Right! They're Smartter Than atheists.

[Colanth]

If you are seeking to falsify a religion using a microscope or by means that are strictly empirical you may have all sorts of difficulty.

1) We're not trying to falsify Christianity - we all accept that it exists.  (Falsifying Christianity's claims isn't the same as falsifying Christianity itself.)

2) Falsifying means "by empirical means".  If an assertion can't be empirically falsified, it's an assertion about something that doesn't empirically exist.  If you're claiming that your god doesn't empirically exist, we agree with you, and there's nothing to discuss.

This is not the only way that we come to true and valid conclusions about our world.

No, only about the part of it that empirically exists.  We don't empirically test love, or yellow or happy.

We often use reason and evidence to form both necessarily true conclusions

You may, but that has nothing to do with falsification.  You don't seem to understand the scientific method at all.  (And falsification is part of the scientific method, it's not some lay understanding of "proving something not true".)

Is this something you recognize, or do you discount everything that is not, in some sense, directly empirical?

If something isn't "in some sense, directly empirical", it can't be falsified, because it's not a member of the class of things that can be falsified.  (Something that's been empirically shown to be true IS in the class of things that CAN BE falsified.  "Can be falsified" and "false" are totally different.)

And what is it that you are looking to make happen?  If your only goal in a discussion is to prove something false rather than to come to true and accurate conclusions regarding its veracity, do you think a lot of people should really be tempted to engage?

We're looking for your empirical evidence that your god empirically exists - which is what you've been claiming to have (whether you understand natural language well enough to realize that that's the claim you've been making or not).  Whether you're "tempted to engage", you want to troll the forum or you want to leave is up to you.

What would be the point?  Would they not be justified in believing or at least suspecting that your overall goal has nothing to do with being guided by a pursuit of what is actually true but to simply come to a conclusion, proven or not, that the other person's position is false?

The scientific method consists of assertions and attempts to disprove them.  That's how "Truth" is arrived at.  You assert that your god exists.  We don't go looking for proof that you're wrong, we look for evidence that you present, then we see if any of it can be disproved.

So, for example, some Christians claim that the Bible is the word of a can't-be-wrong god, and every word in it is true.  If we find something in it that's patently not true (ignoring assertions of miracles, which is just another way of saying "we don't know), we've falsified the claim.  (And that claim is falsified at least once in just about every book in the Bible, which is almost 7,000% more falsification than is needed.)

Do you even see the problem I'm describing?

Yes - the problem is that you accept the assertions unless there's proof that they're wrong.  (Proof that most Christians won't accept even when it's presented, because they have a vested interest in the Bible being true.)

But that's not how it's done.  You present your assertion, you present evidence to back it up (if the assertion is that something is empirically true, then the evidence has to be empirical), and you present methods of falsification.  Not "if you can prove the assertion wrong", but "if you prove this true, my assertion is wrong".  Like evolution - if you can present a crocoduck, evolution is falsified.  (Otherwise you have to accept non-directed evolution going "from goo to you" unless you can prove that it didn't happen - that's the same as your "prove that God doesn't exist".)

Having said that, there are all kinds of ways to falsify Christianity or religion more generally.  Off the top of my head, you could attempt to:

1)   Prove that God(s) does not exist.
2)   Prove that Jesus Christ did not exist.
3)   Prove that the Christian Bible has no significant relationship with its autographs.

As I said above, that's not it.

4)   Prove that objective morality doesn't exist.

The Bible claims that slaves have to obey their earthly masters.  We'd consider that immoral.  So which is the absolute morality?  That it's moral to own slaves?  Or that slavery is immoral (and the Bible is a book promoting immorality)?

Even if there were a god that provided morality, is something because he says it is?  That's morality that's relative to the god, it's not absolute.  Is it absolutely immoral and he's just telling us about it?  That would mean an agency greater than God.  (What makes it absolutely moral, if God can only tell us about it, but not make the actual decision that it's moral?)

5)   Prove that information can be created and built-up over time through meaningless, undirected, and natural processes.

Prove HOW your god created the universe.  (Not "he spoke it into existence", but the mechanism by which his speaking caused the universe to come to exist.)  You can't?  Then evidently - by your own logic - it never happened.

