua...@nosuchisp.com> wrote:
>}{R} wrote:
>}> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
>}> was not allowed.
>}>
>}> Sorry.
>}>
>}
>}Any living human being. Similar to libel rules.
>
>You do not want to go there, this is a UK group. Two references
>
>Godfrey v Demon (google it - Godfrey won)
>and my own issue http://www.nursesarebullied.org
>
>}The dead and imaginary are fair game.
>
>And any anyone else, not in the UK.
Lawyers decide, for legal purposes, what is or isn't libel. I decide
for moderation purposes in ukrc what is and isn't personal abuse.
There is a pretty comprehensive explanation in the metaFAQ - I suggest
you read it.
I deem off-topic any personal abuse of any living person, whether the
abusive comment is factually true or not. The dead, the imaginary
and God are all beyond personal abuse under the terms of the charter
because they are not *living* *human* beings.
Debbie, modding from work
Debbie
Jenkins) wrote:
Which is why I left the identifying details of the person abused out
of the moderation post. I'm not as stupid as you seem to think.
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>Ken Down wrote:
>
>> In message <87wt5p6...@g.mccaughan.ntlworld.com>
>> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> There are other objections theists could make to these studies:
>>
>> How about the one that answers to prayer are not dependent upon the number
>> of prayers offered? Can these alleged experiments guarantee that no one in
>> the not-prayed-for group has prayed for themselves?
>
>Nope, but this objection has the problem that it basically
>makes intercessory prayer (at least for healing) redundant.
>You've said elsewhere in this thread that God heals only
>those who have faith.
That's not so - even Biblical evidence is clear about that. Jairus'
daughter, Lazarus?
I haven't been following (and can't keep quiet) - but as one who has
some experience of, and who tries to practice, healing - I would say...
1. Someone needs to have faith - the pray-er, the recipient or even
bystanders.
2. We still need to determine what God's will is, part of the purpose of
prayer is to listen to God, not to issue *our* orders.
I have been praying for three seriously people in the last few weeks.
One with a brain tumour died on Monday, one with a brain haemorrhage
seems to be recovering (but we're not sure if he knows who he is with),
and one is dying of inoperable lung cancer.
I was disappointed at the death of the first (though less so when I
discovered that he had been brought up a Catholic, and had recently seen
a priest in hospital) as he seemed to make some recovery a few months
ago, then got worse.
The second - not a Christian but the supporter of a Christian family - I
am praying for a recovery. But I'm not certain of the Lord's will.
For the third, I am praying for a peaceful and quiet death in the
presence of his family.
Sometimes I *am* sure of what is happening, most of the time I pray in
faith, and the real paradox for Christians is whether we are influencing
God, or just trying to jump on His bandwagon and claim the credit. What
I *do* know is some of the things I have seen, would not have happened
if I hadn't done what I did. (Whether someone else might then have done
it, I cannot say.)
>You suggest here that if someone's
>being prayed for then it doesn't matter how many people are
>praying for them. I put it to you that anyone who has faith
>will, unless actually comatose, be praying for himself
>or herself, and therefore that if your proposals are right
>then there is no benefit in praying for anyone else to be
>healed.
>
Perhaps - as an experiment - we need some anti-believers acting as a
control group praying that they don't recover? :-(
Mike
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
http://www.trustsof.demon.co.uk
<><
For this is what the Lord has said to me,
"Go and post a Watchman and let
him report what he sees." Isa 21:6
<><
Gareth McCaughan
Oh, sure, it's not a comparison of like with like. For that,
you'd need to look at things like the work of religious
charities (random example: Christian Aid), and also of
course at the other ways in which religion leads to people
getting killed (some wars, for instance). It's not at all
clear how the balance would end up. So the producers of
Dawkins's series chose a single image that they felt
represented their side of the story. And someone making
the opposite case could have chosen something that would
have been pretty effective the other way. Nothing wrong
with any of that, of course.
Gareth McCaughan
[me:]
>> There is also a continuum in the thought processes from ordinary
>> political activists (of whatever stripe) and those who flew those
>> planes. Terrorism is a complicated business, and even when al Qaida
>> do it it's political as much as it is religious. Being on a continuum
>> with appallingly evil people is, unfortunately, part of being human.
>>
>> If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing
>> evil deeds, and it were only necessary to separate them from the
>> rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil
>> cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing
>> to destroy a piece of his own heart?
>>
>> -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
>
> Nice quote, one of the things I have always like about Solzhenitsyn is
> this attitude, Despite everything he went through he refuses to believe
> in absolute evil. But then that is a religious concept isn't it? When
> you believe someone is absolutely evil it is a short step to thinking
> the world would be improved if they were absent from it and to couch a
> fight in terms of good and evil. So amongst Islamists the US is The
> Great Satan, and amongst neocons Islamists are just evil.
I think there's a natural tendency to demonize one's enemies.
Plenty of people seem to regard (for instance) paedophiles as
Absolutely Evil, whether or not they're religious. Sometimes
religions encourage such thinking, sometimes not. I'm not
sure where Islam stands on that, but the less lunatic forms
of Christianity would generally claim that everyone's "made
in the image of God" and important enough for Jesus to die
for and so on, which *ought* to discourage thinking of anyone
as absolutely evil. I'm not sure it does so very effectively
in practice.
> Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
> to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
> people into occupied buildings.
