The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
[PATV] Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 17: Religion in Games (Part 2)
Posts
Science is a process, not an edifice, if you have faith in science you definitionally are not applying the concept incorrectly. All scientific claims are tentative and subject to revision. It is imperative, if one wishes to understand and perform scientific inquiry that one realises that everything we know is more likely to be wrong than right, but that it is the best current understanding and that each revision takes us closer to understanding correctly, a potentially unreachable goal.
I wish people wouldn't trot out the kind of tripe you have here as it makes it difficult for those of us who actually have to teach research practices, scientific literacy and such to undergraduates. To be fair you are probably just ignorant and not being willfully incorrect and misrepresenting science, but that doesn't change the nature of your message and doesn't negate the fact that it is incorrect and damaging.
Additionally it is not a good idea to trot out comments from famous scientists to support points about faith and science. They aren't saints. Einstein was wrong about all sorts of stuff. The point of thinking critically is that a claim be judged on its merits not on who made it.
It appears to me likely that you have faith in something or other, be that gods spirits or unicorns. Your framing of faith in a positive rather than neutral light in this episode is, frankly a disservice to your stated intent of a balanced look at it. That is kind of par for the course though as a balanced look at faith tends to make it look silly, so anyone determined to cling to it will have to cast it non objectively to bias an audience.
The only basal assumptions necessary for scientific exploration are that
1) The world exists
2) Our senses give us imperfect information about the world
3) The laws of logic are valid
These things also must be assumed in order for any interaction with anything to be reasonable. Point 3 is also necessary for points 1 and 2 to be intelligible. You can call these "faith based" if you wish, but that is really stretching, putting those three axioms alongside anything else talked about when people use the term faith (not as in trust, but as in belief without evidence) is a pandering attempt to support a religious mindset and is horribly disingenuous.
You on the other hand are describing something SUPERBLY biased from your current perspective, and somewhat self gratifying about "Science".
First off, it seems that you are not aware, but there is a lot of theological exploration, in different religions, this means that religions dont always blind themselves of all modern discoveries to keep preserving the faith, but instead they try to understand and merge modern advances through the light of their -mostly moral- beliefs. You have a borderline medieval look on religion (and I'm extremely critical atheist, very interested about the subject). Religion often adapts based on what is observed, and as noted, sees faith as a final static aim and not as a variable stepping stone. Moreover most modern religious views try to find ways in which their faith complements scientific discovery and not really counter it. (fanatism is another story, but that ammounts for fanatism in any field).
Secondly, In mathematics and science in general, it is well known that we have AXIOMS, axioms are hypothesis that are just accepted as true because they enable further reasoning. This as stated is not "the answer to everything", but instead a tool to advance within a certain track. In scientific theory, of course the stability doesn't exist, if evidence demonstrates something, it stands until disproven and it is TREATED as a truth, even when it theoretically shouldn't. In modern scientific research though this is very interesting, because it enables for standing parallel theories that explain the same phenomenons in different ways. And supporting one or the other into it being accepted as truth BEHAVES in the exact same way as religious belief on the individual. That is, until challenged. Photons were a very well known example of this, researched paralelly by different scientists trying to prove that they were waves or particles, and coming up with something in the middle.
And yet again in the public eye, there is always that sense of a truth you can trust: not all people are researchers, and no researcher can research everything. But we they have a certain set of beliefs / trusts that set the structure of our vision of the universe. Of course this is not the ideal portrayal of science but all of us stand in this spot when faced with some forms of knowledge. It's not always easy to realize but we all have axioms and beliefs, even when it comes to scientific knowledge. And even moreso today, when the dregree of abstraction of scientific research is often very hard to observe in practice for the non intensively formed specialist.
But really, if you investigate theology and religion, they have also modified the beliefs heavily through history observing social changes. Of course this fuels moral conflict, but only because it normally hits societies more directly and often has a stronger moral charge. While being critical about the morality of science often seems pointless, since it just "is", scientific discovery is still a product of a human observational finding of a pattern in nature, and it can often be inprecise, biased and incorrect.
However if you are going into semantics, you are correct to notice the difference: Science is the observation of phenomenon, and faith is the belief in certain observations (that may be more or less objective). In fact this is a risky association, but induction which is one of the most commonly used scientific proofing methods, requires requires a degree of faith. But in any case anyone can see that the way they function isn't disconnected, it is a gross lack of observation to think that they are.
Anyway
I'm slightly disappointed about the episode though, I think Faith -has- been tackled in games to some extent, even without a particular creed or in a fully abstract way... expected a deeper analysis.
The willingness to abide in a position without evidence is faith. "Faith" and "confidence" are NOT interchangeable terms. Nor are "belief" and "reasonable expectation," or "dogmatic adherence to an unreasonable idea" and "tentative trust granted for the sake of argument expected be vindicated."
Where is the examination of the other side of this argument? The dangers of faith? The repeated damage of faith on the mind, on society, on history? You were about to go there with the priest who has no magic powers, then just waltzed on past it. I was expecting you guys to at least discuss the portrayal of religion in games. Dragon Age. Final Fantasy X. Thief. These are games which actually do a great job at examining religion and faith. And you skipped them to prattle on about a loaded term you didn't even define.
And way to misrepresent Einstein. The man held a reverence for science in the same vein as Spinoza, but was not religious at all. I can throw around quotes too:
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
-Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Albert Einstein
I know you guys were trying to be impartial, and I hoped that you would be, but I feel like your misstep of not defining faith, then tacking faith onto science, then using the same context to tack it onto religion, wasn't a mistake, but rather a deliberate and conscious decision. I recall your Propaganda episodes with some clarity and irony here.
