Science Text Attempts to Reconcile Religion and Science 1071
terrymaster69 writes "The New York Times reports that the National Academy of Sciences has just published their third book outlining guidelines for the teaching of evolution. 'But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.'"
Trying to bring a god in classroom (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sellouts (Score:1, Insightful)
Richard dawkins disagree's with you.
Why make concessions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Public figures like Sam Harris help me realise that they simply don't deserve it. Their position and the means they used to arrive at that position have no merit what-so-ever.
Orthogonal concepts (Score:2, Insightful)
Or as the old Pope hold, science provides a description of how God created the world, while religion provides a description of why God created the world.
Re:Logic vs Faith (Score:4, Insightful)
Faith is subjective, mystical, and can have the appearance of utter hogwash to someone not participating therein.
The casual observer of one of my more meaningful experiences would have said: "Dude: you were parking the car".
Yet, at that time, in that context, I got a very deep message out of it.
The trick to peaceful existence is to keep a weather eye on the line of demarcation between faith an logic, and be respectful, if not accepting, of both sides.
And don't try to use elements of one to assail the other. Such is a quick trip to unhappy land.
Re:Logic vs Faith (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sellouts (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's the hypocrite?
Not requires, allowes (Score:5, Insightful)
Science and God (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty tolerant against people with any kind of religion, mostly because it is the only way to get along. But trying to reconcile science and religion? They are both trying to describe how the world works, from two opposite sides. All the important things that religious persons believe in are completely outside the laws of nature. Saying that they can go together because one is about belief and the other about reason? These concepts are not exclusive if you try and describe the same thing.
Now I might be flagged as some kind of extremist. If that's true, it's because I don't want to "belief" as some people want me to. I try and describe things in a logical matter. Fortunately you can be a extremist atheist without having to harm people. Especially if you see from history that polarization is sure not to work.
Re:Logic vs Faith (Score:3, Insightful)
Human beings are rarely aware of much of what drives them to think or act or feel what they do. Science attempts to explain it all, but its answers aren't very reassuring and when it comes to it, religion is much better at satisfying people's feelings of emptiness and lack of direction.
So it's no surprise that, given the inadequacies of the current state of science, people are still believing in the supernatural.
Also, it's not a question of logic but probability. I mean, even science has basic assumptions, mantras and anecdotes here and there which occasionally turn out to be false and lead to radical rethinking on basic ideas.
Essentially, I think we needn't care too much about whether people choose to see everything as fitting into 'God's Plan' or being just 'Stuff that happens' or whatever, as long as everybody is committed to uncovering the truth, whatever it turns out to be.
The limits of science (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of the creationist/ID nonsense is due to people not understanding how science should be hold to different standards than religious texts. "The theory of Evolution" is very much different today than what Darwin proposed. This would have been a weakness in a religion, but is a strength for a scientific theory.
Re:Two Baskets (Score:3, Insightful)
A God (or gods) sweating on putting all the dinosaur bones into the soil just to 'trick us' is plain pathetic.
I'm not a believer in any of these 'gods', but i can live with the former
People who deny evolution based on their god fantasy need to wake up.
Re:Two Baskets (Score:3, Insightful)
take a look at the sectarian violence in the middle east now between shias and sunnis over minor interpretation of gods will (tho i suspect religion is just an excuse for racial hate that we are seeing, nowhere in the koran does it say killing innocents is ok)
nowadays religion brings nothing good it seems, what happened to compassion and love thy neighbour? instead we get peadophile priests and sexual abuse cases,
what happened to helping the poor? last i checked the Vatican is rich beyond belief and is rung better than most corporations out there
Finally someone making sense (Score:1, Insightful)
As the article states: "Asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God."
P.S. IAC
This is absolutely ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's a good idea since it doesn't explain anything. As the original poster pointed out, as more and more evidence is collected the need for gods, ghosts, and goblins declines and never increases. That is because it was an incorrect hypothesis to begin with.
The reality is that the "gods of the gaps" argument is the only argument for the existance of these fantasy beings and if you don't accept that then there is no other reason to believe they exist other than "it says so in a book I read once".
TWW
How vs. Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Every question asking for meanings ("why") rather than mechanisms ("how").
