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 generalgrog wrote:
I find it amusing all this "Lying for Jesus" talk and how easily those people forget about the Lying for science..or probably more for the money and fame it can bring...Lets not forget the wonderful amusing world of scientific breakthroughs shall we A short list of hoaxes

Piltdown man
Nebraska Man
Eugenics
laboratory replicated abiogenesis
Ida (as late as 2009)


GG

I'm pretty sure the only ones claiming to be infallible are your lot, GG. Failure is built in to science - how else can one empirically test something without trial and error?

 generalgrog wrote:
I find it amusing all this "Lying for Jesus" talk and how easily those people forget about the Lying for science..or probably more for the money and fame it can bring...Lets not forget the wonderful amusing world of scientific breakthroughs shall we A short list of hoaxes

Piltdown man
Nebraska Man
Eugenics
laboratory replicated abiogenesis
Ida (as late as 2009)


GG

I don't get where this 'how easily those people forget about the Lying for science' comes from. The aim of the scientific debate is to identify hoaxes. It is so well remembered, that it's integrated in the system.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Albatross wrote:

 Testify wrote:
...consider this - as a society, we lack the ability to hold two ideologies.

If you're unsure of what the word 'ideology' means, then you probably shouldn't use it. Your statement is completely incorrect. Societies are, in effect, a nexus of ideologies.

Well, this is certainly a first -me agreeing with Albatross- but he's right. If a single person can experience ambivalence, I'm sure a society can.

You're right, but I'm thinking more in terms of how societies are constructed. They're constructed of individuals, each with individual structures of belief and representation. I'd be VERY wary of describing cultural groups as ideologically homogeneous, even. In fact, I wouldn't say that at all.

And I'm sure you'd agree with me on a lot of things, presentation of arguments not being one of them!

So this question, and follow on statement is directed for Matty (who is hopefully still monitoring this thread):

Do you disagree with ALL forms of superstition, or just the stupid ones that lead to harm to people? By this I mean, do you (or did you) wear a certain pair of "lucky" socks on sports days, or missions while in the RM? While watching a game, do you hold your beer a certain way, in order to affect the outcome of a play? (the bud light "labels out" superstition commercial sort of thing)


I definitely agree with you, as far as the getting people hurt or killed sorts of superstition, but think that certain "silly" superstitions (socks on gameday, labels out, etc.) are OK, and have an odd sort of place in our society.

 Albatross wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 Albatross wrote:

 Testify wrote:
...consider this - as a society, we lack the ability to hold two ideologies.

If you're unsure of what the word 'ideology' means, then you probably shouldn't use it. Your statement is completely incorrect. Societies are, in effect, a nexus of ideologies.

That's debateable. I would argue that our society has rejected Christianity in favour of a warped view of empiricism. If I had more time/motivation I'd make an epic post explaining why I think this but...meh.

If you think it's debatable then you probably shouldn't reinforce my point in your responses to my posts!

The very fact that you've admitted to the existence of both Christianity and empiricism as existent ideologies lends further weight to my assertion that society is a nexus of ideologies. You needn't feel bad, though. It's pretty self-evident. Society is not ideologically homogeneous, is it? It's a site of negotiation.

I would be hard-pressed to find a single thing that government has done, on either side, in recent times that pointed to anything other than a decline in "conventional" values and a rise of "objective" values.

 Testify wrote:

I would be hard-pressed to find a single thing that government has done, on either side, in recent times that pointed to anything other than a decline in "conventional" values and a rise of "objective" values.

The olympic bid?

Just kidding.

'Conventional' and 'objective' are not opposing terms.

 Testify wrote:
I would be hard-pressed to find a single thing that government has done, on either side, in recent times that pointed to anything other than a decline in "conventional" values and a rise of "objective" values.

Gnyaah kinda hard to argue, as 'objective' isn't and shouldn't be opposed to 'conventional'. As far as policies with a traditional foundation, well, I mean, just look around, it's all there.


-Ninja'ed on most of the content-



Also, I'd add that there really isn't that much of a disconnect between positive and traditionnal values, since positive science, be it human or natural, is a lot more about shortcircuiting the meta-story which produced those values and simply replace it by a necessity to use data from available and reproducible sources.

Positive science will, if they have not already, elucidate the existential problems. It's just that in the mean time it all seems so reductive to the point of almost being an insult to the feeling of complexity we have about ourselves. Give it time.