I still love you guys, and I still watch your show and will continue to do so, but I'm going to speak my mind when I disagree with something said in a public forum.
The willingness to abide in a position without evidence is faith. "Faith" and "confidence" are NOT interchangeable terms. Nor are "belief" and "reasonable expectation," or "dogmatic adherence to an unreasonable idea" and "tentative trust granted for the sake of argument expected be vindicated."
Where is the examination of the other side of this argument? The dangers of faith? The repeated damage of faith on the mind, on society, on history? You were about to go there with the priest who has no magic powers, then just waltzed on past it. I was expecting you guys to at least discuss the portrayal of religion in games. Dragon Age. Final Fantasy X. Thief. These are games which actually do a great job at examining religion and faith. And you skipped them to prattle on about a loaded term you didn't even define.
And way to misrepresent Einstein. The man held a reverence for science in the same vein as Spinoza, but was not religious at all. I can throw around quotes too:
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
-Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Albert Einstein
I know you guys were trying to be impartial, and I hoped that you would be, but I feel like your misstep of not defining faith, then tacking faith onto science, then using the same context to tack it onto religion, wasn't a mistake, but rather a deliberate and conscious decision. I recall your Propaganda episodes with some clarity and irony here.
I still love you guys, and I still watch your show and will continue to do so, but I'm going to speak my mind when I disagree with something said in a public forum.
Second, @hobsgoblin has a wonderful comment but somebody needs to deal with the fact that it appears about four times in its gigantic entirety.
Finally, I wanted to address what @RatherDashing89 said:
> You guys do realize that we don't know that our current atomic model is 100% accurate, right? We don't know that the speed of light is constant throughout the universe. And we cannot know anything about the past without putting some faith in what other people have told us.
There's a lot of misunderstanding of faith and religion. Non-religious people tend to assume what religious people are talking about and it's usually wrong (what Evangelical Christians say about their faith is in my opinion a big reason for this misunderstanding). But right here we have the #1 misunderstanding about science, which I think everyone believes except the scientists themselves.
In science you are never - I repeat, never - supposed to have absolute faith in a single idea. Scientists do not believe that the atomic model is 100% accurate. Scientists assume that it is accurate for the purposes of further experimentation. There is a difference between belief and assumption, and I don't think most people understand that. You don't need to have faith in the atomic model to assume that, if it is true, then X might also be true; let's do an experiment to see if X might also be true.
I will admit that many scientists tread the line between assumption and belief, but it's largely unavoidable when one is doing cutting edge research. When one is researching the evolutionary lineage of human beings, for example, it would really slow things down to be reconsidering after every observation whether evolution itself is still a valid interpretation of the observations. If something were to come up that really disproved things, that's when you do the reconsidering.
If the reader has ever heard of string theory, it's a perfect example. For those who haven't, see XKCD: http://xkcd.com/171/ . The whole thing with the higgs boson at LHC? I've heard that if the higgs boson is shown to exist, it would discredit string theory. All the string theorists were trying to reason the implications of string theory and figure out how much of the universe it could explain. They assumed that the basics of string theory were true and worked from there. If the basics are discredited, then it would certainly disrupt a lot of people but it's not the same as suggesting that God doesn't exist. For one thing, God is not disprovable. For another, string theorists do not have faith in string theory the way that @hobsgoblin explained Christians have faith in God.
The difference between string theory and God is that string theory is just a concept that might help scientists better understand the universe, while God is something people can trust in and help them to be happy. Science is concerned with "how" the universe works, but God tells us "why" it's the way it is. Science tries not to tell us "why", but sometimes the bible can be easily interpreted as saying "how" (and that's where biblical literalists get into conflict with scientists). That trust in "why" is what faith is really about, not in believing without proof some story about "how" the world works.
Science is a process, not an edifice, if you have faith in science you definitionally are not applying the concept incorrectly. All scientific claims are tentative and subject to revision. It is imperative, if one wishes to understand and perform scientific inquiry that one realises that everything we know is more likely to be wrong than right, but that it is the best current understanding and that each revision takes us closer to understanding correctly, a potentially unreachable goal.
I wish people wouldn't trot out the kind of tripe you have here as it makes it difficult for those of us who actually have to teach research practices, scientific literacy and such to undergraduates. To be fair you are probably just ignorant and not being willfully incorrect and misrepresenting science, but that doesn't change the nature of your message and doesn't negate the fact that it is incorrect and damaging.
Additionally it is not a good idea to trot out comments from famous scientists to support points about faith and science. They aren't saints. Einstein was wrong about all sorts of stuff. The point of thinking critically is that a claim be judged on its merits not on who made it.
It appears to me likely that you have faith in something or other, be that gods spirits or unicorns. Your framing of faith in a positive rather than neutral light in this episode is, frankly a disservice to your stated intent of a balanced look at it. That is kind of par for the course though as a balanced look at faith tends to make it look silly, so anyone determined to cling to it will have to cast it non objectively to bias an audience.
The only basal assumptions necessary for scientific exploration are that
1) The world exists
2) Our senses give us imperfect information about the world
3) The laws of logic are valid
These things also must be assumed in order for any interaction with anything to be reasonable. Point 3 is also necessary for points 1 and 2 to be intelligible. You can call these "faith based" if you wish, but that is really stretching, putting those three axioms alongside anything else talked about when people use the term faith (not as in trust, but as in belief without evidence) is a pandering attempt to support a religious mindset and is horribly disingenuous.
