Reply #71: It's all kind of unraveling for you, isn't it? [View All]

[Selwynn]

I take it you do at least have a problem with Christian Scientists who withhold medical care from their children, right? Exactly what do you base your objection so such practices upon? You're saying that science is adequate or suitable for disproving that kind of prayer, but not your kind of prayer. About all I can tell is that you view prayer as some sort of variation on meditation. Prayer ranging from meditation to faith healing is really just a continuum. You're picking some arbitrary line in the middle, I'm discounting it all until proven. I don't see why I need to defend my position (bunk until shown otherwise), but where you draw the line raises a lot of questions.


You are really starting to unravel my friend. Now I want you to pay very careful attention, because more and more when I respond to you, I have to continually come back and remind you that I’ve never said the things you accuse me of saying, and more in more you only reveal publicly how deeply you were pre-biased towards anything I might say. You assumed I was just another “anti-science” person by your own admission, and I imagine you thought you’d come in make easy work of a person with a silly point of view, all the while looking good yourself while doing it. But at every turn you’ve been thwarted and had to backtrack. Saying things like, “Oh I guess I assumed this and if that was in error, I’m sorry,” or “oh, well if you’re not saying this then you must be saying this…no you’re not saying that either, well hmm.”

I never said that science is adequate or suitable for disproving one kind of prayer but not other. I never – not one time, NOT ONE TIME – said that science was not able to prove or disprove “prayer.” What I said is that this particular experiment, while still leaving some questions as to method open in my mind, does at best have a limited aim, by its own admission which is the investigate the significance if any prayer has on people’s health. A scientific study that shows eating carrots does not significantly decrease your chance of getting cancer does nothing to prove or disprove whether or not carrots are good for you. They may be good for you. The just don’t decrease the risk of cancer.

“About all I can tell you of your view of prayer” – about all you can tell me of my view of prayer is precisely nothing because I have refused to explain it to you, because it is completely irrelevant to the argument here. The argument here is about two things: the limits of this particular study, and the fact that the fullness of our lives is not created by science alone, but science, philosophy and the arts are all needed for a healthy understanding and experience of the world in which we live. That’s it. I am not making an argument “for” prayer under any definition. I am not saying to you, you should “pray.” My personal views on “prayer” or yours are completely irrelevant. But since you seem so mindlessly obsessed with it, I should point out that I don’t care if you consider my personal feelings on prayer arbitrary, I don’t care if you discount it until proven. I don’t care if where YOU THINK I draw the line raises a lot of questions FOR YOU.

I’m not asking you “pray” by any definition of the term, and neither am I attacking your intellect or your sophistication for not choosing “prayer” of some definition as a personal method of expression in your life.

My personal reflection, and my private quiet times of introspection are mine alone, and since I do not ask you to share them nor judge you in anyway, I feel under no obligation to explain myself to you. I’m not asking you to. I have never in this entire argument made a claim for the supernatural power of prayer, nor have I EVER indicated that I would refuse any truthful evidence of science on any matter whatsoever. It is YOU who have repeatedly tried to stuff me in a box of having an unscientific and “religious” opinion where I don’t fit. And that is what has been so frustrating to you, and ultimately made the quality of your argument suffer. This entire thread you’ve been arguing against the straw man of the person you thought I was, rather than the person I actually am, and consequently you’ve been ignoring large parts of my posts because they don’t fit in with the kind of person you wanted to argue with. I turn out to be a rational man, not an irrational “mystic.”

If I seek to call the personal time I spend reflecting on life and asking questions of myself and seeking answers in the privacy of my own quiet times away from others prayer, what is that to you? As long as I don’t argue that prayer can raise people from the dead, when there is strong and convincing evidence that this is false, or argue that prayer can cure the sick when there is overwhelming evidence that it cannot – I am not doing those things. I don’t really care if you think the time I spend thinking as I walk the streets in my town at night shouldn’t be called prayer. Who cares. I am not asking you to share my language to describe my experiences, I am not telling you to believe something that scientific evidence contradicts, I am not telling you what to do at all. My private, inner life, is my private inner life and you have no business there, except that I will say that there is nothing in my private, inner life that I believe which flies in the face of scientific observations. And I don’t really care much whether you deem it to be “arbitrary” or not. If you feel that way, but all means DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT YOURSELF. I never asked you to.



Really, everything else you say I've heard before. Essentially that cold, rational, scientific, unfeeling, etc. people like myself are missing out on the world, or that we're dangerous (your "red flag"). It's really sad, because these mischaracterizations of science are what keep people running away from it, and keep people believing in psychics, divination, and the lot. "Ooh, don't try to rationally analyze everything you cold-hearted scientist, there's plenty of room for mystery in the universe, and THIS snake oil is just one example!"


