Hard to keep up with your non seqs sometimes. We were talking about epistemic standards by which to judge whether the source of an reported religious ...
Sure. But neither do we know that the belief is true in any sense other than that it works. Thus, all we need (and imo all we acrually have access to)...
Yes, it's a judgment. And judgments are based on... drum roll... some standard or other. In one case you judged according to a naturalistic standard, ...
The limits of science are the limits of the human mind on a good day. The limits of stupidity, dysfunction, and ignorance, on the other hand, are the ...
Creationists readily recognize the conflict between their explanations and evolution. (And it is they, not scientists, who make much public noise abou...
This reasoning strikes me as an appeal to consequences. Sure, our beliefs have consequences, sometimes consequences that are widely judged to be posit...
Seems to me that if it is not logically possible to subscribe to both explanations, then they are in conflict. Either one subscribes to the explanatio...
Cognitive dissonance is a bitch, ain't it, Wayfarer? I'd like to mention, too, that though we are attracted to and readily influenced by charismatic p...
So you subscribe to some hypothesis that's unverifiable, unfalsifiable, untestable, and offers no independebtly confirmable predictions--and provides ...
If there are factors or causes in human lives that science can't explain, even in principle, then what else is there besides (1) they remain unexplain...
If naturalistic explanations cannot explain something, then what else is there besides (1) it goes unexplained, or (2) we subscribe to some hypothesis...
What I find blatantly hippocritical, though, is their facile rationalizations for excusing all his behavior that blatantly violates so many of thei ot...
Foe the vast majority of tens of millions of evangelicals, abortion is the make or break issue. It trumps all the rest of their moral judgments combin...
So, the specific issue I addressed was Arkady's challenge to Eggcart's assertion that "The Planned Parenthood kerfuffle has died down considerably sin...
Conflict between science and religious fundamentalism arises over conflicting explanations for certain phenomena--such as species, in the current ID v...
No, Arkady is right. Defunding Planned Parenthood continues to be a primary political goal of conservative Christians. And although the PP policy on a...
Americans are, perhaps, more individualistic, more inclined to a git-er-done attitude and self-reliance (improvise-adapt-overcome), anti-intellectual,...
Sure, we take the person's word for it that he had what he believes to have been a religious experience. Perhaps idealized, but I think the vast major...
I think the distinction you're making between argument and hypothesis here is a red herring. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for phenomena. For...
The argument from design, including the ID incarnation, and the cosmological argument allege to explain empirically observable phenomena, but do not t...
In order to be epistemically consistent, a scientist's religious beliefs would have to satisfy the same criteria he requires his science claims to sat...
Excellent. People commonly come to the logically fallacious conclusion that if one's view of science is not that it is about the Real Truth, it's, the...
Seems to me that one could substitute the term "religion" for "science" here, and it would fit quite seamlessly--including "the quirky crazy fucks mos...
The dispute in this thread is not about people's experiences, it's about the propositional claims--such as the existence and action of a supernatural ...
Of course, it is possible to be a religious believer and a scientist. The question is: Is it epistemically consistent to be a believer and a scientist...
I am quite sure that at least Harris, whom I've heard speak to the issue, and the others are not so benighted as not to understand that science theori...
This does not even address the question I asked in response to your assertion that Dawkins et al are "making false claims that the empirical evidence ...
Again I refer you to the context in the U.S., where evolution is a hot-button political issue in which creationists are numerous, sometimes the majori...
Are you saying that the empirical evidence (fom biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, geology, climate science, oceanography, radioactive dating, pal...
For the record, I find the New Atheist debates, with the possible exception of Sam Harris, quite off-putting, even obnoxious, discourteous, and disres...
Ah, a middle path. As in "The New Atheists Are a Bloody Disaster" and "the decline in Americans' general critical thinking ability is partly because o...
Indeed. What the believers in the pews actually reveal they believe is notoriously at odds with the theologians. One fascinating book about this is "T...
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