You on the other hand are describing something SUPERBLY biased from your current perspective, and somewhat self gratifying about "Science".
First off, it seems that you are not aware, but there is a lot of theological exploration, in different religions, this means that religions dont always blind themselves of all modern discoveries to keep preserving the faith, but instead they try to understand and merge modern advances through the light of their -mostly moral- beliefs. You have a borderline medieval look on religion (and I'm extremely critical atheist, very interested about the subject). Religion often adapts based on what is observed, and as noted, sees faith as a final static aim and not as a variable stepping stone. Moreover most modern religious views try to find ways in which their faith complements scientific discovery and not really counter it. (fanatism is another story, but that ammounts for fanatism in any field).
Secondly, In mathematics and science in general, it is well known that we have AXIOMS, axioms are hypothesis that are just accepted as true because they enable further reasoning. This as stated is not "the answer to everything", but instead a tool to advance within a certain track. In scientific theory, of course the stability doesn't exist, if evidence demonstrates something, it stands until disproven and it is TREATED as a truth, even when it theoretically shouldn't. In modern scientific research though this is very interesting, because it enables for standing parallel theories that explain the same phenomenons in different ways. And supporting one or the other into it being accepted as truth BEHAVES in the exact same way as religious belief on the individual. That is, until challenged. Photons were a very well known example of this, researched paralelly by different scientists trying to prove that they were waves or particles, and coming up with something in the middle.
And yet again in the public eye, there is always that sense of a truth you can trust: not all people are researchers, and no researcher can research everything. But we they have a certain set of beliefs / trusts that set the structure of our vision of the universe. Of course this is not the ideal portrayal of science but all of us stand in this spot when faced with some forms of knowledge. It's not always easy to realize but we all have axioms and beliefs, even when it comes to scientific knowledge. And even moreso today, when the dregree of abstraction of scientific research is often very hard to observe in practice for the non intensively formed specialist.
But really, if you investigate theology and religion, they have also modified the beliefs heavily through history observing social changes. Of course this fuels moral conflict, but only because it normally hits societies more directly and often has a stronger moral charge. While being critical about the morality of science often seems pointless, since it just "is", scientific discovery is still a product of a human observational finding of a pattern in nature, and it can often be inprecise, biased and incorrect.
However if you are going into semantics, you are correct to notice the difference: Science is the observation of phenomenon, and faith is the belief in certain observations (that may be more or less objective). In fact this is a risky association, but induction which is one of the most commonly used scientific proofing methods, requires requires a degree of faith. But in any case anyone can see that the way they function isn't disconnected, it is a gross lack of observation to think that they are.
Anyway
I'm slightly disappointed about the episode though, I think Faith -has- been tackled in games to some extent, even without a particular creed or in a fully abstract way... expected a deeper analysis.
The willingness to abide in a position without evidence is faith. "Faith" and "confidence" are NOT interchangeable terms. Nor are "belief" and "reasonable expectation," or "dogmatic adherence to an unreasonable idea" and "tentative trust granted for the sake of argument expected be vindicated."
Where is the examination of the other side of this argument? The dangers of faith? The repeated damage of faith on the mind, on society, on history? You were about to go there with the priest who has no magic powers, then just waltzed on past it. I was expecting you guys to at least discuss the portrayal of religion in games. Dragon Age. Final Fantasy X. Thief. These are games which actually do a great job at examining religion and faith. And you skipped them to prattle on about a loaded term you didn't even define.
And way to misrepresent Einstein. The man held a reverence for science in the same vein as Spinoza, but was not religious at all. I can throw around quotes too:
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
-Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Albert Einstein
I know you guys were trying to be impartial, and I hoped that you would be, but I feel like your misstep of not defining faith, then tacking faith onto science, then using the same context to tack it onto religion, wasn't a mistake, but rather a deliberate and conscious decision. I recall your Propaganda episodes with some clarity and irony here.
I still love you guys, and I still watch your show and will continue to do so, but I'm going to speak my mind when I disagree with something said in a public forum.
The willingness to abide in a position without evidence is faith. "Faith" and "confidence" are NOT interchangeable terms. Nor are "belief" and "reasonable expectation," or "dogmatic adherence to an unreasonable idea" and "tentative trust granted for the sake of argument expected be vindicated."
Where is the examination of the other side of this argument? The dangers of faith? The repeated damage of faith on the mind, on society, on history? You were about to go there with the priest who has no magic powers, then just waltzed on past it. I was expecting you guys to at least discuss the portrayal of religion in games. Dragon Age. Final Fantasy X. Thief. These are games which actually do a great job at examining religion and faith. And you skipped them to prattle on about a loaded term you didn't even define.
And way to misrepresent Einstein. The man held a reverence for science in the same vein as Spinoza, but was not religious at all. I can throw around quotes too:
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
-Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Albert Einstein
I know you guys were trying to be impartial, and I hoped that you would be, but I feel like your misstep of not defining faith, then tacking faith onto science, then using the same context to tack it onto religion, wasn't a mistake, but rather a deliberate and conscious decision. I recall your Propaganda episodes with some clarity and irony here.
I still love you guys, and I still watch your show and will continue to do so, but I'm going to speak my mind when I disagree with something said in a public forum.
Second, @hobsgoblin has a wonderful comment but somebody needs to deal with the fact that it appears about four times in its gigantic entirety.
Finally, I wanted to address what @RatherDashing89 said:
> You guys do realize that we don't know that our current atomic model is 100% accurate, right? We don't know that the speed of light is constant throughout the universe. And we cannot know anything about the past without putting some faith in what other people have told us.
