2701. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149337 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:36 pm

No, what you are doing here is called the "red herring" fallacy. You asked me why I thought you were goalpost-moving. I answered - by claiming that we should not consider relevant the views of a major religious figure.

This major religious figure is also a political figure and it is not just a question of theology that is involved. You are the one who raise the red herring in the first place.

Yes.

So "intellectual honesty" to you basically means the absence of intellect or reflection, Strange definition but in that case I agree 100% than fundies are more intellectual honest. It is not a compliment.

2702. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149333 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:29 pm

SteveN

Indeed, theologians may not think that they are cherry-picking, and they may have big conferences and debates to decide what to accept as fact and what next to label as 'intended metaphor' but in the absence of evidence, all they're doing is cherry-picking.

Then so do the fundies who pray to the "Holy Spirit" to guide them cherry pick and they have no system at all. You think that is more honest?

2703. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149332 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:26 pm

With the "not my religion" technique. You attempted to define away the inconvenient fact of the Papacy.

No, you are using the strawman technique which started this debate in the first place. I never claimed that all non fundamentalists are honest.

Now this is the "not my geographical area" technique. You exclude Africa, South America, Asia...

If they just follow dogmas without reflections, they are closer to fundies than the reflective believer I have in mind. So by your definition they are intellectually honest because they don't "cherry pick" over the Church's dogmas.

2704. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149327 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:19 pm

The moderates certainly do realise they are cherry picking. They have meetings like Synods at which they do this. They have "theologists" who help.

Theologians may not think that they are "cherry picking", they have systems and debates, The fundies cherry pick, but arbitrarily.

2705. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149324 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Now that is not only goalpost-moving, but also backs up what I have been saying. Papal declarations are not honest! But, they represent the (supposed) views of a large fraction of Christians.

How exactly did I move the goalpost? I don't know how many Catholics actually think Papal declarations "represent" their views in North America or Europe.

2706. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149319 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Of course they do. They just rarely think that they do. Which is the point.

Neither do the moderates. You only think they do because you assume the fundie position as your default.

2707. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149315 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 12:59 pm

SteveN

My point, right from the beginning, is that the fundie thinks his evidence is stronger and doesn't commit the intellectually dishonest sin of cherry picking the data to fit the theory. If the moderates you refer to were to only accept the parts of the bible for which there was evidence, then there would be very little left in which to believe, including the belief in God.

Fundies don't cherry pick? Do you honestly think even fundies believe in a flat earth? They only use the Holy Spirit as a cover for their cherry picking,

Secondly, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what "faith" is to many Christians. The formulation, "faith is to believe without evidence" while true in a bumper sticker slogan sort of way, but it misses out on a lot of nuances.

A sophisticated Christian would tell you faith is only invoked when reason alone cannot carry you through some last threshold, it is not a blanket excuse to reject all evidence and reasons in order to hold on to dogmas a b c. Moreover, he would say faith is a process, which involves constant struggle and questioning, it is not simply closing one's eyes to declare "I believe!"

It is a kind of rationalization and perhaps self deception, but it is not willful dishonesty. It is more subtle than that and it doesn't mean the person has to be overall irrational to have faith.

It is not like if you can accept one premise without evidence, namely that God exists, therefore anything goes. This is a point that the "rational crusaders" on this site often miss.

2708. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149308 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 12:39 pm

steve

The honest approach would be to say "we really don't have that much of a clue. Work with us and we will see what we can come up with. We aren't quite sure what is really true, but we will do our best, so take what we say with a pinch of salt". There are more honest religions that do take this approach,

Yes, I agree, but if some moderate shows up saying his faith is a constant struggle to "know God" and he is willing to update his beliefs if warranted he will be accused of intellectual dishonesty by many here who apparently think that it is more honest to fabricate data and misrepresent evolution in order to argue for a literal interpretation of the Bible.

That is very strange.

BTW, the Catholic Church INC is a corporation and I don't consider Papal declarations represent an honest Christian approach. I am talking about individuals .

2709. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149304 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 12:31 pm

SteveN

Bonzai claims that there are objective methods used to analyse the text in order to determine the intent of the authors (i.e. story or historical record) but if that is so, why is there still so much controversy.

There are such controversies surrounding any ancient text, that's why there are so many papers still published on say, Lao Tze. The Bible is more complicated because it was written by so many people over such a long time.

Moreover, textual analysis, is not a 100% precise science like physics or chemistry, it is a bit like archeology where people do often don't agree
on things.