Wow. Now you are just bold-faced lying I can’t believe it. I am amazed that I have so gotten under your skin. You keep trying to paint me as something that I am not because you want to argue against something that I am not! First of all, my argument which I have stated many times at this point, is not that “scientific” people are missing out on the world. I am a “scientific” person. All the other words you added, you added to color negative emotion. I never called anyone cold, I never called anyone unfeeling. I did however, say that (hard)sciences such as astronomy, biology, physics, etc., are not the only aspect of understanding human life. Epistemology, Logic, Ontology, Ethics, Psychology, Sociology, and Art, Music, Literature, Poetry and expression are all aspects of understanding human life in the world. My argument was that a person who ignores or dismisses all most of these things, is a person who misses out on a large part of understanding and experience. If anything, my argument would be the people who wrap themselves in the guise of science without actually reflecting true scientific principles of openness and inquiry, and instead have their own personal axe to grind, miss out on a lot. Now that's a claim I will make, but even in making it, it is not my "argument." It is a possible consequence of my argument. There is a difference.

Second, and more importantly, you are deliberately lying by mischaracterizing my “red flag” comment. What were the two words right after I said “raises the red flag?” Those words were ”of skepticism. I never implied that rational thinkers and scientists were “dangerous.” I said that people with an obsessive need to claim their discipline superior to all use make me skeptical. You spun that out of your own continuous attempts to paint me in a position that I don’t hold, because it’s easier for you to look good arguing then. Right now, you look pretty bad. You owe me an apology for deliberately misrepresenting my comment on the “red flag of skepticism” and instead saying only “red flag” and implying that it meant I was saying you were “dangerous.” You also owe me an apology for deliberately misrepresenting the primary point of my argument after I have stated my argument repeatedly in crystal clear terms.

So here it is for a third time:

My argument is: I think it is the hallmark of foolishness to argue that (hard sciences) and (hard sciences) alone is the only true and appropriate tool for telling everything that needs to be told about the world in which we exist, and disparage philosophy or the arts as trivial and really unable to shed any relevant insight into the reality of "being" (ontologically speaking) within the framework of Being, i.e. existing in existence - a subject which is every bit as much related to understanding the universe as anything else - and probably much more personally so.

My further argument, or I should say a stipulation to my argument is: I also, very strongly believe it is utter foolishness to argue that philosophy or the arts alone are the only true or important tools for saying everything that needs to be said about the world, and thus disparage, criticize or mock (hard sciences) as trivial or misguided.

Nothing in my argument calls rational men dangerous. I am a rational man, a man who embraces the scientific method, as well as to tools of logic for critical reasoning and argumentation. And my argument is not that such men are cold and heartless, for I am one of them. But my argument is that to ignore or talk condescendingly about the contributions of philosophy and the arts to our understanding of our lives is shortsighted and unfortunate. It is not a person who values truth who is “sad” or “missing out. It is the person who does not appreciate truth in all forms who is missing out on much.


But just because I know that the colorful patterns in a sunset are caused by the refraction of light doesn't mean I can't appreciate the beauty of it. I just don't feel the need to assign that beauty, or the experience of that beauty, a separate existence. It's entirely a construct of my mind, which must obey the physical laws of the universe.


And I never said otherwise. I never said that the experience of beauty should be assigned a separate existence, and I certainly never said your experience of beauty did not need to obey the laws of the universe.  What I said was:

“I think it is the hallmark of foolishness to argue that (hard sciences) and (hard sciences) alone is the only true and appropriate tool for telling everything that needs to be told about the world in which we exist, and disparage philosophy or the arts as trivial and really unable to shed any relevant insight into the reality of "being" (ontologically speaking) within the framework of Being, i.e. existing in existence - a subject which is every bit as much related to understanding the universe as anything else - and probably much more personally so. “


So, what we have is that your different definition of prayer makes it immune to the conclusions reached in this particular study. However, there are probably billions of people on this planet who DO view prayer as being able to bring about supernatural influence in the world. They, of course, will reject ANY data that contradicts their beliefs. (The old "mysterious ways" defense mechanism.) Mainly because they have a similar attitude and opinion on the subject of science as you do - that it's limited and flawed when trying to analyze certain things. And so that's why I believe this study was a waste. It will never convince the "true believers" that prayer is useless, and it only reinforces what the rest of us already knew.


Are you saying that there are no limits to science? Science knows everything right? Gosh I hope that’s true because I have a lot of questions I’ve been dying to have answered! Oh wait, no, of course you’re not saying that. There are in facts limits to scientific understanding as we are still discovering the great complexities of the universe. My personal understanding of prayer doesn’t make it immune to anything. I will take the findings of this study, and say that I agree that evidence seems to indicate that prayer does not create supernatural power to heal the sick. I will agree with that, as it seems a most reasonable conclusion. What more do you expect?

