Kanbei or can not bei

[AronRa]

On Sunday 2013/07/07, I appeared on the Lying Ghost Show where I was introduced to a Young-Earth Creationist named Kanbei.



Unfortunately the after-show was better than the actual show. It went on for another hour and could be summarized thus:

Humans are apes in the same sense that...

Humans are NOT apes!

Humans are apes, because....

Humans are NOT apes!

Humans ARE apes, because....

Humans are NOT apes!

Yes, we are!

Humans are NOT apes!

Look it up.

Humans are NOT apes!

I can PROVE that humans...

Humans are NOT apes!

....that humans ARE apes in the....

Humans are NOT apes!

Hominoidea....

Humans are NOT apes!

(sigh)

Then the conversation moved to the comments section once the video was uploaded.

Any observer of this who isn't biased beyond hope will see that this entire program was a farce; there was no moderation and it devolved quickly into a 6 vs. 1 bash fest with little interest in conducting any meaningful argumentation or dialogue.

It would have been better if there were just the two of us, Kanbei. But it doesn't make any difference if, whenever I disprove your assertions, you automatically reject it without consideration. Case in point, when you said that the Bible was internally consistent and concordant with evidence, and we immediately showed otherwise both times with substantial examples which we could then solidly confirm.

You have not disproven anything whatsoever. Instead you boisterously interrupted on multiple occasions merely to make incredibly biased and unsubstantiated claims which, rather than dealing with the debate at hand, seek instead to portray all who disagree with you as liars. It's quite possible to give plausible and reasonable answers to 99% of the supposed contradictions in the Bible. If God answers 99 of my 100 questions, I'm willing to trust Him on that last one.

You said the Bible was internally consistent. I showed a list of 417 documented contradictions, and I listed several specific ones which you couldn't pretend to address.

You said the Bible was concordant with evidence and Womble and I both listed several specifics which conflict with what the Bible says and the interpretations creationists resort to.

You still have not -and cannot- show ANY evidence that exclusively concordant with creationism. I can -and have already- done that for evolution.

Also kanbei85, although ALL of your claims were unsubstantiated, I've never made an unsubstantiated claim in my adult life. Like I told you -and showed you- on the show, I can prove everything I say -even to your satisfaction. You can't back up anything you believe because not a word of it is true.

Just to clarify, if 'partisan' means "prejudiced towards a particular point of view" then NOTHING I said was remotely partisan, but EVERYTHING you said was.

Same to you.

"Same to you?!" No sir. That's the point. You can't say the same things to me that I say to you. We are not on different sides of the same coin. You're off the chart. I have ALL the evidence, ALL the demonstrable truth, and you have naught but frauds. I've given you many challenges which you have cowered away from, but you could not conjure a challenge that could intimidate me that way, because I'm not afraid of any truth, and you clearly are.

The word "partisan" is not limited to politics only, but rather encompasses the idea of factions in general. You have been brainwashed; Darwinism is not fact but a metaphysical a priori commitment to materialism applied to biology.

Thus Kanbei proves my point again by lying again and again. (1) criticizing evolution as being 'metaphysical': Evolution is an explanation of biodiversity summarized by 'decent with inherent modification'. No part of that study is metaphysical. (2) No part of is a-priori, and (3) there is no aspect of it which isn't factual -as I already showed and can continue. But here Kanbei again denies methodological naturalism, pleading for an unsubstantiated and indefensible belief magic instead.

common descent is not only unobserved but unobserv*able*.

Common descent is objectively verifiable by numerous means, some of which are detailed in the various challenges issued to Kanbei, which he has cowered away from.

That statement is either dishonest or ignorant. To objectively verify something it must be observable, and by definition common descent is not observable because it occurred in the remote past. Any alleged proof you can conjure up will at best be only one possible interpretation out of many. This comes back to the issue of worldviews: yours is internally contradictory and untenable, thus your interpretations are garbage.

Criminal investigations always examine events that happened in the past, yet they can be objectively verified. Common descent can be verified several ways including by tracing conserved mutations in a genetic orthologue.

Criminal investigations are not operational science in the same way that chemistry or biology are operational sciences. Criminal investigations never objectively verify what happened in the past, but rather they form theories based on the interpretation of presently-existing evidences and they try to convince juries that their interpretation is the correct one.

