No let him research. Another story, I’ve told before here somewhere. One of the first atheist shows I got hooked on was Austin’s Atheist Experience. I was sure that I could study Matt Dillahunty’s arguments and find flaws in them and prove him wrong. In the process of preparing to call the show I convinced myself I was wrong.
3point, don’t ruin this for meI'm not ruining anything- I'm saving your butt by giving you invaluable marketing advice.
Never oversell… it inevitably leads to disappointed customers. Besides, if what you’re selling is the real deal no marketing is even required.
So take whatever time you need and present us with everything you’ve got. Be as honest and earnest as possible by laying all your info out at once without trying to ‘sell’ it to us.
Most people here will be able to see any flaws in your evidence and/or conclusions almost instantly, regardless of how you present it, so don’t spend too much time crafting a towering masterpiece that can be knocked down by the slightest breeze.
I was sure that I could study Matt Dillahunty’s arguments and find flaws in them and prove him wrong.Matt's one of the best out there. His logic is deadly.
I don’t understand some of the technical/mathy terminology he gets into when explaining the formal logic. But it’s fun to listen to him talk about the same ideas I have in ways that are so much better than I could say them.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing anything about this again, to be honest. The guy is smart enough to figure out his mistake on his own. I wasn’t. Like, 3 damned times. 2, at least.
I have a question
Why does a prayer or prayer stop or stop yawning?
What is the relationship of praying to the end of yawning immediately?
does prayer have anything to do with the immediate end of yawning?
If so, what is the cause of yawning when the person is not sleepy or tired?
What?
I think yawning is one of those things which isn’t entirely understood. The general belief, as I understand it, is that it’s a reaction from the body to get more oxygen or something like that. Not that I know anything about it, specifically. I just remember reading or hearing that somewhere, at some point.
I have never before heard any claims made about a relationship between prayer and yawning, though I would suspect any similar mental process would yield similar results, if there were any actual correlation. I do have personal experience with long, boring church services causing yawning, though.
The posts about yawning, have led to me yawning. (Really. I am not saying that to be cute.) What yawning is about is a question worthy of analysis, I think. I have yawned a few times now, but didn’t think to try to start praying in the midst of one. I just enjoyed the yawns. OTOH
A yawn goes by pretty quickly. By the time, I said to myself "Dear God, Pleas— " Oh! Yawn’s over.
Or when another yawn starts, I could say to myself “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, M—” Oh! Yawn’s over.
But what is the function of yawning? My first guess is that it is pretty much a reflexive behavior, like sneezing or blinking one’s eyes. The typical explanation that it promotes circulation seems believable to me, but IDK if that’s all there is to it. But a connection to praying, I suspect, is co-incidental at most.
you did not understand.
I said prayer prevents yawning.
and the prayer makes the yawn stop immediately.
what is the cause of this phenomenon? Is it a mechanical cause or an intelligent cause?
Right. I don’t understand how a prayer can make a yawn stop immediately, because a yawn only lasts a matter of seconds. How long does a prayer take? The yawn will be over by the time a prayer gets going.
And how do you know that a prayer prevents yawning? Maybe the yawn was not going to happen anyway.
Que?
In response to Widdeshin I repectfully submit the following,
There is no contradiction between science and belief in a supreme being. That contradiction, though not real, is perceived because we habitually think in proscribed categories. Science gathers irrefutable facts and pieces them together to form a coherent picture of reality. It limits itself to what is empirically demonstrable. It makes no attempt to answer questions that speculate about what may or may not exist outside the observable framework of the physical universe. If it did it would no longer be science. Science deals with that which can be weighed, measured, calculated or directly observed. Science very capably shows us how the universe works, but not its ultimate meaning or purpose. Science is limited in its ability to describe anything beyond its circumscribed purview. However, despite your assertion to the contrary, science does (in my opinion) provide convincing evidence of a powerful, unseen supervening force that controls, governs and directs all existent reality. For example; cosmology accurately describes the creation of the universe as beginning nearly 14 billion years ago with the “Big Bang”. What was the Big Bang? It was an intensely concentrated singularity that exploded and brought into existence our expanding universe. This is incontrovertible. Astrophysicists correctly say that all we know and observe including time itself couldn’t exist until this seminal event took place and they are accurate. Time is a measuring rod that describes matter changing from one state or condition to another. Without matter being set in motion by the Big Bang time itself was not possible. Not only time but the laws of physics didn’t exist prior to this original singularity exploding into the four dimensional space time continuum. These things are generally regarded as true by nearly all cosmologists. Yet, and here’s the point; if time and the laws of physics didn’t and could not exist prior to the Big Bang, what was it that caused the original singularity to explode? In other words something outside of time and beyond the controlling physical laws that presently govern all matter in the universe acted upon this concentrated point of matter as if from a separate realm of governing power. Something caused this object to explode because when it reached a certain temperature and density it was no longer stable. That (and this) something had to exist prior to time itself and beyond the natural laws that regulate all physical matter in the universe. This to my mind is evidence (not proof) of an all-powerful and timeless agent that governs every aspect of existent creation.
This is essentially an elaboration of the argument for “First Cause” and though not new, has been buttressed by modern cosmology.
I think it is quite true that evolution resulted in humans with a predisposition to develop religions and also humans who have the capacity to develop critical thinking. However, the manifestation of and maintenance of both, depend on various cultural influences. Cultures evolve also but not exactly as biological evolution occurs. In biology, the organisms that survive to reproduction, pass on their genetic info. In cultural evolution, the cultural memes, practices, organizations, etc. that survive and thrive pass on their information and the cultures that don’t do this as effectively, fade away.
