philh

yes but where was the boat for the jews in the holocaust? for the tustis in the rwandan genocide,m for the poeple killed in the asian tsunami. Your story is a nice sotry but its just a sotry, in reality god doesnt send the boats becuase he doesnt exist. maybe people who get double mals do pray, but gues what happens to them, they mostly die. So whats your point?

r u serious, that phrase was made the national motto in 1956, was the US founded in 1956? It was put on the currency in the 1860's, gues what the Us wasnt founded in the 1860's either. even if it was put on by the founding fathers, so what? They kept slaves, does that mean slavery is good?

i think the evidence for the effectiveness of vacination is overwhelming and I have demonstrated that in preivous posts. I am concerned to debunk the pseudo scientific nonsense that they are not. As to whether they should be mandatory well thats a philisophical issue not just a scientific one. I dont have a strong opinion either way although I lean more to the yes. I accept there is a freedom of choice issue but on the other hand should people be free to endanger others with contagious diseases that are easily preventable? With regards to the varicella vaccine it is 95% effective against severe form of the disease and 70% effective against typical forms. Data form the CDc indicate that the varicella zoster virus is actually a cause of shingels. Furthermore there were 100 deaths annually from varicella b4 the introduction of the vaccine, if you can show me that the vaccine causes more than 100 deaths annually I would agree with you that maybe its not a good idea, otherwise i think only reverse conclusion can be reached.

y do you respect views on homeopathy when they are so absurd? Would you care to justify the law of infitesimals?

in your experience he seldom intervenes? do you want to replace the word seldom with never? Does the possibility not occur to you that thats becuase he does not exist? Can you not entertain the possibility that the reason he did not save 6 million of his "chosen people " was that hes not there? if you have no method of distinguishing between a prayer that is answered with a no and a prayer that is not answered at all then you have no basis to say that prayer is anyhting other than wishful thinking. I will go back to my pschic analogy. suppose a pychic claims he can predict the outcome a coin toss but his ability only works half the time. if he has no ability at all we would expect by random chance he will get the asnwer right 50% of the time. If he really does have the power but it only works 50% of the time he will get the answer right 50% of the time. the fact that these two scenaarios are indistiguishable mean we should not take the pyschics claims seriously, so it is withh a prayer.

gr8 point. heres the ultimate test between science and religion. We both jump, one of us relies on man made technology ie a parachute the other relies on prayer, who do you think will survive?

No i dont believ in miracles, those who claim miaculous events are eithher decieivng othhers or more likely decieving themselves. James Randi has a $1m prize for anyone who can show evidence of a supernatural event, so far no one has ever won that prize. has god every hurt anyone? Well i dont believe in god so my answer to that is no. but I do believe that belief in god has hurt people. One only has to look at the huge amounts of religious conflicts in the world both now and in the past to accept that.

No a good father would not do that but at least we can tell the father is there and reacting either positivley, negativley or indifferently. How could you tell that with prayer? lets take an example. On 9/11 muslim terrorists im sure prayed their mission would be succesful, its likley the passengers on the plane also prayed they would survive. how can you tell whether the prayers of the terrorists were answered with a yes, the prayers of the passengers were answered with a no or whether they prayers were irrelevant? this comes back to falsifiability. If a prayer leads to a postivie outcome the religious assumes that prayer is really working, if a negative outcome occurs rather than coming to the opposite conclusion one comes to the same conclusion that prayer is real but this time god answered no. the fact that people come to the same conclusion irrespective of the outcome should show that prayer is a delusion.

I heard a preacher once say all prayers are answered its just that the answer isnt alway yes. he really didnt see this as absurd.Its like saying I can predict the outcome of a coin toss but I onlly get it right half the time. Its amazing the systems of self deception that people can build.

I dont see the difference. I sometimes wish I would win the lottery ( it might help if I actually bought some tickets) Im sure religious people pray they would win the lottery, how are these (or any other case)different? Im sure you know I was once religious, i used to prey very hard, so i dont see how you can say I have no connection.

No I turn to my friends and family for suport. Also if I am having problems i try and solve them my self. did u ever see the movie "Touching the Void" its an excellent documentary about a climbing trip that goes wrong. In fact its one of the most exciting movies I have ever seen. there is a scene where the protaganist is in a depserate situation and believes he is about to die. In the documentary he narrates that he had abandoned his Christian upbringing and rejected belief in god but wondered whether in the face of death he would reverse that and start to pray. Well he didnt pray he fought for his life and he survived against an appaulingly desperate situation. Taking action to deal with your own problems inlife is far superior to wishing them away which is what prayer amounts to.

fair enough Steve and thank you for your honest answer. But if everyone considered religious question on their own merits and then picked the religion they felt had the best evidence we would not expect the geographical distribution of religion that we have. the fact that most people who are Muslim are born to Muslim parents and most people who are Christian are born to Christian parents and so on surely speaks vloumes about the nature of how people come to their religious beliefs. Im sure we all think we are immune to these social pressures but the evidence says othherwise.

