OT: Superman and Stemcells

[Evil Dave]

NTJedi said:

The real question is when does the soul arrive... yet mankind doesn't know. Destroying the temple(body/organism) for where a soul may reside is definitely wrong.

O great Jedi Master,

Do bugs have souls? Do rocks and trees have souls?

Beats the hell out of me. Worrying about the possibility leads only to paralysis. Like all societies, we want laws and norms. We can't wait for some future revelation. So we try to make something up and try to stick with it. In this discussion, we're (sorta) trying to decide what we wanna do and why we wanna stick with it.

[Arryn]

Johan, for someone who's otherwise fairly intelligent, I'm surprised (shocked, actually) that you cannot see for yourself why spousal abuse is an illogical (or if you prefer, irrational) behavior. Do you really need me to explain it to you?

With regards to proofs, you are doing precisely what I said that believers do: shifting the burden of proof. In this case, by attacking the attacker. You are also using circular reasoning in your attacks. Which is a logical fallacy, BTW.

You cannot use as a logical argument: "I don't have to prove what I say is true because you must prove me wrong." To use an analogy, let's pretend that religion is the prosecution side in a court of law. It's the burden of the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The only obligation the defense has (we can call it 'science' if you wish) is to point out to the jury (aka the public) whether the prosecution has made its case or not, and to demonstrate where the prosecution has made mistakes in its allegations (ie: where religion has made unverifiable claims). The defense does not need to prove anything. Proof is the burden of the side making the accusations (claims).

If I claimed to be the Messiah, it's not your job to prove me wrong. It's my responsibility to prove that I am what I claim. Religion fails such tests. It cannot prove its claims. Quite the opposite.

Finally, the more we learn about the universe we live in, the less the need for (or ability of) religion to explain that universe. Religion was invented to give comfort to primitive people who fear what they don't understand. It still serves that role today. With a few exceptions, most modern religions remain fundamentally fear-based.

[Zen]

Hah, I think in your case Arryn, it is not too illogical or irrational in the case of spouse abuse. Zing!

I also think it's ever amusing that people fall on the *strawman* of labor of proof. Proof in this matter is purely opinion, hypothesis, and a foundation of faith (whatever it may be).

[Tuna]

johan osterman said:
I also notice that while you demand proofs of those that you believe holds views different than yours, you yourself offer very little to back up your assertions. This I find somewhat amusing in light of your claim that "Believers have always resorted to shifting the burden of proof to those that disagree with them".

She doesn't have to produce any proof whatsoever, as following the scientific method, she is not making a claim. Believers make a claim: "God does exist". She doesn't have to do absolutely anything until the said believers provide her with falsifable proof. Only after that she must provide the believers with a counterproof. Same works with soul: "There is no proof whatsoever for the existence of soul, thus soul does not exist. ¤"

The age old argument "You prove that god doesn't exist!" Just doesn't work. Generally, when someone uses it on me, I use that as a sign to start ignoring the person. You provide me with falsifable proof that god does exist, and I will either falsify it or start believing that god exists.

Oh, and to clear a bit: "Falsifable", in laymans terms, doesn't mean that something is wrong, quite the contrary. It means that if it is wrong, it is capable to be proven wrong. Generally, in modern science, if something is not falsifable, it is considered to be false by default.

For example the theory "All cars are blue." can be falsified simply by observing a single non-blue car. Then again, theory "there is a god" is not falsifiable, thus is, by default, false. Only when it becomes falsifiable, by someone providing me with methods to somehow test if there is a god or not, will the theory be worth even the slightest of considerations.

[Arryn]

Evil Dave said:
Gandalf, are you arguing for Newton's blind watchmaker? God wound up the world and set it going according to physical laws?
I'm not trying to argue (yet ), but just trying to understand what you're saying.

Since science has done a passable job of explaining the universe from the Big Bang onwards, it pretty much only leaves room for God in the (as-yet) unexplained area of "what happened before the bang"? Some people prefer to see the hand of God in the setting of the physical laws of the universe, and in the "spark" of creation. Yet others can explain even that as random processes in a multiverse of infinite universes and infinite possibilities. (We exist because this universe happens to have the right random conditions for us to exist to ponder the question.)

