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The Forum > Article Comments > The power, or not, of prayer > Comments

The power, or not, of prayer : Comments

By Brian Baker, published 27/1/2011

Drought and floods: did prayer completely fail? Or was it an overwhelming success?

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Grateful,
Re; This is a dodge. As you know, my challenge was direct to the methodology which interprets human fossils on the premise that “Human’s evolved from another species”.

How else could the scientific method interpret the confirmed sequential, but occasionally partly overlapping, age ranges of Australopithecus Afarensis, A.africanus, Homo habilis, H.ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidlegergensis, H.sapien and H.sapien sapien? Humans share 98%+ of their genome with our closest living ape relative so with A. Afarensis, if we could find some DNA, the sharing would be in the high 99% area.

That is what science does, interpret evidence and the evidence of this progressive development from A. ergaster to H. sapien is overwhelmingly. You can read it and learn something worthwhile ( which I did after retiring 19 years ago at the age of 61) if you get your head out of the ancients writings.

In my earlier posts I mentioned the age of the earth (4.5b years) and compared it to the time elapsed since the big bang (13.7b years). The science is irrefutable; our earth contains products of a supernova explosion so why did god wait for a second generation solar system and wait a further 4.49999+billion years before putting a human being in place?

You comment about the morality and ethics of the western world and atheists. Let me make a point about ethics and morality and to do so I will quote from Sam Harris’s latest book “The Moral Landscape” where he states, based on studies,
"And on almost every measure of societal health, the least religious
countries are better off than the most religious. Countries like
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands - which are the most
atheistic societies on earth - consistently rate better than religious nations on measures like life expectancy, infant mortality, crime, literacy, GDP, child welfare, economic equality, economic competitiveness, gender equality, health care, investments in education, rates of university enrolment, internet access, environmental protection, lack of corruption, political stability, and charity to poorer nations, etc."

If god exists she has obviously been favouring the atheists ever since The Enlightenment.
Posted by Foyle, Sunday, 13 February 2011 7:17:56 PM
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Trav,

It’s a pity you won’t be sticking around; with your arguments going the way they are, the discussion is bound to get shorter and shorter anyway.

<<The spirit of our debate was rather charitable but now it's disappointing to see that you're getting emotional.>>

Um... no, it was actually your emotional outburst last Tuesday (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11510#197615) that caused the discussion to take a dive. Things were travelling until then. Why would I need to get emotional when my arguments are still standing strong?

<<If you wanted examples then I don't recall you mentioning anything at all about my brief sketch of C Stephen Evans argument in his new book, nor anything about the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument.>>

Firstly, my criticism of the cosmological argument applied to both versions. Hence why I’d simply use the more broad term “cosmological argument”.

Secondly, you were claiming that I was ignoring you “best” arguments, yet the Leibnizian cosmological argument is actually worse than the Kalam cosmological argument; it fails for the same reasons the Kalam cosmological argument fails and more. It is so bad, that even William Lane Craig was reluctant to touch it at first.

You still haven’t even watched that video yet, have you? Your reluctance here is not surprising though, given your ignorance of just how thoroughly these arguments have been debunked. They worked fine hundreds of years ago, but we know a heck of a lot more about causation now.

As for C Stephen Evans, lets take a look at his arguments, shall we?

<<Natural signs certainly seem to exist that lead people to believe in God.>>

Even if there were aspects of nature that lead people to believe in god, that wouldn’t say anything about the truth of those beliefs; just that it lead them to believe in a god. Not only that, but to assume a god is to give up. It’s laziness. God is only ever inserted as a way of easing our discomfort of not knowing everything and doing so is fallacious.

Continued...
Posted by AJ Philips, Monday, 14 February 2011 11:12:58 AM
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...Continued

<<They provide widely accessible signs that point to God, yet they are easily resistible...>>

Easily resistible because they are based on a combination of excessive credulity and an ignorance towards science.

<<...which is exactly what one would expect to see if there is a God who exists and makes it possible to hold some sort of natural knowledge of him:>>

So what would a universe look like if it wasn’t created by a god and how do you know how to tell the difference if everything we see is ‘created’?

Basically C Stephan Evans is alluding to the fine tuning argument here, which is fallacious since it assumes that we have sufficient knowledge to determine that there could not have possibly been any other cause. It is a god-of-the-gaps fallacy.