Well, if you're anxious to understand that then you could
perhaps do some research into the methods of the Tamil Tigers,
a mostly secular group that until 2001-09-11 had killed
more people by suicide terrorism than any other. They've
still carried out far more suicide attacks than any other
group, I think. I don't know whether they made use of a
concept of absolute evil, but if they did it was probably
a Marxist version of that concept rather than a strictly
religious one.
(Of course Marxism has some of the characteristics of a
religion, but I don't think it's helpful to say that it
actually *is* one.)
Richard Dudley
> > > Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
> > > when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
> > > series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
> > > Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
> > > p1.
> >
> > What do you imagine Dawkin's response might be to a picture of the
> > Hiroshima skyline, shown intact in September 1945 with the byline
> > 'Imagine a world without scientists'?
>
> I suspect he would refer you to a whole slew of quotes from people like
> Robert Oppenheimer.
Oh, I'm already aware of Oppenheimer's view. Were you referring to his
self-identification with the Hindu deity Shiva on beholding the success
of the Manhattan project ?
Richard
Peter Ashby
> In uk.religion.christian on Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:21:13 GMT, Quasin
> <qua...@nosuchisp.com> wrote:
> }{R} wrote:
> }> OK. I missed the bit that said personal abuse to a non-involved third party
> }> was not allowed.
> }>
> }> Sorry.
> }>
> }
> }Any living human being. Similar to libel rules.
>
> You do not want to go there, this is a UK group. Two references
>
> Godfrey v Demon (google it - Godfrey won)
> and my own issue http://www.nursesarebullied.org
How did that pan out? last entry on the news section is 2002.
Simon Robinson
> Nice quote, one of the things I have always like about Solzhenitsyn is
> this attitude, Despite everything he went through he refuses to believe
> in absolute evil.
I agree that is a very good quality.
> But then that is a religious concept isn't it?
Not really. Secular society is full of both individuals and groups -
even some secular newspapers - who are very ready to condemn other
individuals and groups as absolutely evil (look at how many newspapers
treat paedophiles, for example). I suspect (without any proof) that
there's something in human nature that makes many people inclined to
want to class other people as 'bad' (perhaps it makes people feel good
about themselves, helps them to feel better than other people or
something). ISTM one of the really nice things about more moderate forms
of Christianity is that, by declaring that we are all imperfect and in
need of God's love, and in fact loved by God, it strongly discourages
that tendency to label certain other groups as bad (and therefore to
think it's OK to treat them badly).
> When
> you believe someone is absolutely evil it is a short step to thinking
> the world would be improved if they were absent from it and to couch a
> fight in terms of good and evil. So amongst Islamists the US is The
> Great Satan, and amongst neocons Islamists are just evil.
I totally agree. However I don't think that's really the result of
religion, I think it's the result of many people's need to find a group
that they can demonize. Before Islamists came along to perform that role
for us, we had paedophiles. Before that we had poofs. Before that we had
commies. Before that we had niggers. etc. etc. At best you could
probably argue that some religious dogmas tend to capitalize on that
tendency.
> Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
> to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
> people into occupied buildings.
I believe the concept of using planes as a weapon in that way was first
invented by Japan, 60-65 years ago. And I don't think the reasons had
anything to do with religion. So, no, you don't need religion to
pursuade people to do things like that. You just need to convince people
that there's a sufficiently great enemy. Besides, putting the blame for
the WTC attack entirely on religion is to ignore all the contributary
social issues, in particular the grievances that many muslims feel they
have for how they've been treated by western countries (and Israel,
supplied by western countries) in the past.
Jeremy P
news:877ixn3...@g.mccaughan.ntlworld.com...
> I hope the moderator already reads all her own posts before
> they are allowed to reach the group. :-)
With pursed lips I posit that pesty posts are given a pasting and the pests
promptly pastored unless p**ssed I mean plastered
--
Jeremy Parsons
Gone but not forgotten... Back yet rarely noticed...
Peter Ashby
>
> > Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
> > to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
> > people into occupied buildings.
>
> Well, if you're anxious to understand that then you could
> perhaps do some research into the methods of the Tamil Tigers,
> a mostly secular group that until 2001-09-11 had killed
> more people by suicide terrorism than any other. They've
> still carried out far more suicide attacks than any other
> group, I think. I don't know whether they made use of a
> concept of absolute evil, but if they did it was probably
> a Marxist version of that concept rather than a strictly
> religious one.
The Tigers are engaged in asymmetric warfare with Sinhalese majority. It
seems that in that environment it is distressingly easy for the Tigers
to portray the fight as one of racial survival. It is a small step from
being willing to die to defend your home and family to this under the
right circumstances. I see many of the Palestinian suicide bombers in
this class too, especially since several have been christian or secular.
I chose the example I gave precisely because it does not stem from such
a situation. These were not people who could be so motivated, in fact
many of them were relatively privileged.
Peter Ashby
Which would make faith healers redundant overnight. Hmm, maybe we should
support this idea?
Gareth McCaughan
>> Nope, but this objection has the problem that it basically
>> makes intercessory prayer (at least for healing) redundant.
>> You've said elsewhere in this thread that God heals only
>> those who have faith.
>
> That's not so - even Biblical evidence is clear about that. Jairus'
> daughter, Lazarus?
I know, and I've said as much to Ken. I'm just pointing out
that the different things he's saying are incompatible. I'm
sure you would have a different set of answers, which may
have different weaknesses. (Or even none.)
> I haven't been following (and can't keep quiet) - but as one who has
> some experience of, and who tries to practice, healing - I would say...
