Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Battle Rages on: Dialouge with Spacemonkey

 somehow they just never seem to listen. This is one of the things that makes me most frustrated, the way they say the same things over and over again, year after year and never seem to learn. This exchange is about three posts on CARM this morning but it could be four years ago, any day of the week. I thank my dialogue partner, the inimitable spacemoneky.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Spacemonkeyadb


Do you mean here that nothing but God could have this transformative effect? Or that nothing but RE could produce this effect?

 Meta

so far the only actual data of such things comes from religious experience. many things we know can't produce it such as mental illness, which is always degenerative rather than transformative.

Quote: Spacemonkey
Because you've never even come close to establishing the former. And the latter is irrelevant.
 Meta
sorry you are confused. The former is what is established as scientific fact, from that we can logically deduce the latter. That is a logical deduction not "never come close" I have most certainly come close, in fact I've proved it, in terms of rational warrant.




Quote:Spacemonkey
Nothing but visual illusions have the specific effect upon me that they have. But that is no reason for me to conclude that visual illusions must be produced by really existing impossible 3D objects.

 Meta
But you are doing the deductive work of the argument. you are just creating a straw man argument that's really nothing more than a bad analogy and you are leaving out the crux of the thinking that goes into the rational warrant part.


(1) The RE stuff is the co-determinate--for various reasons we can expect this to be associated with the divine to the extent that we have a historical understanding of that term.

(2) Since we do have this relationship between the co-determinate and the phenomena it is rationally warranted to believe that it is indicative of the divine.


(3) it's not a proof, it's a warrant!





Quote:Spacemonkey
And to insist upon the positive effects of RE as a relevant difference here is to commit the fallacy of appealing to consequences (or do you still think that's just a conspiracy by atheists to subvert your arguments?).

Meta
that is a totally screwy understanding of what that fallacy means. nothing in that fallacy that say you cannot based conclusions on effects.

by your logic the Surgeon general was illogical to say smoking causes cancer. essentially all cause and effect relationships are built upon construal by correlation.

even when you have a mechanism, understanding a mechanism as a mechanism is based upon the contusing form correlation.

by your logic we can scrap cause and effect.

this is an example of the fallacy in sue according to an atheist site:

Quote:
…I want to list seventeen summary statements which, if true, provide abundant reason why the reader should reject evolution and accept special creation as his basic world-view. …

13. Belief in special creation has a salutary influence on mankind, since it encourages responsible obedience to the Creator and considerate recognition of those who were created by Him. …

16. Belief in evolution and animal kinship leads normally to selfishness, aggressiveness, and fighting between groups, as well as animalistic attitudes and behaviour by individuals.
that differs from my use of the RE thing. Because I'm not saying "If you believe this you get good things." Even the alleged fallacy the way it is set up is not a fallcy. this is just the atheist hijacking of logic on the net. atheists who don't study logic use these phony assertions about fallacies that are taylor made to apply to God arguments. it's nothing but a huge lie.

be that as it may my arugement says some differnce must obtain between God doing something and nature doing it. If there's no difference between the two we have no reason to think that God is involved. The difference is in outcome.

that is very different than saying this must be true because it has good consequences.


Quote:Spacemonkey
You have never established that a purely naturalistic account of RE and its positive effects is less likely or plausible than a religious account which posits an actual God as responsible for them. And until you do that your argument does not even establish rational warrant for belief.

Meta

I sure as hell have open your eyes look for a change. did you even read this far? most atheists don't even read the material did you read this? open your eyes and look for a change!


(1) no research that claims to evoke the experience has used the M scale to verify

(2) chemical association are not disproof of Divine connection because it would have to be there anyway even with God. god has to use it so it's not a proof he's not doing it. that's like saying if people have ears it proves God isn't talking to them because God can speak through ears.

(3) I have 7 tie breakers that destroy this position but you have to wait for the book if I divulge it now the publisher wouldn't like it.

(4) you are attempting to lose the phenomena
Quote:Spacemonkey
Originally Posted by Spacemonkeyadb View Post
You have your former and latter mixed up. You just said you have proved that only God could bring about the effects of RE.

Meta
No I did not. I said the difference is what tells us it's connected to God. I didn't say only God can do it i said so far only RE has this association.

Quote:Spacemonkey
But I repeat that it is irrelevant that RE has a particular and positive effect on people, unless you can show that it is less likely to have a natural explanation than a supernatural one. You haven't done this.


Meta
you are not following my argument. I am not using the positive effects of RE as the exisgence for belief at the point of pay off for the warrant. I'm plugging them at the point of the tie breaker where one says "what's the difference in nature doing it and God doing it?" In all cases where where it's undisputed to be nature it's negative, in the only case where it's claimed to be God its positive, and if god was doing it we should expect it to be positive that tells the distinction between nature doing it and God doing.

so when you then say I haven't shown nature can't do it I jsut did. I showed that nature is not doing it. see what to assume it's nature a prori that is begging the question. the issue of RE is what is being argued about so you can't just assume a prori not God you have to show other cases. I show in the other cases nature does't act this way so why think it's nature now? there are other reasons but that's part of it.

showing that nature doesn't act that way in other cases is a reason to think that it's not now.


Quote:Spacemonkey
No. Belief in God-caused RE is not warranted unless you can show that a supernatural cause is more likely than a natural one.
I just did. Because in other case nature never acts that way so why assume it's nature now? especially when the effects are the reason religion exists and they aer what we should expect from the divine?

Meta

the content of the experience is overtly about the divine so there's no real reason to assert the falsehood of the content if the experience itself is real, then knowing that nature doesn't do it otherwise there's no real reason to not accept it as such.




Quote:Spacemoneky
Don't be ridiculous. I'm not saying all cause and effect reasoning is impossible. I'm just saying that the positive effects of RE are no proof of its having a supernatural cause.
Meta
they are not proof it, they are rational warrant because they are tie breaker. do you not understand? nature in other cases does not produce positive effects. In this case the positive effects are expected if God were involved, that is a good reason to think God is involved becasue it's a good reason to think nature is not.

It's also just a priori the nature of the experience is religious.


Quote:Spacemonkey
You miss the point. If RE had purely natural causes inside the brain, then unless you can identify some point where the supernatural intercedes in the prior causal chain leading to those brain events, you will have a case of causal over-determination, rendering your postulated supernatural line of causation entirely superfluous, redundant, and non-explanatory.

 Meta
I just did that. we can say this is the point becuase nature doesn't do that. get it? it is not nature because nature doesn't do it.

you need a logic class. you don't understand the basic conceptions expedience or sense data or corroboration or how we know things. you need epistemology and logic. you don't understand co-determinate.

I said all of this in the previous post. if you were really listening you should have gotten it.

it's the very same as neutrinos. the argument about consequence is nothing more than the way neutrinos came to be understood. by your phony little alleged "fallacy" we should still not accept neutrinos.
Meta

simple answer:

Quote:
If RE had purely natural causes inside the brain, then unless you can identify some point where the supernatural intercedes in the prior causal chain leading to those brain events,
(1) no evidence to show that brain chemistry produces RE because the studies that claim that don't use the M scale

(2) I have showen a point where the SN intercedes.

(a) nature doesnt' behave this way in any other case, not reason to think it would here. for example in menal illness it is not trnasformative

(b) there is reason to think this is SN because it's the co-determinate: the trace of God is the original of religion the sense of the numinous.

(c) the content is about religion,

(3) no reason not to regard it as a straightforward perception of divine presence, that's what it pro-ports to be and the corroborating factors validate it; nature doesn't do it.

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