Finally, there is a lot of vested interests involved and Biblical interpretations do have contemporary significance, people probably wouldn't feel the same passion in taking sides over conflicting interpretations of some ancient Greek authors, if they do the controversies would be confined within the scholarly circles and we wouldn't even know.

2710. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149296 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 12:09 pm

This brake? Was it a hand-brake, foot-brake or perhaps a limb, or maybe some other part of his skeleton?

I am sure he meant a brick.

2711. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149294 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Steve,

What is happening is that religion is providing rules for society that are supposedly God-given, and in some cases (such as Catholicism) it is allowing basically no doubt about those rules. Then, later, it changes its mind, and allows no doubt about the new rules. It is a form of intellectually dishonest re-writing of history.

We are talking about whether mythologies were generally taken to be factual truth or allegories by their creators and their audience, not the Catholic Church,

Catholicism is rather recent comparing to the stories in Genesis. It learned these stories second hand, hundreds of years after they were written, or perhaps thousands of year if you want to go back to the original Babylonian myths the Jews ripped off from, so I can't see why the Catholic's literal interpretation should be taken to be the "original" one and anything else were later "fudgings", I think you define the time line somewhat arbitrarily to warrant your conclusion, That is cheating,

Secondly, there is no reason why moral laws based on religion would necessitate a literal interpretation of all myths. All civilizations have creation myths but often their moral codes only bore tangential relationship to these stories or not at all, Many pagan civilizations didn't see their Gods as the source of morality, As atheists we should be encouraged by that.

2712. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149285 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 11:48 am

Take the blinders off.

That is an idiotic reply, like many of your posts lately, Are you drinking too much Duff?

2713. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149277 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 11:34 am

SteveN

You seem to be missing again the point I'm trying so hard to make. Whether or not parts of the bible are factual or not is irrelevant. It is the method by which parts are condemned to be allergory/metaphor and others to be factual based on nothing more than personal opinion that is intellectually dishonest

I didn't ignore your point and in fact I have addressed it.

You keep on saying that their methods are based on "personal opinions" which is simply not true. Contemporary Bible scholarship uses many techniques in textual analysis and so on to try to figure out the intended meanings of Biblical passages.

There are two separate issues here. First there were the apparent truth claims, to ascertain them would require external evidence.Secondly, what were the claims that have actually been made? Just as Riely pointed out the Bible was written by many authors using many different styles and it presents a genuine problem to decide which was meant to be literal and which was meant to be metaphorical, what was meant to be eternal and what was only situational, There is nothing "dishonest" in trying to sort that out, It is just like trying to parse other ancient literary texts.


Indeed the early Christians themselves had been doing that with the Old Testament in a much more careless and carefree way than contemporary scholars.

You are thinking that somehow religion is a static thing based only on the texts, this is a fantasy of the fundamentalists and apparently some atheists,

Until relatively recently, the Adam and Eve story, the Flood etc. were considered by most people in Europe to be factually true. Very few (if any) of the 16th Century theologians suggested that Genesis was 'just a metaphor'.

Well if some Rabi is believable the Adam and Eve story was largely taken to be a metaphor until the Church wanted to justify Jesus' mission with the doctrine of original sin. So who invented what is a historical question. If you believe in Tom Harpur who wrote the Pagan Christ, Paul invented the literal interpretation wholesale.

Just as I told epeeist, the assumption that somehow religious stories go through a shift from literal truth to metaphors because of challenges from science is not a self evident one, and I have seen no evidence for that as a general pattern.

IMO, a fundamental error made by many people here, following Dawkins himself, is to see religion simply as a collections of truth claims, a kind of bad science which attempts to "explain" experience.

In fact mythologies served at least two roles.They were sometimes used as explanatory models, no question about that, but more commonly, before the advent of formal theology, they were a way to summarize people's experience, to convey moral lessons and to capture some kind of experience with the "transcendence" which they didn't have a name for.

To summarize an experience is not the same as attempting to "explain" it. I think the explanation part came later. So, I actually think that it is the other way around, creation stories were first taken as allegories, it is Church dogmas that turn them into literal truths.

I seriously don't think the ancient Jews were armature geologists who took the earth to be 6000 years old because the Bible said so,

2714. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149238 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:54 am

The ground is the claim of divine inspiration

"Divinely inspired". is not the same as "divinely dictated", If that is the claim they would say so, like the Muslims claim about the Quran.

So no, your objection is not valid.

Edit Moreover, even if the book is claimed to be divinely dictated, like the Quran, there is still no scriptural ground in saying that God could not make situational instructions or use metaphors, at least not for the Bible. There is no Biblical basis that God is a literalist.