Sartre sucked donkey schlongs. Merleau-Ponty all the way, baby.

I would like to know the number of scientist who don't believe in a deity, don't believe in ghosts, don't believe in lucky charms, have no superstitions, or any other illogical fault.

 generalgrog wrote:
I find it amusing all this "Lying for Jesus" talk and how easily those people forget about the Lying for science..or probably more for the money and fame it can bring...Lets not forget the wonderful amusing world of scientific breakthroughs shall we A short list of hoaxes

Except there's one key difference:

Scientists can sometimes be misled by a hoax, but when the truth is exposed the people behind the fraud are shunned from the community and everyone admits "yeah, we were wrong, here's the truth".

Liars for Jesus are deliberately committing fraud, and even when their fraud is exposed as painfully obvious to anyone who does even the most basic research into the subject they insist on defending the fraud, and even defending the act of lying because it was done "for a good cause".

 d-usa wrote:
I would like to know the number of scientist who don't believe in a deity, don't believe in ghosts, don't believe in lucky charms, have no superstitions, or any other illogical fault.

Now I'm reminded of the Archmagos in the second Grey Knight novel, when he berrates his apprentice for showing a fear of heights ; ''A fall of more than 6 meters is potentially fatal, thus ascribing an increase of fear to any higher elevation is illogical".

Well, no ones is exempt of logic faults. Some of them we're even naturally bent toward making. Honestly, I could never appreciate a political debate after the Ethics course in which they taught us the list of sophism. You could do an analysis of even the best debators out there and I'm still convinced you'd approach about 1 sophism per paragraphs. In bad debators, it'd be about 1 per sentence. In fact, I'd like to start doing that, that'd be a good exercice for the kids in class.

I think I once saw that about 40% of scientists in the US believe in God. Now as I'm doing the search all the primary sites cited are obviously not the kind to be absolutely unbiased.

 Testify wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Testify wrote:
"A couple of hundred" out of "many thousands" is 10% dude. That's not negligable

It is within the statistical margin of error.

Unless you don't believe in set theory.

10% is not within the margin of error. At all.

...

...

.

Yes it is. The sample is too small to be representative of the population.

As the scientific evidence piles up each year, it become necessary for creationists to start to believe in some kind of conspiracy within the scientific community to keep the biblical truth of a young earth with no evolution hidden. So why not pick the devil for the source of this?

I mean, really, once you accept this Georgian fruitbats starting point, blaming it all on the devil seems only logical.

 generalgrog wrote:
You are arguing from ad-populum.

All I was doing was responding to palindromes erroneus statement regarding life scientists that believe in creation as "virtually none" If he had said small number I wouldn't have had an issue with his misleading statement.

GG

In the context of global science, that number is virtually none.


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 Testify wrote:
"A couple of hundred" out of "many thousands" is 10% dude. That's not negligable

It's 191 names, and they had to lie to bump it up to that.

There is about half a million people working in scientific research in the USA.

That's means the percentage, even if we pretend every one of those 191 people actually disbelieves in evolution, is 0.038%.

Which is virtually nil.


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 generalgrog wrote:
Sorry but where did I use the argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy?

It's funny that people think I am arguing for creationism here. I am only pointing out palindromes fallacy of stating that, out of creation believing scientists, "virtually none" are from the life sciences field. That's what he said and that was misleading. He didn't say "out of all scientists "virtually none" were from the life sciences field"

25% is not a statistically insignificant number.

GG

That ratio is a gibberish number. Looking at the number of scientists overall who do not believe in evolution, or looking at the number of scientists in various life sciences who don't believe in evolution would be informative numbers.

But the number of life scientists who do not believe in evolution, measured as a portion of the total science population who don't believe in evolution? A gibberish number.

By your argument, if the number of scientists in life sciences remained constant, but there was an increase in scientists in other fields who didn't believe in evolution... we'd have a decrease in that number and somehow the idea would be further discredited, despite the number of life scientists holding constant, and the number of scientists overall who don't believe in evolution increasing.


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 d-usa wrote:
Sorry for getting upset about the term then.

Not a problem. The more we discuss this and properly clarify the difference between 'belief in Jesus' from 'disingenuous attack on scientific institutions to support a particularly narrow, and rather dubious interpretation of the Bible all to justify an expansion of the religion into government and greater society' the better.


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 Kaldor wrote:
No, it's more that accepting the scientific method of basing our inquiries on empirical, verifiable data and logical principles of reasoning means that we 'believe' in evolution, and have no reason to believe in god.