I'm an atheist, I believe the only meaning that exists is what we create ourself. But that is a philosophical position, not a scientific position. There are excellent philosophical arguments for why I'm right and the theists are wrong. But they are philosophical, not scientific. Those who believe science can disprove God is as delusioned as the ID people who believe science can prove God.
Those religions that has a well-educated clergy, such as the Catholic Church, have long ago decided to leave the Emperor (science) what is his, namely the mechanisms, and leave God (religion) what is his, namely the meanings. Only, Those churches that mainly consist of in-breed hillbillies, mostly some US Protestant groupings and some Arab Sunni-Islamic groups, still want religion to describe mechanisms, despite the overwhelming evidence that religion sucks at mechanism.
In science class, don't ask why it rains, ask how it rains. Mechanism, not meanings.
Re:The limits of science (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but it has absolutely no relevance to cult beliefs. The solution to limited scientific knowledge is better science, not to give up and invent a god of the gaps.
Weasel Words (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution provides such a good explanation for biodiversity that it becomes unnecessary to invoke God, except for the awkward questions of the origin of the universe and the origin of life. You can bodge in a kind of "wind it up and let it go", deist God, but this still ends up leaving unanswered questions: If a God could come spontaneously into existence from nowhere, why couldn't a ready-made, non-God-requiring universe come spontaneously into existence from nowhere? And if a highly complex living entity such as God could could come spontaneously into existence from nowhere, why couldn't a few single-cell organisms come spontaneously into existence from a suitable already-existing environment rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and trace elements, with pure energy available in the form of radioactivity or electrical storms? (Evolutionary theory suggests that you only need single-cell organisms to begin with. All the rest will then take care of itself.)
And trying to teach biology without mentioning evolution is a bit like trying to teach electronics without mentioning Ohm's Law. (And Ohm's Law cannot be proven or disproven experimentally, because every voltmeter and ammeter fundamentally depends on Ohm's Law being true for its operation.)
Re:Two Baskets (Score:1, Insightful)
the God basket is not empty if the science basket is inside it...
Re:Sellouts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How vs. Why (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do I exist ? Is that really a meaninful question ? It implies that I must be here for some purpose. One of the interesting things about language is that it is easy to ask questions without real meaning.
On Genesis, from a Christian (Score:2, Insightful)
For the Christian Scientist, all theories of the "natural" world as identified by the set of sciences that interest us are a subset of a larger, engaging reality. For the Christian layperson, having a theory on the working of one mechanism or another, buttressed by direct observation, if not by yourself then at least by others who have established themselves as trustworthy, should be convincing enough for most material at hand. To put this on topic: "evolution" contains robust models and should be seen as both able to provide useful explanations for our own natural history as well as provide insight into our future. And we can safely stop short of the drama right there.
Part of what has gone wrong in the highlighted subculture is that people who are not qualified will sometimes speak authoritatively on topics and end up with moronic conclusions. Sometimes this is how I feel when I read slashdot comments from naturalists that really feel that there is a conflict of interests between religion and science; and it is exactly what grates on me when I hear religious people espouse the same. Both persons will go away from what they fear and toward what they trust, and this is a bad process in general when it comes to advancing knowledge, no matter who does it.
And let me point out the great irony of culturally conservative Christianity: an in-depth attention to the Bible, particularly the Genesis creation myth will reveal that it is *nothing* about actual physical "creation". One thing that conservative theologians like to claim is understanding the historical and cultural significance of the Bible (this is a good thing). In my opinion, it is jettisoned frequently on this single topic for the purpose of funding a culture war.
Briefly, let me summarize that it is common practice among ancient near eastern cultures to take the dominant mythology, particularly the creation myth, and to retell it from the perspective of the current Monarch who uses this retelling to establish their role in the world, specifically their fitness for rule as it is often retold to highlight the character traits this Monarch possesses. In the Genesis creation account, what we see happening is a retelling of the dominant Sumerian/Akkadian creation myths (check out the Enuma Elis cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_Elish [wikipedia.org] for an example) from the perspective of the God of Israel: the major changes are a shift away from chaos and randomness toward order and predictability. The Israelites, safely said, were concerned by things such as established, powerful people groups in the same region, and basic things like sustaining a crop or herd of livestock; living through a winter and avoiding things like being enslaved again were definitely on the mind.
