PLAYER57832 wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:I believe that whenever I do my anti-rain dance, it will stop raining because of the rain gods.
(1) I do my dance, the rain continues. I could always say, "the anti-rain dance wasn't good enough," and that claim can't be disproven--unless of course I failed to carry out the ritual perfectly. Theoretically, the acceptable duration of anti-rain dancing for that particular circumstance could've been 12 hours instead of 12 minutes.
Or, we could engage in SCIENCE! and namely STATISTICS!, in order to show that the anti-rain dance extremely likely does not cause the rain to cease. This approach is performed empirically, and we have our evidence which can disprove the causal connection (beyond a highly certain doubt). However, excuses can be made by me:
(a) the rain gods just weren't impressed.
(b) the rain gods wanted more rain anyway
(c) the rain gods work in mysterious ways sometimes
The above claims are unfalsfiable because they can't be tested scientifically. John is saying that they are falsifiable--just not yet, which is also an unfalsifiable claim.
No, but nice try.
1) Is partially true. When something doesn't work how we expect, whether in religion or science, we try to figure out why.
2) IF you can provide evidence beyond a highly certain doubt.. then you have something real, essentially scientificaly proven. Like many scientific claims or theories, it could possibly be wrong, but most people will wind up going with the claim. A few doubters will come up with many, many more excuses than those you provide, including the excuses in #1
3) in the case of most theology, there is a complete lack of the certainty you describe in #2. However, there is a segment of militant atheists that try to claim their ideas have certainty or, worse, that becuase the evidence shown is not to their personal liking/does not meet certain special requirements they have decided must be met (note.. the exact reverse of #1 -- if it works, there is another reason why, always....), the idea if God is just false, utterly illogical.
These militant atheists are no more logical than many of the extreme religious individuals they chastize and belittle. BUT, they are worse because the faith based don't claim to be other than faith-based, but the militant atheist actually claims to use science.
4) Most believers and most scientists hold to their own ideas based on the evidence they see and understand through various ways. Most also acknowledge that as much as they BELIEVE these things to be true -- sometimes a very, very strong belief indeed! -- they cannot necessarily truly prove these things to someone else infallibly. They may still try, though as much to see if they can defend their position as because they actually think they can convince the other person (or maybe they just like to debate).
There is logic in the desire to understand the 'big' questions and given the indoctrination involved it is hardly surprising that many people follow the path of religion . There is often a point though when logic is supplanted by faith which is understandable but , as is the case with falling hopelessly in love, not particularly reasonable.
Whilst I would agree that it is poor logic to utterly dismiss the concept of a supernatural creator, it is far from logical to take the opposite view and unquestionably believe in one.
When one goes further and starts buying into particular myths and organised religious dogma t
the question of logic, in the scientific sense, becomes utterly moot.