To make claims about the intent of Biblical passages you have to somehow put yourself into the shoes of the intended, contemporary audience. It is not intellectually dishonest for a believer in acknowledging that and reject the fundies' approach.

2715. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149237 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:51 am

irate,

If it can be interpreted differently, it is clearly not 'truth'. It is also clearly not 'divinely inspired' if it is so damn imprecise. And inaccurate. And contradictory. And false.

Of course I agree as an atheist. But that is not what the debate is on. It is about whether an intellectually honest Christian is obliged to be a fundamentalist. I don't believe so, As I said, even the fundamentalists pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance when reading the Bible, so they don't actually believe the Bible is self contained either,

2716. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149234 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:45 am

Of course not, but I'm not claiming Shakespeare to be factually accurate

But except for the fundies, Christians are not claiming, and are not obliged to claim that every bit of the bible is factually accurate.

There is no scriptural basis for such claim as far as I am aware of.

If it's not arbitrary, why are no two opinions the same? If you are aware of a widely accepted, authoritative guide to what is fact and what is fiction in the bible (and more importantly the basis for these distictions), then I would be grateful for the source. All I can find is personal opinion and selective cherry-picking wrapped up in clever names.

You probably have the same problem with Homer, Lao Tze and any ancient texts for that matter. Even if you adhere to rigorous scholarship there will be differences in interpretations and opinions, It doesn't mean the scholarship is arbitrary though.

That being the case I wonder what is the ground in asserting, like steve does, that only a literal reading of the Bible, based on a translated text is the way of the fundis is "intellectually honest".

2717. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149220 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:21 am

Riely

Educating a Christian about what they are supposed to believe as a Christian is what I think Bonzai was being critical of. I agree with Bonzai's point, and I think your attacks on his point rely on a misrepresentation of that point.

Exactly, I think I was clear about the point I was making.

2718. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149217 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:18 am

The problem is that if you admit that the bible was written by men, you have to get into all sorts of contortions if you still want to believe a God was behind any of it.

Yes, this is from an atheist, but the Christians don't see it that way and not even the fundies.

Do you think fundies think that the earth is flat?

All Charismatic sects,--fundies,--pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance before they open the Bible, If the Bible is self contained they wouldn't need the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So they have no business in accusing others of "twisting", they do exactly the same thing, only they turn it into a doctrine.

The internet comes back on..

2719. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149206 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 9:05 am

Steve,

Non-literalist: "The word 'flat' is used out of context. My research has allowed me to fudge the word 'flat' to mean 'roundish'"

It is not like that.

Nonliteralist: The Bible was written by men, albeit "inspired", The purpose of the passage was to convey a moral story, not to teach geology, So why must it be accurate regarding the shape of the earth? READ IN CONTEXT.

I can sympathize with this. Normally when you read a historical or literary narration and see a sentence like "enemies are moving in from the four corners of the earth.." you wouldn't say it implies the earth really has four corners. That is NOT THE POINT of the narrative.


Hope this get posted.

2720. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149194 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 8:50 am

I have no problem with this at all. We tell others what they should believe all the time. It is called education.

In the context of debate with theists this is called strawman argument.

2721. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149190 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 8:46 am

Steve,

What a strange question.

I am ignorant of the geometry of the Earth. I am honest if I say that I believe it to be flat.

See?

If I were a forum fundamentalist I would agree with you. But reading in context you implied the person who said the earth is round is somehow less honest, which I don't agree.

MaxD

I will get back to you later because I am losing my internet connection, I don't want to write a long reply only to lose it. I am too lazy to save forum posts.

2722. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149185 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 8:33 am

I should add that Christian fundamentalists do accept that the Holy Spirit guides the believer in reading and interpreting the bible. They state this more explicitly as a doctrine than non fundamentalist sects which rely on scholarship and exegesis,

Once the fundies open the door to individual guidance by the Holy Spirit they have no leg in accusing the non-fundamentalists of "going by their feelings" because they are doing exactly the same thing, it would be just as legitimate to say that God's revelations are private and personal while the Bible is just a prop, If you need the Holy Spirit to guide you, you basically admit that the Bible is not self contained.

2723. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149170 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 8:13 am

SteveN

. My only point is that the fundamentalist belief is, as far as the fundie is concerned, intellectually honest.

Yes, but only as far as the fundies are concerned, being ignorant is not the same as being intellectually honest.

Take a way the super natural element and just consider reading the Bible a comprehension exercise. Would you say it is "intellectually more honest" to read Shakespeare simply on face value while ignoring all allusions, metaphors and historical context?