There's a lot of misunderstanding of faith and religion. Non-religious people tend to assume what religious people are talking about and it's usually wrong (what Evangelical Christians say about their faith is in my opinion a big reason for this misunderstanding). But right here we have the #1 misunderstanding about science, which I think everyone believes except the scientists themselves.
In science you are never - I repeat, never - supposed to have absolute faith in a single idea. Scientists do not believe that the atomic model is 100% accurate. Scientists assume that it is accurate for the purposes of further experimentation. There is a difference between belief and assumption, and I don't think most people understand that. You don't need to have faith in the atomic model to assume that, if it is true, then X might also be true; let's do an experiment to see if X might also be true.
I will admit that many scientists tread the line between assumption and belief, but it's largely unavoidable when one is doing cutting edge research. When one is researching the evolutionary lineage of human beings, for example, it would really slow things down to be reconsidering after every observation whether evolution itself is still a valid interpretation of the observations. If something were to come up that really disproved things, that's when you do the reconsidering.
If the reader has ever heard of string theory, it's a perfect example. For those who haven't, see XKCD: http://xkcd.com/171/ . The whole thing with the higgs boson at LHC? I've heard that if the higgs boson is shown to exist, it would discredit string theory. All the string theorists were trying to reason the implications of string theory and figure out how much of the universe it could explain. They assumed that the basics of string theory were true and worked from there. If the basics are discredited, then it would certainly disrupt a lot of people but it's not the same as suggesting that God doesn't exist. For one thing, God is not disprovable. For another, string theorists do not have faith in string theory the way that @hobsgoblin explained Christians have faith in God.
The difference between string theory and God is that string theory is just a concept that might help scientists better understand the universe, while God is something people can trust in and help them to be happy. Science is concerned with "how" the universe works, but God tells us "why" it's the way it is. Science tries not to tell us "why", but sometimes the bible can be easily interpreted as saying "how" (and that's where biblical literalists get into conflict with scientists). That trust in "why" is what faith is really about, not in believing without proof some story about "how" the world works.
First it must be determined what we are talking about when we say "faith" as there are 2 main ways in which we use the term.
The first is the most general. Like when we say "I have faith in (my friends, myself, my favourite sports team)". It is a belief based on knowledge that can be confirmed with facts. Ex. We can say we have faith in our friends, because we know our friends, so we can make an estimation of their potential. This faith is usually easily confirmed or dispelled by facts. If it turns out you were right, we say your faith has been rewarded. If you are wrong we say you are gullible. Thus faith is simply unproven gullibility.
The second type is religious faith. This is a staunch belief in that which, by it's own admission, cannot be known. This faith come mostly from culture, upbringing, and a desire to believe a particular thing. Unfortunately this is nothing more that a bias. Either for comfort or obligation, you believe it because you chose to. This type of faith demands adherence. If you have difficulty believing, then you are not trying hard enough, so keep telling yourself it's true until you believe. It is the antithesis to reason and will usually be defended against all reason.
Thus the premise that science is based on faith, is wrong.
Science is based on reason and that which can be confirmed. While some scientists might place a faith in their hypothesis, this often to the detriment of what they are doing. Ideally one should have no faith at all and only accept that which can be proven. It is only when scientific men of faith suspended their faith and began to think critically, that they begin to make progress. Science is meant as an investigation. So we follow the evidence, where ever it leads, and work to try to be without bias as much as we can.
To say that science had "faith" in Newton, was using the first definition, not the second. Even then, at the time everyone knew that Newtonian gravity was wrong, but it was the best they had so they continued to use it anyway. This was replaced by Relativity which was more accurate, but is still wrong (doesn't work on the quantum level) which is why they continue to search for the Grand Unified Theory. And even the GUT will likely be wrong in some point but will still be more accurate than what we have.
As for faith in games, I think the dynamic between Morigan and Leiliana in Dragon Age:Origins was a really interesting example of scepticism vs. faith.
Of course, in these games the force demonstrably exists...believing in it doesn't require faith as such. But the question of goodness, and whether its worth having faith in morality and other people, is often a central concern. And I'm not just talking about the way your specific Force powers change depending on where you fall on the morality spectrum.
The best example might be the ending of The Mysteries of the Sith, where the only way to win (spoilers, y'all) is to lay down your weapons and surrender. Then there's the plot of Jedi Knight 2, which starts with a Katarn who has forsaken the Force because he doesn't believe people are good enough to be entrusted with that kind of power, and where the central argument is whether it's worthwhile to trust oneself and other people with real responsibility, and to hope for happiness and love rather than just...power.
Put another way, the whole series revolves around the temptation of Christ, rewritten in a sci-fi/fantasy idiom. If that's not about faith I don't know what is.
I'm not sure an increased/decreased vulnerability to magic counts as an exploration or expression of having faith (or not).
I mean... if I'm willing to open a can of worms, I can sort of see it... after all, the really faithful often talk about Feeling the Presence of the Holy Spirit or Hearing the Voice of God, which I guess sort of counts since you could describe those kinds of experiences as reaching out and touching the supernatural which non-believers can't do. (Sort of, anyway. Former fundamentalists can still perfectly recall and recreate those experiences since that kind of thing is a function of the brain.)
The biggest problem is supposedly approaching faith as an element of religion (as a whole) is that faith is largely a concept central to Christian-type religions and either less important or even completely irrelevant to the vast majority of religions that have existed in human history and continue to exist today. For many religions (including many that shape our world today) faith is far less important than one's actions.