6)   Etc...(I'm sure there are many others)

There sure are - and they're all as invalid as the 5 above.

They made a whole website about all the people god killed in the bible, for all manner of silly reasons. Here, have a look:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_o ... ing_people

I don't know about you, but I cannot consider a person who is responsible for that much death anything less than a mad-man, especially if he expects you to love him while he's doing it. You cannot justify that kind of behaviour, especially given the power God is supposed to have.

As I said, this is likely untrue and has more in common with your own misconceptions and biases than with what is actually the case or is true regarding the manner.

The Bible CLEARLY STATES that God killed every single living human being on the planet, except for Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives.  There's no possible "misconception" or "bias".  The Bible STATES that this, and only this, is the case.

Unless you have an actual need for the Bible to be true, but you can not accept that the Bible actually says something that you can't agree with.

For example, who is it that you think is insisting that the Bible should be read, in all cases, in a wooden literal sense?

If not, it's not the word of some god that can't be wrong, it's just the opinion of the person reading it.

The Bible is many things, and one of the things that it is, is literature.  There are places where Jesus, for example, is telling stories, which are often called parables.

No one is pointing to a parable as not being "true", we're pointing to assertions of fact that aren't true.

There are other instances where the Bible makes use of metaphor and does things like anthropomorphizes God in some way, so as to make Him or some attribute more relatable.

And who decides whether a particular assertion in the Bible is metaphor or literally claim?  You?  No.

If you are interested in the details of this matter, there is an art & science called hermeneutics

The ACTUAL definition of which is "to make the Bible fall in line with existing knowledge, no matter how far you have to stretch the words in it".  It's a division of Christian apologetics.  (Yes, I know the Christian definition - but, like most Christian assertions, it's wrong.  You CAN NOT tell fiction from fact by reading a test, unless you're willing to accept that the text CAN be wrong, and Christians aren't willing to accept that the Bible can be - as witness, I give you all the apologism you've already posted.)

Yes, and typically, there are good ways to differentiate between the likely truthfulness or falsehood of the groups and texts in question.  This is done in various ways that aren't strictly empirical, as in historical investigation, evidence, arguments, reasoning, etc... but it can be done.[/quote]But if, for example, the book say X, and you know, beyond any doubt , that X is false, then saying "that wasn't meant to be taken literally" isn't analysis, it's assuming, a priori, that the parts of the text meant to be taken literally are 100% true, so anything not true is not meant to be taken literally.

That leads to the situation where the "experts" have to keep changing which parts are which, as new knowledge comes to light.  For instance, it's now known - beyond any doubt - that the number of people the Bible claimed spent 40 years in the Sinai, never did.  (Too bad the people who wrote the story couldn't foresee ground penetrating radar, and weren't aware of how well the desert preserves feces.)  So, what?  Oops, Exodus wasn't meant to be taken literally now?  It was for 2,500 years, but now the unchanging word of God changes, huh?  (Oh, and it's not possible to "escape" from Egypt to Canaan, since Canaan was part of the Egyptian hegemony.  It's like "escaping" from the US to Minnesota.  So, by "hermeneutics", we know that the story was written MUCH later, LONG after Egypt was a power to be reckoned with, since the author had no idea of the relationship between Egypt and Canaan.)

"Hermeneutics" causes more problems for your argument than it solves.

For example, you can test the veracity of the Book of Mormon.

Let's see.  The angel Moroni brought gold plates to Joseph Smith.  Nothing to show lack of veracity there that you won't also find in the Bible.  The text on the plates was in a foreign alphabet that only Smith could read, only using special spectacles.  Again, no proof of anything there.  The plates told the story of ... etc.

So how does the text prove its veracity or lack thereof?  Because YOU don't believe it?  Then the Bible is false because WE don't believe it.

No, textual analysis harms your case more than it helps.  I'd go in a different direction.

You can also look at their Bible and demonstrate that their conception of God doesn't comport with the picture given in their own Bible.

Yes, if a text contradicts itself, it's most likely not 100% correct.  But the converse isn't at all true.  Texts that don't contradict themselves AT ALL can be false or fictional.

