Have we had a thread about the Richard Dawkins atheist summer camps for kids yet?

[policywonk]

here

Though #1: Dawkins is a loon.

Thought #2 (following very closely on the heels of Thought #1): DS1 (6) - who is alone (in his class of 30) in having been taught about the Big Bang rather than the creation story - might well get a lot out of something like this. At the moment, he's beginning to suspect that his father and I are cult leaders.

Daftpunk, you almost always make me smile. I'm glad the christians have you on their side.

The church was required to obey the law. They decided they couldn't do that as it would inhibit their bigotry so have abandoned helping kids get adopted at all.

"the teapot analogy fails because there are no empirical or theoretical or philosophical reasons for believing in the teapot"

There is no empirical or theoretical reason for believing in god. It may be argued that there is a philosophical reason, but then it can be argued that there is a philosophical reason for anything so that doesn't carry much weight.

Having a lot of people think something doesn't make it true or we would have felt the sudden change when the flat world became round

Gotta go, dd's sports day, joy of joys.

I object to sports days!

I very much agree with this from Fennel: 'I think what is happening (and Dawkins talks about this) is that though the majority of UK adults don't have a religion, there's still an expectation for small children that Christianity is the norm.'

Actually, I'm interested in what you say about creationism, MP. Does the CofE no longer accept the Genesis version? Do CofE vicars say squarely 'this is a creation story, but not one that CofE-goers are expected to believe'?

Yes, that's a good point - and not just christianity but I think very specifically Church-of-England-ism, which is slightly different, ime.

No, I can't consider it as one would a court case. For one thing, nobody is convicted under witness testimony - it's recognised by police and lawyers as being the least reliable form of evidence. There are all kinds of studies which show this.

Plenty of people believed the earth was flat, and would have been prepared to testify to this as they believed it was true. It proves nothing, sadly.

I'm not saying we can prove things either way. I'm just saying natural s[k/c]epticism in the face of little or no evidence is the intellectually honest position for me. I have had nothing in the last twenty years which has persuaded me otherwise. However, I still listen. Can anyone ask for more?...

morningpaper - I can see why tealeaves may not be an acceptable comparison to you. What about "mediums", then? The stuff they do is arguably "testable" by how right they are, and some like to claim that they get things right, sometimes. So the argument is not about whether they "do it", but how. Anyone who has read even the briefest article on "cold reading" will be able to tell you how.

Surely if tealeaves are testable, though, so is prayer? It should be simplicity itself to set up a proper experiment, with a control etc.

"Let's see it like a court case - the witnesses are the disciples. Now when examining testimony..."

Anyone got any testimony that is from the disciples?

I was taught when I was little that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were 4 eye-witness accounts varying slightly because they all noticed different things. Later I discovered they were anonymous accounts written long after the events were supposed to have taken place.

But the 'scientific' experiment on prayer would need to have a working definition of what prayer is, and that's something of a sticky wicket, I've found. A lot of it wouldn't be testable anyway.

Like my favourite example, Gridlock. From the people's perspective, they had a faith that was fulfilled by their rescue. From the Doctor's perspective, he was the one who freed them from their trap.

But from a metaphysical perspective, there's nothing to indicate that the people's faith didn't play a part in keeping them safe, for example, until the Doctor came to see Jack the Face of Boe and free them.

Yes, I know Doctor Who isn't real, btw ;)

Basically Pw, yes. The church hasn't ever made a pronouncement on it because it sees science as science and doesn't think that the creation story in Genesis is supposed to be anything more than a religious narrative.

One Bishop has said: "Evolution is the best available explanation we have at the moment to describe the way in which God creates." which I think is a fair summary of the church's position.

There have been some interesting dialogues on this matter in the Leicester chronicle! There is a relevant interview at the end with Rowan Williams which is full of the most marvellous beardiness.

What a lot of useless shit my brain is full of

What a lot of useless shit my brain is full of

N.B. you are not meant to read that as being a quote from williams, although it may fit

But surely the simple test would be that if prayer caused something to happen more than not praying did. You wouldn't have to test to see which precise result was caused by which prayer.

That's been tried as you probably know and showed no positive effect from prayer.

I suppose to be fair you could say that they had only proved that praying for sick people doesn't work, but that's a useful bit of knowledge to have.

MP, my sides are aching from laughing at that being a quote from Williams.

UQD: That would depend on your definition of prayer. I believe it enables humans to connect in some way with the divine. I'm not sure how you would test that

Heh Shame. Now that would have made a poster for the Rational Express.

onagar, that's because you have a different definition of what prayer is supposed to do. There's many of us that don't have a simple linear cause/effect belief about it.

kayharker;...it's your attitude that needs to change...you need to accept the fact that millions of people think like me...i'm sorry to break that news to you.

But onager the purpose of prayer is to change the individual, not the outside world

One may pray for a sick relative and hopefully that would encourage one to visit the sick relative and communicate with the sick relative, and remember how important the sick relative is to God and oneself

lol @ beardyhead full of shit

poor Rowan

I do love the way he talks

You just get the impression that he really wants to footnote everything and sub-footnote all of THAT and...

What daftpunk said!

I'm afraid that many religious people do claim that prayer has a specific result. I could find you 476,093,543 examples if you like

Many even base their belief on a prayer being answered.

daftpunk, undoubtedly many people are as pugnacious as you are. That simply proves many people are pugnacious. It proves nothing about me or anything else.

Of course prayer has a result. Whether that is actually a specific incidence of divine intervention into the physical empirical universe is however, not a necessary part of maintaining a believe in theism.

kayharker - hello! Hope you are ok.

You can't bring Doctor Who in. That's not fair! And an episode written by Russell the Atheist Davies too...

I suppose it would be difficult to establish a working definition of "prayer" before doing the experiment. To outsiders it often looks very much like wish-granting, as if God were the genie and the believer were Aladdin. This kind of falls apart when the wishes aren't granted, so I'm not surprised that other, more woolly definitions are used instead. I rather get the feeling that if one were to ask a hundred Christians what "prayer" is you would get at least fifty different answers. This isn't necessarily a problem for the atheist.

morningpaper - apart from the "to God", that description (13:40:11) sounds like a perfectly reasonable version of "positive thinking", which a non-believer does all the time too.

What you call it in your previous post, something which "enables humans to connect in some way with the divine", immediately has problems for me as there is not anything which I recognise as "the divine" - and its existence would need to be demonstrated first. Given that it can't be, then surely the only way to test it is the effect it has in the world we can perceive. Otherwise we just go round in circles.

I'm not ignoring your notes, by the way, but I just haven't got time to read them right now...

i find you very patronizing KH ...

Really dp? I find KayHarker by far one of the least patronising believers on here.

This whole definition thing is an an interesting one, because at some point we have to agree what the consensus is about what something is - or at least what working definition of it we are using - before we say we don't believe in it.

In my experience, frustratingly, religious people tend to just keep moving the goalposts. If I say I don't believe in "god", I am made to define "god" and then am given the answer "oh, well, that's not what I understand by god." If I say I don't believe "prayer" works, I am made to define "prayer" and then am given the answer "oh, well, that's not what I understand by prayer." Etc.