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The Great Debate: "Has Science Refuted Religion?"

Humes fork said:
Science makes claims about how the world works. So does religion. These answers contradict each other.
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No, science makes no claims. It measures, tests, predicts out comes based on the accumulation of data. Religion works on personal perception, which means science has no quantifiable data to work with.

Hence why you will never see a scientific paper describing the evidence for the non existence of God. Which leads directly back to the statement pauite made - that neither philosophy intersects the other
 
MG1962 said:
No, science makes no claims.
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Yes, it does.

It measures, tests, predicts out comes based on the accumulation of data. Religion works on personal perception, which means science has no quantifiable data to work with.
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Religion 'works' in what sense? Verifiable? Demonstrable? Repeatable? Science works with personal perceptions and quantifies them all the time too, by the way.


Hence why you will never see a scientific paper describing the evidence for the non existence of God. Which leads directly back to the statement pauite made - that neither philosophy intersects the other
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Which god is that, exactly, that you're speaking about? Give us a coherent, rational definition and I'm sure we can work with it and set about disproving it.

Of course, according to scientific principles, "no god exists" is the null hypothesis and must be overcome by persons stating that their god exists. Most theists even realize this much, as they are the ones who go around proclaiming how their god created the earth, or people, or a huge flood, or lightning strikes... or how their god created the universe, or how their god is love and compassion and that their god is protecting people or even how their god is unknowable.
 
dafydd said:
No, there is no evidence for a god.
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No matter how many times it's pointed out to him/her, Limbo continues to post the same nonsense. It's almost as if he/she doesn't want to learn, and just wants to keep posting the same strawman nonsense...
 
I don't want to watch the whole thing, so can anybody tell me:

What piece(s) of knowledge were discovered by religious belief rather than by the scientific method?

If any belief system includes, built into it, the concept of impenetrable mystery, can that belief system be a legitimate "path to truth?"

What avenues of self-correction are built into religion?

How many times does a belief system need to be shown to be in error before that belief system is "refuted?"
 
Thanks for the video....nice one.

I can't express how frustrating it is when I hear the line of EQUIVOCATION FALLACY argument used by the guy at minute 1:17:00.


This argument of "who set the laws of physics" is so utterly imbecilic that every time I hear it I wish I could shake some sense into the person who uses it.

They EQUIVOCATE the "laws of physics" with the ten commandments. They think the "laws" of physics are like statutes of law and rules set by someone or something.

Even scientists like the guy responding to the questions are confused and do not seem to understand the difference between COMMANDMENTS or STATUTES and the DESCRIPTION of how matter behaves.

If I were the guy answering the question I would have immediately said .... "this is an EQUIVOCATION FALLACY".

When we say the "laws of physics" we do NOT mean that they are rules and statutes that are FOLLOWED by matter.

Matter does not FOLLOW LAWS.....matter is....matter is what is and it behaves as it behaves..... we then come along and DESCRIBE how this is and we set SYMBOLS in mathematics and calculus to DESCRIBE how things ARE (even saying “it behaves” can be equivocated by theists).

The laws of physics are not COMMANDMENTS set by some being so that matter can OBEY and FOLLOW the STATUTES of God…. they are DESCRIPTIONS as opposed to rules
 
Brown said:
I don't want to watch the whole thing, so can anybody tell me:

What piece(s) of knowledge were discovered by religious belief rather than by the scientific method?

If any belief system includes, built into it, the concept of impenetrable mystery, can that belief system be a legitimate "path to truth?"

What avenues of self-correction are built into religion?

How many times does a belief system need to be shown to be in error before that belief system is "refuted?"
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You have to remember that the debate is "Has science refuted religion" and it's cute because it's actually hard to prove such a topic without getting into specifics, something Dinesh and the other guy don't have to do. They don't have to investigate the veracity of the claims of their religion, all they need to say is "science doesn't know ______ so they cannot say that science has refuted religion"

I despise Dinesh's tea analogy, where he says "Let's say i make a cup of tea, then get a scientist to explain it; He'll study thermodynamics and demonstrate all that's happened and THAT is science's answer, but the religious answer is 'I wanted to make a cup of tea'"

Dinesh ignored the infinite regress of it and assumes that "intent" is the prime mover of the tea and therefor he says that's the same for God. He just removes 'intent' from infinite regress for no reason.
 
Lowpro said:
You have to remember that the debate is "Has science refuted religion" and it's cute because it's actually hard to prove such a topic without getting into specifics, something Dinesh and the other guy don't have to do. They don't have to investigate the veracity of the claims of their religion, all they need to say is "science doesn't know ______ so they cannot say that science has refuted religion"

I despise Dinesh's tea analogy, where he says "Let's say i make a cup of tea, then get a scientist to explain it; He'll study thermodynamics and demonstrate all that's happened and THAT is science's answer, but the religious answer is 'I wanted to make a cup of tea'"

Dinesh ignored the infinite regress of it and assumes that "intent" is the prime mover of the tea and therefor he says that's the same for God. He just removes 'intent' from infinite regress for no reason.
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I found the other guy ... Ian Hutchinson (??) to be a lot more annoying. See if you can count how many abject lies he stated in his closing statement (minute 1:51:50 onwards).

His equivocation of the "laws of physics” is as irksome as a scab.

But his entire position of "science does not know and thus it is a religion" is as pernicious as the bubonic plague.

I just cannot understand how a person fails to see how hypocritical and imbecilic his position is when he claims that Christianity is irrefutably and obviously as true as can be while scientists who deny that are doing so based on no evidence except their tantamount to religious beliefs.