My own feeling is that few if any will actually take on the task of doing the things I'm talking about by actually looking for what is either true or false about these matters

We don't look to see if something is true - that's confirmation bias.  We look to see if something is false.  And A LOT of the Bible is false.

See, no matter how many things we find that are true, we still have to test all the rest to see whether the Bible is the word of a can-not-be-wrong god.  But all we need to prove that it's not is ONE SINGLE error.  The end result is the same, but disproving is a lot easier.  (And yes, it's just as accurate for this purpose.)

as we're talking about a massive task, but it has and can be done.

Since at least a few of us here have done it, we know that's true.

Everyone has their own sets of questions that are most important to them.

The only question that matters here is whether your god is objectively real.  If he isn't, the rest is completely irrelevant.  And so far, in 2,000 years, no one has seen any objective evidence that there's any objectively real god.  (Not in 11,000 years either.)

Each person has their own obstacles to being able to believe the truthfulness of Christianity.

Atheists have only one problem - total lack of objective evidence that any god has ever objectively existed.  And we're still waiting.  Not for "it wouldn't make any difference".  Not for "you wouldn't accept it anyway".  Not for "it would be a waste of my time to show it to you".  Evidence.  All we've ever seen, and I've been asking for evidence for almost 3/4 of a century, is that no one actually has any evidence.

It's unfortunate though that the majority of people spend most of their time looking to throw more subterfuge in the path of their belief

No, we're just looking for YOU to throw evidence on your assertions.  And you still refuse to.

What's unfortunate is that so many people spend so much effort making stuff up to rationalize their beliefs to themselves.  no matter what science finds, Christian apologists will make up something to make the Bible consistent with the new knowledge.  (Or, worse, will claim that the new knowledge is a plot, or someone's imagination, or in some other way isn't real.)

in order to rationalize and continue in a state of denial

The only thing we deny is that you've presented any objective evidence that your god objectively exists (which you claim to be true - want to change that claim to something other than "objectively real"?  Maybe "subjectively real"?)

So the ball's in your court (as it's been from the start) - do you have actual evidence to back up your assertions, or will you keep making assertions in support of your assertions?  (Which is all any theist I've ever had this discussion with has ever been able to do.)

IOW, are you any different than the billions of theists who came before you, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

[Solitary]

gomtuu77, is there anything at all that would make you not believe in God?    Solitary

[Colanth]

gomtuu77, is there anything at all that would make you not believe in God?

Remember, according to the story people didn't believe Jesus even when he personally spoke to them - so I doubt that anyone could convince a really deep Christian these days.  When your mind was made up for you before you learned to speak, it's nailed shut.

[gomtuu77]

Can you name a conclusion that we can reach that is irrefutably correct but not empirically provable?

Yes, I love my son. AT THE BOTTOM.

If it's not irrefutably correct, then it's not a valid conclusion and if it's not empirically provable, how can we prove that it's irrefutable?

Because while my feelings may not be empirically provable, I have direct access to them and good reason to trust the direct access I have to myself.

I do not see any other way to reach truth other than empirical observation. It's easy to make statements and claim truth, but to show truth requires a strictly empirical analysis.

This may be true, but it's not because other ways to reach truth don't exist.  A good deal of things we believe to be true are not concluded by way of empirical verification.  A lot of the things we believe to be true are concluded on the basis of our own knowledge and personal reflection.

How can you prove that something does not exist?

It's up to you to devise some kind of method.  You were asking if theism or Christianity could be falsified.  Part of my answer is that proving that God does not exist would be one way to do that very thing.

We've already shown that there is no physical evidence to suggest the existance of either the Christian God or a Supernatural Jesus Christ.

Both of these statements appear to be fantastic exaggerations of atheist dreams rather than realities.  Also, I didn't include the term supernatural.  I'm simply talking about the person of Christ.  The supernatural aspect is another question.  Most secular scholars are quite comfortable affirming the existence of Jesus Christ, whose life and teachings were the original impetus for His followers, which eventually became known as Christians.

Generally speaking, lack of evidence is enough. But how can we conclusively proof they are not real?

Correct, as that would be a logical fallacy.  How you can go about doing it is essentially up to you.  I'm simply pointing out that this would be another way of falsifying Christianity.