Another clarification: If after careful consideration and thoughtful study, you decide that obstetric science is more plausible than the fable that babies are brought by a stork, that is NOT a 'bias'. Neither should scientists be 'neutral' to storkism. Having an 'open mind' does not mean discarding the sum of all human knowledge in favor absolute horseshit which the ENTIRE global scientific community has proven wrong a million ways over the last couple centuries, just to be clear.

I know that's an outright lie, but if you prefer lies to truth I certainly can't help you. I don't have the time or inclination to cast any more pearls before swine. Everything you would need to find out to utterly refute the Darwinist position is openly available to you. You will not have an excuse on the day when you are called to account for your actions.

So you're still using the wrong word -knowing that is wrong. But you don't care, because from your perspective, your confirmation bias and predetermined conclusions are a-priori, and truth is irrelevant. If truth mattered to you, then you would not dismiss everything I told you without consideration.

Unlike you, I do not lie. As I showed on the show, I can prove everything I say, and I can prove when you're lying. Quit lobbing pigswill and calling it pearls. If you can't verify that the things you say are actually correct, then they are NOT correct. Got it?

If only the reality of your position matched the arrogant confidence with which you present it. Your worldview is completely internally contradictory in every possible way, yet you ironically claim to have some grasp of truth. Evolution carries with it the denial of human reason and dignity at its very core.

You're projecting your own faults again, Kanbei. By asserting absurd conclusions without reason and vowing to defend unsupported assumptions against all reason, YOUR worldview is contradictory in every possible way. Mine is DEMONSTRABLY consistent and yours is demonstrably false -on every point.

Meet me in a written forum suitable to the task and let's prove it. It'll be fun.

What would you define as "a written forum suitable to the task"?

This one!

Although, I can't really dedicate any time to this until next week, because I have to prepare for a conference this weekend.

 

[Vivre]

Hello AronRa,

I really enjoyed that LGS-episode for being very telling to me and regretted not to be able to follow into the after-show as well - so thanks for leaving the eloquent notes about it here. ;-)
In the end I was most impressed by your forthcoming serenity.

thanks & greets ~ Vivre

 

[Kanbei85]

Thanks for the invitation to this forum. I'll see if I can stimulate some productive dialogue.

You don't begin building a house by layering shingles on the grass- you start at the foundation.
The foundation of our disagreements doesn't begin at creation vs. evolution, it begins
at theism vs. atheism, and that's what I'd like to discuss with you here. If we can't
come to an agreement on that foundational issue, there's no real point in trying
to debate evolution. This is because evidence is never viewed from a purely
neutral, unbiased position (whether you wish to admit it or not, this is definitely the case).

I have never claimed to be an unbiased person. I have my bias, and you have yours. The
key is to try to determine which of our fundamental presuppositions or biases makes
more sense of the facts of human experience. We both have the same evidence to work with.
We both view the fossil record. We both view mutations. We both view finch beaks. How
you interpret what you see is entirely based on where you're coming from. Even Darwin
was affected by confirmation bias. He was convinced of Lyellian uniformitarianism as
a geologist before he ever even entered the arena of biology.

I say that as a preface to this question:

Why don't you believe in God?

 

[Gnug215]

Hi Kanbei!

This is just to let you know that I've only just seen your post in the moderation queue.
In order to combat spambots, we've had to implement moderation for all new members, sadly.

Anyway, you have now gotten through the eye of the needle, and can post freely.

Welcome aboard, and I hope you'll enjoy your stay, even though you'll probably meet a fair amount of disagreement.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Why don't you believe in God?

Why should anyone believe in a god(s) in the first place?

 

[Laurens]

Why don't you believe in God?

Insufficient evidence.

 

[Prolescum]

Why don't you believe in God?

Lots of reasons, first among which is the Bible. After that, the Enuma Elish. Then duck phalluses.

 

[WarK]

Why don't you believe in God?

Lack of evidence. Theists' arguments for existence of a god.

 

[Vivre]

Why don't you believe in God?

Missing evidence. Unresolvable contradictions and her seemingly dependency on a surrogate mother.
None of the hundreds Gods and Goddess has bothered to leave a trace.

well~come on board

 

[AronRa]

Thanks for the invitation to this forum. I'll see if I can stimulate some productive dialogue.

