But, it always seems to me that whenever someone says they reject science, it's just code for "our lives of convenience" or "gee whiz, I don't like feeling dumb whenever some science person talks over my head"
Which, hey, I can at least understand that. As much as I love technology, I do sometimes I wish I could chuck it all and go live a more pastoral and basic life. I'm sure a lot of people have had the same feeling at one point in their lives. And let's face it, there is a certain level of arrogance/smugness/douchebaggery possessed by those in higher academic circles sometimes.
Does that mean I reject science, facts, and common sense. Hell no. Just like I don't reject the idea of faith just because a bunch of assholes in robes and sceptres think they can talk to god.
I just believe that there is nothing that is immune to corruption. If science were to gain dominance over religion, it doesn't suddenly mean we've become less corrupt as a society. We'll still fight wars and still be assholes towards one another. Corrupt scientist vs corrupt priest: what's the difference?
Is that what the OP is arguing. I kinda doubt it, I'm just saying I can sorta understand hating both science and religion. Both sides can be rather dickish. I just think this is another situation where all we hear from are the extremes from both end of the spectrum but we never hear from the more reasonable silent moderates that are able to think logically and still have faith and not let either side get out of hand.
science is a great way to examine and traverse the external world. The internal, psychological, is a little different. science has its uses there of course, but it's ultimately no more or less limited than any religion. Psychiatry in particular is arguably the weakest of the sciences. We're all ultimately screwed over by our own subjectivity.
science is a great way to examine and traverse the external world. The internal, psychological, is a little different. science has its uses there of course, but it's ultimately no more or less limited than any religion. Psychiatry in particular is arguably the weakest of the sciences. We're all ultimately screwed over by our own subjectivity.
psychiatry is more limited and limiting than psychology which doesn't presume to be as exact a science. psychiatry has more dangerous tendencies, even if only because a lot of MD's tack on a psychiatry certification without properly understanding what they're doing, and treating the mind like it's just another sick part of the body.
if science made us an entirely objective and reasonable race, we wouldn't deify people like Winston Churchill, a bigot who happened to be prime minister when America bailed his country out, and claim to not be racist at the same time.
e big crunch has been out of vogue because it looks like the universe is accelerating.
I also don't know that time can even be said to have a "direction" without some kind of consciousness to experience it as such. You get into "if a tree falls in the forest" territory. Presumably, you can't have conscious entities with a reverse entropy process because our brains evolved around chemistry that depends on entropy. So in a way, time can't move in reverse, because the perception of time coudln't move in reverse.
Consider a meteor striking the moon. Played forward, one can can predict the moment of impact and subsequent behavior. Played backward, however, the whole thing is unpredictable. Once the debris settles and cools, the crater continues in an unchanging state indefinitely. You would have no idea when to expect the debris to heat itself and then gather implosively and race away into space.
This is leaving aside quantum indeterminacy, which makes the arrow of time so much the more forceful.
Though, as you point out, American religion has been overwhelmingly influenced by Enlightenment ideals—look at Christian abolitionism, which is in direct contradiction to Christianity's holy scriptures.
Goddammit. We're back at this again. Look, unless you are a Protestant or otherwise embrace the heretical doctrine of sola scriptura the scripture is not an exhaustive account of what Christianity is or is not. It is a historical record of the Jewish faith and the life of Jesus, and within the context of the other pillars of the faith - namely the Church, its traditions, and reason - one is able to find moral and religious teachings therein.
You and your apologetics. Which church father outlawed slavery and killing unbelievers? Citation needed.
I'm not a Christian, but you are willfully posting a strawman version of religion, by taking the most absurd and infantile examples of fundamentalist Christianity and its heretical and shallow theological doctrines possible, and using those examples to further your own positivism.
I'm using the term broadly, and it has obviously evolved and is still evolving.
That is, "enlightenment morals."
I would say that you are using the term enlightenment morals so broadly as to be meaningless. You aren't referencing any particular moral theory - in fact, you seem to only obliquely be referencing Locke or Rousseau, in terms of their political philosophy. Or, in the case of this:
I think it's fair to say that equal rights and freedom of speech—arguably the most fundamental "morals" of American culture
John Rawls, whose political and moral philosophy is a product of the 20th century.