How are you using "autographs" here? As in the people who wrote it? We have a long list of research into who wrote and modified the bible throughout the ages, lists of contradictionary accounts, and massive amounts of claims made in the books that have been proven to not have happened. What, specifically, are you looking for as proof?

As in the original writings.  Yes, I'm aware of the various higher and lower critical approaches taken to the Bible in the past and even in more recent days.  Again, proof that there is no significant connection between the autographs and what we have today, or in other words, that the writings have not been, by and large, preserved.

How do you prove this?

Again, how specifically you accomplish the task is up to you.

We already know that nothing we consider moral was at all times considered moral by all people, and we also understand that it's impossible to get a definition of moral that all human beings agree with. That seems fairly conclusive to me, so what specifically do you accept as proof that objective morality doesn't exist?

Do we?  What cultures or peoples have considered the unjustified taking of human life to be moral and acceptable?  I think you are mistaking differences in understanding and application of the moral law with differences in the moral law itself.

This question requires a clearer definition of the word 'information' to make sense. I can easily take a handful of sand, blow it into the wind, and make it land on a piece of sticky paper. That will most definately produce 'information', but I doubt that would satisfy you.

What complex information that was built up over time would actually be created in an unguided, undirected, and meaningless process when it would have come from your hand and by your own decision?  In addition, where would the sticky paper have come from?  Surely, all of these things would not meet the criteria, right?

What kind of information do you want the proces to create? And how do you define 'meaningless' and 'undirected'?

I think complex intelligible information is easy enough to understand.  I mean, I get the move, which is relatively typical, but I think you know what I'm talking about.  Here's what comes up on Google for a definition of information.  (1) accurate and timely, (2) specific and organized for a purpose, (3) presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance, and (4) can lead to an increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty.

Most of these questions you ask as counterproof are designed by the religious to be unanswerable by definition, which makes them bad examples of "falsifiable claims". A falsifiable claim would be something like "God purged humanity in a great flood. If there was no flood, then god is not real".

Actually, that's not true.  It wouldn't follow that because there was not a flood, that God is not real, which is to say God does not exist.  If that were true, you would merely have to disprove any single purported event.  All it would mean is that the particular claim is false, and it might lessen the credibility of the God or religion more generally.  In addition, it would be difficult to disprove the existence of a specific flood, especially since the timeframe is debatable.  We do know that there was a time when humanity was reduced to very small numbers sometime in the past.  We also know that if humanity were not yet spread throughout the entire planet, a worldwide flood could have been local.  In the same way someone in a small town could say, everything was flooded, even though flood waters never reached the entirety of the earth (i.e. everything) but only inundated their local area, a local flood could be legitimately termed global in the sense that it affected the entire world's human population (i.e. the known world). Whether or not that specific event happened or not is somewhat beside the point though.  I'm not aware of questions having been designed to be unanswerable.  The fact that it hasn't been done doesn't mean that it's impossible.

A large number of christians. Just like a large number of them do the opposite. I have no idea which side is right, because there's no way to test it.

Right, but you're having a discussion with me.  In the context of this discussion, who has suggested that you must always and everywhere read the Bible in a wooden and literal fashion?  It certainly wasn't mean.  It seems to me that it would be better to attempt to take the Bible in the sense it was intended, rather than to always take it literally, which was obviously not the intent of the author(s).

We do this with all sacred books of supposed truth. The outcome is exactly the same for all of them.

No we don't, and no they aren't.  I hear this claimed all the time, but I never actually see it.  I see falsehoods and misunderstandings affirmed, but not the kind of genuine investigation you're talking about.

It's just that believers claim that the method is correct for all books except theirs, in which case the researchers mysteriously missed the 'real' meaning, even though they perfectly managed to destroy the believability of every other book out there. The fact that you give us this method, and tell us it works, even though the same conclusions are reached for your book as every other, should at the very least make you think.

