I've heard of selective hearing, but selective logic? I can't make an inference about an ant's experience using human perspective, but I can make exclusively human-isc conclusions about the origins of the universe. Get out of here...

What it sounds like you're trying to say here is that all human ideas are human-centric. Which I guess you can claim is a true statement. But the implication of that position is that you're undermining all of human experience, because we have no experiences other than human experiences, hence they're necessarily human-centric.

This goes far beyond what I was claiming, and you're welcome to take that position. But I don't think that's the position you're actually trying to stake out.

I'll point out that my position includes literally quoting a scientist making a claim based on scientific observation that supports the position I took. So I'm unclear as to what you would find objectionable about that.

I'll also point out that the structure of the claims are quite different. One is "I experience X as a human, so if I observe Y that reminds me of X, I conclude that Y is also X." The ant is behaving in a manner that can be interpreted as pain, and therefore the ant must be in pain and is experiencing pain in the way that we experience it. There's a big hole in the logic. This is clearly a projection of our experience onto a situation.

However, we can make a claim about the universe, such as "gravity exists between all massive objects" (which includes massive objects that we may not have any experience with), and it's not a human projection in the same way that the first one is.

That's not what I'm saying. You said, "Your reaction can easily be interpreted as you projecting your own experiences onto the ant...So whatever "pain" you're reading into this is probably wrong. This doesn't say that they do not feel pain, but rather choosing to insert your human experience into the ant's experience is probably not yielding anything true about the universe."

What you're refusing to acknowledge is that Christians insert their own human experiences in trying to understand god. You tell me why it's "probably wrong" to suggest ants feel pain, but it's not wrong to authoritatively conclude that a god, assuming one exists, feels human emotions such as love, empathy, jealousy, anger etc, and why he essentially created the entire universe obsessing over human morality.

And what's special about the article? It doesn't conclude anything (because it can't). And the "Sims/robot programming" argument is nonsense because they're not sentient, so obviously they don't feel pain.

Thanks for the clarification. That description makes more sense than the other one.

Simply put, I don't know why Christians would make that claim. The "emotions" that God have are unlikely to be quite what we experience. Among other things, there would be a distinctive theological position that whatever our emotional experiences are have been tainted by sin, whereas God (being sinless) would not have that. So there should already be a distinctive "otherness" to whatever it is that God experiences.

So when someone refers to "God's anger" they should not actually be saying that "God is experiencing anger in the way we feel anger" but rather that "the best way we can approximate whatever 'emotion' God is exhibiting is the word anger."

The statement about "obsessing" over human morality, however, hints at precisely the type of thing that you just accused me of. I think what's happening here is that you're demonstrating that our ability to describe behaviors is limited to our language, but just because we use that language does not imply that we're claiming something about the "experience" of that. Compare how this stands relative to trying to assert specifically that ants feel pain in a particular way because they move in a particular way.

(As far as "authority" goes, I'm not going to defend everything Christians say and do or how they say and do things. Let them claim things with "authority" of God's experience of emotion and accept it as much as you might accept bluto claims to be an authority about how ants feel.)

That's not what I said. I didn't say that they *don't* feel pain. But whatever pain they might feel is highly unlikely to be what we experience. Why? The neurology of human emotion plays into how we understand and interpret our emotions. But ants seemingly don't have such a complex neurological system, so it is unreasonable that they would experience pain the way we do. The other poster basically made the claim that the physical motions show that it is in pain and negated that. You seem to be affirming both myself and the scientist I quoted.

And as far as sentience goes, I think you're assuming your conclusion.

Hearing you mention bees made me think of this thing I read a few months ago, found it pretty interesting and seems relevant.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...ke-to-be-a-bee

That may be your personal belief or interpretation, but I don't think the same holds true for most Christians. Does the Bible have a footnote about God's emotions?

Accused you of what? Being cruel to insects? If so, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say regarding human morality. What I was saying is that humans are insignificant in the context of vastness of the universe's space and time. We arrived a mere second ago, may not live to next, and live in a mere spec of the universe. Even if we colonize the Milky Way at some non-trivial fraction of the speed of light, we would still be insignificant. And yet, there are numerous Biblical scriptures depicting God, the creator of the universe, as a man with human emotions who obsesses (i.e. who's main focus is) human morality. That's a very human-centric perspective of the creator the universe.

I hope that clarifies what I meant by "obsesses". But even then so, condemning someone to an eternity of hell and suggesting ants feel pain are not the same degree of "obsession" imo.