I know that you never got around to responding back in our last discussion, but if you are going to accuse me of taking passages of the Bible "out of context" you are going to need to defend your assertion.
I don't respond to people who attempt to brow beat me into submission by ignoring my points.
You keep on saying this, and you never back it up. You never explain what you think the proper context is.
HERMENEUTICS. I'm talking about scriptural interpretation. I'm not a biblical scholar, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not looking to defend any particular theological point. What I'm trying to establish, Qingu, is that reading a text requires more than simply reading the words on the page. What is the context of the work? When was it written? By whom? What historical, political, or social realities informed the writing of this work, and what can I gain from that? Who was the author? How was the author informed by these realities?
In terms of the Bible, Qingu, we can establish that the Bible was only ever canonized and codified in the 4th century, principally by Athanasius, although Origen, I believe, made an attempt earlier than this. We can glean that in terms of Christian practice, the Church (the ecclesia) existed before the scripture, that the episkipos and the presbyteros also existed before the scripture, and that an ecumenical meeting of all members of the episkipos was and remains to be the highest form of legislative authority in the Christian world, as recognized, at least, by all of the small-c catholic churches.
I could go on, but then I'd just be repeating myself. Qingu, the Bible must be interpreted in the context of the Church, its tradition, and reason. That is what I am trying to establish, and what you are doing is not an intellectually honest critique of things.
It is the foundation of the Christian religion. Without the Bible, there would be no Christianity.
Are you seriously not a recovering Protestant? Because this is categorically false. Christianity existed for centuries without the Bible, and it has only been since the Reformation that the Bible has been so venerated. The Bible is not necessary for the existence of Christianity, and while I'm not trying to diminish its importance - it is only one part of the larger organizations and institutions of the faith, and you, like the doctrine of sola scriptura, needlessly and ahistorically inflates the importance of scripture to the detriment of all other pillars of the faith.
The fact that Christianity has evolved nonBiblical traditions and that most Christians are ignorant of the Bible doesn't mean you get to marginalize its importance.
You sound like a Calvinist.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited June 2009
Qingu, I would say that most priests I know are more likely to cite literature or movies in their homilies than scripture. Also, the most essential part of catholicism -- the mass, have rites that go back before the writing of christian scripture. You really are dogmatic in your ignorance.
This is why I hate religion and science. To me, they both seem like futile attempts to explain things that we cannot grasp in the slightest. Why even try to explain it? Why even try to understand it?
Science mostly attempts to discover what can be done with what we have. So, science can make a lightbulb. This does not necessarily provide insight into our existential state of being but, rather, gives us a way to make it not dark sometimes.
For my part I tend to shun both religion and science and focus upon philosophy. I think philosophy is not burdened by the problems of either religion or science and ultimately might let our ant-selves come to a full realization of how our ant selves are.
science is of immense value, and practically speaking has more discernable value than just about anything else. But anyone who claims it has the answers to all problems is quite obviously neurotic, and probably a mediocre scientist.
psychiatry is more limited and limiting than psychology which doesn't presume to be as exact a science. psychiatry has more dangerous tendencies, even if only because a lot of MD's tack on a psychiatry certification without properly understanding what they're doing, and treating the mind like it's just another sick part of the body.
science is of immense value, and practically speaking has more discernable value than just about anything else. But anyone who claims it has the answers to all problems is quite obviously neurotic, and probably a mediocre scientist.
Science can give us inductive knowledge about observable, material things.
Nothing more than that. It's useful for what it does, but it cannot give us things that aren't reducible to observable, material things knowable through induction.
So, I guess the 'everything is relative' approach has been abandoned as stupid?
Optimal, thats an odd word to choose. Optimal for whom?
And if you say 'the earth' again please explain more in depth.
The earth does not have standards. It does not say 'I would like to have this many humans on me. And no mining out metal or processing gases or liquids into more energy efficient forms.'
No I have not abandoned the relative argument, I am just busy in other areas.
Optimal for Earth, and I don't know how I can explain the Earth in more depth without it being unnecessary.
