Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Ringman
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by Ringman

Again you are wrong. I am showing you you constantly depend on faith. What evidence to you have for something from nothing? Your faith!


Rich, I will not attack your faith. But will explain mine in similar terms.
You believe God is eternal and omnipresent. You know not from whence God came, nor do you care. Correct??

I believe in conservation of matter and energy. I know not where the matter/energy of the universe came from. I know only that it exists.

Our faith is actually quite comparable.


You are mistaken. I know Infinite Intelligent Energy had no beginning. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and be omnipresent. All matter and energy come from Him. He created conservation of energy AND entropy.



You don't know any such thing. You appear to be conflating knowledge with faith.

Nor is it a solution to propose an even more complex assumption, a God (whatever that is), as an explanation for a vast and complex universe.



Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Tarquin
Originally Posted by DBT
Chuck should publish his thesis for peer review...oh, that's right, he's an evangelist spruiking faith, not an astrophysist.

A community service provided for the sake of balance. smile

I've not seen the video. I only want to point out making "peer review" the arbiter of truth is to employ a logical fallacy---an appeal to authority. A scientific proposition is either true or not based on its predicate facts, premises and conclusions, not because it has been approved by someone or some group of thinkers. That's very sloppy thinking.


It's not an appeal to authority to have someone knowledgeable in the field to review your work in order to pick up any flaws or mistakes.

That is what makes science the most successful method of discovery in the history of humankind.

And the absence and discouragement of questioning is what makes religion and faith the worst, dogma, contradictions, resentment of questioning, etc.


It most assuredly is an appeal to authority when you imply that the only way to establish the truth of a postulate is to have others learned in the field confirm its truth. Your preferred mechanism for achieving that is "peer review" (since you faulted the video initiating this thread on the basis of a lack of peer review rather than attacking its facts and logic) but truth is not established by the consensus opinion of experts. That is indeed a fallacy---an appeal to authority. It is certainly possible the experts will arrive at the correct conclusion but often, they do not (witness global warming/cooling/the food pyramid, etc.). That however, is quite beside the point, the truth isn't so because consensus of experts declare it thus, but because the factual predicates, premises and conclusions of any proposition under consideration are themselves demonstrably true. This happy outcome is is not something established by a consensus of experts. If some experts ultimately arrive at the truth, it is on the same basis as everyone else, not on the basis of them constituting a "group of experts" specially endowed by virtue of education or training to decide what is truye. It is certainly true that reason and the ability of a postulate to be falsified have contributed mightily to the discovery of truth, but all of that is predicated on the premise that the mind is free to apprehend truth. This is something virtually all religions agree with but which the philosophy of materialism (your a priori metaphysical commitment) denies.

Last edited by Tarquin; 01/26/20.
Tarquin