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| Author |
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| 25 new of 372 responses total. |
eskarina
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response 50 of 372:
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Jun 4 23:40 UTC 2002 |
The fact that you are trained in something means it isn't innate?
Morality certianly fails the test. How about language, reading? The only
thing the human baby does at birth is suck and cry.
As far as reason: Just because you can't rationally prove something doesn't
mean it isn't true. Godel wrote this down in the context of mathematics:
no system of proof can catch all truth.
We also haven't yet defined religion.
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mary
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response 51 of 372:
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Jun 4 23:42 UTC 2002 |
I'm not surprised at all by how many people consider themselves religious
and believe in a god. I mean, first you are told that God will take care
of you if only you trust, that no matter how bad you are you can be
forgiven, and that in the end you'll go to a place so amazing you can't
even imagine it. Then you put family and cultural pressure to bear and
stir in a good dose of tradition. And for the real clincher you give them
problems without solutions.
I'm surprised there are so many atheists looking elsewhere for their
truth.
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mary
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response 52 of 372:
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Jun 4 23:43 UTC 2002 |
People slipped in.
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jep
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response 53 of 372:
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Jun 4 23:55 UTC 2002 |
I don't think there is, or has ever been, a society in which there was
no religion with a prominent place in it. It's as widespread as
language (which is also taught).
re #47: Other places besides Catholic Europe existed, and they didn't
develop what Europe did. The place that was so heavily dominated by
the Catholic religion happens to be the place where Western
civilization, technology, freedom and world dominance (for the last 500
years) came from. It seems like more than a coincidence to me.
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jmsaul
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response 54 of 372:
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Jun 5 01:22 UTC 2002 |
It's more than a coincidence, but that doesn't mean that the Catholic Church
is the reason for it. The reasons have a lot more to do with geography (read
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ for a good explanation).
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rcurl
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response 55 of 372:
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Jun 5 02:10 UTC 2002 |
Re #50: One must be trained to be religious, therefore it is not innate.
Language is innate (it requires imitation, but not training). All illiterate
societies have had language, quite a few also had no written form of their
language.
Just because you can't rationally prove something doesn't mean it's true.
Most things that fail rationallity are not true. So where does that leave
religion? Nowhere.
Re #53: religion is found everywhere because people immersed in it make
a big effort to impose it on others, and there have always been vestiges
of old pre-historical religions (which I have pointed out will arise
spontaneously when humans attain consciousness, for lack of any other
explanations or standards, in order to impose order on chaos).
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brighn
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response 56 of 372:
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Jun 5 03:51 UTC 2002 |
Religion is not as widespread as language. Every single human living in a
community, unless utterly dysfunctional, uses a language of some sort. Many
humans do not use a religion (Rane and Mary, for example).
All illiterate societies had no written form of their language, Rane. I think
you may have phrased what you were saying poorly. ;} I also think you may be
missing Eskarina's point, or at least I disagree with your comments on
language. The ability to learn language appears to be innate in humans, based
on the twin observations that all but the most dysfunctional of humans learn
a language when exposed to it, and that only a few unique non-humans pick up
any substantive amount of human language (that is, beyond learning their own
name and a few pattern-matchings like "sit" and "come here"). But people still
learn language the same way they learn belief structures: Chiefly through
observation. The reason why I ultimately agree with you and not with Eskarina
is not because religion is any more taught than language, but because religion
is not an inevitable result of what is taught. The analogy to language is
belief structure, not religion, and not all belief structures are religions.
(Rane has a belief structure, he just doesn't have a religion... or at least
I'll say so to avoid an argument ;} ).
People have as much trouble modifying their belief structure as they do
modifying their language. They tend to include new attitudes and beliefs into
the existing framework, and rarely through out the entire belief structure,
in the same way that people have foreign accents when the learn additional
languages.
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jaklumen
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response 57 of 372:
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Jun 5 05:22 UTC 2002 |
oh bah-- come on. Perhaps it is better to say "belief system." For
Rane, it's science. Anyway, why must we assume humans must impose
order on chaos? There *is* order in the universe-- entropy by
absolute definition would assure our non-existence. Order was created
sometime, somehow, by a greater power.
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rcurl
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response 58 of 372:
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Jun 5 05:44 UTC 2002 |
Science is not a belief system. It is a mosaic of observation and
interpretations.
Order is created in the cascade of entropy increase, which can kick
chaotic systems into higher order. All that appears to have existed
"in the beginning" was enormous energy and enormous contrasts of enery.
No "greater power" is necessary, except in the energetic sense.