The Extra Credits folks usually make great videos and research pretty well within games, but for this topic it really looks like they just didn't do their homework.
Perfectly fair point, I just find it an interesting expression in game mechanics. Perhaps are more grounded exploration of faith vs skepticism would be a link with both morale and risk taking. That is; more faith equals braver but also more likely to take risks, due to faith that things will work out. Or you might take an ideological vs pragmatic angle with it, inflexible but decisive vs flexible but indecisive.
But perhaps none of those would amount to an exploration either, without expression in plot as well as mechanics.
This simple statement should serve to end the argument that "Atheism is not a form of faith." With this definition, it is. There is no proof that god(s) exist, there is also no proof they do not exist. If you believe, and have no doubts, that is a form of faith. Even if you believe that life is an accident. It's a belief, and you can't prove life is an accident.
On the numerous facets of the word faith, there are a large portion of games that argue facts and mysticism, or that use Religion and myths as furniture. The paint on the walls, the location, types of creatures, imagery and symbology. Though, aside from flavor text of NPCs, and setting, nothing has really had the player, that main character, whom you experience the game through, deal with faith issues. And by faith issues, I mean things directly effecting his belief, whether he questions or doubts it from experience. Perhaps his devotion becomes stronger to his beliefs because of circumstances. Hell, the character could be anyone, of any belief.
An Atheist being shown marvelous and unexplained phenomena that has a ring of possible divinity? Perhaps someone of a deep devotion to a god finds that the portal to his god's plane is nothing more than a wormhole to another planet, or an alternate universe.
You could even make something that hits closer to the core of specific belief systems or religions. Like an experience where the main character is an Angel or Servant of a god and has close proximity to them. Then they are cast out by the god they have so much faith in their benevolence. The experience could lead you to chose whether or not you keep that faith in the god. Perhaps the Angel now believes in something else entierly? The possibilities for stories that explore faith more closely are manifold.
Oh, and before someone gets on me for having an Angel question something because "They have no free will of their own!": One, it's a story that may help you learn more about your own faith. Two, if they have no free will, and that entails ALL angels, how did Lucifer turn against god? God is flawless, never makes mistakes, and angels have no free will, yet Lucifer still rebels. Again, an examination of faith, or belief, if the word faith scares or puts you off.
Three things:
1) The burden of proof is on the proposer of a hypothesis
2) There is a bit of an misunderstanding at work here about what Atheism is. Atheists aren't necessarily claiming that they are absolutely certain there is no god or gods.
3) Atheism says nothing about the origins of life or whether or not it is an 'accident'
Gnosticism and agnosticism are positions on whether it is possible to know if there is a god or gods. Theism and atheism are the belief, or lack thereof, in a god or gods. It is possible to be a gnostic theist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist or agnostic atheist. Many people who call themselves agnostic are agnostic atheists, but some can be agnostic theists. It is this double use that undermines the utility of the term agnostic.
Most self-described atheists are agnostic- atheists, and are not dogmatically convinced there are no god or gods. Likewise, many who believe in a god or gods will readily admit they cannot know for certain.
The point you are trying to make depends on a very selective interpretation, or assumption, of what an atheist thinks, which is not central to atheism, may or may not be the case, and often isn't. Atheists make no proposition about the nature of the universe, so they don't have anything to prove. They simply don't buy into others explanations regarding gods.
Consider how science is treated as religion by many. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get people to buy into whatever you're saying with the words "Studies have shown" or "Experts say"? They never ask to see the studies, and even if they do, a simple printout or a link will usually convince them (or you can just claim to have lost it, that usually works too.) They trust - they take it on faith - that these numbers are factual, were reached by legitimate means, and not skewed by error or paycheck. These are big assumptions to make, particularly with things like global warming and genetically modified food being such significant political topics.
/CAN/ it be proven one way or the other? Can you go to the lab, talk to the scientists, observe them at work? Sometimes. But does anybody actually do it before relaying their findings as, shall we say, Gospel truth?
That some people don't follow up on claims of proofs does not change that science is concerned with assessing proofs, that faith is belief without proofs, and that these are not only not the same thing, but opposite things. Faith in science does not science the same as faith make. Plenty of non expert people can and do wonder or argue about the legitimacy of a study when they hear it, and often pseudo-studies with a particular agenda are easy to spot. Quite often in the comments of a news story about a study people will question the sample size, or the whether the study actually says what the headline implies, or so on. This does not make these people scientists of the particular field, any more than people taking the report at face value magically turns science into faith or religion (religion implies quite a different thing than faith, someone who takes a random story about a study at face value probably doesn't worship scientists).
Reasoning is a mental activity called "inferring".
To infer is to draw conclusions from true premises (e.g., data, information, facts).
Logical reasoning always results in drawing non-contradictory conclusions from true premises.
It is the task of logic to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning.
There are two ways to infer, via inductive logic or deductive logic.
Inductive logic draws probable though fallible conclusions from true premises.
Deductive logic results when truth of premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion.
The truth of a premise used in logic is never based on faith, since faith does not require that one establish evidence of (data, information, facts).
There are people who believe, based on evidence, that we didn't land on the moon. Even conspiracy nuts rely on evidence for their belief. Its not that you may not have, or want, evidence for your belief, its that you require none... if you have faith.
