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The_Walrus
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23 Nov 2014, 6:57 am

Shep wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:
I don't believe anything you have posted is peer reviewed.
The book is peer-reviewed, but just to throw in a few more peer-reviewed sources, in MLA format:

Ray, Walter Alan. Is God Unnecessary?: Why Stephen Hawking Is Wrong According to the Laws of Physics. iUniverse, 2012.
McGettigan, Timothy. "Stephen Hawking's God: A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion." The Socjournal (2013).

Hyland, Terry. "The science delusion: freeing the spirit of enquiry." Journal of Vocational Education & Training 66.1 (2014): 107-111.

Gentry, Robert. "Creator God Rules The Universe Because Hawking Built The Big Bang On A Foundation Of Quicksand." Bulletin of the American Physical Society 59 (2014).

OK, I'm not sure you know quite what "peer-reviewed" usually means in the context you are using it. Generally, the work is submitted to a series of experts before publication. They suggest changes and the work is not published until they are happy. It is rare that this will happen with whole books - getting a series of experts to each review a chapter is more common. Neither of the books you cite thank reviewers, which is standard - otherwise how would anyone know that they were peer reviewed?

The sociology blog post you cite is riddled with errors - it spells "Mlodinow" wrong, for example, and also waffles on about discredited Freudian ideas. It's not peer reviewed - indeed, the journal has stopped being peer reviewed altogether since 2010.

Hyland is a book review, not peer reviewed primary literature. The book being reviewed is discredited (Rupert Sheldrake's The Science Delusion).

So that leaves Gentry. Again, that's not a paper, as far as I can tell. At first, I thought it was probably a letter, but no, it's a summary of a presentation. http://absimage.aps.org/image/APR14/MWS ... 000100.pdf
Of course, I did not see the presentation, but the abstract is not promising - lots of grandstanding, little of worth. The only substantial thing is the claim to have discredited redshift, but without any evidence that's useless. Again, this is not peer reviewed.

It's generally considered academic malpractice to cite something you haven't actually consumed. You certainly haven't consumed Hyland. I would be surprised if you saw the Gentry presentation, but if you did, then perhaps you can shred some light (pun not intended) on the flaws in redshift that Gentry points out.



friedmacguffins
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23 Nov 2014, 3:16 pm

No offense intended, but there is something ironic in a scientist, and particularly an Aspie, citing peer pressure as a source of moral authority.

The materialists complain about flying spaghetti monsters, yet cannot reproduce any of their most pivotal claims -- even by intelligent intervention.

In that everything in the observable world is prone toward disorder over time, it might be inferred that all order comes from a higher order, and the natural order comes from a supernatural order.



AspieOtaku
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23 Nov 2014, 3:37 pm

There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example:

God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.
None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either.
God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.
The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone.
The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God.
When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers."
Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.
And so on…

More info from http://godisimaginary.com/i14.htm


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24 Nov 2014, 12:03 am

friedmacguffins wrote:
In that everything in the observable world is prone toward disorder over time, it might be inferred that all order comes from a higher order, and the natural order comes from a supernatural order.

This is a simplistic argument which has been debunked many times. Simple but effective examples of order from disorder in nature are: plants growing from seeds and multiplying their complexity, snow flakes, stalactites, fluted sand-beds in flowing water, lightning. Wherever energy flows, you will often find it propagating order. The sun beats down on the earth, producing complex orderly weather patterns.


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The_Walrus
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24 Nov 2014, 5:25 am

friedmacguffins wrote:
No offense intended, but there is something ironic in a scientist, and particularly an Aspie, citing peer pressure as a source of moral authority.

Pardon me, but I don't believe anyone has done so.

It was the OP (evidently not a scientist) who brought up peer review and claimed to have peer reviewed literature supporting him. AspieOtaku is the only person disagreeing with him on his central claim, and hasn't attempted to cite peer reviewed literature or anything.

Peer review is distinct from peer pressure, but it's not actually a very good system. Post-publication review seems stronger. It was Shep who raised peer review, I simply pointed out that he was wrong, I am not actually arguing with his central claim that empiricism cannot actively disprove supernatural phenomena that have no effect upon the real world.