It's not scientifically proven whether ants experience pain or not. Until scientists prove or offer enough evidence to suggest they don't, it'll remain my personal belief that they do. On the other hand, there is ample of evidence disproving the central tenets Christianity makes, so your comparison is flawed. I also find it interesting that you, as a Christian, can embrace science when it's convenient, yet dismiss it when it challenges your views.

Okay. But to be absolutely clear, you're taking a position that science does not explicitly endorse, and you're saying "Well... it's my personal belief."

Please state "the central tenets Christianity makes." I'm not even sure how to interpret that sequence of words.

Interestingly, as a non-Christian, your statement above shows you're doing precisely that which you've accused me of. You are clearly not embracing science. Science shows that there's insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion. And yet you don't embrace that unknown that science is presenting you, and take a scientifically unwarranted position.

You seem to enjoy making silly comparisons. Until science offers enough evidence for or against a hypothesis, you're open to speculate whether or not is true, e.g. Einstein believing that the universe is static until Hubble showed that it's expanding, or speculating whether or not life exists on other planets. Compare this to Christianity denying well established scientific theories and facts, e.g. evolution, Earth's age etc.

This is just the kind of broad-brushing one hears from people who don't know what they're talking about. Many Christians believe in both evolution and in an old Earth. I personally deny both old Earth and (macro)evolution, but many of my brothers and sisters in Christ affirm both those things. Broad-brushing any large group is usually a bad idea and invariably makes it more difficult for a discussion to move forward.

I obviously can't speak for Aaron, but I don't believe he rejects any scientific theories or facts that are affirmed by the vast majority of scientists. That's my job.

You seemed to have missed the point. My point was believing that ants feel pain is not the same as denying well-established scientific facts and theories, which most regular church goers do. I'm not singling out Aarons' beliefs.

Please quote your source for the claim that "most regular church goers deny scientific facts and established theories"

There are plenty of Christians who accept evolution and the scientifically estimated age of the universe. I'm not sure how you would claim that "Christianity" denies these things.

Poll from 2014:




Source:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/...n-origins.aspx

Thanks for the link!

As a Macro-Evolution "denier", I'm pleasantly surprised by the data.

You do raise an interesting question. If scientists believe a particular claim, do you then say that "science" makes the claim? For example, there was a time at which the state-of-the-art in scientific thought was that life happened spontaneously. Does that equate to "science once said" that such-and-such was true? I would tend to think not.

I find it interesting that you pointed to the 2014 data set when there's a more recent data set that highlights a significant shift:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/...s-new-low.aspx

I will also point out that this is a survey of American Christians only. Globally (because Christianity is not a US-only religion), Christians do not generally agree with the creationist perspective.

So I think that on multiple levels, your claim is of questionable validity.

That's the beauty and the whole point of science. It's dynamic, improving with technology, and open to correction, religion is not. I'm sure there are plenty of things in quantum mechanics today that will revised 100 years from now, but today's quantum mechanics is the best we can currently understand the subatomic world.


Weekly church goers went from to 24/1/69 to 28/1/65. That's suppose to be a significant shift? Ok..

Multiple levels? Ok..

You forgot my claim. My claim was that believing in something where is no significant scientific evidence for or against, e.g. believing insects feel pain, is not comparable to denying longstanding scientific theories. This was the false comparison that you were attempting to draw on me.

And for the record, evolution is not the same intelligent design or "God-guided" evolution. Intelligent design is a religion of its own. You cannot include intelligent-design Christians as evolution-accepting Christians, in case you were thinking that.

Where are you from? I live in US, and when I associate with Christians, they're American Christians. That's the context of the conversation. I don't care about Christians in France or Libya. But you're welcome to cite a source. The US has the most Christians, and it's skewed, i.e. the US has over 2x more Christians than the 3rd most Christian nation. And among the top 10 countries with the most Christians, 6 are 3rd world countries, so it wouldn't be a surprise if these 6/10 countries are bias against evolution.

I respect Christians that embrace science, but are they really Christians then? If you're educated enough to be able to dismiss countless parts of the Bible as utter bullshit, are you still a Christian then?

1. I believe China has the most professing Christians now.

2. Why don't ID people who believe in evolution count as believing in evolution?

Edit: I'm a Christian and I am also pro-science. And so is PhD astrophysicist Jason Lisle.

Another edit: This continual Broadbrushing is getting annoying.

Notice how you didn't actually answer the question. Why would that be?