So are you implying we cannot analyse anything using science but the only way to know if something works is our own personal expereince? that does not make sense. Imagine I invent a new canopy design, lets assume the rate of malfunction for parachutes as a whole is 1 per 1000 jumps. Now lets assume that the avergae for my new parachute is 1 malfunction in every 50 jumps. lets also assume aero dynamicists have show theoretically that my design is unsafe. I think we would be very safe to conclude that my new parachute design was not very safe. We can use both theory and emperical evidence to come to that conlusion. Are you seriosuly suggesting we would have to try this canopy before making this conclusion?Suppose we make 10 jumps on the canpoy and experience no malfunction, you are implying that we could then say oh yes that canopy is safe. of course that would be a ridiculous conclusion. Are you suggesting that we should ignore the theorists and that experimental evidence?Well that is the implication of what you are saying about homeopathy. i really think you need to learn a little bit about critical thinking.

Thats right and i dont deny that spirtuality exists as an emotional state in the same way that love exists as an emotional state. What I do deny is that those who have those spiritual states necesarily draw the right conclusions from them. If there is some change in your brain chemistry and you experience this and interpret it as being in touch with some all powerful being that doesnt mean you are right. Similarly if you fall in love and believe your desired person is perfect that doesnt mean you are right either. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario,has run expirements using electromagentic signals around the brain 80% of people people, he said, claim a ""mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits. "That's in the laboratory," Persinger said. "They know they are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or synagogue?" What we need is to use our brains and distinugish subjective feelings with emperical facts. So many people claim reality for god through experience but if we can demonstrate that religious expereince can be replicated in the lab by changing brain chemistry we should conclude that such subjective feelings cannot be trusted to represent physcial reality. In short your expereince of god does not count as evidence of god.

If you read my piece you will find what I am saying is that love cannot be measured in any exact way but there is evidence of real phenemonen going on. for example a new study by Enzo Emanuele of the University of Pavia demonstrated that people who have recently fallen in love have eleveted levels of NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4 compared to a control group of those who had not , he is quoted "our data demonstrate for the first time that circulating levels of nerve growth factor, but not of other neurotrophins, are elevated among subjects in love," this of course does not mean love can be measured exactly but it does mean that love can be associated with real and not imagined phenemenon. the same cannot be said with god unless you concede that god is simply an emotional state, that I might agree with. there is certainly evidence that people who experience religous rapture do have changes in brain chemistry. that of course would not imply that god itself exists as any real external reality. I am still waiting for someone to present some evidence of that. i really find it baffling that someone as obviously intelligent as Bilvon can believe in something so lacking in any evidence. Is it becuase of social pressures in the US?

Love is an emotional state and there is plenty of evidence that points to its existence especially chemical changes in the body and altruistic behaviour If You are saying you could get an actor to replicate love, that is very doubtful. Could you get an actor to perfrom the same sacrificies that a parent does for their children? that a husband might do for a wife? Sure they could maybe replicate the tears of a loved ones death but that is not the same as the action involved in a lifestyle of love and affection. As for chemical changes in the body, could you get an actor to change the levels fo testerone, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotnin, oxytocin and vasopressin in the ways that are associated with love and bonding? I doubt it very much. Your comment about wieghing a room is a very silly analogy. The fact that one cannt quanitfy something exactly does not mean that we have no evidence that it exists. If you do follow that line of reasoning you would have to conclude there is no evidence that carbon emmisions lead to global warming. It is a fact that we are unable to exactly quanitfy the amount of global warming we will get for any specified level of carbon emmissions. One of the reasons for this is that we dont have a full understanding of cloud feedbacks. But that doesnt mean we dont have any evidence that carbon emmissions lead to global warming. In pyschology its much harder still to quantify observed phenemenon than it is in enviromental science. For example we cannot quantify the amount of anti semitism in germany in 1936, there is no scale that we can say oh thats a 7.8 up from 7.45, but does that mean we can say there was no evidence of anti semitism? Of course not. So you analogy falls apart. There is evidence that love exists, there is no evidence that god exists. Im still waiting for some, care to provide any?