You don't begin building a house by layering shingles on the grass- you start at the foundation. The foundation of our disagreements doesn't begin at creation vs. evolution, it begins at theism vs. atheism, and that's what I'd like to discuss with you here. If we can't come to an agreement on that foundational issue, there's no real point in trying to debate evolution.

Wrong. Whether any god exists or not is irrelevant. Either way, evolution is still an objectively verifiable fact of life (literally) and the Bible would still be man-made mythology and dead-wrong about damned near everything back to front. Not even the existence of your god could change either of these realities.

This is because evidence is never viewed from a purely neutral, unbiased position (whether you wish to admit it or not, this is definitely the case).

This is definitely NOT the case. I don't view science with biases. Science seeks to minimize or eliminate biases. Religion *is* a bias by definition, and many theologians will readily admit that.

I have never claimed to be an unbiased person. I have my bias, and you have yours.

I have no biases in this topic.

The key is to try to determine which of our fundamental presuppositions or biases makes more sense of the facts of human experience.

I have no presuppositions either. You do, but I don't.

We both have the same evidence to work with.

I have evidence. You don't. Before you try to argue that you do, prove my point, and show me what evidence you think you have.

We both view the fossil record.

I do. I was a paleontology student for years. You don't view the fossil record. You don't know anything about it.

We both view mutations.

I do. You don't. I'm a science major who's primary interest is in phylogenetics. You have no idea what that even is. I cite peer reviewed articles relating to our dysfunctional vestigial primate genome, and you deny that we even have one.

We both view finch beaks. How you interpret what you see is entirely based on where you're coming from.

We might both look at finch beaks, but I think you stopped there. I trace them all the way back to earlier dinosaurs.

Even Darwin was affected by confirmation bias. He was convinced of Lyellian uniformitarianism as a geologist before he ever even entered the arena of biology.

Having factual confirmation =/= confirmation bias.

I say that as a preface to this question:

Why don't you believe in God?

The simple short answer is, because there is no truth to that claim. The burden of proof is on the positive claimant. Sagan said "Positive claims require positive evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". But faith makes the most absurd claims imaginable and expects us to accept that completely and without any evidence whatsoever. The requirement of faith alone is reason enough to discard the claim as false. Because the only thing in the universe that requires or desires faith are deceivers seeking believers. That's why Hitchens said "That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Dr. Boghossian describes faith as "pretending to know what you don't know" To some degree, he's right. And now I'll add my own words to this philosophy: if you can't show it, you don't know it, and if you can't verify that your claims are factual, they're not.

But it's not just that there's no truth to it. It's also that there are a helluva lotta lies. Take creationism for example. Like all forms of religious extremism, it crosses the line of sanity and posits all kinds of notions which are demonstrably false. All the claims of religion fall into two categories only: Those which are not evidently true, and those which are evidently not true. There is not a third category for things that have been -or can be- shown to be true. They are neither indicated nor vindicated by anything whatsoever.

And that's the 3rd category of short reasons why I don't believe in God. Whenever believers try to deny methodological naturalism arguing for magic instead, I am reminded of the fact that every time we ever found the real answer for any phenomenon once attributed to the supernatural, it always turned out that religion had the wrong answer, and the truth turned out to be a revelation of whole new fields of fascinating study previously unimagined and vastly more complex than the gods, ghosts, and spirits we imagined.

Finally there is the fact that in your particular instance, belief hinges on disproving evolution. You have no idea what you're up against there. You mentioned the foundations for our beliefs. I *have* a solid foundation. You don't. Your belief system is a house of cards built on a cloud. I can prove -even to your satisfaction- that evolution is the truest, best explanation there is for the origin of our species, and I can do it -not with pseudo-logical word games and erroneously-concocted mathematical riddles- but with clear presentations of undeniable fact, regardless of your prior biases and despite your faith. Because what I believe is actually real and what you believe is wholly imaginary.

 

[forgotten observer]

Why don't you believe in God?

Hello kanbei and welcome to the forums! Before we begin this discussion you may wish to define the particular characteristics you ascribe to god, or state which god you are talking about, if you are being specific, cheers Forgotten observer. ( I apologise if this looks scrappy, I'm typing this with a 3ds!)

 

[AronRa]

Just so you know, Kanbei, while you're welcome to respond to anything/anyone you like, if you came here expecting a one-on-one conversation with me, you won't have to reply to anyone but me. No one here will have any problem with that.