<<Cosmic Wonder, beneficial order and the moral realm/moral awareness.>>

I think I’ve covered the “cosmic wonder” and “beneficial order” sufficiently for now, but as for morality, we have very good naturalistic explanations as to how it’s come about. Besides which, I had already explained why Christianity is immoral earlier, so I fail to see how Christianity could ever be a good explanation as to where we get our morals from.

These are not reasons to believe that the universe makes more sense in a theistic framework.

<<You waved off my claim that theism accounts for many facts better than naturalism...>>

No, I did not.

I provided reasoning as to why you were wrong by pointing out that everything that has been attributed to gods has eventually been found to have natural explanations.

<<and you completely missed my point about extraordinary evidence.>>

No, I did not.

You claimed that the fact that extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence is “over-simplistic” because one’s prior assumptions can vary what is considered “extraordinary”. So I then explained why it doesn’t matter what our assumptions are when gauging what is “extraordinary”; only what we “know” counts.

Continued...
Posted by AJ Philips, Monday, 14 February 2011 11:13:03 AM
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...Continued

Now that I’ve covered those, I should also point out that to imply that my lack of response to these points of yours was deliberate by claiming that I “ignored” them, is totally dishonest. Perhaps it is me who should be questioning your seriousness?

<<Either way, as I said, I distinctly get the impression that your approach to these kind of discussions is not conducive to fruitful dialogue.>>

Your claim that this discussion hasn’t been “fruitful” is discredited by how much we’ve established. To you, “fruitful dialogue” just seems to be any dialogue that doesn’t drag you our of your comfort zone. Here’s just a short list off the top of my head of what we’ve established:

-The cosmological arguments don’t work;
-Extraordinary claims do in fact require extraordinary evidence;
-There is no credible evidence for a miracle performing Jesus.
-There are no arguments for the existence of god that are not fallacious.

I respond with lengthy, thorough responses, covering a wide range of topics and yet you have the gall to question my seriousness. People who are not serious tend to give short sharp and often largely irrelevant responses.

<<Thus, the valuable and (at the moment) scarce resource called time is too valuable to spend with someone who garners that impression in me.>>

I know you would truly like to believe this, Trav, but the plain fact is that you have not sufficient given reason to show this to be the case. You are simply clamming up because my arguments drag you out of your comfort zone and now you need a reason to get out quick.

That’s the trouble with debating a former Christian: I am all to familiar with these tactics and can spot them a mile away.

Self-deception is rife amongst the religious, but you take it to a whole new level with your claims that I ignore your best arguments, continually miss your points and your attempt to divert attention from the fact that your arguments don’t hold by making me and my credibility the issue.
Posted by AJ Philips, Monday, 14 February 2011 11:13:07 AM
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AJ,

Continually trying your hand with psycho-analysis achieves nothing.

“The plain fact” is that unless you know me personally or have some means of knowing details of my personal life you have absolutely no way of knowing how scarce my time is right now! This is yet another perfect example of the arrogance I was referring to in my previous posts.

I am not “clamming up”- like most Christians, I don’t even actually claim that my position is primarily even based on syllogistic style arguments and I do not believe that the majority of atheists views are primarily based on arguments either. I simply hold that there ARE some arguments that a rational person could hold which provide strong support for a Christian worldview. That is all. AJ, once again: Do not attribute to me, or assume that I hold views that you do not know that I hold and do not assume to have knowledge that you do not have!

The problem with you being a former Christian is not that you can spot anything a mile away, it is that you have become so certain of your own position that you blind yourself with your own arrogance without even realizing it.

(continued)
Posted by Trav, Monday, 14 February 2011 12:57:41 PM
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One last comment: If it weren’t for my lack of time (I am posting this on my lunch break- and have virtually full time commitments, day and night till Sunday afternoon so I can 100% guarantee this will be my last post): This medium of communication has simply proven to be untenable- your responses to my brief sketch of C Stephen Evans completely misunderstand his arguments (they are nothing like fine tuning arguments!), but admittedly that was mostly my fault as I didn’t lay them out in enough detail to allow you to grasp them.

This type of forum would work if we agreed to both argue ONE point, for example “Is the Kalam argument reasonable?” or “Should we expect that theistic evidences will be easily resistable?. But given the way our discussion has run, there are too many misunderstandings and generalizations. This is not primarily anyone’s fault- it’s mostly a result of the format.

Cheers, all the best
Posted by Trav, Monday, 14 February 2011 12:57:51 PM
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