What the Genesis creation myth does say is basically this, if I can grossly oversimplify in a paraphrase: "The God who has lead you out of Egypt is greater than the gods and the people whom you face next; where the world is random and unpredictable, this God establishes order and sustains the land; have no fear."
And *that* is what a conservative pastor should be telling their congregations about creation and the meaning of the stories in Genesis.
Making this conflict with "science" is obviously left as an exercise from an aggressive or intentionally ignorant mind. Or maybe both
Re:Education is the Solution, Religion is the Prob (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The limits of science (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The limits of science (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a number of what I consider to be mistakes in the current debate. The first is to identify scientific truth with the kind of absolutist claims that are made by religion. Scientific truth is a much more humble concept. The second mistake is when people who understand the two are different, nevertheless believe that the religious conception of truth is viable. It isn't. We just need to face up to the fact that we appear to be epistemically limited creatures.
Justification by evidence isn't going to work, because science will just eat it up. Justification by faith is an oxymoron. The only sorts of proofs left are metaphysical arguments, and even if they work, they never result in the kind of god that anyone other than a Deist would want to believe in.
I don't have a moral problem with people believing in God. But that doesn't mean that their beliefs should not be challenged in public, and that they should not be called on to defend them (and likewise for the opposition). That's pretty much what we do on other topics. Someone makes a claim and people ask for reasons why we should believe it. It beats fighting about it. There are many reasons we should debate religion, but the best one is probably because we want to know whether its claims are true or not. That's really the value that underpins most of science.
The recent prominence of people like Dawkins is evidence that the prejudice against the critical discussion of religion in public is on the wane. That's a good thing. We also have public places where this sort of thing is debated formally: they are called philosophy classes.
Re:Two Baskets (Score:1, Insightful)
The standards of truth are entirely different. (Score:4, Insightful)
Science may not have an answer for everything, science has made mistakes, not every accepted theory can be 100% proven. But religion does not even try to prove anything, religion requires you to accept what is proclaimed without any attempt of evidence, or logic, what-so-ever. With religion, it's true just because somebody said so - no other reason.
Don't let yourself be fooled by an argument of ignorance. Don't think "if science doesn't have every answer that proves religion to be true." Because that is just illogical.
What is known about science is backed by hard evidence - religion has no such standard.
Re:God of the Gaps (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't fathom how your post got voted as Insightful.
Re:On Genesis, from a Christian (Score:3, Insightful)
Understanding Genesis 1 as a poem leads to some rather wonderful finds. For example, the way I like to understand Genesis 1 is as follows:
Genesis 1:1-2
Genesis 1:3-19 Genesis 1:20-30
Genesis 1:31
There are two parallel parts.
So in 3-19, the author presents the various elements of the non-living world, the climax of which is the stars in the sky and finally the Sun and the moon, who "rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness".
In 20-31, the author presents the various living things of the world, the climax of which is man and woman who rule over the animals and plants. The men and women are given the same position and same responsibility as the sun and the moon. The same mission to bring light and remove the darkness.
Religion and science are incompatible (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this would really be totally schizophrenic: it would require somebody to base his acceptance about what is on something that is completely without any logical cause (God) and something that has been derived from many pieces of unrelated evidence (Science). I don't see how this can go together in any reasonable way. How should one decide when to believe and when to require evidence? Somebody who believes in God could just as well believe in Creationism or some other silly fairy tale.
The argument of some religious people, some of them calling themselves scientists is that science cannot answer all questions and religion comes in then: why was there the big bang etc.
Of course science cannot and will never be able to answer all question. But what good is it to believe in some fairy tale answer for those unanswerable questions instead of just accepting that we simply dont know? Isn't it evident that "answering" the question about why there was a big bang with "God did it" makes everything just more complicated instead of easier? Why is there "God" then? We do not gain anything by this "answer" but we lose a lot.
I think it is evident that there simply is no place for religion to answer the wonders of what is anymore. None of the explanations for how stuff works thousands of religions came up with ever turned out to be true or remotely sensible.
That leaves religion as some kind of ethical instance: maybe it cannot explain nature and reality, but it tells us how to behave ethically, no?
I think, this is actually not true either, on the contrary: ethical behavior comes from the human ability of compassion. It is biologically built into us. No need for God here either. It is no coincidence that practically all mahir rules of ethics, save some details about sexual behavior, are identical between religions: you dont kill, you dont cause pain, you dont steal etc.