Stop this nonsense, please. Evolution explains how we came to be, it says nothing about why, or what might have started that process. If some people want to think a divine creator played a role in that, that is there choice and science cannot confirm or refute that.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I thought Liberals are spinless wusses who are afraid of fighting?

From Umberto Eco's Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt;

"When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."

And I absolutely intend to not only compare, but equate the Christian Domionist originally mentioned by dogma with Italian fascists.

 sebster wrote:
If some people want to think a divine creator played a role in (the creation of the universe), that is there choice and science cannot confirm or refute that.

There's a huge disconnect between "Maybe something supernatural happened to kick start the universe, although there's no evidence to suggest that" and "God, as defined and described by this book, definitely exists".

Kilkrazy wrote:
Yes it is. The sample is too small to be representative of the population.

Agreed. I only stated that 10s as a ratio of 100s was 10%.

sebster wrote:
It's 191 names, and they had to lie to bump it up to that.

There is about half a million people working in scientific research in the USA.

That's means the percentage, even if we pretend every one of those 191 people actually disbelieves in evolution, is 0.038%.

Which is virtually nil.

I know you love mass-quoting people, and I usually care a great deal what you have to say, but you're replying to something that I didn't say. I was replying to a specific comment. The comment itself may have been off-hand, in which case feel free to dismiss my reply to it, but I'd appreciate not being labled as a defender of young-earth creationism.

 Testify wrote:
What you say is all well and true, but consider this - as a society, we lack the ability to hold two ideologies. Our government has adopted the scientific method as its guiding ideology, claiming in the process divine infallibility (hmm) and completely ignoring any humanity whatsoever.

No, it hasn't. The guiding principle of our societies is democracy, because a thing will happen when a majority of people wants that thing to happen. Exactly what one or more scientific studies might conclude on that issue means sweet feth all as to whether that thing will happen, except to the extent those scientific studies manage to sway a portion of the population.

Government's approach to science is that it is more scientific study good thing for the overall benefit for our society, so it puts in place various subsidies, direct funding, and other policies that support scientific endeavour. Government's approach to religion is that it is a good thing for the overall benefit of society for government to stay right out of religion, and so, for the most part, that's what it does.

Albatross wrote:

 Testify wrote:

I would be hard-pressed to find a single thing that government has done, on either side, in recent times that pointed to anything other than a decline in "conventional" values and a rise of "objective" values.

The olympic bid?

Just kidding.

'Conventional' and 'objective' are not opposing terms.

No but it's obvious from the context what I meant.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Testify wrote:
I would be hard-pressed to find a single thing that government has done, on either side, in recent times that pointed to anything other than a decline in "conventional" values and a rise of "objective" values.

Gnyaah kinda hard to argue, as 'objective' isn't and shouldn't be opposed to 'conventional'. As far as policies with a traditional foundation, well, I mean, just look around, it's all there.


-Ninja'ed on most of the content-

Also, I'd add that there really isn't that much of a disconnect between positive and traditionnal values, since positive science, be it human or natural, is a lot more about shortcircuiting the meta-story which produced those values and simply replace it by a necessity to use data from available and reproducible sources.

Positive science will, if they have not already, elucidate the existential problems. It's just that in the mean time it all seems so reductive to the point of almost being an insult to the feeling of complexity we have about ourselves. Give it time.

Sartre sucked donkey schlongs. Merleau-Ponty all the way, baby.

None of that makes any sense to me.

I have a high intelligence but have not been educated beyond GCSE level, try to be broader and not as deep


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 sebster wrote:

 Testify wrote:
What you say is all well and true, but consider this - as a society, we lack the ability to hold two ideologies. Our government has adopted the scientific method as its guiding ideology, claiming in the process divine infallibility (hmm) and completely ignoring any humanity whatsoever.

No, it hasn't. The guiding principle of our societies is democracy, because a thing will happen when a majority of people wants that thing to happen. Exactly what one or more scientific studies might conclude on that issue means sweet feth all as to whether that thing will happen, except to the extent those scientific studies manage to sway a portion of the population.

Government's approach to science is that it is more scientific study good thing for the overall benefit for our society, so it puts in place various subsidies, direct funding, and other policies that support scientific endeavour. Government's approach to religion is that it is a good thing for the overall benefit of society for government to stay right out of religion, and so, for the most part, that's what it does.

