Phi for All

Waiting on a response to your question or waiting on the Amscope you ordered?

It's never as capricious as that. You actually have to be pretty rude and undesirable to get that kind of attention and effort from the Staff. Most people who get banned from an accumulation of infraction points wise up after a temporary ban. Others never know when enough's enough.

And now *you're* doing it again, asking for a logical answer about something to do with the existence or non-existence of God. Faith is illogical; it's outside of science and logic. I'm not ignoring the point about the ambiguity of atheistic definitions; I'm taking them as granted and practically irreconcilable. Most atheists don't want their stance associated with a lack of belief but if you're talking about God then faith, not logic, has to come into it somewhere. It may well be the crux of the matter. The trap is that many on both sides will never give up their definitions because they have already made up their minds what they want their stance to be. Often that stance means they will suggest doubt while implying certainty. The equation is unbalanced when skepticism isn't practiced.

And we would never do something like that to such an innocent forumer who needs us kind and patient geeks to help him out with science.

I concur. While I am completely opposed to creationism as has been outlined here, I think suggesting it's a mental disorder is misleadingly vivid and without merit. Just because you were raised and educated with bad information doesn't make you cognitively infirm.

I know it matters to atheists. I know it's a distinction they want to forge in order to take their arguments away from a faith-based foundation. I can concede that it is important to them to establish there is no faith involved. But I still don't want the arguments to boil down to non-believers demanding non-existent proof from believers, and believers insisting that God is behind everything science tries to explain. That way lies madness. Clarification is always good, but I still think we need to stay away from the same old traps. IF we open a P&R section it will not be a place for those only interested in espousing religion or those only interested in trashing religion to come and post. It will be a place where established forum members can discuss these matters without using one to bash the other.

Please concern yourself with your own happiness. What you choose to call yourself is of less interest to me than how you present your arguments here on SFN. I'm sure many will object to your labels but that's what happens. People chafe under the restrictions imposed on them by other's labels. Frankly it was always the people who had firmly made up their minds one way or the other that caused the most problems with our past attempts at a Philosophy & Religion subforum. Good points were lost among the traffic jams caused by continual sniping over the same old crap; atheists demanding proof and preachers claiming God transcends physical laws. If we are to attempt it again it will be with the provisos that God is inherently undetectable and cannot be proven, and that any statements about God, ANY statements, therefore require an element of faith that science cannot measure.

I would disagree with the latter. Withholding judgment, for our purposes, makes you a skeptic, not a believer or denier. Now you're back to trying to use science to refute faith in an unobservable entity. I'm telling you, *this* is where these discussions will always bog down. God doesn't make appearances anymore since you wouldn't need faith if It did. That makes It supernatural and science just isn't interested anymore. Your skepticism, like science, has NOTHING to do with faith, but saying God exists or doesn't exist is a statement based on faith, since it's about God and we know that science can't be applied to God, ever. This, imo, is the only way we will be able to discuss religion successfully here on SFN. There may be all kinds of ways to split hairs on atheism but trust me, when any side of the issue tries to use science and religion to prove or disprove the other, the argument goes nowhere fast.

Severian is saying that theists and atheists are both making absolute statements about a power that is supernatural, therefore neither can use natural physical science to support their arguments; both must, by definition, be using faith instead. Yet atheists still ask for scientific proof and theists insist that God can transcend physical laws and neither seems likely to give up their stance. This seems to contradict itself. Why would someone who doesn't deny the possibility of God be called an atheist (no-God)? If you define atheism as a state of being without theistic beliefs, you are still saying there is no God, which forces you to either use scientific methods (a big no-no) or make a judgment based on faith, which is just as valid as a theists claims. Skeptics are not atheists because they don't discount the possibility of a God while ignoring any use of science or religion to prove or disprove one another. Literary critics can't use the same criteria they employ to measure the worth of a book to measure the gases composing a distant nebula, and it's much the same way with religion and science. When faced with a theistic question, the skeptical scientist should merely shrug and say, "Could be, but I have nothing to observe yet." Or be willing to admit that any opinion they have on the matter is purely faith-based.

Skepticism about an unobservable phenomenon, ANY unobservable phenomenon, does NOT require faith, just an open mind. That's the beauty of it. ANY firm pro or con stance regarding unobservable phenomenon requires faith. You can't ask for evidence to support something that can't be observed. That would be involving science and you just can't do that with God. The skeptic is king in science and when you leave the realm of the observable you leave the realm of science. All atheists AND theists need to stop invoking science by either asking for proof or explaining nature with supernatural means.