I'm not sure what specific method you're talking about, especially since you think that only empirical investigation can bring you to any genuine truths.  And the only reason supposed identical conclusions are reached is because the investigator has generally set out to establish the same conclusions rather than to arrive at true conclusions.  If people were more interested in the truth about a particular matter, rather than to what extent they can reinforce their own pre-conceived notions, different conclusions would be reached.  And it's been done by people in the past.  Typically those who do it are written off though.  For example, when Antony Flew transitioned to a theist, he was suddenly no longer a respected philosopher, but he was just an old man whose faculties had long since left him.  So in the eyes of the atheist, Flew's lucid discussions on the matter of God's existence were essentially chalked up to senility.  I suspect that few if any people making a similar transition for what they believed were good reasons would ever be taken seriously by the atheist community.  The disdain and dismissiveness with which these matters are dealt with at the outset is breathtaking at times.  After more than a decade of talking with atheists, I'm amazed at the consistency of this kind of behavior.

Can you name a few?

I already have...coherence & correspondence.  I would really suggest that you get hold of a good Systematics text, which is to say a Systematic Theology text.  For your purposes, probably Norman Geisler's would be one of the better choices.  Look it up on Amazon.  
//http://www.amazon.com/Systematic-Theology-In-One-Volume/dp/0764206036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378428788&sr=8-1&keywords=Systematic+Theology+by+Norman+Geisler

I read into the book but it does nothing to me. But if there's an experiment I can do, I see no reason not to try.

What exactly are you expecting, magic?  If you are even tempted to say yes, then you've essentially admitted that you haven't even tried to take anything seriously.  That's one thing that has to be done if you expect to actually engage in a genuine investigation that can allow you to come to meaningful conclusions.  If not, then you'll just be engaging in self-congratulatory straw-man tipping for the most part.

[Icarus]

Can you name a conclusion that we can reach that is irrefutably correct but not empirically provable?

Yes, I love my son.

That's actually fairly easy to prove empirically, we've found 5 neurochemicals (to my current knowledge) that are responsible for love. We can even differentiate between the love of a mother for her child and a wife for her husband. The wonders of modern science eh? It almost makes you want to throw down that bible and start pushing the limits of scientific knowledge through empirically verifiable scientific experimentation.

It's up to you to devise some kind of method. You were asking if theism or Christianity could be falsified. Part of my answer is that proving that God does not exist would be one way to do that very thing.

It's impossible to prove something doesn't exist, we can prove its very very likely not to exist. This is why the burden of proof (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific ... f_evidence) lies on the person making the claims. It's not the responsibility of the rest of humanity to prove a single person is lying.

For example: I'm god, prove me wrong (if you can't by your own logic you have to recognize me as god).

I'm not sure what specific method you're talking about, especially since you think that only empirical investigation can bring you to any genuine truths.

Plu is right, the only real evidence we have for the universe existing is empirical evidence. I think you're relying on your 5 senses far too much; optical illusions are a thing because your senses are far from perfect.

[gomtuu77]

Can you name a conclusion that we can reach that is irrefutably correct but not empirically provable?

Yes, I love my son.

That's actually fairly easy to prove empirically, we've found 5 neurochemicals (to my current knowledge) that are responsible for love. We can even differentiate between the love of a mother for her child and a wife for her husband. The wonders of modern science eh? It almost makes you want to throw down that bible and start pushing the limits of scientific knowledge through empirically verifiable scientific experimentation.

Okay, for the time being, I just want to deal with this issue alone, because this is a mistake that materialists make, are corrected, and then proceed to make again in the next sentence.  What you've said is false.  Let me demonstrate by asking a few questions.

First, how did they find the 5 neurochemicals that you're speaking of?  What was necessary for them to find them?  In other words, how did they know what to look for?

[Icarus]

Okay, for the time being, I just want to deal with this issue alone, because this is a mistake that materialists make, are corrected, and then proceed to make again in the next sentence.  What you've said is false.  Let me demonstrate by asking a few questions.

First, how did they find the 5 neurochemicals that you're speaking of?  What was necessary for them to find them?  In other words, how did they know what to look for?

Really? You want me to hold your hand and guide you through the entire scientific process? How about I give you the list of research papers and you can spend several hours educating yourself. The answers are out there, you just have to look (something you probably didn't do in this case). If you think these research papers are incorrect you will have to write your own research paper disproving them. If you can't, you have to accept it as fact because you've accepted every scientific fact that allows you to live at the high standard of living you enjoy so much (I bet you never questioned any of those eh?).