Virtually every policy in the UK over the past 10 years has had the backing of "scientific evidence". Hell, the government even have scientific evidence for keeping weed illegal

The fact is that science and religion are, in public terms, virtually identical - both claim infallibility at core, and you can explain away mistakes by simply saying that whatever went wrong was not the "true" form.

 Testify wrote:
man...you should. There is a whole world of understanding out there, that is completely seperate from the "scientific method". If it didn't make me sound like a massive dweeb, I'd recommend just sitting down and reading the Saint John bible. It blew my mind

Yes, absolutely. I really hate how so many people, religious folk and atheists, pretend like scientific and religious knowledge are in competition. They're not, they're actually complementary - the more you know about what science has observed in the world, the better context you will have for your religious reading. And the more you know about what religion has had to say about human experience, the better the context for your scientific reading.


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 generalgrog wrote:
I find it amusing all this "Lying for Jesus" talk and how easily those people forget about the Lying for science..or probably more for the money and fame it can bring...Lets not forget the wonderful amusing world of scientific breakthroughs shall we A short list of hoaxes

Piltdown man
Nebraska Man
Eugenics
laboratory replicated abiogenesis
Ida (as late as 2009)


GG

Yes, people lie for personal gain, either political power (eugenics) or cash (Piltdown Man). In each case proper science has shown the lies to be what they are.

I'm a little unclear as to how that makes the lies told by creationists any more acceptable, though.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
This guy is a qualified medical doctor and he doesn't "believe" in embryology?!?!?

He must be an epic liar to have got through his exams without failing the embryology section.

Kind of what I was thinking. He's probably flip-flopping for reasons beside his own.

 Albatross wrote:
I'm pretty sure the only ones claiming to be infallible are your lot, GG. Failure is built in to science - how else can one empirically test something without trial and error?

And the point of science is that when someone makes a claim, it is checked. That somethings take way longer than they should to be properly discredited is not great, but it does nothing to discredit the scientific process as a whole.

Whereas among the anti-evolution creationists there just is no science going on. There's a collection of claims about what's wrong with evolution (of which some are things science hasn't figured out yet, while most are just straight up lies), but no effort at all to actually build and test an alternative theory.


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 Kovnik Obama wrote:
I think I once saw that about 40% of scientists in the US believe in God. Now as I'm doing the search all the primary sites cited are obviously not the kind to be absolutely unbiased.

Yeah, and that's the number that two groups try to pretend doesn't exist, anti-science religious people, and anti-religious atheists.

The rest of us seem to understand that science and religion can happily co-exist, but it seems that haters gotta hate.

Oh, and the Pew survey on this is a pretty good one, I believe. I think that found about 50% of scientists believe in some kind of higher power, but I can't recall any more than that. I think they release figures on it every couple of years, and the numbers are always about the same.


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 Testify wrote:
Virtually every policy in the UK over the past 10 years has had the backing of "scientific evidence". Hell, the government even have scientific evidence for keeping weed illegal

The fact is that science and religion are, in public terms, virtually identical - both claim infallibility at core, and you can explain away mistakes by simply saying that whatever went wrong was not the "true" form.

And that science might inform the decision, but it doesn't decide it. That still comes down to the decisions made by those popularly elected by the people.

Which, simply, is the only sensible way for things to be. The first alternative is to hand decision making over to the conclusion of scientific studies - and while you're trying to sort of vaguely state that's what is happening, it simply isn't.

The second alternative is to stop trying to study the real world in order to inform policy. To actually back away from using science to inform decision making. Which is, fairly obviously, an absurd approach, but the only possible conclusion of what you're claiming here.

 Testify wrote:

None of that makes any sense to me.

I have a high intelligence but have not been educated beyond GCSE level, try to be broader and not as deep

Sorry And it doesn't bear any implication on your intelligence, since knowledge and intelligence are related but not identical things.

To make my post clearer ; all the problems that the existential tradition, either Christian (ex, Mounier) or atheistic (Sartre, Heidegger) have brought up and claimed were unsolvable by positive science will be answered by analytical and scientific means in the next generation or so. They are all epiphenomenal problems, like freedom, the fear of death, our belief in others, so it's perfectly normal that science couldn't start there, since it works by reduction. Not that the existential tradition is entirely worthless, because science still needs free speculation. But you can't buy in the ''the subject can't be made an object'' line they throw everywhere.