The sophisticated believer has to jump through hoops to fit the bible into a modern world-view and this, in my opinion, is intellectually dishonest. One should decide which parts of the bible are historically or literally true (if any) based on evidence, not personal feelings.

Non literalism isn't necessarily the same as being sophisticated. There are those who read the bible based on personal feelings, but not all non-literalists are like that. Some have sophisticated systems to do the picking and choosing, it is called exegesis. It is not arbitrary.

hungarianelephant

Wrt most of Christianity, I would say that this is rather beside the point.

So what if most Christians are ignorant? It doesn't mean they are somehow more "honest" or "authentic" then the few that we happen to engage.

Didn't Jesus say that most people will seek but wouldn't find and that the truth path is narrow? :)

If someone comes up and claims to be a Christian, I think a basic courtesy of discourse would be to let him tell you what he actually believes and take it from there, rather assuming what he must believe, or worse, to tell him what he should believe when his views don't fit our expectations and reflexively making accusation of dishonesty.

Given that these selfsame people align themselves unashamedly to churches which holds recognisably fundamentalist positions

You are describing the wooly believers.

Now if they feel free enough to believe in a mismash of things like picking from an all you can eat buffet I would think that they wouldn't align themselves automatically with Churches. If they support a Church position on issue X, there are probably other reasons than the pastors telling them to. Maybe you should ask them why,

2724. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149158 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 7:50 am

I am not claiming it is authentic. Just more honest.

How does ignorance get equated with honesty?

2725. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149152 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 7:35 am

Dr. Benway

I don't think atheists have a problem with scholarship. They have a problem with thinking about the book as anything more than literature. They criticize the scholars for trying to have things both ways.

Then criticize the magic when it comes up. I have no problem with atheists calling believers out on what they actually believe, but I do have a problem with atheists telling believers what they should believe based on a very shallow way of reading ancient literature, which is essentially like a know nothing fundamentalist Bible thumpers (or "bashers" in the U.K) in the deep South.

epeeist

We have had a similar attempt at discussion with Artful Dodger. What is literal, what is metaphorical, how do you tell the difference between the two and how is the authority to declare which is which granted? He has done his usual post-and-run at this point. You have added another - what does the metaphor mean?

Those are all fair questions that an honest believer would have to answer. But that is quite different from saying that since there are ambiguities the only "authentic" Christianity is to take all words as literal truth, It is dumb and ridiculous. Supposedly rational and informed critics of religion should know better,

Thinking theists are happy to declare Genesis symbolic until one asks what therefore did Jesus die for, at which point Adam and Eve seem to acquire some level of literalness again.They want to eat their cake and have it.

Do you know for sure that the whole of Genesis was meant to be literal? In Hebrew "Adam" simply means "man" and I was told by some Jews that the ancient Jews didn't take the story of the Garden of Eden literally. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in Judaism can shed some lights on it.

Your point seems to be that people used to take everything literally until science showed that literalism is untenable and they shift to more symbolic interpretations to avoid being nailed down. I am sure that happened but I don't think you can claim that is a general rule,--not as a bald assertion without better evidence from religious history anyway. It is not a self evident claim.

steve

It is. The sophisticated believers have more to explain. They have "New Bible with added 'Interpretation' - helps wash away the nasty bits".

Yes, they have things to explain and sometimes they do and sometimes they fudge. I am oppose to the categorical statement that only a literal interpretation is authentic and everything else is "fudging".This is naive and shallow,

Al

The "part describing the whole" being one example. These are easily identified, and are generally understandable to someone with even a modest understanding of semitic languages.

That would exclude most Bible thumpers.

So to say that these are cryptic in a way to make them indecipherable to translators or scholars, is a bit of a stretch.

Even translation from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese is not trivial, a lot is lost in translation, let alone translating into a different language. Maybe there is more continuation ancient in ME language so that their ancient forms are sufficiently similar to their modern descendants, I don't know but it is not intuitively obvious.

But even if you know to tease out all the metaphores from the literal,--based on our reconstruction of linguistic history, there is still an unspoken context, is it supposed to be an eternal command, or is it situational thing, etc?

I see no reason why an "authentic believer" must assume that all verses in the bible are universal and literal like reading instruction manuals,

2726. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #149096 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 5:51 am

bibanu

You are comparing things (e.g. dynamite) and their use with ideas/theories and their consequences. It is not the same thing. THEORIES have consequences - and I think that Coulter shows a nice and believable sequence there (and note the German scholar who she is quoting - another Richard :)).

Well, people can't be held responsible if their ideas are being bastardized, Darwin should be held responsible for eugenics no more than Einstein should be blamed for post modernism because of the idiotic slogan "everything is relative".