here are some graphs from the cdc showing incidence of disease following the introudction of a vacine below rubella http://www.answers.com/topic/rubella-us-1966-93-cdc-gif measles http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/meas-roug/gfx/fg2_3-1e.gif this a very comprehensive document from the Candaians http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/97vol23/23s4/images/fig9.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/97vol23/23s4/23s4g_e.html&h=360&w=447&sz=10&hl=en&start=44&tbnid=5p1T5o9qtyuOOM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsmallpox%2Bby%2Byear%2Bvaccine%2Bintroduced%26start%3D40%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN these show overwhelmbing benefits of vaccines. what we need to do is to compare these benefits to the risk, which are of course never zero in anything. Disease-Related Risks vs Adverse Effects ofVaccination fatality rates Measles Pneumonia: 1 in 20 Encephalitis: 1 in 2,000 Death: 1 in 3,000 Mumps Encephalitis: 1 in 300 Rubella Congenital Rubella Syndrome: 1 in 4, (if woman becomes infected early in pregnancy) Diphtheria Death: 1 in 20 Tetanus Death: 3 in 100 Pertussis Pneumonia: 1 in 8 Encephalitis: 1 in 20 Death: 1 in 20 Averse reaction MMR Vaccine Encephalitis or severe allergic reaction: 1 in 1,000,000 DTP Vaccine averse effects Continuous crying, then full recovery: 1 in 100 Convulsions or shock, then full recovery: 1 in 1,750 Acute encephalopathy: 0-10.5 in 1,000,000 Death: None proven source cdc Lastly in the uk where I live, there was a big scare relating the MMR vacine to autism. So some real scientists went to investigate here were there conclusions "None of the 6 predictions tested in this study to validate an autistic enterocolitis phenotype was supported by the data...combined with the mounting negative epidemiologic evidence, the lack of evidence for a new phenotype of MMR-induced autism strongly argues against any change in existing MMR immunization programs," i think the evdiencce is overwhelming. Most people who oppose vaccines do so on grounds other than real evidece. often they dont like big business or maybe they have religious grounds. But the medical evidence is agianst them.

Do you have any evidence that these vibrations are real? Do you have any evidence that if these vibrations are real that we cna in any way influence them to get the desired outcome? Do you have nay evidence that these solution can remember the imprint of their molecules? Are you aware the the air is filled with small particles of all sorts of stuff, skin fragments, bacteria etc etc why doesnt the solution remember these as well?

I do love many people, my family mr firend and my girlfriend. The evidence of my love is in the way I behave with them, the way Itreat them etc You say 9/11 was a concrete event and spirituality is not like that, are you saying its all in your imagination or is god a real concrete entity? if so there should be evidence of it before we believe in it, where is that evidence?

Of course its not a scientific equation, lets describe it as it is. Its a specualtion with no evidence to suport it. If you agree that god cant be demonstrated scintifically then you are admitting there is no evidence for god. No evidence should equal no belief , as I say particualrly for a subect so important and life changing as the existence of god. Bilvon whats the difference in principle between these two statements: "That doesn't mean we need to 'prove' the existence of God - rather, it indicates the folly of trying to mash science and religion together. " That doesn't mean we need to 'prove' the existence of a 9/11 conspiracy - rather, it indicates the folly of trying to mash science and conspiracy thoeries together.

y not wait til someone wins Randis prize then consider it?

this seems to be another example of data mining. Lisitng adverse effects to vaccines does not mean they are unsafe. Would a list of people dying in ambulances crashes mean getting in ambulances is dangerous? One needs to consider the net benefit. The risk from most vaccines is very small, no one would say it is zero, and the benefits of vaccination have been enormous. Just think of the complete eradication of small pox which killed millions!

do you have any strong evidence that they can't?

For things that are reported to exist we should have evidence of their existence particulalry for somethings as important as god - a subject which has shaped the history of the world and continues to do so, for bettter or worse. For things like literature and art - well if you claim you like a song its your opinion, that does not require you prove it , if you claim on the other hand that say a lost song by the Betales exist which no one has ever heard one would be right to demand evidence of it to believe in its existense. In that sense the standards for art are no different than those for science.

Any chance you mmight address my criticism of homopathy re serial dilution? re natural - there is no reason to believe at all that becuase something is natural it is better for you. Ricin is natural its one of the most lethal poisons in the world. Would you prefer to digest ricin than an antibiotic? of course not, so each substanc has to be assessed on its own merits irrespecitve of whhether or not its natural or man made.