There isn't much of a clash between science and traditionnal values because, when traditionnal values weren't completely dumb and unfounded, they mostly were pragmatic. Those that were dumb were already denounced thousands of years ago, like Plato's harsh judgement on unequal treatment of men and women.

In most cases, science will explain why the traditionnal values are valid, why compassion, love and happiness are important. You shouldn't expect the knowledge given to warm your cold nights, but then, you don't read the synopsis of a movie because it's good, but because of what it might tell you about the movie.

We already had our 'science gone wild' crisis, and it was temporally and locally contained - mid 20th century Germany and Japan. We aren't in a state of utopia or dystopia in comparison to the earlier Moderns. The Last Man has yet to come (oki that's deep).

Religion is fighting a losing war in the west. I've said before that I don't believe it can survive the internet age, and I think that becomes more obviously true with every passing year. Unfortunately, this somewhat inevitably leads to a few fringers adopting a siege mentality and, rather than starting to negotiate terms of surrender, guys like this are the ones who say, "We're running out of soldiers? feth it, give these kids rifles, fight to the last!" No amount of reason's ever going to piece the power of sticking fingers in one's ears and refusing to listen.

 d-usa wrote:
I would like to know the number of scientist who don't believe in a deity, don't believe in ghosts, don't believe in lucky charms, have no superstitions, or any other illogical fault.

Well there is me for one, aside from the built in flaws that every human ha;. I have no superstitions at all, I don't even have lucky dice. I was also an atheist in a fox hole even though they aren't supposed to exist.

 Seaward wrote:
Religion is fighting a losing war in the west. I've said before that I don't believe it can survive the internet age, and I think that becomes more obviously true with every passing year. Unfortunately, this somewhat inevitably leads to a few fringers adopting a siege mentality and, rather than starting to negotiate terms of surrender, guys like this are the ones who say, "We're running out of soldiers? feth it, give these kids rifles, fight to the last!" No amount of reason's ever going to piece the power of sticking fingers in one's ears and refusing to listen.

But that isn't true. The world remains overwhelmingly religious. As social pressure to be religious dropped away the number declined, but that effect has pretty much ended in most Western countries. The percentage of people who seem themselves as religious in various developed countries is now pretty static.

The only exception I'm aware of is the US, where the social pressure to be religious is still quite strong.


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Palindrome wrote:
Well there is me for one, aside from the built in flaws that every human ha;. I have no superstitions at all, I don't even have lucky dice. I was also an atheist in a fox hole even though they aren't supposed to exist.

Yeah, I became convinced I really was an atheist because when bad things have happened to me, it didn't even occur to me to think of a higher power to help me out.

 sebster wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
Religion is fighting a losing war in the west. I've said before that I don't believe it can survive the internet age, and I think that becomes more obviously true with every passing year. Unfortunately, this somewhat inevitably leads to a few fringers adopting a siege mentality and, rather than starting to negotiate terms of surrender, guys like this are the ones who say, "We're running out of soldiers? feth it, give these kids rifles, fight to the last!" No amount of reason's ever going to piece the power of sticking fingers in one's ears and refusing to listen.

But that isn't true. The world remains overwhelmingly religious. As social pressure to be religious dropped away the number declined, but that effect has pretty much ended in most Western countries. The percentage of people who seem themselves as religious in various developed countries is now pretty static.

The only exception I'm aware of is the US, where the social pressure to be religious is still quite strong.

Actually, while the social pressure may still be there - and I'd say that's regional, not a uniform pattern - the percentage who self-identify as atheists or agnostics rises every year, like clockwork.

 Kaldor wrote:

 sebster wrote:
If some people want to think a divine creator played a role in (the creation of the universe), that is there choice and science cannot confirm or refute that.

There's a huge disconnect between "Maybe something supernatural happened to kick start the universe, although there's no evidence to suggest that" and "God, as defined and described by this book, definitely exists".

So why refute that with "God, as defined and described in that book, definitely doesn't exist." Referring to various deities as "imaginary sky fairies" when there's no way of proving that God DOESN'T exist is incredibly rude, and only adds fuel to the fire. Seriously, get some manners.


And yes, I know that the burden of proof lies on those who claim something, but I don't see why you have to be so confrontational and rude about it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So why refute that with "God, as defined and described in that book, definitely doesn't exist." Referring to various deities as "imaginary sky fairies" when there's no way of proving that God DOESN'T exist is incredibly rude, and only adds fuel to the fire. Seriously, get some manners.