However, I do think we should extend the same considerations to the other side, to blame Christianity for Hitler is just as flimsy.

2727. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #149092 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 5:44 am

So Hitler believed in Thor.

BTW, not call Creationists are Christians or even followers of the Abrahamic faiths, Many pagans are creationists, so were most pre-Christians. They have different creation myths.

2728. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149080 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 5:08 am

Steve,

But to claim that the source book is all true is a more consistent attitude than to knowingly fudge things and try and claim divine authority for that fudgeing.

Being "true" and being "literally true" are two separate matters, If I say someone was caught lying and his pants are on fire, that would be "true" if he was indeed caught and was embarrassed for the lie, even though his pants are not literally "on fire".

Ancient Middle Eastern languages were not direct and literal like English, they used a lot allusions and metaphores in a way that were weaved into normal speech seamlessly. It is not like in contemporary English where you can tell relatively easily which is which. Aside from the fact that English is a relatively straight forward language, the ease in parsing is partly due to an unspoken shared cultural references. To decipher what Biblical passages meant to the contemporary audience would involve a lot of linguistic and anthropological forensic work, which is the subject of Biblical scholarship.

I am not saying all moderate believers study Biblical scholarship but to say that the only consistent way to believe is to take the whole book word for word in translation is simply naive.

During the cultural revolution, the French intellectual André Malraux visited Mao, he asked Mao to describe the situation in China. Mao said, "it was like a Buddhist Monk carrying an umbrella." Malraux thought that was very romantic, he returned to France and wrote articles on the romantic image. When the Chinese read his articles, they laughed their pants off. You see, in Chinese "hair" ryhmes with "law" and "heaven" is a traditional reference for higher power, somewhat like "God" minus the personality. A Buddhist monk is shaved, he has no hair, hence no law, the umbrella blocks off the sky, so no heaven either. Mao's words means "total lawlessness and chaos".

Now there were many Chinese speakers in France who could have told Malraux that if he cared to ask and his translator was obviously not very competent. But at least he did know it was a parable, only he screwed it up.

Now you are telling me that one can be justifiable confident that he can figure out the intended meanings of the Bible by reading an English translation thousands of years later, in a naive literalist approach. Sorry, I think that is insanity talking even for a true believer,

By insisting one can only read the bible like a fundamentalist the atheist critique comes off as naive and shallow for the sophisticated believers. It is not "fudging" to acknowledge that language is complex.

P.S. In case the readers are wondering, the pants didn't really fall off for the Chinese readers of Malraux, it was just figuratively speaking.

2729. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149071 by Bonzai on March 25, 2008 at 4:35 am

I actually agree with the fundamentalists on this point (never thought I'd say that!). I have more 'respect' intellectually speaking for the fundamentalists in this regard. The fundies, highly deluded though they are, at least have what they regard to be evidence for their beliefs; i.e. the bible

Yeah, "fundamentalists" reading a translated Bible as if Jesus spoke English, what a joke. At least Muslims read the Quran in Arabic.

You may have more sympathy for the fundamentalists because you share their shallow, "born again" mindsets, only different "religion".

I am sick of idiotic atheists who insist that the only consistent believer is the fundamentalist. Their fucking book is not consistent internally if you take the naive, literalist approach and it needs to be interpreted, it has always been the case and that's what theology is about, at least a large part of it.There is no scriptural basis to say that "God" is an literalist even for the believers.


Even if you disagree with something you don't set up a strawman and then shoot it down to declare victory.

If you want to criticize religion at least try to understand it first.

End of rant,

2730. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148912 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 2:55 pm

It is called Buddhism.

Well as you know there are many strands of Buddhism, some do have gods.

I don't think the atheistic strands of Buddhism or something like Taoism (also atheistic in its pure form)would be able to take the place of God beliefs for all. There are Christians and even Muslims who do practise some kind of Buddhist meditation and read Taoist philosophy. But somehow that is not enough to fill the "God hole" in their brains. What does that feel like? I don't know, it is qualia ,can't be described.

2731. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #148909 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 2:44 pm

Norman,

Do you really think Richard Steigmann-Gall's "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" is merely desperate and simplistic?

Well what did he say? Do tell us, you, however do look desperate and simplistic with questions such as this:

Is there another kind [of Christianity]?

What does Edwin Black, "War against the weak" actually say?

