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A universe from nothing... (for space/science nerds) (pg. 10)
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| EgosXII |
| quote: | Originally posted by yukii
ah, i see that i am tired.
okay, i suppose i now see his point, but aren't we assuming that people who are religious know at least the basic concepts of their religion? just as i think anyone knows the basics of science? my point is, sure we can have blind faith on religion, and science.. i don't see how far the point goes other than that person him/herself for making that religion/science a 'fairytale'.. what i would find more relevant is which has hard evidence? |
as stated a million times above, we're talking about the PEOPLE pushing the beliefs, NOT the actual beliefs.
i havn't been talking about science, but about the people who DON'T understand science, but claim to!
the point of what i was saying, and the point of the safran clip is that many people are annoying because they boast evolutionary theory, or denounce religion, but have no basis for their beliefs...
in this way lay-scientists and religious followers could be compared because they both rely on belief structures to find them truth, NOT empirical evidence. |
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| Fledz |
| None of you are scientists, therefore you all suck :tongue2 |
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| EgosXII |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
None of you are scientists, therefore you all suck :tongue2 |
EXACTLY!!
but i admit it!! :haha: |
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| D-res |
| quote: | Originally posted by Domesticated
Ugh. Lira was saying that if you don't understand science yet believe in it, then you are basing your assertions on blind faith, just as with religion. Thus science would be a 'fairy tale' if you didn't understand the fundamentals behind it. |
So spending years studying the fundamentals behind theology gives the theory stout?
I understand Lira's point however I'd have to say his and Egos' point is moot. Believing something that's easily refutable, the equivalent of myths and fairy tales with just as much historicity, even with years of erudition still leaves one with a bunch of knowledge about a completely unknowable and more importantly, unprovable subject. If one has little time to read the tenets of biology, physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, evolution, et al. but uses logic and their basic education to follow a path analogous to someone more read in the same subjects, it doesn't mean their belief is based on blind faith. I base my beliefs on the ability of human ingenuity to answer the questions blind faith not only fails to do, but refuses to try. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by yukii
okay, i suppose i now see his point, but aren't we assuming that people who are religious know at least the basic concepts of their religion? |
Some do. Craig (Moral Hazard) knows his theology very well, for example, and it'd be an unfair mistake to say he's clueless when compared to a passive atheist that dismisses religions "because they're all wrong whereas science is sound and swell".
| quote: | Originally posted by yukii
just as i think anyone knows the basics of science? my point is, sure we can have blind faith on religion, and science.. i don't see how far the point goes other than that person him/herself for making that religion/science a 'fairytale'.. what i would find more relevant is which has hard evidence? |
I hate to break it to you but religion is based on facts too. How do you think a religion that preached that humans breathe underwater and fly would fare? Religion (and science, for that matter) is an answer to a problem. And it must be related to the facts in a way or another. Christians think miracles happen because of what they perceive as facts: an unlikely cure, a fluke you prayed for, and so on. The difference between science and religion is not that science alone is based on facts. Science is just more reliable.
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
Let me stop you right there and look no further. One does not need to know the introcate details of a system, science in this case, in order to trust or give it weight. As long as the definitions of the system are understood, Principles that lie within that system may be taken as affirmatives. |
The difference from religion in this case being that...? If a priest says God exists, and I trust it, the principles behind it can be taken as affirmatives, no?
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
When we are dealing with such broad context i think it is necessary to play semantics. It is safe to say thus that religion, myth, fable etc may fall into the category of mental masturbation which hold little to know bearing of testable results and cannot be challenged as they are proclaimed to be the word of dietie and immaculate.
Science falls under the category of testable observations. Repetitiveness giving accuracy to findings and in a way shaping the ingenuity of the society we have structured up til today. It may have been religion which motivated the ancient egyptians to build the pyramids, but it was science that actually constructed them. |
Are you truly saying that science involves no mental masturbation? That hypotheses do not precede/influence observation? There's a very good reason why we ditched this sort of Baconian thought: it's impossible.