 

[Kanbei85]

Your knack for confrontational bluster and rhetoric will be difficult to match.
Unfortunately when people make sweeping absolute statements they can't
defend it generally winds up doing more harm for their cause than good in the end.

Whether any god exists or not is irrelevant.

I will endeavor to show otherwise during the course of our discussion.

I don't view science with biases. Science seeks to minimize or eliminate biases. Religion *is* a bias by definition, and many theologians will readily admit that... I have no biases in this topic.

Show me a belligerent atheist such as yourself, and I'll show you someone who personifies and nearly deifies "Science".
Science does not 'seek' to do anything. Science is a method of exploration- a tool- nothing more, and nothing less.
It is a way for intelligent, rational, freethinking beings to explore and learn about the physical world. It has never existed in a vacuum, and
it cannot properly function when all other disciplines are artificially subordinated to it or ignored. The modern (western) world has fallen into
a stupor. Science is being put on a pedestal as if it is somehow the only "real" way for humans to arrive at knowledge.
In reality, humans must already have quite a bit of knowledge to even begin doing any scientific testing.

The steps of the scientific method already presuppose quite a few things. They presuppose that there is an objectively real physical world to test, and that this physical world will behave normally and predictably. Without this presupposition, we would have no reason to do any tests in the first place,because there'd be no reason to assume that just because you got one result one time (or even many times) you would always get that result under the same circumstances.

They presuppose that human beings are able to think rationally and freely; if human beings aren't rational then it doesn't matter
what tests we do, we won't be able to properly make use of the results (or even form the proper questions and hypotheses).
If we don't think freely, then our tests aren't really tests at all but just more of the inevitable outworkings of the same physical system
we thought we were "testing". The very idea of a "test" implies freedom. We would never say, for example, that one rock is "testing"
another rock when one rolls into another. Things with no free will don't test anything. They just behave according to the laws of physics
and that's all that can be said.

We can go even one step further. The scientific method presupposes at least one absolute moral law: honesty. If scientists cannot
be trusted to honestly report the outcomes of their testing, then science will obviously fail.

So, to summarize the presuppositions of the scientific method: an objective external physical world, universal and immutable
laws of logic and physics, and free, rational beings to act as scientists who will be honest about the results of their investigations.

I have no presuppositions either. You do, but I don't.

The only way a person could have no presuppositions is to be unconscious. Refer to the above list of presuppositions that you must have
even to begin to do any science. You stand corrected.

The burden of proof is on the positive claimant. Sagan said "Positive claims require positive evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

And I disagree with Sagan. "Extraordinary" is a metaphysically loaded term. Extraordinary according to whom? In what worldview?
What counts as extraordinary in one system of thought may not in another. A more objective statement would be this:
"For claims to be believed by others, evidence is required." That's a fair statement, and it's certainly not a challenge
that any well-informed theist need shy away from.

Whenever believers try to deny methodological naturalism arguing for magic instead, I am reminded of the fact that every time we ever found the real answer for any phenomenon once attributed to the supernatural, it always turned out that religion had the wrong answer, and the truth turned out to be a revelation of whole new fields of fascinating study previously unimagined and vastly more complex than the gods, ghosts, and spirits we imagined.

You are committing a fallacy of over-generalization here. "Religion" is not some monolithic substance that you can simply refer to as one solid mass.
Religions conflict with one another. Some religions believe in many gods, some in one god, and some are atheistic. Do you think they all have the same answers? Of course not. One must test any system of thought against the facts of human experience to see how well it explains them. This is our task. Some religions definitely do resort to superstition to answer questions. I do not feel the need to defend "religion". I have a specific set of
beliefs that I think are well-supported by the evidence, and that is what I will discuss with you. One simple fact that you should understand, however, is this: Christianity primarily answers the "who" and "why" questions of reality. Science is limited exclusively to the "how" (and in some
cases also the "who") question. If scientists explain that rain falls because of moisture in the atmosphere condensing, does this now suddenly mean that God cannot be responsible for that fact? No. It's entirely coherent to say that God designed the whole system to work that way. Your statement is naive and fails to understand the built-in limitations of science.


Next question:

You say (and/or imply) that you disbelieve in God because of insufficient evidence. What sort of evidence would you expect to find
that you don't? Explain yourself on this point. What kind of evidence would count for you as evidence for God?