One again, you say “prayer is useless” – I asked you to define “doesn’t work” last time, and you declined. Now I ask you to define “useless.” You what you have my friend, you have an aggressive anti-faith point of view. Maybe you were abused by religious people, or picked on for being different, I don’t know. But you are actually the one misusing science. You are making claims like “the rest of us already know prayer is useless” but you a) don’t agree on what a definition of prayer is b) don’t define what useless is c) don’t have the weight of scientific evidence to support that broad claim – you’re the one acting irrationally. The most truthful and honest thing a REAL man of science could say would be something from a position of far less bias. Something like, “well of course as part of the limits of the scientific method, we certainly can’t prove to you that prayer does literally nothing. All we can tell you is that there is considerable evidence to indicate that prayer doesn’t seem to do a some things it has been claimed to do in the past – here’s what we’ve found.”

You sound far less rational, and far less a “man of science” when you are jumping around saying “prayer doesn’t work! Prayer is uselessness! Prayer totally fails! See See! “Everyone” knows its true!” There is a big difference between saying “I’ve seen no compelling evidence to suggest that prayer does anything useful” and saying “prayer doesn’t do anything useful, and if you suggest that it does, rather than looking at your evidence, I will just attack you, mock you, and scoff at you standing my hind my own dogmatic assertion that you are wrong without investigation of your claim.”

When someone else says, “well I have seen compelling evidence that prayer does some useful things,” a real man of science and rationality would say, “show me that evidence, while I listen and weight out its veracity.” He would not say, “well, you only think that because you’re a ignorant, anti-faith, mystic and beneath me” without even looking to see whether the evidence was compelling or not. And it is that latter kind of attitude that disgusts me. It is anti-intelligent, anti-scientific and anti-rational. And in this thread, guess what, YOU are guilty of it. There is no greater example of a person who came in with a personal agenda and pre-conceived ideas not looking for evidence or truthfulness, than your activity in this thread. And if you were in fact a man of rationality and science, who cared more about the truth and factuality than fictions or bias, you’d apologize for your numerous misrepresentations of my position.


Ultimately, in human society, we need some sort of mechanism that we can use to resolve a disagreement. I assert this mechanism MUST be science over all others. War? Naw, that's the neocon's choice. Religious revelation? Puh-lease. Philosophy? Yeah, get two philosophers to agree on something. Art? Poetry? Dream on. Science is superior to all the rest, and you can go ahead and call me dangerous because I think that. I'm sure it won't be the last time I hear it.


Well once again, I never called you dangerous. But it sounds like you really want to be called that which is why you keep lying about what I said. Here’s my quote: “To me, to idolize one discipline so much that one needs to claim it superior to everything else is the first thing that raises the red flag of skepticism in my mind.” I am skeptical of people who claim superiority. It has nothing to do with danger, but if it helps you to feel like a wild, and adventurous rebel without a cause, you can keep misrepresenting what I said I guess.

There is another alternative answer to your question of how we can resolve disagreement. It is the alternative that I have been suggestion since the very beginning. The alternative is this: science is not superior. But it is also an essential component. The mechanism for true understanding, would be individuals who are learned philosophers, committed scientists, and friends of the arts. They are the ones most qualified to resolve disagreements. The person, who is a committed scientist but critical and combative towards learned philosophers and not a friend of the arts, is not much of a man. Likewise the person who is a learned philosopher but critical and combative towards hard sciences and not a friend of the arts is not much of a man. There now you can say that I implied you were not much of a man if you want, but not that I said you were “dangerous.”

Basically, I believe the same philosophy which is behind a liberal arts education, and that is that a well rounded person is the person who is truly wise, and truly ready to understand himself or herself and the world about. Liberal Arts doesn’t just teach science and mathematics. Science may tell us things about the world, but literature, philosophy, history, sociology, music and art tell us things about our experience of place in the world – which is equally critical to the clearest understanding of existence. One is not superior to the other, and ALL are needed.

I guess our biggest difference, is that I who am a degreed philosopher, have no problem acknowledging that Philosophy is not superior to everything else. I’m not insecure; acknowledging that truth doesn’t make Philosophy any less meaningful or important. It is still a necessary and complimentary discipline to other disciplines. You however, seem to have this desperate need to establish your field (is it even your field? What do you do for a living, by the way? Are you degreed?) as superior to everything else. When someone says “what I do is better than everything else” I immediately become skeptical.

I am a man who believes in the principles of critical thinking, rational thought, conjecture and refutation (which is the hallmark of the scientific method.) And the lines between “science” and “everything else” are not nearly so polarized as you would have them be. The only reason you see it that way, is because you seem to be on a crusade against the fringe fanatics of life who hold clearly untenable views. Well, have fun with that.  I mean if you want to spend your whole life on a crusade against crazy religious fundamentalists who believe God miraculously heals people, then have fun. But you picked the fight with me, and discovered too late that I am not one of them, and now your false assumptions and mischaracterizations of my true argument are being brought to light.