OzSpen: Could your world view be somewhat blinkered?

I'll reply to this in detail over the weekend since I haven't the time now. Also I've only got this and another post left today on this thread (4 post limit) and don't have enough room here.

But as an prelude: There are two issues I'll deal with:

One is further details about how science is a methodology for showing that a human made description about the workings of the universe is false*. Especially how it deals with conflicting results which is relevant to your last post to me.

The second is my thinking on the science v's god issue. But before this I would like to know what "god" is to you (eg: how would you define the term?) You may have noticed that so far I've said nothing about any god(s).

*[the scientific method never "proves" a description is exact and complete it just offers evidence for it (ie: it never asserts that a theory of science is an absolute truth about the universe). But it does provide a way to falsify such a description.]

I've read worse essays on OLO but not often. It actually surprises me that management has wasted such effort on a work from a clearly biased source with a perverted agendum.

The work itself is disjointed and grossly irrelevant in certain places, relying on said irrelevancies to inflame the reader at the expense of informing the message.

Generally, the arguing points or explanations are so weakly stated and so incompetently supported that composing a refutation and/or counter-argument brings to mind a question of the wisdom of engaging in a confrontation of wits with an unarmed opponent.

It gives one pause to reflect on the quality of a dissertation that earned a PhD coming from the same mind that produced this article. It would be informative, to say the least, in forming an opinion of the author, if we could learn what field of scholarship gave rise to said PhD. A word or two about his research interests will be of value as well...........if he would kindly oblige us. Presented with a polite request, I'd be happy to reciprocate.

Radio Free Asia is a USA-funded propaganda mill created in the 50s by the CIA . It was elevated from obscurity by Bill Clinton and now broadcasts by satellite to the communist and socialist nations of SE Asia. Distinguished by their absence from the list of RFA target nations are Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The Brookings Institute's Catharin Dalpino (who had worked for Clinton as a news media advisor) declared RFA to be a waste of money. Dalpino said she has reviewed scripts of Radio Free Asia's broadcasts and views the station's reporting as unbalanced, that they lean very heavily on reports by and about dissidents in exile and doesn't sound like reporting about what's going on in a country. Often, she observed, it reads like a textbook on democracy and even to an American it's rather propagandistic.

thinkabit,

Please don't spend time discussing your view of science because that is not the topic of my article. I will not respond to anything you write about science.

<<The second is my thinking on the science v's god issue. But before this I would like to know what "god" is to you (eg: how would you define the term?) You may have noticed that so far I've said nothing about any god(s).>>

The Almighty God (Yahweh) is the self-existent, eternal, living, personal God (Exodus 3:13-15), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3%3A13-15&version=NIVUK

He not only created the universe (Genesis 1 & 2) but also sustains it (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:17). Your and my next breath would not happen without the sustaining power of the Lord God.

He is the 'blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords' (1 Timothy 6:15), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Tim+6%3A15&version=NIVUK

He is the Ultimate Judge: 'In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead’ (Acts 17:30-31), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17%3A30-31&version=NIVUK

Jesus the Lord is returning, 'But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare (2 Peter 3:10), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Peter+3%3A10&version=NIVUK

Dear Ozpen,

You say to thinkabit;

“Please don't spend time discussing your view of science because that is not the topic of my article. I will not respond to anything you write about science.”

Yet in your own posts you have used the term on more than one occasion.

“Jesus' resurrection is based on historical science that leads to a reliable New Testament document”

“I accept the FACT God exists based entirely on the evidence in the universe and the historical science of Jesus' life, death and resurrection.”

Further within your article you have claimed “Evidence provided above indicates evil began with Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden.” If you are putting forward something as evidence then readers quite rightly can measure that evidence.

You really need to stop putting barriers up to open discussion of your position. It looks and is overly defensive.

Dear NNS,

Thank you providing a more fulsome answer, albeit still guarded to a degree. Its comparison to the first admirably illustrates why the original was indeed twaddle. Further thank you for spelling out to our fallacy illiterate friend the distinction between it and ad hominem.

Now that you appear to be cognisant of the difference I'm wondering if you could bring that appreciation to bear on the following jabs from your good self;

“pegged as part of the anti Christian swarm”. Both anti-Christian and a swarm, you weren't holding back there were you. Ad hominem or attacking the argument?

You also basically called Mr Opinion arrogant, lazy and of being blinkered. How is that any less ad hominem than any of my language?
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Wednesday, 13 May 2020 11:13:25 AM

There are many people I do not use loaded language with. They largely are those who do not direct that kind of language at me or at others. There are others who use it with gay abandon and I am more than happy to do the same without anyone crying victim. What gets up my nose are those who employ it but then cry foul.

To Thinkabit.

Look at it from this perspective. What is evolution? Is it an explanation only? Or can it be tested? Can it be pressed to see if it works or not? Can you look at anything today and say evolution did this, because of a change within our lifetime?

It's virtually untestable. And in that sense it is the same as other theories from before written history. They may be good explanations but there's no way to press this kind of explanation to see if there are holes in it. Or to see if it is false.

When someone says something evolved this way or that way, there are several assumptions in place.

1) That there was a change in place. Subject A use to be subject B.
2) That the change was due to a survival trait. The most desirable traits survive and get passed on.
3) That the complex world runs by these changes and there is no design to it.

Assumptions 1 and 2, can be challenged by a few questions of whether something actually changed or not. Case in point even though evolution is a popular term to place in any theory, (such as social theories), there's no evidence that I've found that human nature has evolved. Assumption 3 is challenged by pretty much everything else I said in the previous post.

To Mr. O

There's nothing in what I've said that is against scientific observation. Instead I'm looking at the observations with the observation that God is real. What you're talking about is rationalizing an excuse to not look and see for yourself. That actually sounds farther from a scientific view then anything.

To Steele Redux.

Were you offended by the term "anti-Christian swarm?" On any given topic that brings up Christianity, or even just brushes up onto it, there is a swarm people who have to put their two cents on how and why Christianity is horrible, stupid, or otherwise derail the topic that dealt with Christianity, into a topic of pro Christian, anti-Christian. If you would like a PC term for this observation, I'm all ears, but I'm at a loss for what that term would be. As for Opinion, so far he hasn't shown that I'm wrong on my assessment. After all why else would he decide that there is no God without ever looking into it.

Do you want an apology on accurate criticisms? I don't mind if either you or Opinion accuse me of Ad hominem. That wasn't my point to aviod the very same attics that you both use regularly. But instead, if I do say anything about the person, make sure it's accurate, and relevant. I can stand up to your critisms with both reasons of my observations being relevant to the topic, and accurate in my observation.

If I'm wrong on any of those counts though, I would be delighted to be corrected on the matters.

As for my answer. I'm not sure which parts you think was guarded.