By the way, since we're bashing "mental masturbation" (of which philosophy seems to be a member), I'd like to remind you that science was known as "natural philosophy" until a couple of centuries ago. Mental masturbation spawned science.
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
If you wish to believe in ancient tales developed by unsophisticated methods of analysis which hold no room for modification or change and instead shoddy interpretation to have them make sense of todays world by all means. A closed system will always be closed and thus there is no room for change. Here i am talking about relgion and mythology. |
Religions aren't closed... and they change :conf:
(the problem lies way deeper)
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
For science, there is always room for change and modification, there is no real constant until something more accurate is discovered that leaves old findings simply as stepping stones for advancement in theory. One does not need to understand everything to have trust in the findings (sure it would be fun but thats not the argument here) . You can hold trust in these findings simply because the scientific community (remember how i defined the system before) agrees with it.
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That's a very very very bad idea. Scientists are not infallible, and the scientific community is not always the apex of rationality: Phrenology had got almost everything wrong (their idea that some parts of the brain had specific functions proved to be useful though), and Lysenkoism had disastrous effects.
By the way, the "scientific community" also rejected Copernicus because geocentric astronomy could do a very good job (people often think it was just religion that got in the way).
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
Sure but i know what i am being told has been verified by a comittee of scientists who have a more introcate knowledge of the specific subject and thus peer reviewed. Slightly different then fairy tales if you ask me. |
Shouldn't this apply to theology as well?
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
linguistics is a different category all together. With science your more limited to pick and choose between your theories with regards to a specific subject. For instance, there is no alternative towards evolution. sure cladistics are not constant but the general idea is a widely accepted theory (the only prominent one). |
I fail to see how evolution affected chemistry. Saying evolution is the only choice even within science is a great over generalisation.
| quote: | Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit
Good show lira |
It's been a pleasant discussion :)
| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
None of you are scientists, therefore you all suck :tongue2 |
Oi, I'd like to remind you that linguistics is a social science, and social sciences are 67% a science. Therefore, roughly speaking, I'm two thirds a scientist, one third an anarchist, and one third a smart-arse :D |
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| Capitalizt |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
I'd like to remind you that linguistics is a social science, and social sciences are 67% a science. Therefore, roughly speaking, I'm two thirds a scientist, one third an anarchist, and one third a smart-arse :D |
and 100% ty mathematician. ;) |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| I think the extra third was because he is a smart-arse. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
and 100% ty mathematician. ;) |
Whoosh!
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
I think the extra third was because he is a smart-arse. |
Precisely :p |
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| yukii |
| quote: | Originally posted by EgosXII
as stated a million times above, we're talking about the PEOPLE pushing the beliefs, NOT the actual beliefs.
i havn't been talking about science, but about the people who DON'T understand science, but claim to!
the point of what i was saying, and the point of the safran clip is that many people are annoying because they boast evolutionary theory, or denounce religion, but have no basis for their beliefs...
in this way lay-scientists and religious followers could be compared because they both rely on belief structures to find them truth, NOT empirical evidence. |
in other words, all the other people who are studying these subjects at school, enjoy learning about it on their free time, and like debating about it, are according to the safran video a dumbass, wasting their time bc they don't know what they're talking about since they aren't a scientist!
nice point ;) |
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| apple country |
"ve believes zen nothing!, Lebowski. Nothing!" |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
"He's a nihilist."
"Ah. That must be exhausting." |
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| Renegade |
I'm sure you're playing devil's advocate to an extent here Lira, but I can't in good faith let all this slip by unopposed. ;)
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Some do. Craig (Moral Hazard) knows his theology very well, for example, and it'd be an unfair mistake to say he's clueless when compared to a passive atheist that dismisses religions "because they're all wrong whereas science is sound and swell". |
Of course. I'd be worried if the average theist were not more familiar with theology than the average atheist, but that's beside the point. I'm sure that the average numerologist knows more about numerology than the average non-numerologist, but that surely tells us nothing about the efficacy of numerology as applied to the world we all share? The failure of theology is not that it is incapable of sophistication, but that it lacks any real application to the world-in-itself - what can theology teach us that any other system of thought cannot teach us in a far more parsimonious (or - better yet - more accurate) way?
