Thank's Jed I'll follow this up. Its nice to have a true scholar on the
other side of a debate.
Jed Rothwell wrote:
I forgot to mention that Pascal's argument is also a logical fallacy:
appeal to the consequences of a belief. This was defined thousands of
years before Pascal was born. All in all it was a sloppy analysis, and
Pascal -- who was a sharp thinker -- should have been ashamed of himself.
I wish that people would learn basic logic in grade school. They
should be drilled on a dozen or so common logical fallacies that have
been known for thousands of years. The subject is no harder than
addition and subtraction, and armed with this knowledge you can avoid
innumerable stupid errors. The world would be a better place for it. A
lot of political rhetoric, for example, boils down to one fallacy or
another. You can take a refresher course here:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
Wesley Bruce wrote:
I have seen people cured of the incurable.
This assertion makes no sense. If they were cured it was not
incurable, q.e.d. I think you mean that you have seen people cured
when the odds were against them. No doubt this is true, but it proves
nothing about faith because most people who are seriously ill and who
pray die anyway, and some atheists survive. Causality has long been
searched for but never found. Even the so-called placebo affect has
now been shown to be pure moonshine. Regarding the applicablity of
this to science, I suggest you read Francis Bacon, who wrote in "Novum
Organum" (1620):
"The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid
down, (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure
it affords,) forces every thing else to add fresh support and
confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may
exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them,
or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and
injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first
conclusions. It was well answered by him [Diagoras] who was shown in a
temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the peril
of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognise
the power of the gods, by an inquiry; "But where are the portraits of
those who have perished in spite of their vows?" All superstition is
much the same, whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens,
retributive judgment, or the like; in all of which the deluded
believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass
over their failure, though it be much more common. But this evil
insinuates itself still more craftily in philosophy and the sciences;
in which a settled maxim vitiates and governs every other
circumstance, though the latter be much more worthy of confidence.
Besides, even in the absence of that eagerness and want of thought,
(which we have mentioned,) it is the peculiar and perpetual error of
the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives
than by negatives, whereas it ought duly and regularly to be
impartial; nay, in establishing any true axiom, the negative instance
is the most powerful."
- Jed