>
> 1. Someone needs to have faith - the pray-er, the recipient or even
> bystanders.
Well, if that's all that's needed then one of Ken's objections
to the "prayer studies" is wrong.
> 2. We still need to determine what God's will is, part of the purpose
> of prayer is to listen to God, not to issue *our* orders.
Sure. But I hope you can see that this can end up making
the claim that "God answers prayers for healing" (I'm not
sure whether you'd make quite that claim, but I'm pretty
sure you'd say something along those lines) meaningless:
if you pray for some people and they get better no more
often than you'd expect if God did nothing, then all that
means is that God's will was for the people you prayed for
to do no better than chance. On the whole it seems to me
that that's what we do see.
> Sometimes I *am* sure of what is happening, most of the time I pray in
> faith, and the real paradox for Christians is whether we are
> influencing God, or just trying to jump on His bandwagon and claim the
> credit. What I *do* know is some of the things I have seen, would not
> have happened if I hadn't done what I did. (Whether someone else might
> then have done it, I cannot say.)
"To know what *would* have happened, child?" said Aslan.
"No. Nobody is ever told that."
>> You suggest here that if someone's
>> being prayed for then it doesn't matter how many people are
>> praying for them. I put it to you that anyone who has faith
>> will, unless actually comatose, be praying for himself
>> or herself, and therefore that if your proposals are right
>> then there is no benefit in praying for anyone else to be
>> healed.
>
> Perhaps - as an experiment - we need some anti-believers acting as a
> control group praying that they don't recover? :-(
There are perhaps some ethical issues, as well as practical ones,
associated with such an experiment :-).
Jeremy P
news:1hp7672.pn1q471wi11a9N%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk...
> Nice quote, one of the things I have always like about Solzhenitsyn is
> this attitude, Despite everything he went through he refuses to believe
> in absolute evil. But then that is a religious concept isn't it? When
> you believe someone is absolutely evil it is a short step to thinking
> the world would be improved if they were absent from it and to couch a
> fight in terms of good and evil. So amongst Islamists the US is The
> Great Satan, and amongst neocons Islamists are just evil.
>
> Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
> to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
> people into occupied buildings.
Can't disagree, though Christianity does not admit a concept of absolute
evil, while many of all ways of thinking believe in what you might call
'irretrievable evil' and will readily make their own list from which "they'd
none of 'em be missed."
The great experiments in atheist statehood seem to be (and, thankfully,
"have been" where these experiments have been terminated) particularly
enthusiastic about both this, and their own right to define 'evil' in any
way that suits their ends.
I'm grateful to know that according to the God of my faith laying down one's
life for one's friend is the pinnacle of human love. Not laying down one's
life for the destruction of one's enemy.
Jeremy P
news:vq58m25s0u6qr3m71...@4ax.com...
Absolutely. And I'll start dealing with that terrible threat once I've
disarmed Prince Philip.
Gordon Hudson
news:slrnem6u3a.h1s.-$P-W$-...@noctua.org.uk...
> Ah, but you Christians cannot prove the non-existence of the Invisible
> Pink Unicorn, either. Because, you see (or rather, you don't) She is
> Invisible. As the IPU's creed puts it "By Faith we know She is Pink, by
> Reason we know She is Invisible, because we cannot see Her."
Thats my point exactly.
It is impossible to prove the non existence of anything like this so its a
wasted argument.
Glyn Millington
> In uk.religion.christian on 20 Nov 2006 21:54:08 GMT,
> Trevor....@suneidesis.com (Trevor Jenkins) wrote:
>
> }If
> }we follow your line of reasoning
>
> Message-Id ?
>
> }that those who vociferously criticise a
> }topic are secretly indulging in these things themselves then Dawkins is
> }clearly a closet theist and his constant atheistic bleating is merely a
> }coverup for what he really believes. ;-)
>
> So all god botherers are really atheists.
Only those who get militant about it :-)
atb
Glyn
Peter Ashby
Except that you can put the idea to a probability calculation,
especially if there are explicit or implicit claims for the deity doing
things. Things like creating the world and all things that crawl, fly
and swim for eg.
Peter Ashby
Which just confirms my point. If you can justify that blowing up
yourself and a load of soldiers at a bus stop will protect your friend
you have automatic religious sanction. You have literally sanctified the
act.
Michael J Davis
Richard Dudley <abrax...@gmail.com> writes
>Peter Ashby wrote:
>
>> Richard Dawkins in the afforementioned book expresses his pleasure that
>> when Channel 4 put ads in the national papers for his Root of All Evil?
>> series they used a picture of the Manhattan skyline with intact World
>> Trade Centre towers and the byline: Imagine a world without religion.
>> p1.
>
>What do you imagine Dawkin's response might be to a picture of the
>Hiroshima skyline, shown intact in September 1945 with the byline
>'Imagine a world without scientists'?
Thanks for that thought, Richard.
The argument might well be, "but scientists try to stop that sort of
thing happening." Exactly the same expression I imagine used by the vast
majority of religious people.
Mike
--
Michael J Davis
<><
I'm not religious
because I know God
I'm not God-fearing
because I accept His love
I'm not in conflict
because I have His peace
<><
Michael J Davis
<nos...@spam.nium.org> writes
>In uk.religion.christian on Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:21:13 GMT, Quasin
><qua...@nosuchisp.com> wrote:
>}
>}Any living human being. Similar to libel rules.