Firstly, we have indeed addressed LOSS of faith several times in games - this appears in numerous games, actually. Final Fantasy X is an example, where Wakka and Yuna are both deeply upset by the reality of what is going on, and Wakka in particular is very offended when Tidus first really starts fighting against it, though eventually he sees reason. Yuna is much less so, but one could argue that her loss of faith is more gradual, and she's a less vehement person to begin with - she is willing to die, but Tidus essentially convinces her that life is too precious to waste like that, and that it won't actually solve the problem anyway, and that, in the end, this was all just a grab for power by the church, not really something which is truly for the benefit of everyone else in the world - as, in the end, the peace is shattered again.
Another example would be Mass Effect 3, where Liara becomes upset that the superiority of the Asari, and their religion, was not based on themselves, but was actually the result of intense Prothean intervention with their early society - they had not earned their place in the universe, but had been given it, and moreover her own people hid this fact from everyone else because it would have destroyed the myth of Asari superiority. They were just another scavenger race getting their technology from the Protheans rather than inventing new things themselves, and this fundamental lie really hurt her. It wasn't that she was particularly faithful to the gods of the Asari, but rather that she had discovered over the course of the game that the protheans were not particularly nice, and that her own people had hidden these things to make all the Asari feel more powerful and in control. Her whole worldview about the inherent superiority and goodness of her own species, as well as of the protheans, had been broken, and while she persevered, she persevered in part through the lie that the Asari had in fact been chosen by the Protheans for their superiority, when in fact it would appear it was just the Protheans not putting all their eggs in one basket - they had observed and helped numerous nascent races, and the Asari were just one amongst many. But it did make her feel better.
It is true that crises of faith are pretty rare in games, and are mostly non-religious in nature (mostly of the nature of learning that you are, in fact, the Tomato in the Mirror, or that your employers are the bad guys, or your friend is a bad guy, or your dad is a bad guy, ect.) but they do show up.
I will also note that part of why crises of faith are difficult to portray in games is mainly because it requires the main characters to have faith to begin with, and you have to portray that faith in a manner that won't greatly annoy the player in a fairly short period of time, which is quite difficult to do - especially if it is obvious to the player from the start that they are going to have their faith tested. Basically, you have limited time to tell your story, and you have to establish their faith before you break it (or their lack of faith before you build it, though a story about building religious faith can be a very tough sell to begin with - this is why most faith evolution in stories is about learning to trust others and similar things).
Or to put it bluntly, its very difficult to do this sort of storyline in a game, and it is very easy to do it badly and make it offensive, and even more so when it is about faith in religion, which is far more ephermeal, harder to characterize and establish well, and much more likely to cause offense - especially if you take the shortcut of using a real world religion.
Now... on to the further part.
Math and science are not based on faith, and anyone who claims otherwise has no understanding of either. Period.
Math is indeed based on postulates, but this is because no logical system can exist without making assumptions. However, just because we make these assumptions does not mean that we cannot -test- these assumptions - what is missed by the makers of this video is the fact that we CAN indeed test these postulates and assumptions, and indeed, have done so. All of the postulates of mathematics cannot be proved by logic ex nihlo - you have to make some OTHER assumptions to prove them, which doesn't really improve the situation at all - but what you CAN do is show it to be exceedingly unlikely that you are incorrect. We use these postulates to make predictions, and we can verify or falsify the postulates via experiment - we can construct triangles and suchlike and prove or disprove whether these rules apply to the real world. And indeed, as far as we can tell, the postulates of mathematics are correct in their systems. They are not logically derived, but we do not take them -on faith-.
And so it is with science. The reason we never prove anything in science is precisely this reason - in math, you can prove things based on your postulates, but you always know that your postulates are just that, so you can only prove things in systems with given postulates. In reality, there are no proofs, so all scientific knowledge is what are known as theories and laws, which are just heavily verified experiments. So when we talk about scientific knowledge, it is much as the postulates of mathematics - it is that we have done such a great degree of research that we are confident to X degree that Y is true between bounds K and Q. This is how science works - we have level of certainty, we have precision of certainty, and we have bounds over which we have observed said things. When something is disproved in science, then you shift over to the next thing. This is how science works. Faith has nothing to do with it. A scientist may have faith, they may BELIEVE something, but science does not. And this is the fundamental mistake the makers of this video made.
We are only as certain as our observations allow us to be. As you look at history, what you see is us becoming ever increasingly certain of our observations and our science, and when people talk about how physics got overturned at the start of the 20th century, and how our current science can be just as overthrown, is to not actually understand what happened there.
Is Newtonian physics wrong? Yes. But at the same time, we use newtonian physics daily, and indeed, most scientists use newtonian physics more often than they use relativistic physics, because while Newtonian physics is not absolutely accurate, it is a very good tool for approximation, and relativity seldom matters on the human scale (not never, though - people who deal with satellites and really anything involving space do indeed have to care about relativity). When we went from Aristolean physics to Newtonian physics, our calculations became massively more accurate over the range of what humans normally interact with. When we went from Newtonian physics to relativity, our calculations for most things that happened on earth pretty much remained unchanged (though we did gain some new meaningful insights into some things, such as radioactivity, but these things were prodding at things we had never observed before, and had been unable to use). A huge amount of what we do in the real world doesn't use relativity for calculations because it simply doesn't need to.
So when we talk about the laws of physics being overthrown, we need to keep in mind what is actually happening is a refinement of accuracy, especially in extreme cases - Relativity barely matters on Earth, but once you start poking out into space, it matters a great deal. Quantum mechanics gave us a better understanding of how the elements worked, but we still did chemistry for a long time before we understood quantum, or indeed the structure of atoms - they just gave us more power. And it is well worth noting that our current theories are massively more accurate than preceeding ones - we are confident that within certain ranges our theories are, at worst, very, very accurate approximations of reality - and no new theory is going to change that fact, because that is how the universe is.
