It is clear that one of the members of this conversation has concluded that he cannot advance his cause by discussion, and has decided to hide from the questions.
The importance of that discussion does not require him, however. There are many more people on and reading this topic.
Here is the summary of the ideas under discussion so far for further dialogue.
“Faith,” as a method to know, for how-to-know has no mechanism for uncovering fraud and deceit.
“Scientific Method” as a method to know, for how-to-know,
does have a mechanism for uncovering fraud and deceit.
At one point the argument was apparently made that since fraud and historical silencing of women’s voices
exists in science, this somehow suggests that the mechanism doesn’t work, and that we don’t have to talk about the lack of mechanism in faith any more because science has been shot down, perhaps.
To wit:
Also, can you please respond to this question:
atrib said:
What were you trying to say in your post about fraud and sexism in science? What was your intention, if not to diss the process?
I'm saying there was 'dishonesty.' Therefore Dissing the process was not the intention. The merits of people, individuals, personal character.
Or now since “merits of people, individuals, personal character,” are now the problem, perhaps the claim is that since science if filled with deceitful people, this is somehow an indictment of the scientific method, and that, again, this means we don’t need to talk about the lack of mechanism to detect fraud in religious faith.
But these arguments both fall flat. Or any other argument that may be implied but is now being disowned, also falls flat. There is no argument about this existence of fraudulent people in science that saves faith as a
method to discern truth.
Because the reason we know about deceitful people and fraudulence and dishonesty in science is
because the scientific method detects it and exposes it and celebrates the transparency that unearths it. The
method itself works to detect fraud.
This is done, as we know, by peer review, by the fact that every experiment
must be reproducible or it is declared not-a-truth.
By contrast, faith, which of course also includes people who are deceitful and also silences women’s voices; has no mechanism - no system - to force the hand of the oppressor or the deceiver. No expectation of repeatability, peer review, publishing and challenging. This lack of expectation means that a person claiming a Truth by the method of Faith has only to say, “I believe this,” and they have met all the requirements of faith to determine a Truth.
Compare, again, how science would do this. To declare that you have found a Truth, you must tell everyone exactly how you found it. You must release enough data and procedure for them to be able to
repeat the same test and get the same answer. And if no one can repeat your answer, you have no Truth claim.
This is the difference. It is the difference in HOW WE KNOW whether something is a Truth.
Religion: uses the method of faith, cannot discern whether fraud has occurred.
Science: uses the method known as the Scientific Method and can discern fraud by transparency and irreproducibility.
The red herring of whether there are individuals of deceitful or oppressive character in science, while conveniently failing to discuss those present in religion has no bearing on how the methods work.
Ironically, however, that red herring does provide a window into the question in the OP of this thread;
“How do theists ‘know’ what is real?” It appears to include smoke, mirrors, artful dodging and self-deception. The decision by one user to hide from the discussion points that he himself brought up, despite being asked repeatedly to just explain what he meant, is an illustration of this.