>
>You do not want to go there, this is a UK group. Two references
>
>Godfrey v Demon (google it - Godfrey won)
>and my own issue http://www.nursesarebullied.org
I don't think they can all be that bad...
"In January 1997 in an attempt to backup Cain, Whitehead started formal
departmental meetings, including the production of minuets."
... Visions of them dancing around the wards!
>}The dead and imaginary are fair game.
>
>And any anyone else, not in the UK.
No, any living person.
>}And although some say God is neither dead nor imaginary,
>
>As you know, we disagree :)
>
>}you'll be glad to know God is fair game. :)
>
>All we atheists have to do is work out how to change the rules :)
God rules - OK! ;-)
Gareth McCaughan
Certainly. I was just pointing out -- and it seems you agree --
that there are things other than religion that can motivate
people "to do things like fly planes full of people into
occupied buildings".
--
Peter Ashby
I reserve my sympathy for his wife and family and all those who have
felt downtrodden by his ministry. All I have read in this group is
sympathy for him. This failure to consider those affected by his
behaviour I consider to be callous.
Peter Ashby
I was never claiming religion to be the sole motivator. That it is a
motivator is surely sufficient. I should not have to specifically decry
the necessity of assymetric warfare etc for this tendency of religion to
be true.
Religion also causes people to bomb or burn down abortion clinics and
take a shotgun to doctors and their bodyguards.
Kendall K. Down
Paul Wright <-$P-W$-@noctua.org.uk> wrote:
> Ah, but you Christians cannot prove the non-existence of the Invisible
> Pink Unicorn, either. Because, you see (or rather, you don't) She is
> Invisible. As the IPU's creed puts it "By Faith we know She is Pink, by
> Reason we know She is Invisible, because we cannot see Her."
Indeed - but the difference is that we wouldn't waste time on the futile
effort of "proving" her nonexistence.
God bless,
Kendall K. Down
--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia's premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================
Kendall K. Down
pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk (Peter Ashby) wrote:
> The flaw in this argument is the same as the flaws in the arguments put
> forward in favour of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Any snakes
> in the wild in Ireland would have to form a viable breeding population,
> one is insufficient. Such a population has to eat something and may be
> eaten itself. Snakes as they grow must shed their skins, also they leave
> egg debris behind when they hatch. They also leave characteristic spoor
> indicative of their feeding habbits (bones, bits of insect carapace
> etc).
These facts in no way invalidate Gordon's argument. His point is that you
cannot *prove* the absence of snakes in Ireland; all you have done is
provide *evidence* in favour of that hypothesis. There is another thread in
which your inability to distinguish between evidence and proof has been
commented upon.
Kendall K. Down
Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
> I think you miss Simon's point, namely that one example
> of harm done by religion isn't much evidence of anything;
> without religion we might perhaps have kept the World
> Trade Center, but we'd have lost Mozart's Requiem.
I wonder which of the two is the more worth preserving?
Peter Ashby
> In message <1hp5hfy.1c8w9tq145ecaN%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk>
> pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk (Peter Ashby) wrote:
>
> > The flaw in this argument is the same as the flaws in the arguments put
> > forward in favour of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Any snakes
> > in the wild in Ireland would have to form a viable breeding population,
> > one is insufficient. Such a population has to eat something and may be
> > eaten itself. Snakes as they grow must shed their skins, also they leave
> > egg debris behind when they hatch. They also leave characteristic spoor
> > indicative of their feeding habbits (bones, bits of insect carapace
> > etc).
>
> These facts in no way invalidate Gordon's argument. His point is that you
> cannot *prove* the absence of snakes in Ireland; all you have done is
> provide *evidence* in favour of that hypothesis. There is another thread in
> which your inability to distinguish between evidence and proof has been
> commented upon.
I was pointing out that his criteria for determining the absence of
snakes was ridiculously limiting. the simple absence of shed skins is
more than sufficient just by itself. We can say that no viable breeding
population of snakes is present in Ireland. To pretend otherwise is to
demonstrate ignorance.
If he was trying to allude to the black swan problem in induction then
he chose a very bad version of the problem.
Jeremy P
news:45645760$0$634$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk...
If the IPU has location, mass and dimensions, you could reasonably go
looking for her, invisible or not. If the IPU does not as a matter of
course, but intervenes in the world, it would be harder to look for her in a
systematic way, but you would be able to make some test for her past
activities whenever and wherever they were claimed. And to all practical
intents and purposes, the failure to act is equivalent to non-existence.
Suppose you did find evidence of her existence, but not of her pinkness?
Chances are you would at least as a working hypothesis take the IPU's creed
(that they claim was written by their members who had heard the IPU
whispering to them. After all, it was this that started your enquiry.
Simon Robinson
> I was never claiming religion to be the sole motivator. That it is a
> motivator is surely sufficient. I should not have to specifically decry
> the necessity of assymetric warfare etc for this tendency of religion to
> be true.
Err, you wrote:
> Nice quote, one of the things I have always like about Solzhenitsyn is
> this attitude, Despite everything he went through he refuses to
> believe
> in absolute evil. But then that is a religious concept isn't it? When
> you believe someone is absolutely evil it is a short step to thinking
> the world would be improved if they were absent from it and to couch a
> fight in terms of good and evil. So amongst Islamists the US is The
> Great Satan, and amongst neocons Islamists are just evil.
>
> Without these concepts I find it hard to see how you can induce people
> to think the necessary thoughts to do things like fly planes full of
> people into occupied buildings.