Edwin Black provided documented evidence, including Hitler's private correspondence with American eugenicists that proves convincingly that Hitler was inspired by "science" in his "final solution". Look up the book, or find a review online ("science" is in quotes because it was a bastardized form of "Darwinism". It was actually a pseudoscience and an ideology)

Did I ever say otherwise? Only Hitler said otherwise and I quoted him. I didn't even mention Martin Luther's anti-semitism like Richard did.

Invoking Martin Luther is quite "flimsy" indeed, for Hitler looked at Jews in racial, rather than religious terms. If religion was the motivation he could have just forced the Jews to convert.

Also, Germany was actually one of the LEAST anti-semitic country in Europe before the Nazi took over, it is untenable to depict Nazi genocide against Jews as a logical extension of old world anti-semitism.

So, direct quotes from Hitler are flimsy?

If some guy told me "I am Napoleon", a direct quote, does it follow that he was really Napoleon?

Any one with some minimal historical knowledge and common sense would know quotes mean nothing if cited like bumper sticker slogans without the proper context. Since obviously you are not stupid you must think that we are.

2732. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148902 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 2:21 pm

I think it is the other way around. Religion may survive because of the sense of an inner life, but that is nothing to do with the idea of God.

That "otherworldiness" is the source of a lot of "spiritual experience" according to believers. It is the way they "feel" God and the "transcendence". Hence my comment. I think it is entirely possible to have belief in some God without formal dogmas and Churches, just look at the so called neo pagans and freelance believers who don't subscribe to any religion.

On the other hand I can't see how religion (understood conventionally) can survive without God.

2733. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148900 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 2:15 pm

That was not what I was hoped you would see. I had hoped that you would notice what the creationists were up to

A "war" with creationism is not the same as some grand overarching war against any form of religious belief in the name of some "rational" utopia.

I sometimes have that feeling while reading this site, it is as if there is some kind of crusade going on by the "rational" zealots where many of whom,--not all,--mostly succeed only in setting up strawmen. The argument boils down to "if you say you're a Christian you must believe in what I say you believe in or you're just lying or being evasive." And usually "what I say you must believe in" happens to be the most crass forms of Biblical literalism only found in the Southern U.S. and very few places outside.

I can't speak for Spinoza, but it is probably the same thing that he was thinking about regarding the silly "war" rhetorics. The first casualty of any war is usually truth, we should bear that in mind if it is a war that we want to wage. I find very often the caricature of religious people is laughably simplistic, not very different from the caricature of atheists from "the other side" in crudeness.

P.S. This site is painfully slow at my end. So you'll have to forgive me for the typos and mistakes, I won't bother to edit and repost.

2734. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148887 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 1:23 pm

I think some kind of "God" will always survive just because we do experience an inner life. There is this "other wordiness" which arises from this awareness, (Belief in God is not the same as religion, which is a social institution)

This is the God of the qualia.

Science and philosophy would not be persuasive if they try to tell people that their sense of self and inner experience don't exist and that people are just deterministically programmed meat puppets.

Even if this is true,--which I doubt,--we would have to invent some kind of illusions to cope, either explicitly or implicitly by simply ignoring that part of science. "Truth" is *meaningful* only to intentional agents that can ascribe and grasp meanings, if "truth" says intention is an illusion, meanings will become void as well, in that event "truth" would mean nothing.

2735. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148881 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Spinoza,

Good posts!

Mitchell Gilks,

Let me ask you, do you think that laymen can be intellectuals, while academics can not be?

This is not directed at me, but I do have an opinion, probably very close to yours.

I think being an academic and being an "intellectual" in the true sense are two different things. I know many academics, many of them are very tunneled vision people who don't know anything outside their narrow fields, worse, many don't even have the slightest intellectual curiosity. I think the publish or perish culture of the academe has much to do with it. I know plenty of people with Ph.Ds and I would be very ashamed to call myself a "doctor" in anything if I were like them, they don't even have a passing knowledge about major subareas in their own field outside their areas of specialization.

2736. Biology prof expelled from screening of 'Expelled'

Comment #148877 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 12:38 pm

So PZ got kicked out of a screening because they thought he was a trouble maker up to no good. It back fired and now they have even a bigger PR problem and try to spin themselves out of it.

That should be the end of the story.

How many threads do we want to make out of this? How many more posts do we want to read about what a dishonest scumbag Mathis is? It is tempest in a teapot, really, maybe involving a couple of bruised egos.

Snap out of it.

2737. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #148871 by Bonzai on March 24, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Hitler was no more motivated by Christianity than Stalin was motivated by atheism. I agree with Mphil on this completely. It is unnecessary to try to pin Hitler's atrocities on Christianity. It just make the people who do that look desperate and simplistic,

Even if Hitler did consider himself a good Christian, which I strongly doubt, it has to be a very distorted and deformed kind of Christianity, which means the example of Hilter lends absolutely no force to the critique of Christianity in general.