I also don't think anyone mentioned "moral authority" before you.

Quote:
In that everything in the observable world is prone toward disorder over time, it might be inferred that all order comes from a higher order, and the natural order comes from a supernatural order.

Toss a coin a thousand times and by chance you'll get five heads in a row.

There are also laws of physics other than entropy which can fight against entropy somewhat. Life is basically an exercise in fighting entropy.



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24 Nov 2014, 6:38 pm

“A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion


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AspieOtaku
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24 Nov 2014, 7:05 pm


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24 Nov 2014, 8:44 pm

The existence of "higher beings" is not even in the realm of scientific inquiry until the term is assigned a precise meaning. You might as well ask if there is scientific proof pertaining to the existence of googledygoggedies or boogles or ninnynonnies or fragglecytes.



AspieOtaku
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24 Nov 2014, 9:20 pm

National Geographic has disproven god if you chalenge National Geographic you fail and will always lose hence god has been disproven as well as other gods since christianity was made up and stolen from more primitive religions, you have lost!


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24 Nov 2014, 10:49 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:
“A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Here in Australia, we now have fibre-optic all the way to the house (for some of us). I wonder if God suffers lag or time-outs, or even 404's.... 8O


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yournamehere
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24 Nov 2014, 11:03 pm

You are the higher power. All of you. You may be smoking it too.

You are gods.
True ego driven petty tyrants.

Go prove someone else wrong, I know what you are.



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24 Nov 2014, 11:39 pm

yournamehere wrote:
You are the higher power. All of you. You may be smoking it too.

You are gods.
True ego driven petty tyrants.

Go prove someone else wrong, I know what you are.

I'm only a minor deity - god of my own life, and not very omnipotent.
The gods of politics, economics and taxes are more powerful.


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A frown is not always a frown.
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The_Walrus
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25 Nov 2014, 6:47 am

Narrator wrote:
yournamehere wrote:
You are the higher power. All of you. You may be smoking it too.

You are gods.
True ego driven petty tyrants.

Go prove someone else wrong, I know what you are.

I'm only a minor deity - god of my own life, and not very omnipotent.
The gods of politics, economics and taxes are more powerful.

"Very omnipotent"? Surely "not very powerful" or "not omnipotent"?



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25 Nov 2014, 7:34 am

The_Walrus wrote:
Narrator wrote:
yournamehere wrote:
You are the higher power. All of you. You may be smoking it too.

You are gods.
True ego driven petty tyrants.

Go prove someone else wrong, I know what you are.

I'm only a minor deity - god of my own life, and not very omnipotent.
The gods of politics, economics and taxes are more powerful.

"Very omnipotent"? Surely "not very powerful" or "not omnipotent"?

See? I can't even conjugate properly.


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I'm not blind to your facial expression - but it may take me a few minutes to comprehend it.
A smile is not always a smile.
A frown is not always a frown.
And a blank look rarely means a blank mind.


yournamehere
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25 Nov 2014, 7:51 am

Narrator wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Narrator wrote:
yournamehere wrote:
You are the higher power. All of you. You may be smoking it too.

You are gods.
True ego driven petty tyrants.

Go prove someone else wrong, I know what you are.

I'm only a minor deity - god of my own life, and not very omnipotent.
The gods of politics, economics and taxes are more powerful.

"Very omnipotent"? Surely "not very powerful" or "not omnipotent"?

See? I can't even conjugate properly.


It's o.k.. You have a really cool avatar, so it balances itself out.



Liveirarica
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25 Nov 2014, 11:58 am

Fnord wrote:
Liveirarica wrote:
... This means we are made in God's image, figuratively and spiritually speaking, not literally and psychically.

In turn, this means that the Bible can not be taken as the literal "Word of God", but only as a collection fumbling attempts by a series of humans to explain their existence with allegory, analogy, and metaphor.
What I meant to say was clear and that is Word of God is literally from God (as in, written by God) rather than inspired (as in, what you are referring to), I never said that the words aren't allegorical.