That sure looks to me like a claim that religion is the sole motivator
(or at least: The sole motivator you don't find it hard to think of).
'These concepts' looks like it's referring to the idea that someone is
absolutely evil, which you state to be a religious concept.
> Religion also causes people to bomb or burn down abortion clinics
Well, a belief that abortion clinics are doing evil is presumably the
biggest motivator. That motivator may arise from religious beliefs.
> and
> take a shotgun to doctors and their bodyguards.
Not sure what's that referring to unless it's another reference to
abortion clinics.
Paul Wright
So why don't you believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn? You can't prove
that She doesn't exist, and you won't be laughing when She crushes you
beneath Her Holy Hooves for not believing in Her, I can tell you.
--
Paul Wright | http://pobox.com/~pw201 | http://blog.noctua.org.uk/
Reply address is valid but discards anything which isn't plain text
Michael J Davis
<Gareth.M...@pobox.com> writes
>Mike Davis wrote:
>
>>> Nope, but this objection has the problem that it basically
>>> makes intercessory prayer (at least for healing) redundant.
>>> You've said elsewhere in this thread that God heals only
>>> those who have faith.
>>
>> That's not so - even Biblical evidence is clear about that. Jairus'
>> daughter, Lazarus?
>
>I know, and I've said as much to Ken. I'm just pointing out
>that the different things he's saying are incompatible. I'm
>sure you would have a different set of answers, which may
>have different weaknesses. (Or even none.)
Yes, I hadn't seen your excellent objections when I write the above (or
even that below!).
>
>> I haven't been following (and can't keep quiet) - but as one who has
>> some experience of, and who tries to practice, healing - I would say...
>>
>> 1. Someone needs to have faith - the pray-er, the recipient or even
>> bystanders.
>
>Well, if that's all that's needed then one of Ken's objections
>to the "prayer studies" is wrong.
>
>> 2. We still need to determine what God's will is, part of the purpose
>> of prayer is to listen to God, not to issue *our* orders.
>
>Sure. But I hope you can see that this can end up making
>the claim that "God answers prayers for healing" (I'm not
>sure whether you'd make quite that claim, but I'm pretty
>sure you'd say something along those lines) meaningless:
>if you pray for some people and they get better no more
>often than you'd expect if God did nothing, then all that
>means is that God's will was for the people you prayed for
>to do no better than chance. On the whole it seems to me
>that that's what we do see.
Yes, I can - a constant paradox. Why did Jesus command us to ask?
>
>> Sometimes I *am* sure of what is happening, most of the time I pray in
>> faith, and the real paradox for Christians is whether we are
>> influencing God, or just trying to jump on His bandwagon and claim the
>> credit. What I *do* know is some of the things I have seen, would not
>> have happened if I hadn't done what I did. (Whether someone else might
>> then have done it, I cannot say.)
>
>"To know what *would* have happened, child?" said Aslan.
>"No. Nobody is ever told that."
Indeed. (Nice quote.)
>>> You suggest here that if someone's
>>> being prayed for then it doesn't matter how many people are
>>> praying for them. I put it to you that anyone who has faith
>>> will, unless actually comatose, be praying for himself
>>> or herself, and therefore that if your proposals are right
>>> then there is no benefit in praying for anyone else to be
>>> healed.
>>
>> Perhaps - as an experiment - we need some anti-believers acting as a
>> control group praying that they don't recover? :-(
>
>There are perhaps some ethical issues, as well as practical ones,
>associated with such an experiment :-).
Yes. But all such controls - prayer or testing remedies for cancer -
have that. Actually I think *not* praying for someone deliberately,
falls into the "run round the house without thinking of 'elephants'"
trick.
Patrick Herring
...
| {R} (who has no problem with moderation at all, if your modbot breaks you
| can use mine :)
I've thought about that (I'm the techsup) but it would take away my
temptation to fiddle with the code (which is also written in Rexx) and
there is only one thing I can't resist...
--
Patrick Herring, http://www.anweald.co.uk
zen christianity: http://www.anweald.co.uk/zenchristianity/
Gareth McCaughan
> In message <87mz6k4...@g.mccaughan.ntlworld.com>
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> I think you miss Simon's point, namely that one example
>> of harm done by religion isn't much evidence of anything;
>> without religion we might perhaps have kept the World
>> Trade Center, but we'd have lost Mozart's Requiem.
>
> I wonder which of the two is the more worth preserving?
The Requiem, clearly. Unfortunately there were also
thousands of people inside the WTC, whereas there have
never been thousands of people inside Mozart's Requiem.
(Nor inside Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier...)
Peter Ashby
>
> > and
> > take a shotgun to doctors and their bodyguards.
>
> Not sure what's that referring to unless it's another reference to
> abortion clinics.
Why is it only us atheists who know about this stuff?
On 29 July 1994 The Reverend Paul Hill shot Dr John Britton and his
bodyguard James Barrett with a shotgun outside Dr Britton's home. He was
executed in 2003 apparently convinced he was a martyr who was going
straight to heaven.
For the record I condemn all the above killings.
Jeremy P
> Jeremy P <newsr...@0uce.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm grateful to know that according to the God of my faith laying down
>> one's
>> life for one's friend is the pinnacle of human love. Not laying down
>> one's
>> life for the destruction of one's enemy.
>
> Which just confirms my point. If you can justify that blowing up
> yourself and a load of soldiers at a bus stop will protect your friend
> you have automatic religious sanction. You have literally sanctified the
> act.