What really scares some (many) religious believers is the possibility that some (unethical) scientist may someday (in the not-so-distant future) create a human being entirely in a lab from raw DNA, without "conception" at all. No egg. No biological parents. Instant person, just add water. (That's a joke.) If said experiment turns out a breathing, thinking human, where will that leave religion (and what many religions teach about humans)? We can already create viruses from scratch. It's only a matter of time before more complex organisms, and eventually people, can be 'manufactured'.

[Zen]

Arryn said:
Finally, the more we learn about the universe we live in, the less the need for (or ability of) religion to explain that universe. Religion was invented to give comfort to primitive people who fear what they don't understand. It still serves that role today. With a few exceptions, most modern religions remain fundamentally fear-based.

I doubt you have the proof that is why it was created or have any eyewitness accounts of such reasoning during Religion's creation. However: Even with that, the common theory it was not 'created' to give comfort to primitive people who fear what they don't understand but rather a way to control the primitive people by giving them a standard of belief with which could be manipulated by the priest class for social 'improvement' and standardization of governing morals.

[Tuna]

Zen said: Proof in this matter is purely opinion, hypothesis, and a foundation of faith (whatever it may be).

Why? The scientific method works perfectly well for everyhting else on the planet. Why should the existence of soul, or god, be any more a matter of faith than the fact that earth rotates around the sun?* Why should existence of something be an opinion? If it exists, the it exists and is provable, if it doesn't exist then it just plain doesn't exist. No need for opinions or faith here.

*(Or actually, rotates around the center of gravity in the solar system which happens to be very near the center of the sun, but anyway.)

[Arryn]

Tuna said:
For example the theory "All cars are blue." can be falsified simply by observing a single non-blue car. Then again, theory "there is a god" is not falsifiable, thus is, by default, false. Only when it becomes falsifiable, by someone providing me with methods to somehow test if there is a god or not, will the theory be worth even the slightest of considerations.

Thank you. I haven't said "there is no God." I said "prove God exists". As you point out, they are not equal statements.

{This is certainly going to cause an uproar:}
There is less evidence for the existence of God than there is for UFOs. Yet, oddly enough, more people (by far) believe in God. Heck, more people believe in voodoo than in UFOs. People who believe in UFOs are called "crackpots". People who believe in God are "mainstream". We live in an irrational world indeed ...

[Zen]

Tuna said:
Why? The scientific method works perfectly well for everyhting else on the planet. Why should the existence of soul, or god, be any more a matter of faith than the fact that earth rotates around the sun?* Why should existence of something be an opinion? If it exists, the it exists and is provable, if it doesn't exist then it just plain doesn't exist. No need for opinions or faith here.

*(Or actually, rotates around the center of gravity in the solar system which happens to be very near the center of the sun, but anyway.)

Because "proof" is under the sway of "perception" and "understanding" which continually evolve. If you want to apply the "At this time, we believe:" to every fact that is presented by scientific conclusion, then it would be accurate. Science continually disproves other previsouly scientific facts, or finds and creates theories to plug the holes in otherwise grandly adopted factual systems.

[Evil Dave]

Arryn,

I don't think Johan was saying that wife-beating was right, or logical, just that the demonstration that it's wrong or illogical depends on accepting a big set of other principles, like "human life has inherent value" and "men and women have equal worth as people". If you start from assumptions like "all people are sinners waiting for redemption", "women are more sinful then men", "it is men's duty to 'correct' women", then wife-beating (under certain circumstances) is logical, the same way many people would consider it logical to spank their kids if they were playing with fire.
This doesn't say that either one is "right", tho.

Religions are perfectly capable of making predictions: "All the faithful go to paradise after they die." Have you ever seen a priest burning in Hell?
What's considered proof (at least as far as scientists worry about it) depends not only on making predictions, but making ones that can be disproven. And usually disproven in particular ways. If somebody says "I am the messiah because God came to me in a dream and said so", well, there's no way we can check that. Even if he says "As proof of my divinity, the sun will rise tomorrow", we'd say "While we can test that, it was also true that the sun rose before you became the Messiah, so what does that have to do with anything?" Now, if he says, "As proof, the sun won't rise tomorrow, because my god will cast Utterdark overnight." now that we'd be much more interested in.