Indeed, if one insists on latching on to such flimsy connections to argue that Hitler was somehow the product of Christianity, there is a much stronger case to link him to Darwin. (for those who don't understand the logic of conditional statement, I am not agreeing that there was such connection) After all he created his genocidal program after American eugenics rather than the Bible (ref:Edwin Black, "War against the weak")

2738. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148661 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 2:38 pm

42nd

Not exactly, because your goal is still your own survival and no one else's (at least at genetic and unconscious level), you only drag others because you have to. In prisoner's dilemma, each prisoner is trying to get his own arse out of trouble, not caring about the other one, but they still end up cooperating.

But then they seem to be just different levels of descriptions, like thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. "Groups" do exhibit cohesion and from what you are saying they do get selected as units. Whatever the "goals" of individuals may be, it doesn't invalidate the group level description.

Besides, if you are right we would expect a lot more traitors in wars and conflicts when working with a superior enemy often seems to provide a better chance for individual survival and gene propagation, But there are strong group incentives against such actions. You can of course argue in some convoluted way that group loyalty is better for individual survival at normal time, but wouldn't it be simpler to describe the group dynamics using group variables instead? I don't know.

Moreover, if you do reductionism all the way down, whatever beneficial to individuals may not be beneficial in terms of gene propagation, Example technically advanced societies provide better chances for individual survival but they also also have less children. It is not an coincidence either.

EDIT And why stop at genes?. The late physicist Heinz Pagels wrote in his book "the dream of reason" that Dawkins had it all wrong, the genes were themselves only the play things of DNAs, I don't remember how the argument went, but will look it up when I have a chance.

2739. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148656 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 2:30 pm

Yes. The test MAY be powerful enough to show significance. If the difference is there.

There will almost always be differences because our models are only approximations. I said "almost" just as a technicality to cover myself, in fact I would be tempted to say "always".

You are attempting to fit a specific model to the data. This is a form of "difference hunting". You should really be testing for a specific difference, within certain confidence limits, not searching for any difference.

Searching for "any difference" is testing for a specific difference = 0. So in principle it is the same (in many cases assumed say, a normal distribution)

However, you have diverted from the hypothesis I was considering. It is that the rate of decay is not exponential, not some specific exponential.

But I was clear that I was talking about parametric tests. It was you who changed the question.

f you pick ever more sample data, you will be able to fit an exponential curve with ever greater statistical significance. Increasing the sample data will (virtually) never show less fit.

Yes, but then you may overfit by capturing too much noise. Significance alone doesn't tell you whether over fitting occurs. I mentioned a regression model with a 100 parameters and a R^2 close to one to make the point earlier.

2740. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148649 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 2:13 pm

yeah, but how is it a "misfire"?

2741. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148643 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 1:49 pm

It's called game theory. Check prisoner's dilemma for more details of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

If it is "rational" thing,--albeit in an unconscious level,--how does it fit in with Dawkins' theory of "selfish genes misfiring"?

So yeah, basically if it takes 10 people to kill a mammoth (and nothing smaller is available for hunting) , then they need to work together even if they don't really give a damn about each other.

So that enhances the chance of survival of the group v.s other groups where members don't cooperate. Maybe I am naive like beelzebub, but that sounds like group selection to me.

2742. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148642 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 1:49 pm

There is not more likelihood of a statistically significant departure from exponential decay rate if you follow the decay of 100,000 atoms than if you follow 1,000 atoms.

No, you are talking about something different.

That's why I asked you to be specific about your hypothesis to be tested.

Let's say we assume it is exponential decay, the number of decays follows Poisson distribution. But we don't know what the decay rate is, that is what we want to find out. This is a typical set up for a parametric test.

Let's say your model predicts a decay rate of 1.78, in whatever unit and you want to test that as your null hypothesis.

In reality, the rate may actually be 1.78012222. It has nothing to do with sample fluctuations or anything like that, it is just that your model doesn't specify enough number of decimal places. It is a "model error"

Now if you test with 200 nuclei you may very well get a p-value above alpha,--say you pre-set it to 1%,-- because the power of the test is not able to detect the difference of 0.0012222. But if you use a sample of 20000 nuclei, the test may be powerful enough to yield a p-value below alpha, thus showing significance.

The fact is in almost all real world situations our models are going to be a bit off because at some points approximations would have to be made, If you have a large enough sample, the test would be able to detect whatever tiny errors in the model and yield significant results. Thus, in principle you can show any effect to be significant by a large enough sample.