Run that one by me again. You justify that extraordinary leap... how?
Patrick Herring
...
| I was pointing out that his criteria for determining the absence of
| snakes was ridiculously limiting. the simple absence of shed skins is
| more than sufficient just by itself. We can say that no viable breeding
| population of snakes is present in Ireland. To pretend otherwise is to
| demonstrate ignorance.
Anyway, some of us just /know/ there are no snakes left in Ireland...
<g>
Patrick Herring
|
| Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
|
| > Peter Ashby (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
| > <1hp4601.11q7yja1x2vdu1N%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk>:
| >
| > > For my birthday I received a copy of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's
| > > latest book.
| > >
| > > So, after asking many people here to do so and receiving no reply here
| > > is a last chance:
| > >
| > > If Dawkins's arguments are irrational as has been claimed ad nauseum
| > > then Please! cite me one. Since I know have a copy page and paragraph
| > > number will suffice, no tedious copying required.
| > >
| > > NB: I will respond only to relevant examples, they should also include
| > > an explanation of why the example is irrational (or any other heinous
| > > sin).
| > >
| > > Peter
| > >
| >
| > I picked up a copy in a bookshop to look at. (Unclean! Unclean!) The chapter
| > heading "The Great Prayer Experiment" caught my attention and I was able to
| > skim the first paragraph where D*****s cites one of those experiments where
| > one group was prayed for while a control group was not.
| >
| > I am a great believer in intercessionary prayer, having had one personal
| > demonstration of instant fulfilment thereof. (I have relayed the story here
| > before but if anybody needs to know the details I can repeat them.) When I
| > lead the formal intercessionary prayers in church I make sure that the
| > petition for the sick and suffering includes *all* those in need of prayer.
| >
| > So all I can say in reply to Prof. D is, sorry for spoiling all these
| > experiments by implicitly including all the control groups, but my duty to
| > God comes first.
|
| Which bit of the group told they were being prayed for got worse did you
| not get to?
Dawkins assumes, irrationally, that prayer for healing works like a Law
of Nature. It's possible that God doesn't want people to be religious
due to "signs and wonders" so by making prayers in an empirical test
maybe the researchers made it impossible for God to act in those cases.
| Anyway the idea that anecdote trumps a statistically valid
| sample is so funny I may fall off my chair.
I agree there's no (valid) trumping but there are two types of law-based
beliefs going on here. Mass observations give you laws that apply
generally, but 1st person subjective experience gives you reasons for
following your own particular path. As long as you don't tell others to
follow your own personally meaningful data...
Trevor Jenkins
> In uk.religion.christian on Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:38:43 +0000, Patrick
> Herring <p...@anweald.co.uk> wrote:
>
> }{R} <nos...@spam.nium.org> wrote:
> }...
> }| {R} (who has no problem with moderation at all, if your modbot breaks you
> }| can use mine :)
> }
> }I've thought about that (I'm the techsup) but it would take away my
> }temptation to fiddle with the code (which is also written in Rexx) and
> }there is only one thing I can't resist...
>
> on Gradwell's servers so I wrote it in PHP, with some perl PGPmoose signing
> routines.
>
> If god was a programmer he would have liked FORTRAN
Yup, changing (what we think of as) constants all over the place. ;-)
Regards, Trevor
<>< Re: deemed!
Kendall K. Down
Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Nope, but this objection has the problem that it basically
> makes intercessory prayer (at least for healing) redundant.
> You've said elsewhere in this thread that God heals only
> those who have faith. You suggest here that if someone's
> being prayed for then it doesn't matter how many people are
> praying for them. I put it to you that anyone who has faith
> will, unless actually comatose, be praying for himself
> or herself, and therefore that if your proposals are right
> then there is no benefit in praying for anyone else to be
> healed.
Quite so. But just in case ...
Kendall K. Down
Michael J Davis <?.?@trustsof.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I haven't been following (and can't keep quiet) - but as one who has
> some experience of, and who tries to practice, healing - I would say...
> 1. Someone needs to have faith - the pray-er, the recipient or even
> bystanders.
Quite so - and unless this is taken into account, all these so-called
experiments are a waste of time.
> For the third, I am praying for a peaceful and quiet death in the
> presence of his family.
Now that would *really* skew the results of the experiments!
Kendall K. Down
Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.M...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > Do these experiments attempt to discover whether any of those
> > prayed for lack faith, or any of those not prayed for have faith? God is not
> > going to heal someone without faith or not heal someone with faith, just to
> > keep the experiment statistics going.
> So much the worse for the alleged goodness and mercy of God.
How does God's not conforming to the requirements of an experiment detract
from His goodness and mercy?
> > 3. Valid prayers always conclude with "Thy will be done": have the
> > experimenters some way of determining what God's will in the particular
> > cases is?
> Nope. But then, neither has anyone who prays (barring
> special revelation, which appears to be rare at best).
> It would appear that the fraction of people in these
> studies whom it's God's will to heal is exactly the same
> as the fraction of people who (so far as we can tell)
> would have got better anyway.
How so? All you can say is that God chose to heal the same proportion of
people in both groups. What's this "would have got better anyway" business?
Mark Goodge
typed:
>In uk.religion.christian on Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:38:43 +0000, Patrick
>Herring <p...@anweald.co.uk> wrote:
>
>}{R} <nos...@spam.nium.org> wrote:
>}...
>}| {R} (who has no problem with moderation at all, if your modbot breaks you
>}| can use mine :)
>}
>}I've thought about that (I'm the techsup) but it would take away my
>}temptation to fiddle with the code (which is also written in Rexx) and
>}there is only one thing I can't resist...