And just because the Earth doesn't have standards and can't declare what it does and doesn't like doesn't mean that we should fuck it over for the rest of the species.
The earth is fully capable of creating new species and will continue to do so for about the next few billion years. No action humanity could take, even if we truly made an enormous effort to do so, could kill everything and even a single deep sea vent with a few microbes and plants survived our insane war on all life(and even likely if it didn't) the earth would be teeming with life within a few thousand to a few tens of millions of years. In terms of 'number of species there ever will be' human activity can make absolutely zero impact at our level of technology.
Is the Polar Bear somehow better than the Tyrannosaurus? If not, why will the earth care (and why should anyone taking a long term view of simply biodiversity) care when it is extinct. Hell, even the Polar bear wont care, because its a bear and thus doesn't know about its existence as a species or the possibility of extinction.
Things have value ONLY because humans assign value to them, since we are the only creatures with any real concept of value to things which are beyond simple survival needs. As such, science, which is effectively a quest for value through understanding and creation of new items and ideas is important.
Hell, even a pretty determined effort by the human species couldn't kill us off, even if a really bad global warming event occurs there will still be people wandering about.
I dunno, but if science could find a way to nudge the Earth a bit closer or further away from the sun it might just achieve its dream off ending all life on this rock.
Is the Polar Bear somehow better than the Tyrannosaurus? If not, why will the earth care (and why should anyone taking a long term view of simply biodiversity) care when it is extinct. Hell, even the Polar bear wont care, because its a bear and thus doesn't know about its existence as a species or the possibility of extinction.
But, really, one of the most interesting aspects of science is the study of animal intelligence. Humans aren't quite as unique as we imagine. We don't really know whether or not a bear is aware of its own existance or what it thinks about. Bears are extremely intelligent and, in studies, have shown signs of self-awareness.
I think that everything is relative. This is illustrated nicely by ants. A boot coming down on an ant just ended its life, yet from our perspective, that step was just one of many on the way to a movie. The same exact action carried vastly different meanings for the parties involved.
To further the metaphor, lets say that I dump a bucket of water over an ant colony. To me, I just spilled some water, and I'll be doing something else in a few minutes. To those ants, however, I just changed their lives forever. The paths that they created are gone. The tunnels they spent hours digging are flooded. The majority of their population is dead. The same exact action held hugely different consequences for me and for the ants.
This is why I hate religion and science. To me, they both seem like futile attempts to explain things that we cannot grasp in the slightest. Why even try to explain it? Why even try to understand it? Lets say the ants spend years analyzing what exactly happened, creating different belief systems and scientific explanations because of it, and by some miracle they come to the conclusion that someone just spilled some water. What did they accomplish? How do you think they feel, knowing that what they've dedicated their lives to was just an accident? That what they've crafted their existence into is meaningless?
As a side note, I absolutely hate it when people are atheists because "Oh, I don't believe what I can't see." That logic is so flawed. Do you believe that there is a Nile river? Yes? Have you ever seen it? Oh, only pictures? Well, we all know pictures can be fabricated, so how do you know its really there? We all use faith, whether we like it or not.
So, D&D, do I stand alone in my hate for both religion and science? Is there a title for that? Either way, do you agree/disagree with what I've said?
EDIT: I apologize for any incoherency. Its late, just ask and I'll clear anything up if doesn't make sense/isn't explained properly.
If you're really drunk, I guess I can understand this post, but otherwise you should probably read some books or maybe take a course in critical thinking. But if there's no point in understanding the world, you might as well acquire a really comfortable bed and stay there.
And what does your computer rely upon to function?
Logic.
And what is that? A branch of philosophy.
What does my computer rely upon to function? Electricity. Seriously. If humans suddenly had different conceptions of the universe, it would matter not one fuck to my machine. It would still run.
And you are unfortunately improperly equating philosophical logic with mathematical logic. If-then, do-until, And, Or, Not, etc, these are not philosophies, they are simple states and statements of consequence. Any being in the universe with a concept of causality could figure computers out eventually.