Societies can be illiterate and have written languages, because societies
are not homogeneous. Written languages in ancient societies have been
reserved for certain classes - the society itself was illiterate.
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jaklumen
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response 59 of 372:
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Jun 5 11:46 UTC 2002 |
Bullshit-- not in this context.
"Order is created in the cascade of entropy increase.." sure. That
makes about as much sense as putting a disassembled mechanical clock
into a paper bag, and then shaking it for a long time to see if it
eventually comes together. Come on, Rane-- not all scientists believe
that, and many have disseminated the statistics involved. You'd have
a better chance of winning it all at Vegas.
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russ
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response 60 of 372:
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Jun 5 12:16 UTC 2002 |
Re #53: Yes, language is taught. People learn extremely different
languages depending mostly on where they are born. So which language
is innate to humanity? None of them, apparently (though the grammar
of creoles indicates that there may be an innate grammar).
The Renaissance only had a chance in areas dominated by Catholicism
because Islam failed in its own time, hundreds of years earlier, to
push past dogmatism and all the other roadblocks to progress. Science
moved in no small part despite the Church, not because of it; does
Galileo ring any bells?
I expect that if society stopped training people in religion we would
still have errors of thought (people are falliable creatures), but
the organizations of religion would take some time to reappear if they
ever did; I'd hope that personality cults wouldn't fossilize into dogma
quite so fast (though the Randroids make me fear for humanity).
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md
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response 61 of 372:
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Jun 5 13:01 UTC 2002 |
I thought the order we see in the universe is a strictly local
phenomenon that occurs because of the various forces that draw things
together, chiefly, in our case, the force of gravitation. Stars and
planets form into roughly spherical objects, atmospheres develop,
liquid water appears, life starts from molecules on up, and we're in
business. There is no need to posit a god in this process, unless you
want to call gravitation a kind of blind idiot god. (I'm reserving
judgment on the big bang at the start of all this, as well as on the
origins of the properties of matter, because I've never read a
convincing explanation.)
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brighn
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response 62 of 372:
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Jun 5 13:43 UTC 2002 |
#58> "Science is not a belief system." You just can't meet me half way here,
can you, Rane? I'm willing to relent on "Science is a religion," but not on
this. But you illustrate my point excellently: Just as a Midwesterner has
difficulty understanding that they speak a dialect of English (most think they
speak English, and someone from Texas or New York speaks a dialect), someone
like you who has been fully indoctrinated into a specific belief system has
a hard time seeing that they have a belief system. Just because you can't
*see* it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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vmskid
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response 63 of 372:
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Jun 5 14:52 UTC 2002 |
Saying that science is not a belief system is plainly ridiculous. And as far
as it being a system of observation and interpretation, so is religion.
Sceince, like traditional religion, starts out assuming certain axioms which
cannot be proven, but are taken as true. Science thus tends to be more of a
statement about human perception and psychology than what actually constitutes
reality.
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brighn
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response 64 of 372:
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Jun 5 16:19 UTC 2002 |
Science does indeed start with certain assumptions, but those assumptions are
much more defensible than religions. For instance, one assumption of science
is, "Our mutual reality is close enough to objective reality to take reliable
measurments and make observations on that objective reality." For instance,
when we perceive an object to fall, we must assume it to be the case that
there are two relatively salient objects -- the falling object, and the earth
-- that become closed together. If this isn't the case -- if, for instance,
neither object really exists, and everything around us is a Matrix-like
fantasy -- then science is nothing more than an intellectual exercise that
means nothing. The only other assumption that science makes that comes to mind
right now is, "The universe works according to predictable rules." If
everything is random, there's no point to trying to make predictions.
Religious assumptions are a lot less defensible, at least on the ground rules
set by science. "God exists" is an assumption, but there's little motivation
beyond begging the question for accepting that. Even comments like, "There
must be a grand design behind all this" doesn't require a conscious designer.
The scientific method, in and of itself, makes no assumptions about the nature
of God, one way or the other. Many modern scientists choose to believe that
God does not exist, given the overwhelming lack of evidence, but the most
honest atheist scientist must admit that they're saying that God is highly
implausible, not that God definitely doesn't exist.
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rcurl
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response 65 of 372:
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Jun 5 16:32 UTC 2002 |
Science has no axioms. Some logic systems that have been developed have
axioms (e.g., mathematics), but that doesn't mean that mathmatics
necessarily has any relevance to reality. That some does is observed by
scientists to be quite amazing, and of course accepted as it is in part
useful. If you think science has axioms, please state some.
Religion has no observations and interpretations that can be repeated and
tested. If observations cannot be repeated then they are irrelevant to
science.