The role of religions here is to make it unnecessary to *think* about ethics. After all God told us the does and donts. And that is the problem: when it is not necessary to think about ethics any more, compassion can be switched off. Yes, it is not right to kill, but its ok to kill that criminal. Yes it is not ok to cause pain, but it is ok with that slave or that member of another religion.
Religion is opium, because its sole purpose is to make thinking unnecessary and make people feel comfy in their self-rightous ignorance.
Re:How vs. Why (Score:3, Insightful)
The same reason why scientists need to run around and find out 'how'.
I have only one question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Odds are that they're only promoting one (or a handful of) major religions. Aren't there laws against that sort of thing?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Two Baskets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
Or as the old Pope hold, science provides a description of how God created the world, while religion provides a description of why God created the world.
Does that make any sense?
I see logic and faith as two totally opposite concepts. One relies on rational thinking while the other relies on two thousand year old myths. One of the memorable parts of Neil deGrasse Tyson's [wikipedia.org] speech on Beyond Belief 2006 [thesciencenetwork.org] was the fact that 15% of scientists believe in God, and he thought that this 15% was the biggest worry of science. Because he, and many other scientist can't reconcile the belief in God with science because explaining something complex and unlikely by something even more complex and even more unlikely doesn't make any sense.
Re:evolution doesn't require abandoning belief in (Score:3, Insightful)
If they had each been Indian they would have belived in Rama, Shiva etc. but their work would have been the same, or at least of the same quality. That's because science and rational thought are striving towards a truth, whereas religion, having no basis in reality, is arbitrary and whimsical with no need to strive towards any particular thing. Indeed, it is one of the defining characteristics of religion that it avoids striving towards any truth since that would require an admitance that the current dogma is not the final word. Such admitance is suicide for something as paper-thin as religious "thought".
TWW
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
Overall I think science education has done a poor job of differentiating between science and faith. This has been exacerbated by the exclusion of any discussion of religion in public education, as you need to talk about religion and faith to understand the difference.
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sellouts (Score:3, Insightful)
Some things are inherently unprovable. That is a large distinction.
I might have some theory that makes a prediction of the behavior of matter at extremely high temperatures. Maybe I can't test it right now because there is no way (yet) to generate that temperature, but it is still testable in principal.
If I speculate about the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient entity that regularly alters reality without leaving behind any evidence then this will always be untestable. No experiment will every be able to conclude: "the result was X, therefore god doesn't exist", because the answer to that will always be, "your result X happened that way because god wanted it to happen that way"
I call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe that somehow the thoughts in our head caused by our neurons and synapses reach God then he must be in contact with nature somehow. If God sends his magical wishes into our world to be written down in a book then it must also be so. If you claim that God affects our world then he must be part of nature or extend somehow into the physical world and science is the only possible successful method at discovering it. If you reject science you reject the only possibility of ever truly finding a god.
You can say that your idea of a god isn't related to science but the Christian God most certainly is and it's absurdly false.
Stop confusing your redefined vague new age bullshit god with the vengeful, jealous and petulant God of the desert.
Re:Logic vs Faith (Score:3, Insightful)
> Faith is defined as, because of objective past experience of God's action, trusting his promises of future action.
How do you know it was God? Why not the purple people eater monster?
Ah yes, you take it on faith that it was God and not some purple people eater. In other words...
> Faith is subjective, mystical, and can have the appearance of utter hogwash to someone not participating therein.
Re:Um, think about that (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's optimistic to hope for critical thinking in schools, but the alternative -- simply not discussing such topics -- amounts not to education, but vocational prep.
Re: Orthogonal concepts (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't God just create us all as souls in Heaven? Everyone sings happily ever after, end of story.
But no, he has to create us with bodies in a material world and leave us unattended so we can fall prey to temptations we don't understand and get condemned to Hell for it, so he can show how much he loves all of us by saving a tiny, tiny fraction of us from eternal torture.
The factual errors in the bible can be swept under the rug if you're so motivated, but the theology is stupid beyond belief.
Re:Logic vs Faith (Score:3, Insightful)
Proclaiming that its a tool shows you either haven't really considered what faith is, have had negative experiences with someone who was using their faith as a justification for an argument, or just don't give a shit what faith at its core is and what its can be. I will agree that arrogant faith can be worse that arrogant 'unfaith'. But don't blanket the idea of faith as a negative, its disrespectful. Do unto others and all that jazz.