Science really shouldn't concern itself with any other definitions of creationism. If they involve a non-observable deity behind natural, physical processes then it's completely up to the individual to decide where faith begins and ends. It's only when religious interpretations completely ignore evidence gained using rigorous scientific method in favor of instantaneous creation that simply appears to be far older that science should be concerned. God is not denied by evolution, It is simply ignored. But intelligent design is, again, adding an unobservable element into an otherwise sound, natural and well-tested theory. It puts ID back into the realm of faith so science has nothing to say. ID further compounds the mistake by insisting it has created a controversy which must be taught alongside science in public schools. I rounded up to 5 billion as opposed to rounding down to 6000.

For our purposes here, creationism can be defined as the belief that God created all things in six 24-hour days about 6000 years ago without the use of the evolutionary process. It is a dismissal of all gathered evidence on evolution in favor of instantaneous creation, even creation of the geological evidence that would seem to support an Earth age of around 5 billion years. Any other religious or spiritual aspects do not fall under the purview of science or the topic of this thread.

I don't think you are interested in discussion. Your username tells us you are interested in only one thing. You have 8 posts and 7 of them are thread starters, all defending genetically modified crops, primarily in Africa. I think you have an agenda and I think you are being paid for it. All of these things are inconsistent with our purpose. This is a scientific discussion forum, not your personal marketing platform. Please discuss.

I'm going to leave it up to Pangloss to decide if this is a political issue or not. ku, I've always found it a bit distressing that many of your threads involve some form of support for what the majority consider deviant sexual behavior such as pedophilia, rape, brutality and now bestiality. I've tried not to introduce any ad hominem arguments because you are well-spoken and somewhat considerate with your threads (although you tend to ignore clarifying questions put forth by other members). You seem to have a bit of an obsession and I wonder if you'd address that in this thread?

To include what many others believe in (have faith in) your definition of supernatural must include things which are inherently unobservable. These things don't violate the laws of nature but they remain outside of the physical, natural world and are thus supernatural. There are faiths in "higher powers" that don't *violate* anything, they're simply non-falsfiable by their very... nature..

I don't want to take this thread too off-topic but I have to point out that if a contract requires only one company fulfill a multitude of tasks it's usually because a single multi-functional infrastructure will save TONS of money. The architects of the KBR contract ignored the most important business driver behind using a no-bid, single entity solution. It was a proposal tailored to fit a company, not a company in a position to fulfill a proposal.

Hush, you'll confuse the baby! You want him to think he only has two toes?! It's hard enough to raise a vegetable without you complicating things!

Ooooh, you did it, you good boy! Who's daddy's little genius? You posted on an Internet forum! Yay! I told the doctors they were wrong about you! We'll try typing with the other hand after your nap. Say bye bye!

It's true, he's undefeated, but only in games like Find Your Foot and Rattle Tag. He pwns those. School will start soon and then I'm sure the rigors of kindergarten will tax psycho1's ten-year-old, um... brain.

Step back and ask yourself what literature is supposed to accomplish. If you are looking for enlightenment (aka education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge) then it's possible for a well-written cereal box to be literature. It all depends on what works to turn on the lights for you.

No. Indignant is acceptable. You are both making *arguments*. Calling someone inept is an ad hominem fallacy and we try to call them out when we see them. Logical fallacies can often keep us from learning so we don't allow them to stand unchallenged. It could be that, for you, it is. However, I truly hope you will realize that your ego is not that fragile, shake it off and come back.

Since belief in a literal six-day creation contradicts geological and evolutionary evidence it MUST be a metaphor (or a misinterpretation of yom). Very little else about creationism completely contradicts science. It's not really about anyone's personal beliefs, it's about falsely assigning characteristics to a supposedly historical event based on a system of beliefs that denies characteristics typically used with historical events. The option to view the six-day creation metaphorically removes the stumbling block between creationism and science. The rest can be ignored by both sides. God can still be omnipotent so the faithful are happy and science can still ask for evidence while remaining skeptical until they get it.

Don't be silly; *we* always see Earth with North America on top. Another common element is where ships that meet in space are always aligned with each other. You never see one of them come in at a different angle to the other. It's hard to cancel gravity from our perceptions.

LOL, that's the first thing I thought of when I read that, especially since it was capitalized. You know it's against the rules to have multiple accounts!

Thank you for not responding to the personal attack. Your restraint is admirable and noted. But aren't they all creationist places? I will send a PM to one of our members who was raised in Israel and now lives in NY. She speaks and reads Hebrew and would be a good source for this discussion (I hope it's not off-topic; I consider it to be at the root of creationist claims). I can appreciate that but the Essenes at the time influenced much of Hebrew writings and were skilled in metaphor. This may just be one of those impasses that crop up when discussing religion from a scholarly viewpoint. Why did God create the heavens and earth in six days but make it look billions of years old? To strengthen the faith of those who know the truth. How... circular.