Love is more than just a kiss: a neurobiological perspective on love and affection
Neuroscience (January 2012), 201, Complete, pg. 114-124
A. de Boer; E.M. van Buel; G.J. Ter Horst


This one comes with pretty pictures of which neural clusters are firing when feeling love (and the chemicals):
Neuroimaging of Love: fMRI Meta-Analysis Evidence toward New Perspectives in Sexual Medicine
Journal of Sexual Medicine (November 2010), 7 (11), pg. 3541-3552
Stephanie Ortigue; Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli; Nisa Patel; Chris Frum; James W. Lewis


Slightly more general:
Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us
Neuroethics, March 2008, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp 31-44,
Julian Savulescu, Anders Sandberg


Slightly more advanced:
HYPOTHALAMIC DIGOXIN, HEMISPHERIC DOMINANCE, AND NEUROBIOLOGY OF LOVE AND AFFECTION
International Journal of Neuroscience (January 2003), 113 (5), pg. 721-729
RAVI KUMAR KURUP; PARAMESWARA ACHUTHA KURUP

You have a lot of disproving ahead of you, I suggest you get a PhD in neuroscience first. It isn't strictly necessary but it would help bring your level of education and knowledge base closer to your ego (maybe not all the way).

[gomtuu77]

Okay, for the time being, I just want to deal with this issue alone, because this is a mistake that materialists make, are corrected, and then proceed to make again in the next sentence.  What you've said is false.  Let me demonstrate by asking a few questions.

First, how did they find the 5 neurochemicals that you're speaking of?  What was necessary for them to find them?  In other words, how did they know what to look for?

Really? You want me to hold your hand and guide you through the entire scientific process? How about I give you the list of research papers and you can spend several hours educating yourself. The answers are out there, you just have to look (something you probably didn't do in this case). If you think these research papers are incorrect you will have to write your own research paper disproving them. If you can't, you have to accept it as fact because you've accepted every scientific fact that allows you to live at the high standard of living you enjoy so much (I bet you never questioned any of those eh?).

Love is more than just a kiss: a neurobiological perspective on love and affection
Neuroscience (January 2012), 201, Complete, pg. 114-124
A. de Boer; E.M. van Buel; G.J. Ter Horst


This one comes with pretty pictures of which neural clusters are firing when feeling love (and the chemicals):
Neuroimaging of Love: fMRI Meta-Analysis Evidence toward New Perspectives in Sexual Medicine
Journal of Sexual Medicine (November 2010), 7 (11), pg. 3541-3552
Stephanie Ortigue; Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli; Nisa Patel; Chris Frum; James W. Lewis


Slightly more general:
Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us
Neuroethics, March 2008, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp 31-44,
Julian Savulescu, Anders Sandberg


Slightly more advanced:
HYPOTHALAMIC DIGOXIN, HEMISPHERIC DOMINANCE, AND NEUROBIOLOGY OF LOVE AND AFFECTION
International Journal of Neuroscience (January 2003), 113 (5), pg. 721-729
RAVI KUMAR KURUP; PARAMESWARA ACHUTHA KURUP

You have a lot of disproving ahead of you, I suggest you get a PhD in neuroscience first. It isn't strictly necessary but it would help bring your level of education and knowledge base closer to your ego (maybe not all the way).

Hahaha...no, I was asking much more basic questions.

My point is simply, did they not require some kind of first person account from someone in order to be able to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?

Hahaha... :rollin:

[Icarus]

Hahaha...no, I was asking much more basic questions.

My point is simply, did they note require some kind of first person account from someone in order to be able to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?

Hahaha... :rollin:

I don't know what you're asking. If you had read those papers you would realize your question doesn't make any sense. You could try rephrasing it again but since you've asked twice and I still don't know what your talking about, chances are you have a very large misconception about how empirical evidence is collected. Its strange you find your own ignorance so amusing.

[gomtuu77]

Hahaha...no, I was asking much more basic questions.

My point is simply, did they note require some kind of first person account from someone in order to be able to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?

Hahaha... :rollin:

I don't know what you're asking. If you had read those papers you would realize your question doesn't make any sense. You could try rephrasing it again but since you've asked twice and I still don't know what your talking about, chances are you have a very large misconception about how empirical evidence is collected.