Cheers.
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
You may not want to talk about it, but the most powerful country on Earth is electing Presidents on the basis of this stupidity. So we'd better start "talking about it."
Why people insist on giving religion a free pass in public discourse is something I'll never understand.
I guess it's just my Aspergers acting up, huh.
Re:The limits of science (mod parent up) (Score:4, Insightful)
As HL Mencken says "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." I think it is a good thing that religious belief should be questioned in the classroom and what better forum than a science class.
Dawkins makes all these points and more in his book "The God Delusion".
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a look at the LDS faith [mormon.org]. Regardless of whether you accept the teachings or not, this religion does put forth an explanation of the why, in much more detail than I have found elsewhere.
I normally try to avoid the flamewar which is Slashdot religion discussion, but hey, you asked ;-)
Cheers
Re:The limits of science (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense. Not all knowledge is scientific knowledge and not all means of discovering knowledge are scientific. This proves the point really.
Not all evidence is scientific. Are you familiar with other fields of human knowledge such as history?
That's a rather glib comment that flies in the face of thousands of years of wise, intelligent and educated people advocating just such a belief and their opponents disagreeing, but not calling it an oxymoron.
Re:Trying to bring a god in classroom (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume you mean the 'truths that mankind has so far come to understand'?
I see. And where has this been proved true? How exactly are you going to perform an empirical experiment on that which is not bound by the laws of nature?
So should we start locking up all those evil people who believe in God?
Besides which, she wasn't telling them to believe in God; she was saying that science has nothing to say about God and there is no conflict there, which is quite reasonable.
Actually, I know quite a few Christians who don't because they don't want to lie to their kids.
No, knowing and following Jesus as personal lord and saviour would be religion for everyone, including children.
Jesus gives me money if I lose teeth? That's a new one. Don' think Santa rose from the dead and can forgive my sin either.
Copying and pasting from Dawkins doesn't make you look older or smarter than you are and just means you repeat his errors. People above the age of 10 don't start believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy. People of all ages and backgrounds start believing in Jesus. That should be a subtle clue that they're rather different. Christianity having a basis in historical events would be another.
Assuming you're American, I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of the Constitution.
One scientist's perspective on God (Score:4, Insightful)
God as a general concept is just not interesting. It is too vague too be testable, so it falls into the category of ideas like solipsism or the notion that the entire universe and all of our memories were created 10 seconds ago. It certainly could be right, but so what? It is an intellectual blind alley that does not lead anywhere interesting. It is boring. You take it as far as it goes (not very far) and then you look for something more interesting to think about.
If somebody wants to propose a testable God hypothesis, fine. I'll give it the thought that it merits. God created all of the species at one time a few thousand years ago? OK, that one's been tested and it's wrong. Next?
Re:The limits of science (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
It might come as a big surprise for you, but the Pope was Catholic, and it has always been the position of the Catholic Church, like it has been for all educated Christians, that the Bible requires interpretation.
This is quite unlike the certain inbreed American hillbillies, who has never read a book in their life, who therefore believe the King James Bible is God's words which can somehow be read directly without interpretation.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
The complexity of someone's fantasy does not make it any less fiction.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:1, Insightful)
The core of science is to figure out how.
No. Why should there be any need for a creation? Time being, as it is, part of the struture of the universe, it is senseless to talk about a time before it, or even the universe changing. It doesn't. The universe _is_. It always has been.
There is science and there is metaphysics. There's no need for magic sky men.
Science and Religion are incompatible. (Score:3, Insightful)
'Do not test the Lord your God' is what we're told when we seek to investigate the existence of gods.
'Faith is the belief in things not seen' is what the religious man tells us as he waves his hand in the manner of a jedi after experiments and analysis fail to show the Almighty.
Religions seek an exception to the scientific method, specifically the parts where you do any science. Experimentation is forbidden, doubt is sin, and failure to believe can result in eternal damnation.
Religion and science are not simply two ways of looking to the universe for answers to our questions. They are absolute opposites of each other. If I were a boy asking his parents a question about something I observed, such as the growth of a plant from a seed, a scientific parent would have to encourage me to experiment on seeds, dissect them, and find out when a seed becomes a tree. A religious parent would simply hand me a book and tell me that if my answer wasn't in there, it probably wasn't important, and may be heretical.
