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- Denial Failure
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April
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11 comments:
I don't know, PSA - I think this might break Doris' brain long before it makes him cry.
But but.....What about the FSM? doth not his noodly appendages heal the sick?
Hmmmmmmmmm. Pass the Parmesan.
I thought for sure the narrator was going to work in a joke about God's expiry or "best before" date.
You heathens makes atheism sound like a lot of work.
Hmmm... was that a jug of whole milk, 2%, 1%, or buttermilk? Only one is the true jug of milk. ;-)
thou shalt have no jug before me?
It might be that god is real and he just doesn't give a damn.
PSA: You gettin' implants? :D
Without a doubt the practise of Christianity is littered with logical fallacies. But that presentation had enough logical fallacies to stagger a moose.
I don't think the antidote to dumb thinking is more dumb thinking.
Prayer is something that people have been doing a very long time. Every religion incorporates it in some form, and usually tries to get you to focus your prayer energy on the deity du jour.
The milk jug analogy demonstrates that it doesn't matter what you use as the focus of your prayer, just as what mantra you use when meditating doesn't really matter. However well it works, it works equally well regardless of the focal point.
I believe that prayer does have some energy transferring effect, because it seems to do that for me. It is frustrating because I can't prove it. They don't research it because there is no money to be made, and there is more money to be made in keeping it channeled towards deities and controlled by religious leaders.
I'm with Rabbit on this one.
I'm afraid that there is a kind of atheist who is so taken with his/her own cleverness that s/he aggressively asserts obvious fallacies. Examples of such in this video are appeals to ridicule, fallacy of composition, tu quoque, question-begging, and the list goes on.
The point is that the milk jug is not comparable to God because the milk jug lacks other characteristics that are critical to any discussion of divinity. That we all agree that the milk jug is not answering prayers does not in any way imply that God is not answering prayers, or even that it is unfair that God can answer prayers with the universe of possible responses.
Consequently, the intelligent viewer (note the blatant tu quoque, you could see it a mile away) is quite justified in being skeptical of this devout atheist.
While there are a few rhetorical tricks, it seems to me the core argument on prayer is strong. The milk jug part doesn't in any way prove that prayer has no effect, but it does pretty much establish that barring obvious impacts on probability or direct pronouncements by the almighty, the person doing the praying can't tell whether prayer works. There can be no reason to believe prayer works based on experiences of prayer and subsequent events. Even if it worked, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
The studies indicating no impact for prayer are much stronger evidence against the efficacy of prayer.
But of course the final claim, that this means God doesn't exist, doesn't follow at all. I don't think God exists, but this doesn't prove it. There can be lots of versions of God that don't go around answering prayers. Admittedly, religion is a more effective meme if you think at least some of its prayers are answered.
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