Science gets progressively less wrong over time, and while things are disproven, as we go forward things get less and less inaccurate, meaning that the changes we make end up being less and less major.
When people say that science is based on faith, they are wrong. Science is based on empirical observation, NOT on faith - the reason that scientists back in the late 19th century thought they were so close to solving physics was because over the normal range of their observations, they had only seen small variations - remember, this was before we knew just how big the unvierse was, and just how many turtles were stacked up. There were some inconsistencies on the edges of their theories, and they wanted to know why certain things happened - why did the two slit experiment work? Why is mercury's orbit off? What causes radioactivity? These were all kind of weird corner cases, and it wasn't obvious to them that the reason why they were off was because the universe was far, far stranger than they had given it credit for. But relativity, quantum mechanics, matter-energy equivalence and the like were devised, and matched the real world data, solving those problems and problems for a great deal of time to come. It is only now, a century later, where we are seeing the limits of our theories again - relativity is having trouble explaining galactic structure, but it seems to describe the movements of objects within a thousand lightyears of us just fine without having to invent dark matter or dark energy. That's a pretty big increase over Newtonian mechanics, which were only good in a local environment. Likewise, quantum is good as far as we can tell, but people know the Standard Model is not quite correct, and people are trying to come up with a better one - but the Standard Model is pretty CLOSE to correct, far more so than previous models have been, and whatever the "real laws" are, that won't change.
This is what a lot of people don't really get, and it is very important to get before you start talking about faith in science. Because, well, there isn't any. There are scientists who have faith or believe in certain things, but that is actually contrary to science - science is about observation, not about belief.
In fact, BELIEVING (in the sense of taking on faith) in science is to miss the entire point of science. Having faith (as in, to be confident in science, or in a person) is completely different from having faith in the religious sense; it may use the same word, but the word is being used to describe two entirely different concepts.
Tl; dr: Science and Math are anethema to faith, and operate on a completely different principle than religious faith does, and are not in fact based on faith.
Incidentally, you also appear to have fallen into the trap (the really, really nasty yet common revisionist trap) that Einstein was a man of faith, and before you start quoting him, you should be aware of what exactly he believed, how he spoke, and what he meant.
Einstein did not believe in God. His God (whom he spoke of fairly often) was the laws of physics. This is why he said "God does not play dice with the universe" and many other things (I will note that he was also totally wrong; the laws of physics do indeed play dice with it
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious (this is translated in various ways, but it appears to be the closest translation available). It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
So you can see, he wasn't talking about the "mystical" at all in the sense that you are speaking of - not of religion. He was speaking of the mysterious - of the unknown, of those things beyond present understanding. It is only by looking at things beyond our present experience that we can expand ourselves.
THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT OF RELIGION, AND YOU USING IT IN THIS WAY IS COMPLETELY WRONG.
Indeed, when you actually -read the speech- this quote was taken from, you'll see that, IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU ENDED THE QUOTE, we find the following sentence, the end of the paragraph, and the end of the thought:
"In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself amoung profoundly religious men."
Welcome to the big wide world of misquoting Einstein and spreading misconceptions about the world.
Congratulations.
And she's almost executed. As a heretic.
Of course, a plot is nothing without execution, and, how the story is executed in the drafts is almost entirely through her, and some very heavy hitting characters who know her personally's perspectives. By itself, that snippet of the plot can be seen as an exploration of the flaws with having too much faith, and how people twist it into their own images. Without explaining much more, I'll leave on this note.
With the proper angles taken with the writing, and with the proper design choices used if I ever incorporate this plot in particular into a mod, this could be a very deep exploration of faith as a mental condition, and the lack thereof. One of the things I really love to do with my writing is explore mankind's perversion of faith versus the relation of what they love. In an old NWN2 mod, I started this, but never finished it due to not wanting to learn the scripting language associated with it because I'm a terrible person.
An axiom is (from oxford dictionary) "A proposition that commends itself to general acceptance; a well-established or universally conceded principle; a maxim, rule, law"
or from wikipedia "As classically conceived, an axiom is a premise so evident as to be accepted as true without controversy".
Most importantly
An axiom is defined as a mathematical statement that is accepted as being true without a mathematical proof.
We accept axioms to be true without having any "logical" reason to do so. They are the basis of our logic and mathematics. We accept them to be true because they "seem to be right".
Granted most of them are almost certainly correct, since we have no proof of their correctness, we have to take their correctness on "faith".
Now most Axioms are used and uncontested. The Peano axioms (basis for Natural numbers) are used basically universally. These are used to derive all sorts of mathematical principles (arithmetic being one)
There are other Axioms that are "generally considered true" that are used in proofs of many other "Facts" that do not have to be true in order for things to function as they do,
and are only considered true because a lot of other work is built upon them. (Axiom of Choice for example).
Lastly we are guarenteed in mathematics that we have statements that are in fact true, but impossible to prove they are true.
See Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (which has been proven), which basically states
"Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true,[1] but not provable in the theory",
meaning we will never be able to prove EVERYTHING About any mathematical basis.
And for those who say "well thats math not science", all of science is based on the principles of math, so any assumption that Mathematics itself is correct, is entirely based on the "faith" that most of the axioms in math are correct.
* "It sure would be cool if there was a representation of faith in video games!"
*....
* "Hey, let's mangle Einstein's image some more! He sometimes said some stuff that could be taken as religious, why not quote it out of context?"