Heresy. A concept foreign to science, but present in all the world's major religions. Freedom to think as you choose, to ask questions without being burned alive at the stake, hung, tortured, stretched or beheaded is a part of science and not a part of religion.
The choice between science and religion is the same one as the choice between trial by peers or simple lynching.
Re:Are NOT the limits of human knowledge! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that government has got a bit religeously "top-heavy" lately, with so many "fundie" candidates in positions of power that they think they have a mandate.
Hopefully, they'll be proved wrong at the next election...
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
Credulity (or gullability, if you'd like) was probably evolutionarily beneficial because belief, in itself, can have positive health implications (ie the placebo effect). Individuals who "believe" tend to recover from disease more than people who don't. What you believe in doesn't seem to matter.
This was fine and good during most of our civilization's childhood, because frankly we didn't know anything about anything. But in the modern age, when science has far more beautiful, predicive and elegant explainations, we need to feed that desire to "believe" with analysis of facts. It is harder, for sure, but more rewarding. Religion knows it is being phased out slowly, and therefore fights science and free thought every step of the way.
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trying to bring a god in classroom (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Trying to bring a god in classroom (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The limits of science (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Trying to bring a god in classroom (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. It is called mass delusion.
You believe it because so many others believe it. After all, how can all these people be wrong, eh?
Use examples from the past. Greek gods and Roman gods would be one. Egyptian gods another. Also Japanese emperor is a god figure as well. No one believes any of these anymore, yet not so long ago, A LOT of people believed it and you would be killed for saying different. A LOT of people can't be wrong. All current religions are just a natural continuation of the past religions. As people outgrew their deities, we needed to create more powerful ones.
Why do we believe? People can't accept futility of their lives. They think they are special and try to justify it with religion (eg. afterlife and "god's will").
Finally, people do not just start to believe in a religion. 95%+ percent, they are indoctrinated into that religion from a little kid that can't think for themselves. Then they stay in that religion mostly out of fear - leave and maybe get the wrath of god as preached by almost every religion so most don't want to take risk like that. This explains the lack of mobility from one religion to another.
Aside: Santa has a basis in historical events that are a lot closer than 2000 years yet look what happened to that. Santa now lives in the North Pole, sports a Coca Cola suit (yes, they made it red), and eats cookies and milk. Santa, from real facts to current myth seems to mimic the so called "religious historical facts" quite well.
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:5, Insightful)
Oooh, a challenge! Shiny, shiney new toy. Thanks Santa!
Now let's break it, fast.
Our abilities to plan into the future, remember the past, recognize patterns, abstract thought, and infer by analogy are survival traits. Right?
Now, parallel research on split-brain patients and in AI have arrived to a similar model of the mind. It is a group of agents, each specializing in one task. What split-brain research has demonstrated is that the inference module is not accurate : it infer an explanation for anything, as long as it can apply a pattern that's been memorized before.
For example, paranoia seems to work by forcing the inference module to find scary explanations to ordinary events. Agents are interacting, but independent. A paranoid person may know full well that there isn't, say, a sniper hiding just there in the bushes, but will have to go see to be sure, even if that's several times.
Religion is an explanation for things that science has figured out by now. It appeared as primitive explanations to
But someone finally decided that they'd seen enough the pattern of "the world around me seems to work in a consistent ways" and inferred "maybe I can figure out all the rules". Now that is an other way to get the answers, and it's better, because it yields perfect results when everything is right (ie, you test an hypothese that happens to be correct). The scientific method is a better tool than religion, so it will supplant it some day.
What's frustrating is knowing there is a reason why people still believe in God : the ssurvival trait to find new ideas dangerous, weird, strange. It is a group-survival trait : if we didn't have it, the genuinely dangerous new ideas would kill us all off damn fast.
Now you know the mechanisms by which both religion and science appeared, and because of which there is a fight between them memes. Happy?
Re:Orthogonal concepts (Score:3, Insightful)
you know what's totally opposite? your thumb and your middle finger. equal and opposing forces can be intoxicatingly useful (not to mention elegant). see also: us constitution
Re:Mod parent up (Score:1, Insightful)
No.
No, no, no.