If a 15% increase in four years doesn't seem significant to you, it's probably because you know little about demographic changes.

Yes, you did make that claim. But you also said this:

And this is what is being criticized. You have described Christianity in particular terms, and so we're looking into that to see whether such a framing is even true to reality.

Oh, so you mean you're ignoring the data that works against your position? Okay. That seems totally legitimate from an intellectual honesty perspective.

Wikipedia seems to be what you used, so I'll also use it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country

There are 230 million Christians in the United States. But there are about 2.5 BILLION Christians in the world. So you're kind of missing about 90% of the world population of Christians. This is kind of like saying that you know what Texans are like, and then extrapolating to all Americans. It's not a reasonable way to do things.

Tell me what you think is theologically required for one to be a Christian. From that, we ought to be able to reasonably conclude (based on your definition) the answers to your questions.

Source? Pretty sure it is the US by a lot.

"Evolution" is often taken as shorthand for evolution by natural selection, which ID denies (or at least views as radically incomplete).

Everyone says they are pro-science, but the creationism movement is in my experience anti-science as science is actually practiced today. Most of the creationists I know or who I've read claim that modern science is wrong in its basic assumptions and also that there is something like a conspiracy among scientists to overinflate the evidence for evolution.

You are correct, the U.S. has by far the most professing Christians. I'm going to fire my fact checker asap.

Why would what be? Why science is always improving? Because there's always new knowledge to be acquired or built on. It doesn't claim to know everything like religion does. Religion follows science once religious folk began to realize how stupid and backward it is to believe that Earth is the center of the universe or that the Earth was created in a matter of days.


Are you serious? With a 4% margin of interest, no, there's no significant change. Seems like you know absolutely nothing about sampling or statistics.


And we're suppose to take your word that most Christians accept evolution? Just cite a source already. Note that intelligent design does not count as evolution. Impress me.

Why would it be that you continue to not answer the questions that were asked? You can identify them from the paragraph you quoted by locating the question marks.

Let's say that there's a survey with a +-4% margin of error (95% confidence) and that was sampled once and something was measured at x%. Later on, it was sampled again and it was measured at (x+4)%. Compute the probability that the mean of the second sample is less than or equal to the mean of the first sample. That will tell you the probability that there is a shift in a particular direction.

Now, we may quibble over what "significant" actually means here, as that's something that's not well-defined. But are you going to tell me that a 4.01% shift is "significant" because it falls outside of the margin of error, but that a 4% is not significant because it doesn't?

Show me where I made that claim. I want you to be clear about my position, because I sense that you may choose to interpret it in a way that is favorable to you once you discover the data.

I thought I did, just re-ask. I'm not here to play games.


Strike 2. Seriously, stop pretending like you know anything about stats. The standard deviation of the difference of two averages is not the same as the standard deviation of either averages. I have feeling this went over your head, but I'm not going to bother explaining high school statistics to you. But you're probably going to try to argue it anyway, so I foresee a strikeout!

Even if you knew this fact, it's laughable that you cite as a "15% increase". If the middle column "Human evolved without God" went from 1% to 1.5%, I'm sure you'd exclaim, "Look at this 50% increase baby! Christians do science!". Put this on RGT's Wall of Comedy.

And btw, June 2014 and May 2017 is 3 years apart, not 4. Are you going to argue this calculation too?

Were you not challenging my claim that most regular church-going Christians do not accept evolution? You then claimed:

I showed you data regarding American Christians. You dismissed the data as it only reflected American Christians. So now I'm asking you for data that shows "plenty of Christians who accept evolution". And again, intelligent design does not count, flat and simple (sorry, but thanks for trying!).

Here were my questions:

Your reply was "science changes" which does not actually answer the questions. The emphasis is clearly on whether "science" is making claims as if it is an anthropomorphized being that is making statements.

While we're at it, here's another prompt that you have chosen to ignore:

Based on the fact that you are unwilling to answer the clear questions, and that you're too lazy to actually look up something suggests that you are interested in playing games.

Go ahead and make your argument. Here's the framing: Given two observations and a shift in their means, one can estimate the probability that the measured mean has shifted simply due to random variations in the sampling and not an underlying shift in the population. Show your work.

You're welcome to speculate about things that didn't happen. "If X happened, you would have been sooooooo stupid as to do Y. This is hilarious! You did Y! Let's memorialize this thing that never happened!"

LOL

Meh. Memory error.

Are you reading the words on your screen, or just glossing over everything?

And you said:

Do you really not see the difference? Are you that dishonest?