And yes, I know that the burden of proof lies on those who claim something, but I don't see why you have to be so confrontational and rude about it.

By that logic, we should treat everyone who expresses belief in the phenomena of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, Odin, et cetera et cetera ad nauseum, with the same polite credulity.

Do you do that? I somewhat doubt it.

Odin is a phenomenon? As opposed to fairly important deity in the Norse religious tradition?

Looks like it's time to bring good old steve-o-meter

http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve

 Seaward wrote:
Actually, while the social pressure may still be there - and I'd say that's regional, not a uniform pattern - the percentage who self-identify as atheists or agnostics rises every year, like clockwork.

My nephew keeps grew three inches in the last year. If this continues, but 2050 he'll be more than 12 foot tall. How will we possibly compete with this new world of giant toddler people.

Seriously, "here is a trend, it will keep happening forever" is bad trend analysis.


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 Kaldor wrote:
There's a huge disconnect between "Maybe something supernatural happened to kick start the universe, although there's no evidence to suggest that" and "God, as defined and described by this book, definitely exists".

There's a difference, yeah. But to think God is defined and described in the bible is to miss the whole point of the thing.

And it isn't an evidence based question. That's the whole point of religious faith.


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 Seaward wrote:
By that logic, we should treat everyone who expresses belief in the phenomena of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, Odin, et cetera et cetera ad nauseum, with the same polite credulity.

Do you do that? I somewhat doubt it.

Bigfoot, Loch Ness and ghosts are stated belief in observable phenomena. They are supposed to literally exist and interact with the material world in direct, observable ways. That we've never observed such a thing is solid evidence to conclude they don't exist.

But the same isn't true of Odin, or any other God (well, it is for older definitions of Odin in which he apparently did interact with the world directly, but not for more modern interpretations).


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 Testify wrote:
I know you love mass-quoting people, and I usually care a great deal what you have to say, but you're replying to something that I didn't say. I was replying to a specific comment. The comment itself may have been off-hand, in which case feel free to dismiss my reply to it, but I'd appreciate not being labled as a defender of young-earth creationism.

Sorry, I saw you clarify your position and decided to remove that post of mine... and then completely forgot to do it. My bad.

In other news, I don't like mass quoting people, but I live on the other side of the world and people say so many things that are just wrong. I mean, did you read that WWII thread?


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And yes, I know that the burden of proof lies on those who claim something, but I don't see why you have to be so confrontational and rude about it.

It only lies on them when they're trying to convince someone else of some kind of action. So, if someone was to claim 'gay marriage will destroy the planet because God told me so' then the burden of proof is on them to prove God exists and said such a thing.

But if it's just 'I like to go to church on Sunday and share my faith with like minded people' well then they've got no more burden than anyone else.

 sebster wrote:
My nephew keeps grew three inches in the last year. If this continues, but 2050 he'll be more than 12 foot tall. How will we possibly compete with this new world of giant toddler people.

Seriously, "here is a trend, it will keep happening forever" is bad trend analysis.

But in this case we have a good reason for suspecting it might continue. Religion (or at least organized religion) depends on having a certain critical mass in society. Most people keep the religion of their parents, go to a church which is well represented in their community, etc, and never really question whether or not it's a good idea because everyone around them is doing it. On the other hand, the more of that critical mass you lose the harder it is to avoid coming to the conclusion that the whole thing is just nonsense. Once religion loses its privileged position in society we might even see the rate of increasing unbelief increase, up to a point where most people are either non-religious or "church once a year" token believers.

And it isn't an evidence based question. That's the whole point of religious faith.

Except that's not how religion works. Religion is quite happy to make evidence based claims all the time: miracles, prayer, historical arguments, etc. It only rejects evidence and demands respect for "faith"* when the evidence goes against religion. It's a dodge to avoid having to admit you're wrong, not a consistent theory on what is a justified belief.


*Faith: belief in something even though you have no good reason and shouldn't. This isn't a virtue.


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 sebster wrote:
Bigfoot, Loch Ness and ghosts are stated belief in observable phenomena. They are supposed to literally exist and interact with the material world in direct, observable ways. That we've never observed such a thing is solid evidence to conclude they don't exist.

But the same isn't true of Odin, or any other God (well, it is for older definitions of Odin in which he apparently did interact with the world directly, but not for more modern interpretations).

So when someone prays for their sick child to recover they're just performing some kind of comforting ritual and don't actually think that god is going to interact with the physical world and grant that request?