If the test detects a difference of epsilon, then the samples are statistically different given the parameters you have specified. But, if they aren't statistically different, you won't detect that difference.

My point has nothing to do with sample fluctuation, but the power of statistical tests in relation to sample size. See above.

2743. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148633 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 12:51 pm

You are wrong. The p-value will only be less than or equal to alpha, showing statistical significance if there is a statistically significant difference You can't just find statistically significant difference by increasing sample size.

I just showed you that you can.

What is a statistical significance? It basically says that certain effect is not "random" due to the quirks of the sample. How do you decide that? Look at the p-value, you agree beforehand that if the p-value is less than certain threshold (alpha) then you decide that it is too unlikely to be chance, with the provision that you may be wrong with probability alpha (type I error) Behind this "how" part there are a whole lot of technical assumptions.

I showed with your T-test example that you can, by simply appropriately inflating the sample to get statistical significance for any pre-set alpha. It is a technical point which arises because of the mathematical formalism. Whether something is "truly" significant in a "philosophical sense" or just technically appears to be so because of a small p-value are not two identical questions and you are confusing the two.

If you insist that they are the same question, you have to provide a proof or a demonstration of the equivalence, which I don't think you can.

Really must run.

2744. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148621 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 12:18 pm

You implied this, in my view, when you said that any specific hypothesis could be shown to be true by increasing sample size. The only way this is possible is if increasing sample size somehow produced statistical significance out of thin air.

No, I certainly did not imply that, in ANY statistical analysis alpha is preset, this is really common sense to anyone who has some knowledge in the area.

I am saying with any preset alpha (and beta)you can increase the sample size so that your p-value would turn out to be less than or equal to alpha, hence showing statistical significance, I have explained it very clearly with your t- test example. If you still don't get it, I think you just want to argue for argument's sake.

I am sorry, I got work to do, See you later.

2745. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148618 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Arbitrary statistically significant difference.

Arbitrary, but pre-set. So you set it to 5%,--or whatever. But it stays the same for the whole investigation, you can 't
have a single test which is significant for ALL alphas.

2746. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148616 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 12:05 pm

In that case you are even more wrong

arge samples don't "invent differences". They reveal them. Or not. That is the point

What? When did I say large samples "invent" differences? I said "DETECT". Alpha is ALWAYS pre-set, most people would set it to say, 5%.

A 10% chance fluctuation in a sample of 100 is reasonable to expect. A 10% chance fluctuation in a sample of 10,000 is far less likely.

The hypotheses pertain to the POPULATION, not the sample. So you're correct, but answering a wrong question,

2747. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148611 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 11:57 am

Looking for a specific difference is not the point. It is about whether that difference matters.

No, you are missing the point. It is not "looking for difference", but to demonstrate that you sample size can be adjusted to detect arbitrary difference.

Now you don't have to consciously pick out an epsilon or find a sample size for that,--though you do sometimes because you do want your sample size to be large enough to tell, say, a 10% difference,-- but the test will pick up the difference automatically if the sample happens to be very large.

2748. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148608 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 11:52 am

No. It's not about detecting difference. It is about detecting statistically significant differences. You are neglecting the P value

No, I didn't, I did mention alpha being pre determined, You can set it to 0.001, It doesn't matter, For the uninitiated, alpha sets the threshold of rejection. If p-value <= alpha, reject null hypothesis.

2749. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148605 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 11:48 am

If epsilon is some real effect? If it's real, we want to find it, don't we?

But it may not be if it is very tiny, which would correspond to differences that fall within some experimental error if you really try to monitor it in some way. That's my whole point, significance alone is not enough.

2750. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148600 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 11:36 am

Re. Your example, of course the answer is yes, it would.

This is a simple independent sample T- test

You null is H0: %match0 - %mathch1 = 0

alternative H1: is %match0 - %mathch1 not= 0

Suppose there is a discrepancy of say 10%, the test would be shown to be significance if it can detect the difference between the null and the alternatives HA's 0< |%match0 - %mathchA |<= 10 (H1 is a compound alternative)

To be able to detect this you must choose your sample size large enough so that the test is sensitive enough (ie with a predetermined beta), it depends on your alpha and beta as given beforehand. There is a formula for that, I won't write it here because of the fonts.

Now change the 10% to epsilon, with the same alpha and beta and using the same formula you can find the sample size to be sufficient large for the test to detect the difference of epsilon.

Well you can specify your epsilon to be so tiny that on a practical level it is indistinguishable to zero, but the test will pick that up if the sample size is large enough,