 

[Visaki]

Hello Kanbei, and welcome. Please note that, as Aron said, there is no problem if you only want to reply to Arons posts as the number of answers can easily become ovewhelming. For my own part my writing is as much for working out my thoughts as it is for others to read. There is also the option of a debate thread on the forums where only you and your opponent are premitted to post but that's between Aron and you.

Why don't you believe in God?

Which God? I have different reasons for different Gods but usually it is the lack of evidence and failings of the arguments.

Whether any god exists or not is irrelevant.

I will endeavor to show otherwise during the course of our discussion.

When you do, please remember rest of the quote: "... Either way, evolution is still an objectively verifiable fact of life (literally) and the Bible would still be man-made mythology and dead-wrong about damned near everything back to front.

The steps of the scientific method already presuppose quite a few things. They presuppose that there is an objectively real physical world to test, and that this physical world will behave normally and predictably. Without this presupposition, we would have no reason to do any tests in the first place,because there'd be no reason to assume that just because you got one result one time (or even many times) you would always get that result under the same circumstances.

You know I'll give that at least I, and the scientific method, have a few presuppositions. Mainly that solopsism is wrong and that reality exists and we can observe it. Personally I do this because I have no way to falsify solopsism and I have no other choise than to live my life as if reality exists. I also aknowledge that people might disagree with me about the scientific method bit.

They presuppose that human beings are able to think rationally and freely; if human beings aren't rational then it doesn't matter what tests we do, we won't be able to properly make use of the results (or even form the proper questions and hypotheses). If we don't think freely, then our tests aren't really tests at all but just more of the inevitable outworkings of the same physical system we thought we were "testing". The very idea of a "test" implies freedom. We would never say, for example, that one rock is "testing" another rock when one rolls into another. Things with no free will don't test anything. They just behave according to the laws of physics and that's all that can be said.

Actually human beings aren't rational, not always anyway. What we can show though is that we are capable if thinking rationally. That is why scientific method is designed to weed out unrational ideas. The real problem I have is with this coupling of our possibly capability of "thinking freely" and testing things. In a sense our thinking process is determined by the rules and regulations of reality as much as the results of the tests we perform, but I fail to understand how the idea of a test implies freedom. For me it implies lack of knowledge (as we test things to know the outcome) and the drive to fix that lack.

We can go even one step further. The scientific method presupposes at least one absolute moral law: honesty. If scientists cannot be trusted to honestly report the outcomes of their testing, then science will obviously fail.

If anything the scientific method accepts that not all people are honest. That is why it requires objectivly verifiable tests, peer-review and falsifiability. If it presupposed that all scientists were trusted none of the prementioned things would be nesessarry.

So, to summarize the presuppositions of the scientific method: an objective external physical world, universal and immutable laws of logic and physics, and free, rational beings to act as scientists who will be honest about the results of their investigations.

I'll give you three (because I'm generous) of those, the physical world and the universal and immutable laws of physics. If we wouldn't suppose these there would be absolutely no point in doing science. The genrous part is that all we have learned about the universe implies that physics is universal and immutable (even is our understanding of it isn't)

And I disagree with Sagan. "Extraordinary" is a metaphysically loaded term. Extraordinary according to whom? In what worldview? What counts as extraordinary in one system of thought may not in another. A more objective statement would be this: "For claims to be believed by others, evidence is required." That's a fair statement, and it's certainly not a challenge that any well-informed theist need shy away from.

I'll guess that Aron and you will have different oppinion on what "evidence" means. I'd drop the "by others" from you statement though, including it implies that you can, and should, believe a claim on faith by yourself.

If scientists explain that rain falls because of moisture in the atmosphere condensing, does this now suddenly mean that God cannot be responsible for that fact? No. It's entirely coherent to say that God designed the whole system to work that way. Your statement is naive and fails to understand the built-in limitations of science.

Would it also be entirely coherent to say that I designed the whole system? But that'd be as silly and utterly unfalsifiable as is the God hypothesis of the water cycle. Problem with this is that you can just claim God with absolutely everything in this way to the point that it doesn't have any real meaning anymore. Science has a built-in limitation, of course, of only dealing with the evident realities of the physical world.

You say (and/or imply) that you disbelieve in God because of insufficient evidence. What sort of evidence would you expect to find that you don't? Explain yourself on this point. What kind of evidence would count for you as evidence for God?

I don't know. The problem here is twofold.

