Savant on Falsifiability and the God Hypothesis

[David Sklansky]

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Are you aware (I wasn't until recently) that many, if not most historians doubt exodus, or even that Egyptians had a large number of Jewish slaves?


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Yes. Did you know that scholars were certain, until the 19th century, that the Hittite civilization was a myth since it was known only from the Bible?

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Surely you realize that the two statements are not of equal impact. They don't "cancel" out. The second statement does not do much to decrease the liklihood of the first. That would be somewhat true even if the scholars in question came from the twenty first century regarding both issues. But when the mistaken scholars are from the nineteenth century it means almost nothing as far as offering evidence that modern scholars are wrong. (I'm not saying they are right. I'm just saying that you can't use your point as a good reason to dispute them.)

[Subfallen]

This is a dim-witted sort of discussion that ignores both authoritative theology and all modern philosophy; and cannot be taken seriously.

Also, these savant fixations confuse me. Say, Witten, seems more impressive. I mean---317 PUBLISHED ARTICLES?!? WTF??

[luckyme]

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The argument goes that it is equivalent to a person throwing a ball in a field and then arguing that the blade of grass it lands on is special because it had only a 1 in a million chance of being landed upon. However our universe is peculiarly capable of complex, intelligent, self-aware life - dependent on many extremely low-probability factors - so that the correct analogy would be if the ball landed on a blade of grass which was coloured blue while all the others were green.

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that seems an even worse analogy but accepting it as given, can some math-type explain why the blue one being hit adds anything to our knowledge of the blue one? Wasn't the chance of it being hit 1 in a million? Does that mean it can't be hit? If it can't be hit, wouldn't the odds be at least 1,000,001 to 1?


luckyme

[NotReady]

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Surely you realize that the two statements are not of equal impact


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They aren't equal but they are similar for much the same reason so many scientists cling to evolution, invent fantasies like multiverses and deny the Big Bang.

[SNOWBALL]

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that seems an even worse analogy but accepting it as given, can some math-type explain why the blue one being hit adds anything to our knowledge of the blue one? Wasn't the chance of it being hit 1 in a million? Does that mean it can't be hit? If it can't be hit, wouldn't the odds be at least 1,000,001 to 1?


luckyme


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The thing is that there is ALWAYS something unique about each blade of grass, even if we don't notice it.

[David Sklansky]

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Surely you realize that the two statements are not of equal impact


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They aren't equal but they are similar for much the same reason so many scientists cling to evolution, invent fantasies like multiverses and deny the Big Bang.

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This is much different. Here you are talking about archaeolgoists and historians examing evidence, using modern techniques, from only a few thousand years ago. Not athiest biologist looking at things millions of years old. If you want to refute them you need to do it in a much more specific way than just saying that sometimes scientific theories are wrong.

[NotReady]

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This is much different.


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The similarities involve the fact that both groups of scientists are attacking Bible positions from the same motivation. But I'm not arguing I can prove exodus just that no one has disproved it, the issue being what it would take to turn me atheist. So they have a very heavy burden given their bias. They may well convince other atheists who may be reasonable accepting their opinion while I'm reasonable to require a heavier burden.

[ZeeJustin]

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that seems an even worse analogy but accepting it as given, can some math-type explain why the blue one being hit adds anything to our knowledge of the blue one? Wasn't the chance of it being hit 1 in a million? Does that mean it can't be hit? If it can't be hit, wouldn't the odds be at least 1,000,001 to 1?


luckyme


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The thing is that there is ALWAYS something unique about each blade of grass, even if we don't notice it.

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Right. They might not all be blue, but very few will be "just green".

Although The Drake Equation is highly subjective, many scientists have input reasonable values for the variables to come up with numbers close to 1. The Drake Equation solves for the average number of planets that would contain intelligent life in our universe. If this number is anywhere above 0.5 (arbitrary number choice obviously), then there is very little that is special about our universe. In actuality, many more scientists have concluded that the number is much greater than 1. SETI for example believes it can be solved to be a VERY large number. This would imply that there is even less that is special about our universe.

[brandofo]

If it's possible for multiple ZeeJustins to play in the same poker tournament at the same time on earth, then I have to concede that there could be more ZeeJustin's cheating at poker at another end of our universe.

[Brad1970]

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If it's possible for multiple ZeeJustins to play in the same poker tournament at the same time on earth, then I have to concede that there could be more ZeeJustin's cheating at poker at another end of our universe.

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LOL [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]