It's not a hard question.  Wouldn't someone, at least initially, have had to be telling them what they were thinking or what they were feeling in order for them to correlate and identify the 5 neurochemicals in question?

[Icarus]

Hahaha...no, I was asking much more basic questions.

My point is simply, did they note require some kind of first person account from someone in order to be able to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?

Hahaha... :rollin:

I don't know what you're asking. If you had read those papers you would realize your question doesn't make any sense. You could try rephrasing it again but since you've asked twice and I still don't know what your talking about, chances are you have a very large misconception about how empirical evidence is collected.

It's not a hard question.  Wouldn't someone, at least initially, have had to be telling them what they were thinking or what they were feeling in order for them to correlate and identify the 5 neurochemicals in question?

No, that's what the fMRI is for. You're trying to create the stupidest weakness in scientific experimentation ever. Scientists don't fall for the "Trust me bro" that's what religion is for. Jesus said "Trust me bro" and everyone did. You might ask, how do we know it's showing love. That is answered by the research papers, which you will never read because you don't want to be proven wrong. I held your hand a bit but now it's time to take the training wheels off.

[gomtuu77]

I don't know what you're asking. If you had read those papers you would realize your question doesn't make any sense. You could try rephrasing it again but since you've asked twice and I still don't know what your talking about, chances are you have a very large misconception about how empirical evidence is collected.

It's not a hard question.  Wouldn't someone, at least initially, have had to be telling them what they were thinking or what they were feeling in order for them to correlate and identify the 5 neurochemicals in question?

No, that's what the fMRI is for. You're trying to create the stupidest weakness in scientific experimentation ever. Scientists don't fall for the "Trust me bro" that's what religion is for. Jesus said "Trust me bro" and everyone did. You might ask, how do we know it's showing love. That is answered by the research papers, which you will never read because you don't want to be proven wrong. I held your hand a bit but now it's time to take the training wheels off.

So you're saying they needed no 1st person response to stimuli to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?  And you're saying they didn't correlate what they were seeing on the fMRI with any 1st person response to stimuli?  I'm not trying to create any weakness.  I'm demonstrating an obvious reality that materialists always fail to recognize.

[Icarus]

So you're saying they needed no 1st person response to stimuli to isolate the 5 neurochemicals?  And you're saying they didn't correlate what they were seeing on the fMRI with any 1st person response to stimuli?  I'm not trying to create any weakness.  I'm demonstrating an obvious reality that materialists always fail to recognize.

Ok, that thing you keep saying, this one: "1st person response to stimuli to isolate the 5 neurochemicals". That isn't a thing. This thing "And you're saying they didn't correlate what they were seeing on the fMRI with any 1st person response to stimuli", that's also not a thing. You're desperately trying to create a weakness to justify your position without having to do any work.

I can keep saying "All your questions would be answered if you bothered to read any of the papers". But I get the feeling your mind is made up on this topic no matter how much evidence is put in front of you (read those 5 papers). By the way, one of those papers told me there are 8 chemicals. See, I read the paper and I learned something. MAGIC!!!!

[Graceless]

You don't have to take anyone else's word for it that those fMRI readings show happiness. You can put yourself in an fMRI machine and think happy thoughts, and those same neural clusters will light up, because all human brains share the same general layout.

So no, you don't need to take anyone else's word for it that the fMRI readings indicate happiness. Therefore you don't need to take anyone else's word for it that those neurotransmitters reliably correlate with happiness, because they correlate with the "happy" fMRIs.

[Solitary]

I love it when people say mental activities find the truth when in fact mental activities are materialistic. Without a material brain or material world you can't have any knowledge just ignorance. Objective events are real, but they can say nothing about the world we live in without a correspondence to the world we live in. Imaginary creatures are not real, they are reconstructions and modifications using our material brain from our association and events in the material world we live in.

This is BS to say prove something doesn't exist. Prove God isn't an imaginary figment of peoples imaginations if He is real in the material world!  And if He isn't prove He isn't just an imaginary figure like a magical invisible tea kettle or snake that speaks with forked tongue.    This is so ridiculous I can believe anyone past six years old can believe in a Magic Man in the sky.  :roll: Solitary