Firstly almost all so called evidence for God would be better and more plausably explained by a very, very (very ad nauseum) advanced alien as Clarck's 3rd law states.

Secondly if a God existed (and it was allknowing and allpowerfull) it would also know what kind of evidence it would take me to believe in it's existence. Logical conclusion is that if that God exists he doesn't want me to believe in it.

 

[Laurens]

You say (and/or imply) that you disbelieve in God because of insufficient evidence. What sort of evidence would you expect to find
that you don't? Explain yourself on this point. What kind of evidence would count for you as evidence for God?

1. Properly conducted studies that show prayer to have a statistically significant effect. This wouldn't prove any particular interpretation of God, but it would bolster the claim that a God who can answer prayers exists. Studies that have been done show that prayer has no statistically significant effect.

2. Information contained within Holy Scriptures that could not have been known by humans at the time of writing. I'm talking about specific scientific information. Again in actuality we find the opposite, all religious scriptures are ignorant of science.

3. A miracle occurring that is observed and recorded scientifically. This has never happened either.

These kinds of things would make me consider that God plausibly exists (as mentioned above however, none would be definitive). Too bad we have nothing like it.

 

[Kanbei85]

Please note that, as Aron said, there is no problem if you only want to reply to Arons posts as the number of answers can easily become ovewhelming.

That's very correct. AronRa invited me here to debate/discuss with him, and, unless he decides to drop out of the conversation, I'll be limiting
my responses to him due to time constraints. Asking me to tackle everyone on this message board at once is not a reasonable thing to do.

 

[nemesiss]

welcome Kanbei,

I found your conversation in the video quite interesting.

to answer your first question "Why don't you believe in a god?", to me it is like asking "why don't you smoke?", i see no reason to do so.
When you are talking about a god, i assume you mean the christian totaliterian god. As it stand i have not seen any proof of ANY god, let alone the christian one, to even postulate a god could even exist. as the evidence stand now (or better phrased, the lack of evidence) Gods are product of the human imagination and do not exist in reality.


As for you claim about science, sofar i know it's the best proces we humans have come up with to describe the workings of our universe. if you know a better one please explain how that proces differs from the scientific method and how it is an improvement.

With regards to the word "extraordinairy", in that context it is used a form of size. To add onto your definition "For huge claims to be believed by others, huge evidence evidence is required. ", though i find Sagan definition more eloquant.

As for your last point about Aronra making a over-generalization fallacy, i think you missed his point.
He does criticize religion in general for envoking magic and that also includes christianity. christianity also makes HOW-claims which can be tested. Same goes for how and why questions, depending on the way you phrase them.
As an examples, police investions are a perfect example of answering the who, how and why question: Who commited a certain crime, how what the crime committed and Why was the crime commited?


I have one question for you: how would a universe (or perhaps just a world) not created by someone, accourding to you look like and how would it differ from one that is created?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

You say (and/or imply) that you disbelieve in God because of insufficient evidence. What sort of evidence would you expect to find
that you don't? Explain yourself on this point. What kind of evidence would count for you as evidence for God?

I think these two videos cover it the best, at least the evidence that everyone would accept.

​

However, for me personally, I agree with this video whole heartily.

​

 

[Vivre]

Hello, I'd like to pass on that the continuation of the discussion from the TheLyingGhostShow has been uploaded today: The Wagers of the Womble with Aronra



Please bring some extra nerves along

The above cited 'epic of apes' starts at ~ 24:35
and AronRa illustrates ostensive: "Humans are apes like lions are cats."

 

[AronRa]

Your knack for confrontational bluster and rhetoric will be difficult to match. Unfortunately when people make sweeping absolute statements they can't defend it generally winds up doing more harm for their cause than good in the end.

If past experience counts for anything, I have nothing to worry about. I can prove everything I say, remember. That means this should be an enlightening experience for you, as the onus is on me to teach you something. You don’t have anything you can teach, because you can’t show that anything you believe is actually factually true. So don’t begin the conversation by posturing. You’re the one making sweeping absolute statements you can’t defend.

Show me a belligerent atheist such as yourself, and I'll show you someone who personifies and nearly deifies "Science".
Science does not 'seek' to do anything. Science is a method of exploration- a tool- nothing more, and nothing less.
It is a way for intelligent, rational, freethinking beings to explore and learn about the physical world.
It has never existed in a vacuum, and
it cannot properly function when all other disciplines are artificially subordinated to it or ignored.