Fwiw, I'm actually quite capable of appreciating theology on its own terms. For reasons I don't really understand, I actually enjoy reading scholarship concerning - say - what the Biblical authors thought concerning the nature of Jesus. Did they consider him the Son of God? If so, what was their understanding of when this "sonship" was "appointed"? What it with his resurrection (Rom 1:3-4), his baptism (Mk. 1:11), his conception (Mt. 1:18, Lk. 1:26-35) or was he the logos that pre-exists existence itself (John 1:1-2)? These are interesting debates on their own terms, but they still have ultimately no bearing on anything meaningful: deciding in which sense we can call Jesus the "Son of God" surely won't change our understanding of the universe or the means by which we should live our lives.
Theology has the potential to be sophisticated and interesting, but let's call a spade a spade: it's still bull from top to bottom.
| quote: | | I hate to break it to you but religion is based on facts too. How do you think a religion that preached that humans breathe underwater and fly would fare? |
Well, religion is ultimately based on "minimally counterintuitive" facts - i.e. facts that are slightly incredible, but not so incredible as to defy all belief (see this link - I've posted it before but it deserves to be reposted). You won't find religions predicated on the fact that humans can breathe underwater, but you will find religions which assert that certain, special human beings can walk on water, or survive in the belly of a large fish underwater for three days. You won't find religions predicated on the fact that human beings can fly, but you will find religions predicated on the fact that the human soul can fly to certain places under certain circumstances, say in a dream or after death.
In any case, the fact that certain beliefs are universally present within all theologies - and others universally absent - is surely evidence of their cognitive origins. I can think of no other way that supposedly ineffable truths would have made themselves known to such a distinct array of religious traditions.
| quote: | | Religion (and science, for that matter) is an answer to a problem. And it must be related to the facts in a way or another. Christians think miracles happen because of what they perceive as facts: an unlikely cure, a fluke you prayed for, and so on. The difference between science and religion is not that science alone is based on facts. Science is just more reliable. |
I think you're giving theology more credit than it deserves here. The universal inefficacy of prayer is not hard to demonstrate, nor is the universal non-violation of natural laws - can differences in perception really account for that fact?
| quote: | | By the way, since we're bashing "mental masturbation" (of which philosophy seems to be a member) |
Haha, steady... :p
Philosophy often lends itself to "insights" that scarcely improve our understanding of the world or our capacity to engage with it, but at least there's a certain intellectual rigour behind it. The analogy that Dan Dennett used - and that I'm going to badly paraphrase because I can't be bothered looking it up - is that if philosophy is a game of tennis, then theology is a game of tennis with the net removed and all the court lines scrubbed off: they're both playing by a set of somewhat arbitrary and self-contained rules, but at least there are ways of "losing" at philosophy. Can you think of a theological idea that was ever rejected for anything other than decretal or otherwise arbitrary reasons?
| quote: | | Religions aren't closed... and they change :conf: |
Religious practice changes quite fluidly, but theology really doesn't - at least not once a central dogma's been laid down. One can trace the trajectory of Christian thought almost by the decade for the first century or so, but it comes to a standstill pretty soon after that. I mean, can you find me a Christian who disagrees strongly with anything St. Augustine had to say in the 4th century? Can you find me a scientific discipline that looks to 4th century ideas as an equivalent source of inspiration?
| quote: | | That's a very very very bad idea. Scientists are not infallible, and the scientific community is not always the apex of rationality: Phrenology had got almost everything wrong (their idea that some parts of the brain had specific functions proved to be useful though), and Lysenkoism had disastrous effects. |
Well I agree with you about placing unwarranted faith in any epistemic method (scientific or otherwise), but Lysenkoism isn't an example of what happens when you place to much faith in the scientific method, it's an example of what happens when you completely ignore the scientific method and go off searching for whatever method happens to validate your world view. Millions of people died basically because the Marxists couldn't accept the fact that Lamarckism is bull - science can't justly wear the blame for that one. |
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