>
>I used to use Rexx a lot on OS/2, and Big Iron. But I never got it to work
>on Gradwell's servers so I wrote it in PHP, with some perl PGPmoose signing
>routines.
I've been toying with the idea of writing a web-based moderation
system using Ruby on Rails.
Mark
--
Please give me one! http://www.pleasegivemeone.com
"A sky isn't always blue, a sun doesn't always shine. It's alright to fall apart sometimes"
Peter Ashby
> pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk (Peter Ashby) wrote:
> |
> | Prai Jei <pvsto...@zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> |
> | >
> | > I picked up a copy in a bookshop to look at. (Unclean! Unclean!) The
> | > chapter heading "The Great Prayer Experiment" caught my attention and
> | > I was able to skim the first paragraph where D*****s cites one of
> | > those experiments where one group was prayed for while a control group
> | > was not.
> | >
> | > I am a great believer in intercessionary prayer, having had one
> | > personal demonstration of instant fulfilment thereof. (I have relayed
> | > the story here before but if anybody needs to know the details I can
> | > repeat them.) When I lead the formal intercessionary prayers in church
> | > I make sure that the petition for the sick and suffering includes
> | > *all* those in need of prayer.
> | >
> | > So all I can say in reply to Prof. D is, sorry for spoiling all these
> | > experiments by implicitly including all the control groups, but my
> | > duty to God comes first.
> |
> | Which bit of the group told they were being prayed for got worse did you
> | not get to?
>
> Dawkins assumes, irrationally, that prayer for healing works like a Law
> of Nature. It's possible that God doesn't want people to be religious
> due to "signs and wonders" so by making prayers in an empirical test
> maybe the researchers made it impossible for God to act in those cases.
For the record Dawkins did not do this research, it was not even done by
nasty atheist scientists bent on disproving that prayer works. It was
done by a bunch of believing doctors using the highest standards of
investigation known to try and demonstrate the power of prayer. The
conclusions are there in the data, and Dawkins is not ignorant of the
sort of objections you are raising.
> | Anyway the idea that anecdote trumps a statistically valid
> | sample is so funny I may fall off my chair.
>
> I agree there's no (valid) trumping but there are two types of law-based
> beliefs going on here. Mass observations give you laws that apply
> generally, but 1st person subjective experience gives you reasons for
> following your own particular path. As long as you don't tell others to
> follow your own personally meaningful data...
What happens when your presonal data flatly contradicts reality as
observed by the masses?*
Peter
*Answer, depends on the data, if you are lucky you get to be highly
religious. Unlucky, you get to be insane. Is there a difference?
Peter Ashby
> In uk.religion.christian on Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:05:21 -0000, Jeremy P
> Logic ?
And some thought.
Peter
Revd. Eric Potts
> >
> > Not sure what's that referring to unless it's another reference to
> > abortion clinics.
>
> Why is it only us atheists who know about this stuff?
Because you have a particular interest in using it as a weapon?
It was indeed an abortion-related killing. I think most educated
Christians are well aware of these and deplore them as much as you. But
we may not feel the need to memorise the details, any more than I take
a detailed interest in other murders that are reported on the news.
> On 29 July 1994 The Reverend Paul Hill shot Dr John Britton and his
> bodyguard James Barrett with a shotgun outside Dr Britton's home. He was
> executed in 2003 apparently convinced he was a martyr who was going
> straight to heaven.
From Wikipedia:
"Rev. Paul Jennings Hill (February 6, 1954 - September 3, 2003), was
an excommunicated Presbyterian minister and anti-abortion activist
connected to the Army of God, who was convicted of the murders of Dr.
John Britton and his escort James Barrett outside a Pensacola, Florida
abortion clinic on July 29, 1994. In addition to the two murders, Hill
seriously wounded June Barrett, the wife of James Barrett. Sentenced to
the death penalty under Florida law, Hill died by lethal injection,
making him the first person to be executed in the U.S. for killing a
physician who provided abortions.
Hill's actions in 1994 were part of an upsurge of violence against
abortion providers in the United States in the 1990s, which was
disowned by mainstream pro-life activists. In a statement before his
execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that
he expected "a great reward in Heaven." During his trial, the judge did
not allow Hill to explain his justification for the murders to the
jury. Hill said he viewed them as defensive, rather than retributive,
acts. Hill left behind a manuscript manifesto titled "Mix My Blood with
the Blood of the Unborn" which his backers promised him they would have
published. It has been available online on his official site since
2004.
At the time of Hill's death, Michael F. Griffin was serving a life
sentence for the murder of a doctor, David Gunn, in Pensacola, Florida
in 1993, and James Kopp was in prison for the killing of a physician in
Buffalo, New York. Eric Rudolph was awaiting trial for a 1998 bombing
that killed a police officer at an Alabama abortion clinic. John Salvi
had committed suicide in prison two years after killing two
receptionists at a clinic in 1994 in Massachusetts."
You will note the word "excommunicated" in the above account.
> For the record I condemn all the above killings.
For the record, so do I.
Revd. Eric Potts
>
> Scientists built the bomb, to see if they could. Then they were persuaded
> to build two more, because they were asked to.
>
> Politicians and the military used it.
> The USA was at war. Declared war with the Japanese.
>
> Much better to imagine a world without god.
