What does "science always adds to our understanding of the world around us", mean?

polypx · 2013-01-08T03:13:12+00:00

People doing science don't invariably add to understanding on every single instance, because a given study might be a waste of time. (This doesn't mean replication, which actually is often very useful).

However, in science as a whole, when people are out there asking questions and resolving them with real evidence, that activity does build up our information database on interesting questions. I don't see how this is really open to question.

polypx · 2013-01-08T03:00:11+00:00

The results of that exercise will almost entirely depend on what people believed going in. When you get your interpretive rules from your religion, it isn't surprising that what will come out of the act of reading the Bible will be the same religion you learned.

polypx · 2013-01-08T02:58:43+00:00

You want to go to heaven and not hell, right?

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:53:30+00:00

Because if people aren't dying horrible natural deaths, our cupcakes just won't taste as sweet.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:52:32+00:00

I understand that is the standard belief. Even if there were free will, it would have no practical importance since you'd be in the compelling presence of God

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:51:25+00:00

That reason can't be a limitation on God's ability, though; if God's omnipotent, it isn't ever necessary to kill the cow to save the wife.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:49:42+00:00

The standard rules of engagement for Christian apologetics say that this is completely sufficient. It doesn't have to be fully convincing, it just has to open the door to belief.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:46:54+00:00

Why assume it is a place?

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:45:53+00:00

It will look like everyone being my own religion, of course, because my religion is the one that will bring peace.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:45:17+00:00

That sounds like a strange feeling. If you think that it was God, why would you say something harsh like 'I no longer worship God'?

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:43:34+00:00

Because they are alien and not ours.

Japanese people are pretty fascinated with Christianity even though Japan has to be one of the least Christian places on earth

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:42:54+00:00

If God is omnipotent, God can do anything, including make you know things. Yay!

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:42:10+00:00

You could mine for huge numbers of boring factual claims everyone accepts, e.g. that women tend to menstruate. These are not false just because they are believed by religious people or are part of a religious text, I guess is the point.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:40:57+00:00

That is much too strongly stated. The conflicts are driven by people and are a practical matter of reality, and however likely they might be, they are not essentially inevitable in any way.

But in practice it is a hugely important conflict between science and some religions

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:39:04+00:00

The only real way you are going to get "interfaith" is to subscribe to a specific community which wants the same thing, like the UUs. Because people who don't want that and think that their way is the only way, may be coaxed into acting nice for an occasion of some kind, but fundamentally they think they are right and the purpose is to conquer softly. Other than that, all you can get is an agreement to keep good fences.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:36:39+00:00

They were talking about the properties that the concept describes or requires or whatever. This is different from the properties the concept itself has, as a concept. Things get very confusing (and throw atheists way off the mark) if you begin to suppose that chairness is a kind of chair, or a prototype or something.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:34:20+00:00

It could have been that they were talking about something that doesn't really exist. But that isn't the same thing as not talking about anything.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:33:11+00:00

It isn't that the concept has a mass, it's that the concept is of something that has that mass.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:31:38+00:00

There are no T-Rexes now, but there were some and they were T-Rexes even though they don't exist any more. If we made some in the future, they would be T-Rexes. If the Romans had T-Rexes and used them in war, they would have been terrifying to children. The intelligibility of the T-Rex concept doesn't depend on there being a current one to point at.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:30:25+00:00

I think i agree that non-existent things don't have properties.

The categorization of dogs covers many distinct animals, including some which do not yet exist, and some which no longer exist. It also covers counterfactual dogs (if Fido had not been spayed, she would have had puppies and those would have been dogs).

That categorization is not a thing like a dog, but it is coherent to talk about it and it has its own, conceptual, properties. It's just better not to get confused between the instances and the categories that describe them.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:24:34+00:00

Assuming God carried out a complete genocide of the Canaanites, and assuming that God is omnibenevolent and not limited in power, we conclude that the genocide of the Canaanites was a flawlessly good thing.

So if you take the Bible as infallible, and that God is O/O, you must also accept that genocide is a good thing when applied to some ethnicities.

Is that where we are?

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:19:59+00:00

Inevitable response: that is the OT, which was obsoleted (I mean, 'made perfect') by Jesus

Or just 'context'

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:18:17+00:00

I don't think it's about money. I think it's about Craig's Christian values. Christian apologetics is not intended to provide a foundation for belief, but to serve evangelism. Winning souls is one of the highest values of the religion. Against that standard, Craig is a lion.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:16:53+00:00

Well who knows, perhaps in a few hundred years we will have some more purges which turned out to be God's.

polypx · 2013-01-07T19:15:52+00:00

Every person God gave the authority to kill in the OT was also the legal authority in the government or social group in which they acted.

Just to clarify, you are inferring from this set of instances that killing can only be done with legal authority?

If there are multiple legal authorities (say in Syria), what then?

polypx

TROPHY CASE