Cultures that follow science and pass on the procedures and information of science have done pretty well in surviving and thriving and passing on its information. Certain religious cultures have also done quite well in surviving, thriving and passing on their dogma.
One tactic by thriving cultures to expand is sometimes by opposing and diminishing other cultures’ development.
If I were to accept the existence of an agent (entity?) that existed prior to time itself and beyond the natural laws that regulate all physical matter in the universe, how could I ever know the mystery of where the f— that entity came from, or how it came to be outside of the scope of natural laws?
How could I tolerate not knowing?
Now if I remain an atheist and acknowledge that there are still things that I don’t know, and accept that while science continues to seek answers, I will tolerate not knowing.
But if I couldn’t tolerate not knowing and decided to make stuff up and call it truth, in order to fill in the blanks, I would have the ultimate answer: God did it. Yet where did God come from? Now I need a meta-religion, I guess, to make up something to explain that. (Most likely it would be something like “God always existed. Accept it and move on).” No need for further truth seeking.
A very astute observation from TimB and it sums up the central criticism of theism offered by those of a different point of view. This is not my argument but the main idea is that theists posit the belief that God exists and when asked for corroborating evidence that is objectively verifiable, they most often say that God is not provable by fact or rational analysis. An atheist or agnostic will often retort by saying the theist has conveniently retreated into an intellectual position that’s immune from skepticism by saying that God is unknowable and therefore faith and only faith can be persuasive in convincing an individual to believe that God exists. The problem with this argument is that the agnostic gives no allowance for the possibility that the believer is correct in asserting that God is unknowable, that ultimate mystery does exist and no amount of rational and logically rigorous method will ever reveal the existence of a supreme being. We who believe God exists are not trying to hide behind the argument that God is essentially inscrutable and therefore beyond any questioning scrutiny. We are simply saying that God is, has been and forever will be an unknowable mystery. We are not grasping at a philosophically convenient argument that shuts down a skeptical argument, we are describing the reality that our heartfelt, subjective intuition and rational intelligence warrant in any free thinking mind. The argument must always end where it starts and that is; The existence or non-existence of God can never be proven or dis-proven. There are things that are beyond the ken of human experience.
I’m very impressed with the depth of those who offer their comments on this forum. Michael Mckinney
Genus homo,
It is refreshing to hear your kind and polite discourse. In regards to your saying “…(agnostics say that theists retreat to the stance that:) God is unknowable and therefore faith and only faith can be persuasive in convincing an individual to believe that God exists. The problem with this argument is that the agnostic gives no allowance for the possibility that the believer is correct in asserting that God is unknowable…”
It is true that I do not give any allowance for theists’ use of the proposition that God is unknowable, as a viable scaffold for the belief in the existence of God. However, for many decades of my life I did not rule that out. Most of my life I have been open to the possibility of the supernatural. Only, eventually, the preponderance of my learning and experience led me to conclude that there is no such thing as the supernatural, including God, except as mental concepts.
There are things beyond the ken of human experience (so far). There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in Horatio’s philosophy. (Tho that more would be a bit less today, due to discoveries thru science, had Horatio survived til now.)
Now scientists everywhere can have a common underlying paradigm (the scientific method) upon which to examine, and debate, or refute, or build upon what is accepted as known.
Each brand of theism, however, may have a rather DIFFERENT heartfelt, subjective intuition and rational intelligence with which they warrant the existence of an unknowable mysterious entity that they call God. As He/She/It is, apparently, knowable to the degree that each religion can have radically different things to claim about the mysterious one.
There is no doubt that what it means to believe in a supreme being varies widely from culture to culture and each with a distinct history and social expression through custom and tradition, but the underlying idea is the same and that is that we are spiritually connected to a transcendent reality and that connection will survive the death of our physical body. I believe that’s true not because it’s a more socially acceptable practice that society encourages but for reasons that are intellectually compelling. This universe has design, purpose and forethought in every aspect of its creation. Another example to add to the one I cited in an earlier post is the miraculous way the universe is balanced in its original distribution of matter and anti-matter. They are different in their respective positive and negative charges being reversed. Both were produced in prodigious amounts after the Big Bang. Inherently unstable when they come in contact with each other they violently cancel each other out and that happened on a phenomenally gigantic scale. After the violent episode subsided just the right amount of normal matter survived to form stars, planets, and galaxies and more importantly the precise amount of normal matter was produced, too much anti-matter and it would have annihilated all normal matter, if too much normal matter survived the onslaught of its encounter with anti-matter then there would be too much normal matter and its gravity would have pulled the universe back in on itself after a few hundred million years of expansion which is not enough time for the evolution of stars planets and eventual sentient life. Everything looks as if it proceeded from a precise formula from an all-knowing mind.
We humans are built (by evolutionary processes) to perceive patterns. We are also exceptional at creating explanatory narratives. Sometimes we might come up with an explanatory idea like “God is the creator and is the source of everything” then we can come up with rationale to support that idea, that “God did it.” (As you have done in your last post.) So to you “Everything looks as if it proceeded from a precise formula from an all-knowing mind.”
While to me, based on what I know of the processes of the cosmos, physical laws, and evolutionary processes (and what I have perceived of the fallacies of religions over many decades) everything looks as if proceeded in accordance with physical laws (no human invention of the concept of an “all knowing mind” is necessary).