I find that a lot more pernicious than the pathetic prattle of D'Souza.

This whole PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC approach by NEO-Christianity to redefine their god in “scientific” terms (ala grifters like William Craig) is in fact extremely effective with simpletons who are bewildered by the science all around them and may have doubts as to the utter retardation of their religion.

This new Usurping God Of Hindsight hoax is a very astute and artful RUSE to LULL any simpletons' cognitive dissonance and put them back into their stupors peacefully believing that their religion has been scientific all along and it is only due to human flaws that we did not realize it before.... a NEO-"fallen nature" principle applied to scientific discoveries.
 
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I think Hutchinson shot himself in the foot when he said that a bunch of scientific disciplines weren't sciences...

Yea he was just a weak commentator all around. He tries to conflate science the method with "scientism" and accuse them of being a religion; they aren't. But he doesn't seem one to let the facts stand in his way.
 
Lowpro said:
I think Hutchinson shot himself in the foot when he said that a bunch of scientific disciplines weren't sciences...

Yea he was just a weak commentator all around. He tries to conflate science the method with "scientism" and accuse them of being a religion; they aren't. But he doesn't seem one to let the facts stand in his way.
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:D


I agree with you about D'Souza’s closing statement…. I listened to it more carefully and you are right…. It very is annoying.

What he says is that if we describe the characteristics of his mythical god as described in the fiction literature called the Bible then we are pissed off religionists.

It is like saying if I write an essay describing Hamlet as a pathetic weakling and that Valdemort is an evil fiend then I must be in fact opposed to them and I believe in them.

I think Dawkins should write a response to the video saying that criticizing mythical characters as presented in works of fiction is a valid way of discussing the fiction and does not mean that one is pissed off at the characters in the plots….what we are pissed off at is people who believe the character is real and not the character itself. When we describe the characteristics of the fictive character as can be surmised according to the myth we are only trying to point out that even if we were to grant them their delusions they are still moronic in advocating such vile mythical characters as worthy of worship even if we were to humor them and go along with their imbecility of believing that it is real.

But I guess being simpletons in the first place implies that this kind of ABSTRACTION goes way above their level of cognition.

But in fact I think it is a PLOY of rhetoric used by clever charlatans… or maybe they are just so used to maligning other religions that they cannot believe that anyone has any kind of opposition to their myths unless he is defending myths of his own like they do.
 
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Well, I listened to parts of it and (apart from the fact that the audio was hard for me to hear) I did not hear anything enlightening from anyone. From some speakers already mentioned, I heard the opposite of enlightenment: remarkable presumption, empty words and called bluffs.

The emptiest of words were the ones in which miracles were declared real because they had been seen. Well, excuse me, but any real scientist would know that doesn't count for bat spit, especially since we don't know the circumstances of the witnessing, we don't know how "miracle" is defined, and to top it off, I know some pretty good magic tricks that could probably fool everyone on the stage and that could pass for miracles (and I admit I'm AWFUL as a magician!). And do I need to add that miracles do not attest for the truth of religions in the first place?
 
Leumas said:
Thanks for the video....nice one.

I can't express how frustrating it is when I hear the line of EQUIVOCATION FALLACY argument used by the guy at minute 1:17:00.


This argument of "who set the laws of physics" is so utterly imbecilic that every time I hear it I wish I could shake some sense into the person who uses it.

They EQUIVOCATE the "laws of physics" with the ten commandments. They think the "laws" of physics are like statutes of law and rules set by someone or something.

Even scientists like the guy responding to the questions are confused and do not seem to understand the difference between COMMANDMENTS or STATUTES and the DESCRIPTION of how matter behaves.

If I were the guy answering the question I would have immediately said .... "this is an EQUIVOCATION FALLACY".

When we say the "laws of physics" we do NOT mean that they are rules and statutes that are FOLLOWED by matter.

Matter does not FOLLOW LAWS.....matter is....matter is what is and it behaves as it behaves..... we then come along and DESCRIBE how this is and we set SYMBOLS in mathematics and calculus to DESCRIBE how things ARE (even saying “it behaves” can be equivocated by theists).

The laws of physics are not COMMANDMENTS set by some being so that matter can OBEY and FOLLOW the STATUTES of God…. they are DESCRIPTIONS as opposed to rules
Click to expand...

The same is often said for evolution as well. Even scientists will occasionally say that our bodies desire to procreate and this is why it is done, when it is the other way around.


When we describe the characteristics of the fictive character as can be surmised according to the myth we are only trying to point out that even if we were to grant them their delusions they are still moronic in advocating such vile mythical characters as worthy of worship even if we were to humor them and go along with their imbecility of believing that it is real.
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Religion has just begun grasping the idea of our own universe. The idea of 'universe of discourse' is still out of their reach.
 
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The Norseman said:
Yes, it does.


Religion 'works' in what sense? Verifiable? Demonstrable? Repeatable? Science works with personal perceptions and quantifies them all the time too, by the way.



Which god is that, exactly, that you're speaking about? Give us a coherent, rational definition and I'm sure we can work with it and set about disproving it.

Of course, according to scientific principles, "no god exists" is the null hypothesis and must be overcome by persons stating that their god exists. Most theists even realize this much, as they are the ones who go around proclaiming how their god created the earth, or people, or a huge flood, or lightning strikes... or how their god created the universe, or how their god is love and compassion and that their god is protecting people or even how their god is unknowable.
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What he said!
 
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