Are you trying to say that scientists are not responsible for their
actions because politicians and the miltary actually order and carry
out the evil deeds?
Because if so, then scientists are not responsible for their actions
and should be placed in an asylum forthwith.
Debbie
Ashby) wrote:
>Kendall K. Down <webm...@diggingsonline.com> wrote:
>
>> In message <1hp5hfy.1c8w9tq145ecaN%pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk>
>> pas...@blueyonder.co.ruk (Peter Ashby) wrote:
>>
>> > The flaw in this argument is the same as the flaws in the arguments put
>> > forward in favour of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Any snakes
>> > in the wild in Ireland would have to form a viable breeding population,
>> > one is insufficient. Such a population has to eat something and may be
>> > eaten itself. Snakes as they grow must shed their skins, also they leave
>> > egg debris behind when they hatch. They also leave characteristic spoor
>> > indicative of their feeding habbits (bones, bits of insect carapace
>> > etc).
>>
>> These facts in no way invalidate Gordon's argument. His point is that you
>> cannot *prove* the absence of snakes in Ireland; all you have done is
>> provide *evidence* in favour of that hypothesis. There is another thread in
>> which your inability to distinguish between evidence and proof has been
>> commented upon.
>
>I was pointing out that his criteria for determining the absence of
>snakes was ridiculously limiting. the simple absence of shed skins is
>more than sufficient just by itself. We can say that no viable breeding
>population of snakes is present in Ireland. To pretend otherwise is to
>demonstrate ignorance.
Unless a new strain of snakes has evolved which does no shed skin.
There could be a viable population of breeding non-shedding snakes
that you have blithely dismissed because you're looking for the wrong
kind of evidence.
Simon Robinson
> Simon Robinson <em...@via.my.web.site> wrote:
>
>>> and
>>> take a shotgun to doctors and their bodyguards.
>> Not sure what's that referring to unless it's another reference to
>> abortion clinics.
>
> Why is it only us atheists who know about this stuff?
That seems a pretty huge extrapolation from 'Simon doesn't know about
that incident' to 'only atheists know about this stuff'.
I would imagine that, since you frequent atheist circles on the
Internet, and some atheists are likely to take particular interest in
such incidents [1], it is more likely that you'd have heard of them.
[1] Nothing intended specifically against atheists by that remark. It's
simply a case that a lot of people of no matter what political/religious
opinion will preferentially take interest in and take time to spread
news of incidents that appear to confirm their own beliefs.
> On 29 July 1994 The Reverend Paul Hill shot Dr John Britton and his
> bodyguard James Barrett with a shotgun outside Dr Britton's home. He was
> executed in 2003 apparently convinced he was a martyr who was going
> straight to heaven.
>
> For the record I condemn all the above killings.
Agreed
Simon Robinson
> In article <45645760$0$634$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk>, Gordon Hudson wrote:
>> "Paul Wright" <-$P-W$-@noctua.org.uk> wrote in message
>> news:slrnem6u3a.h1s.-$P-W$-...@noctua.org.uk...
>>
>>> Ah, but you Christians cannot prove the non-existence of the Invisible
>>> Pink Unicorn, either. Because, you see (or rather, you don't) She is
>>> Invisible. As the IPU's creed puts it "By Faith we know She is Pink, by
>>> Reason we know She is Invisible, because we cannot see Her."
>> Thats my point exactly.
>> It is impossible to prove the non existence of anything like this so its a
>> wasted argument.
>
> So why don't you believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn? You can't prove
> that She doesn't exist, and you won't be laughing when She crushes you
> beneath Her Holy Hooves for not believing in Her, I can tell you.
What possible reason woudl Gordon, or anyone else, have to believe that
there is an IPU?
Simon Robinson
> The Tigers are engaged in asymmetric warfare with Sinhalese majority. It
> seems that in that environment it is distressingly easy for the Tigers
> to portray the fight as one of racial survival. It is a small step from
> being willing to die to defend your home and family to this under the
> right circumstances. I see many of the Palestinian suicide bombers in
> this class too, especially since several have been christian or secular.
> I chose the example I gave precisely because it does not stem from such
> a situation. These were not people who could be so motivated, in fact
> many of them were relatively privileged.
Ever heard of middle class marxists?
(To clarify in case my point isn't obvious: People can be very well off
themselves, but nevertheless motivated towards extreme, revolutionary,
or even on occasions violent, views because of unfairness they perceive
in the world, or awareness of the suffering of others. So the fact of
being privileged is not as relevent as you appear to imply by your remarks).
Peter Ashby
And you are blithely ignoring my other criteria, what you are doing
amounts to nothing more than special pleading.
Peter Ashby
What possible reason would Paul, or anyone else, have to believe that
there is any god?
Paul Wright
Because I assert that there is an IPU and Gordon cannot disprove this,
which seems to be his argument for the existence of God (also McGrath's,
I'm told). You should also believe in the IPU because of Her Scriptures,
as revealed on many web pages:
http://www.palmyra.demon.co.uk/humour/ipu.htm
Of course, the IPU is only detectable by those with spiritual antennae
(now available from Maplin, I understand).
--
Paul Wright | http://pobox.com/~pw201 | http://blog.noctua.org.uk/
Reply address is valid but discards anything which isn't plain text
Peter Ashby
What relative proportions of deprived and privileged people do you think
can be motivated to actions like this?
Revd. Eric Potts
>
> Of course, the IPU is only detectable by those with spiritual antennae
> (now available from Maplin, I understand).
Hi de hi!