Comments on: Followup to yesterday’s post

By: Whose Miracle? « Evaluating Christianity

Whose Miracle? « Evaluating Christianity — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:04:49 +0000

[...] at 10:04 am by Andrew Over at Evangelical Realism (a great site), Deacon Duncan poses a great question to theists that seems a propos of the recent elf-discussions here: [A] guy is suddenly decapitated and lies [...]

By: cl

cl — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:21:36 +0000

DD, In response to your first paragraph, of course we have a problem because you've just introduced a half-dozen confounders.

In response to his first claim, I would have to disagree. One isolated anecdote is not sufficient justification for leaving the null hypothesis in favor of Buddhism or magic-veggie-burgerism. There’s just not enough information there.

I agree there is not enough information to conclude anything positively and I've always attempted to keep that distinction visible. In fact your sentiments here directly echo many of mine in the post I just wrote today. However, there is enough information to warrant further consideration, and the totality of information we have supports leaving the NULL position - and leaving the NULL position does not mean we necessarily believe Buddha is God.

By: R. C. Moore

R. C. Moore — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:24:19 +0000

“Let’s suppose that every time you pray to Buddha, you get healed, up to and including decapitation. Or let’s say it isn’t every time, but a lot of the time, and let’s say there’s a pattern to when you get healed and when you don’t.”

I agree with this, though I would rephrase to meet my usual definition. We start with the hypothesis that praying to Buddha will heal decapitation. We create a protocol to test this, one that should give the same result to all independent observers, with a predetermined statistical variation.

If we obtain a statistically significant result, over repeated executions of the protocol by independent observers, we have successfully separated fact from fiction. This may mean acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis. If accepted, we have also established that this is a natural phenomena.

What if we collect the data, and we do not get any repeatable result at all, but are still left with the fact that heads are now reattached? What if we are unable to create a protocol that produces any result? That would be an interesting state of affairs!

By: Parker

Parker — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:53:14 +0000

Just to respond to your last paragraph;
I went to a baby-sitter as a kid when my mom and dad were both at work. After watching her soaps (ugh) she’d flip the channel to some children’s religious programming. Now, along with making me fear my death and the end of the world and all of the torments of hell, it also left me wondering; where the hell is god today?
It seemed like he was at his peak back 2000 years ago,healing people, consuming towns, plaguing the earth etc. etc. And now, no one’s heard from the guy. People claim they hear him, but from the stories of the old and new testament (illustrated so wonderfully by the eerily life-like cartoons) we would KNOW if he were to contact us. He would do something big, and then throw in a snappy one-liner as to why (god’s a funny shit). It’s just not like that. I asked a sunday school teacher I had about this, and he claimed that ‘god was finished with his work here on earth’ and so then I asked why people were still claiming to talk to him/receive messages from him (like my doomsday preaching pastor circa dec 1999). He then backtracked and said that God still needed to talk to a few individuals so they could deliver his message. Then I wondered why God couldn’t just do it himself. Long story short, that God doesn’t exist.
Monday Funday!
Cheers to all!