* "The only difference is whether or not these fundamental axioms are updated with evidence or not. That's a trivial difference, right? Trolololol"
EC, I am dissapoint.
"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.... By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."
If you parse this as two different ideas, scientific 'faith' might align with the first of those two ideas: when one has evidence a strong correlation and a plausible but technologically unprovable model of causation, you can come to believe in your model. But scientific 'faith' will never align with the second concept: that the material world is controlled by an unknowable, unmeasureable supernatural world.
There's a difference between the /ideal/ of science and how it is actually practiced, the same way there's a difference between the /ideals/ of any religion and what its followers actually do. It is always amazing to me how many people who claim to be completely logical and universally skeptical will immediately and harshly belittle someone for expressing the slightest doubt of anything 'experts say', even if you present conflicting reports from other experts. I have been on the receiving end of this more than once.
Another thing I want to say about faith is this: not all religion or spirituality is based purely on faith. Many of us - myself included - have had experiences which constitute evidence for us. They would be nothing but anecdotal evidence (at best) to anyone else, I acknowledge that and wouldn't try to use those experiences to convince anyone else (not that I'm terribly keen on conversion anyway,) but for me to ignore them or dismiss them (speaking solely for my personal life) is not only foolish, but unscientific - I have made an observation and I have to account for it.
Games as a whole are a process of cause and effect, the player takes action and the game provides and outcome, a reaction.
The issue with faith is if we were to delve into decision making based off of faith in game (in relation to the good/evil measurements) then the game would have to provide a reaction to said decision.
Think of it this way, faith is a representation of a feeling held within a person that can either be founded or unfounded based off of circumstances or a series of events, If the player was to partake in a certain action or make a decision in a game based on having faith, then the reaction or result of that decision would create a foundation or destroy a foundation for that individual players faith represented in that game.
Faith is not something that can be cut and dry, have a cause and effect, or be expected to have a tangible reflection and there for becomes incredibly sketchy to deal with in a player controlled/ developer created world.
Now there is however the application through NPC interactions or possibly coincidence cause and effect situations that could have ground based in faith, but it would be a difficult portrayal in games, not impossible but very difficult as it is to convince anyone of a created belief structure or set of ideals.
Just a thought
- Justin S.
Science is based on faith the same way religion is? [CITATION NEEDED]
Science tells us dinosaurs roamed the earth. We hypothesized, gathered evidence, ran experiments, and determined that was the most likely course of events. Religious people can say anything from "yes that's true", to "that's true, but they didn't evolve, they were created like that by God", to "Those bones are fabrications by Satan, and all experiments that you've performed have been altered by Satan to confuse you".
One of these statements we can verify within our understanding of the natural world, the others are unprovable, and more importantly, undisprovable.
Why did you even do this episode if you don't even know the difference between science and religion?
I don't think people are really that offended (although some might be of course), it's more disappointment than anything. At least it is for me.
EC is a free show on the interwebs, so they are allowed to get stuff wrong on occasion. If they just went down the Science/Faith route, that'd be okay. I'd disagree, but people are allowed to have their own opinion. If it was just the misquote at the end, that'd be an oversight which could easily be corrected (either edited or a comment).
But with both, it just seemed intentionally wrong instead of an oversight. For this reason I'm disappointed. It takes a lot more to offend me.
In Extra Credits defense, this topic isn't something you can just brush over a few aspects of. For example why was "Logic" not brought into it.
Logic is the "science of non-empirical reasoning"
Reasoning is a mental activity called "inferring".
To infer is to draw conclusions from true premises (e.g., data, information, facts).
Logical reasoning always results in drawing non-contradictory conclusions from true premises.
It is the task of logic to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning.
There are two ways to infer, via inductive logic or deductive logic.
Inductive logic draws probable though fallible conclusions from true premises.
Deductive logic results when truth of premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion.
The truth of a premise used in logic is never based on faith, since faith does not require that one establish evidence of (data, information, facts).
There are people who believe, based on evidence, that we didn't land on the moon. Even conspiracy nuts rely on evidence for their belief. Its not that you may not have, or want, evidence for your belief, its that you require none... if you have faith.
I doubt it. James is wayyy off base on everything. Or whatever his name is.
He's a cultural and scientific illiterate and has made me lose more respect for him.
This is on top of him not using concrete examples and taking two episodes to say nothing.
!!!!!Planescape Torment!!!!!!!!!
MASIVE SPOILERS:
The game deals with very interesting questions about humans, about gods, about life and death, about guilt and torment...
What the game dosn't do is answering these questions for you, give you a right or wrong. You were on your own and wether you stuck to a certain belive was up to you. The Key moment of the game, when you answer the main question your answer has no effect on the game at all gut it is probably the question you spend most time before locking it in.
Another aspect is if and how you take responsebbilety for your past actions, which you as the player didn't commit. Do you belive you are guilty, can you seek redemption or do you stand above that?
Those are not only questions of moral and they are not questions of a particular religion. But they all interact with the players faith.
For me, the most important part of the scientific method is not the 'scientific method' per se, the process of logical deduction etc.; it's the _predictive power_ that it offers. Science doesn't just tell us what has happened, or explain what has happened - it lets us use our knowledge of what has happened to let us discern what WILL happen. That predicative power has an immense impact on our day-to-day lives, and has in and of itself saved millions if not billions of lives; while I am a strong believer in Faith (as it were), that predication is the one thing it _cannot_ offer, almost by definition, and it's Why Science Matters.
Yay. I consider this a filler episode.