So you're saying science is an exploratory search but that does not 'seek' -even though it also has a goal. Got it. Yes, [the practice of] science does ‘seek’ to improve understanding, and such requires that it also ‘seek’ to minimize or eliminate bias, which it does by design.

The modern (western) world has fallen into a stupor.

Agreed. That's why I do what I do.

Science is being put on a pedestal as if it is somehow the only "real" way for humans to arrive at knowledge.

It is.

In reality, humans must already have quite a bit of knowledge to even begin doing any scientific testing.

Yes, they have to know how to use science in order to do science. Until then, how else could they understand actual knowledge of anything beyond subjective impressions?

The steps of the scientific method already presuppose quite a few things. They presuppose that there is an objectively real physical world to test, and that this physical world will behave normally and predictably. Without this presupposition, we would have no reason to do any tests in the first place,because there'd be no reason to assume that just because you got one result one time (or even many times) you would always get that result under the same circumstances.

This is not a presupposition. The inescapable facts of physics are imposed on us regardless. We have no choice but to work within the rules of this reality. Well, you may think there are other options, supernatural options where physical laws do not apply, but that's YOUR presupposition. I don't have any presuppositions.

They presuppose that human beings are able to think rationally and freely; if human beings aren't rational then it doesn't matter
what tests we do, we won't be able to properly make use of the results (or even form the proper questions and hypotheses).

I couldn't possibly presuppose that people are rational -given that I live in a world dominated by those who choose to believe things on faith instead.

If we don't think freely, then our tests aren't really tests at all but just more of the inevitable outworkings of the same physical system we thought we were "testing". The very idea of a "test" implies freedom. We would never say, for example, that one rock is "testing" another rock when one rolls into another. Things with no free will don't test anything. They just behave according to the laws of physics and that's all that can be said.

As I said before, I'm not really interested in philosophy, but I know Daniel Dennet and Cristina Rad, and they would both argue whether we (as humans) can even have free will. Regardless, you as a Christian could not possibly have free will, though you don't understand why that is. It has to do with the Christian belief in prophesy; it renders free will a logical impossibility.

We can go even one step further. The scientific method presupposes at least one absolute moral law: honesty. If scientists cannot be trusted to honestly report the outcomes of their testing, then science will obviously fail.

History has seen a few dishonest scientists, and I can name a few modern scientists who still are. You’re probably already familiar with them.

So, to summarize the presuppositions of the scientific method: an objective external physical world, universal and immutable
laws of logic and physics, and free, rational beings to act as scientists who will be honest about the results of their investigations.

The only way a person could have no presuppositions is to be unconscious. Refer to the above list of presuppositions that you must have
even to begin to do any science. You stand corrected.

No sir, I remain correct. I corrected you when you said this on the show, and now that I have refuted each of your erroneous assumptions leading to that comment, I have corrected you again. I still have no presuppositions. You do, but I don’t.

Quit trying to play the game of projection & equivocation. I’m not guilty of all the same philosophical flaws that you are. Your beliefs don’t have any of the validity that mine do. We are not each coming from equal-but-opposite positions. Our philosophies are opposite, but our positions are incomparable.

The burden of proof is on the positive claimant. Sagan said "Positive claims require positive evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

And I disagree with Sagan. "Extraordinary" is a metaphysically loaded term. Extraordinary according to whom? In what worldview? What counts as extraordinary in one system of thought may not in another. A more objective statement would be this: "For claims to be believed by others, evidence is required." That's a fair statement, and it's certainly not a challenge that any well-informed theist need shy away from.

There you are projecting again, as if you’re not the one using ‘loaded’ terms. Obviously it’s a gradient scale; the more extraordinary it is, the more profound the evidence must be. Try not to limit your mind to dichotomies.

Whenever believers try to deny methodological naturalism arguing for magic instead, I am reminded of the fact that every time we ever found the real answer for any phenomenon once attributed to the supernatural, it always turned out that religion had the wrong answer, and the truth turned out to be a revelation of whole new fields of fascinating study previously unimagined and vastly more complex than the gods, ghosts, and spirits we imagined.

You are committing a fallacy of over-generalization here. "Religion" is not some monolithic substance that you can simply refer to as one solid mass. Religions conflict with one another. Some religions believe in many gods, some in one god, and some are atheistic. Do you think they all have the same answers? Of course not.