The universe-as-a-whole (which contains time) is different from the universe-within-time. The difference is equivalent to the difference between the set of positive integers and the sequence 1,2,3,... . The latter begins at 1, while the former merely has a lower limit at 1.
We clearly need to distinguish between the atemporal universe and its temporal counterparts, since by 'universe' I mean the former and you don't. Let us, for now, call the latter the cosmos.
Whether or not a singularity ocurred at the big bang is both debated and irrelevant, since this would merely be a beginning for the cosmos and not the universe. For the universe, the big bang is simply the lower corner of some parameters.
Is this now understood?
Re:Mod parent up (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Two Baskets (Score:3, Insightful)
Your second point, the question of why having a scientific explanation should preclude God doing it, is where the question of faith/belief/whatever comes in. You're free to believe whatever you want, but you shouldn't be surprised (or offended) if someone thinks you're a little odd for believing that God caused some phenomenon, even though there's a good scientific explanation for it. Why would you invoke God in such a circumstance? Why would it be
Science has proven to be a vastly powerful tool for explaining the universe, and there hasn't been any evidence presented to suggest that there are any phenomena it
himi
Re:The limits of science (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you trying to claim that palaeontology
himi
Re:The limits of science (Score:3, Insightful)
"First, and most importantly, this position is inherently false because it is self-refuting. It is a serious and far-reaching claim, requiring justification. However, the claim itself falls outside the limitations of science. It cannot meet its own standard of justification. To state that "Only scientific claims are knowable" is equivalent to stating, "Only ten-word sentences are true."
No it isn't. For a start, one is demonstrably false, the other is at least plausible.
Similarly, we could claim that "only scientific claims are knowable" is a conceptual truth, in which case it is self evident once you understand how the term "know" is used in ordinary language.
But I don't want to do that.
Instead, we could, like Quine did (and as I would do), deny that there is a real distinction between conceptual and empirical truth, but that would simply make my point for me, since Quine demonstrated that abandoning the distinction just makes the tradeoff between different theories one involving the most convenient explanation. There will be an infinite number of possible theories that fit the facts, and arguing over which one is true is thereby pointless, because they all are. In such cases the trade offs are on practical grounds of explanatory power, simplicity and coherence. The theory that we tend to call the "true" one is the one that best satisfies these commonplace constraints. For ancient people this involved explanations with reference to deities. For us deities have no explanatory power.
In this second case, we can establish that all knowledge is scientific by demonstrating that pragmatism is the only viable approach to knowledge. That is what I mean when I say that science has a much more humble notion of truth than religion. The proof is simply the elimination of alternatives and realization that Quine is right.
"This idea is a form of positivism."
It does not necessarily have to be. It can be a form of pragmatism. The two are distinct. Your post seems to completely ignore this alternative.
"Second, this position is also incidentally false. One could hold that a rational person shouldn't accept any non-scientific claim, even if that claim somehow happens to be correct. But no one actually does this. There are plenty of propositions that most of us accept, though they lie outside the limitations of science. The clearest example is the claim that the universe exists. Is that silly? Let me rephrase: the claim that the universe, rather than the Matrix, exists. By definition, this question can never be addressed scientifically."
Yes it can. We have a choice between two competing theories which equally explain the evidence we have, and we simply make the decision on the pragmatic grounds I mentioned above. What the pragmatists are trying to get the dogmatists to realize is that our own behaviour and our own use of words like "knowledge" are relentlessly pragmatic. Once we realize that an infinite number of theories will fit any evidence we have, then truth in the dogmatist sense becomes pointless, because there will be an infinite number of true theories.
"Even if it's possible to doubt some of the things I've mentioned, like an objective physical world, (1) there is no obligation to do so, and (2) no one actually does so, including full-fledged skeptics (as Hume himself admits). In a many cases, perhaps most cases, doubting has no epistemic superiority over not doubting."
But since any theory is underdetermined by evidence, doubt is part of the very structure of belief. This is why I can hypothesize that I am in the Matrix. But even though I can't decide between the Matrix and the physical world on grounds of evidence, I can decide on pragmatic grounds, but the real point is that I must always decide on pragmatic grounds and I always do.
Similarly, people can promote a God centered view of reality that is completely consistent with every piece of evidence. But in terms of explanatory power, coherence and simplicit