Re #59: you may not like it, but it is still true. md in #61 points out a
number of examples that follow from the creation of entropy through
gravitational dissipation of mechanical energy to heat energy. In every
instance where order is observed in nature it can be found to result from
a "entropy cascade", as "work" (mechanical, electrical, chemical potential
energies) are degraded to heat, or heat is degraded from lower to higher
entropy and, along the way, create other forms of order.
A bag of clock parts will not reassemble themselves into a working
clock, but if you observe a clock being made you will find that at
every step energy is degraded and entropy is increased and the finished
clock yields a net universal entropy increase. The order of the clock
arose from at the cost of a great increase in universal disorder.
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brighn
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response 66 of 372:
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Jun 5 17:08 UTC 2002 |
#65> Religion has no axioms, either, because the word "axiom" is
intimately
tied to the concept of formal language, and niether religion nor science has
an immutable formal language. Languages are the representations of things,
not the things themselves. I thought it was clear that, by "axiom" was meant
"unprovable assumption," and posted accordingly.
Religion is irrelevant to science. I think that's the closest I've seen you
come to admitting that science is agnostic, not atheist. ;}
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jep
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response 67 of 372:
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Jun 5 17:09 UTC 2002 |
Atheism is as much a set of religious beliefs as any religion. The
tenets of atheism can no more, or better, be tested than those of any
other set of beliefs.
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rcurl
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response 68 of 372:
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Jun 5 17:28 UTC 2002 |
Religionists are always trying to make that claim, but it is nonsense.
Atheism is, of course, a belief, but it accords vastly better to
observation than does theism. There is no demonstrable evidence whatsoever
for the mystical assertions of religions. Occam's Razor (the simpler
explanation has higher probability) gives the overwhelming weight to
atheism.
Re #64: I question whether those "assumptions" you attribute to science
are even assumptions. Science is a collection of observations, which
we record. It does not matter if a "reality" exists, or not. The
*observation* that predictable rules exist is also not an assumption. It
is simply an observation, that has useful consequences. In using it,
we *presume* predictable rules exist, but that is different than
assuming it (though many people do not make that distinction, mathematical
modelers do, for whom a presumption is an assumption whose truth remains
in question, but which forms a useful starting point for an analysis,
and which may or may not be supported by the result of the analysis).
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brighn
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response 69 of 372:
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Jun 5 18:50 UTC 2002 |
Fine, "presumption," which is for intents synonymous to "assumption" for me
anyway. I'll accept the replacement. True, honest science does take the tack
of "If <insert my presumptions here> is the case, then the following
holds...".
I agree that atheism is more plausible than theism from a scientific
perspective. But you must also agree that atheism is unprovable, at least by
current methods. (I also see the whole thing as more question-begging...
science sets the rules, and then measures religion agaisnt its own rules. If
I were going into a battle with someone and had the opportunity to set the
rules myself, I'd do so in a way that heavily favored me, too.)
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jep
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response 70 of 372:
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Jun 5 19:35 UTC 2002 |
re #68: What are the proofs and evidence that there are no gods,
again? That one side is always saying something is not a rebuttal of
it's validity. Calling an argument "nonsense" is no rebuttal, either.
How is it that Occam's Razor ? To what does it apply? You've reduced
the argument to "Is too!" "Is not!" They both seem pretty simple to
me.
If neither side has any facts, there's no basis for any argument at
all. It's simply a matter of what you believe. Your unproven beliefs
seem to me to be exactly equal to anyone else's. You're extremely
convinced, but so are the devout on the other side.
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brighn
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response 71 of 372:
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Jun 5 20:09 UTC 2002 |
Hypothesis 1: The universe came to being exactly as science describes it, with
a series of natural laws that are true basically because they have to be,
otherwise we would not exist as we do to ruminate on their nature. Today is
the logical outcome of those laws applied to the system in place at the time
of the Big Bang.
Hypothesis 2: God created the universe, then created a layer of scientific
phenomena so that the non-believer would be able to construct a universe in
which God was implausible, thus making the existence of God a matter of faith.
As painful as it is for me to say, I do have to agree that Occam's Razor
heavily favors the first hypothesis.
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jp2
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response 72 of 372:
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Jun 5 20:48 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jep
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response 73 of 372:
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Jun 5 20:59 UTC 2002 |
Occam's Razor is not a proof or a point in an argument; it's just a
principle to keep hypotheses simple.
How do you do experiments, and repeat them, that show how the universe
was created?
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jp2
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response 74 of 372:
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Jun 5 21:01 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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