Don’t answer your own questions. All your answers are wrong. There was no fallacy. I committed no error. I *can* generalize religion according to the traits that are definitive of them. Yes, all religions *do* offer the same answer, that answer is faith, and the answer is wrong.

Every religion that is universally accepted as such is a faith-based system of required beliefs and prohibited beliefs; these include the notion that some element of ‘self’, be it consciousness, memories, or their spiritual essence will somehow continue beyond the death of the physical being. Yes, religions conflict with each other –often violently- because they’re not based on evidence and therefore have no way to know whether anything they believe has any truth to it at all, nor what should be changed or how to make anything more accurate. That’s why you have so many constantly-sharding denominations of Christianity, many with very different criteria yet each claiming ‘revelation’ from God.

One must test any system of thought against the facts of human experience to see how well it explains them. This is our task. Some religions definitely do resort to superstition to answer questions. I do not feel the need to defend "religion". I have a specific set of beliefs that I think are well-supported by the evidence, and that is what I will discuss with you. One simple fact that you should understand, however, is this: Christianity primarily answers the "who" and "why" questions of reality.

You still don’t know what you’re talking about –even on the subject you should know better than I. Religions (including the many conflicting forms of Christianity) *claim* to answer those questions, but they do by assertion –with nothing than “because I said so” as the reason why. As I said before, if you can’t show that your claims are accurate, they’re not.

Science is limited exclusively to the "how" (and in some cases also the "who") question. If scientists explain that rain falls because of moisture in the atmosphere condensing, does this now suddenly mean that God cannot be responsible for that fact? No. It's entirely coherent to say that God designed the whole system to work that way. Your statement is naive and fails to understand the built-in limitations of science.

YOUR statement is naïve, because you fail to understand the limits of science. As I told you before:

(1) Science only weighs whether something is supported by evidence or whether it is not supported, and whatever is not supported does not warrant serious consideration. This notion of (G)god(s) is not supported by evidence, and therefore is not worthy of comment.
(2) If science were to comment on God, I must remind you that (2a) it is dishonest to assert as fact that which is not evidently true, (a point you agreed with on the show); positive claims require positive evidence, etc.
(2b) sience cannot even say that something is *possible* without providing a precedent or parallel indicating that possibility, or by proving that a particular phenomenon plainly happened anyway, regardless whether we can yet explain it. But there is no indication that this god of yours ever existed outside the imaginations of men, and there is no mechanism by which it could even exist, much less do anything.
(2c) If a particular notion can never be indicated nor vindicated by any means whatever, it isn't falsifiable. So it is untestable, and is therefore indistinguishable from the illusions of delusion.

Next question:

You say (and/or imply) that you disbelieve in God because of insufficient evidence. What sort of evidence would you expect to find
that you don't? Explain yourself on this point. What kind of evidence would count for you as evidence for God?

First I should point out that the god you’re pleading for has already been disproved, because it is dependent on the Bible, and the Bible is certainly wrong on practically every claim it makes on each topic it touches. There are far more advanced ideas about god than those of creationists, but even they are so absurd as to be beneath serious consideration. However to be fair, it wouldn’t matter if it was Zeus, Set, or Nu-Kua, provided you actually had evidence to bare. So we’ll first note what the base definition of evidence has to be, and then discuss what you think within that category should be reasonably compelling, and why you think that.

Here are the basic definitions I have to work with:
Fact: A point of data which is either not in dispute, or is indisputable in that it is objectively verifiable.
Evidence: Factual circumstances which are exclusively concordant with only one available explanation over any other.
Hypothesis: A potentially-falsifiable explanation one which includes predictions as to what different test results should imply about it.
Law [of nature]: A general statement in science which is always true under a given set of circumstances. Example: That “matter attracts matter” is one of several laws of gravity.
Theory: (1) A body of knowledge including all known facts, hypotheses, and natural laws relevant to a particular field of study. A proposed explanation of a set of related facts or a given phenomenon. Example: *How* “matter attracts matter” is the theory of gravity.
Proof: [legal sense, common vernacular] Something shown to be at least mostly true according to a preponderance of evidence. [scientific sense] Inapplicable except in the negative: It is only possible to dis-prove a hypothesis or theory. It isn’t possible to prove them positively.

So now that we've got that out of the way, whatcha got?