Goddammit. We're back at this again. Look, unless you are a Protestant or otherwise embrace the heretical doctrine of sola scriptura the scripture is not an exhaustive account of what Christianity is or is not.
I never said it was.
You are drawing a false equivalency between "sola scriptura" and "caring what the Bible says."
I'm not a Christian, but you are willfully posting a strawman version of religion, by taking the most absurd and infantile examples of fundamentalist Christianity and its heretical and shallow theological doctrines possible, and using those examples to further your own positivism.
1. Attributing my reading of the Bible to fundamentalist Christianity is itself a strawman. I am reading the Bible the same way I would any other historical text.
2. My positivism has absolutely nothing to do with my reading of the Bible.
I would say that you are using the term enlightenment morals so broadly as to be meaningless. You aren't referencing any particular moral theory - in fact, you seem to only obliquely be referencing Locke or Rousseau, in terms of their political philosophy. Or, in the case of this:
I think it's fair to say that equal rights and freedom of speech—arguably the most fundamental "morals" of American culture
John Rawls, whose political and moral philosophy is a product of the 20th century.
I'm using it broadly, but not meaningless. I'd wager most people on this forum have a good idea of the spectrum of philosophical moral views that I mean when I use the term.
HERMENEUTICS. I'm talking about scriptural interpretation. I'm not a biblical scholar, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not looking to defend any particular theological point. What I'm trying to establish, Qingu, is that reading a text requires more than simply reading the words on the page. What is the context of the work? When was it written? By whom? What historical, political, or social realities informed the writing of this work, and what can I gain from that? Who was the author? How was the author informed by these realities?
I absolutely agree. Which is why I always try to read the Old Testament in terms of the nascent Mesopotamian culture in which it was written (which should be obvious if you've been following my commentary on the Bible discussion thread). Likewise, I read the Prophets in the context of the Babylonian captivity, and the New Testament in the context of late antique Jewish and Greco-Roman culture. I read the Bible using the same methods I read the Iliad or the Mahabharata—I try to interpret it through the lens of the culture(s) that produced it.
I'm failing to see how I'm "taking the Bible out of context."
In terms of the Bible, Qingu, we can establish that the Bible was only ever canonized and codified in the 4th century, principally by Athanasius, although Origen, I believe, made an attempt earlier than this. We can glean that in terms of Christian practice, the Church (the ecclesia) existed before the scripture, that the episkipos and the presbyteros also existed before the scripture, and that an ecumenical meeting of all members of the episkipos was and remains to be the highest form of legislative authority in the Christian world, as recognized, at least, by all of the small-c catholic churches.
I could go on, but then I'd just be repeating myself. Qingu, the Bible must be interpreted in the context of the Church, its tradition, and reason. That is what I am trying to establish, and what you are doing is not an intellectually honest critique of things.
Except that's nonsense. Why on earth should the Bible—a document written in ancient Mesopotamia, during Assyrian and Babylonian occupation, and during late antique Roman occupation—be read in the context of the culture that decided to canonize the work?
That's like saying that your fancy Collected Works of Shakespeare book should be read in the context of the 20th century American culture that published it.
Now, I certainly agree with you that later church traditions and interpretations of the Bible are worth studying on their own merit. But I absolutely disagree that they should inform our reading of the Bible itself.
Are you seriously not a recovering Protestant? Because this is categorically false. Christianity existed for centuries without the Bible, and it has only been since the Reformation that the Bible has been so venerated.
I probably should have been more clear, though you are being a bit pedantic here. By "Bible," I didn't mean the agreed-upon, canonized collection of texts that form our modern day Bible (which Bible?). I simply meant some collection of texts. Jesus' teachings—or, at least, Paul's teachings, and later gospel interpretations (or inventions) of Jesus' teachings, simply make no sense without the prior existence and context of the Hebrew Bible. Put simply: Jesus is supposed to save us from sin-caused damnation, but what the hell is sin? What is damnation? Who is damning us? Without the Hebrew Bible, these questions have no answers.
And in late antiquity, there was a relatively agreed-upon canon for the Hebrew Bible. It wasn't a "book" (the word "Bible" means "book"), but they had well-preserved and copied scrolls.
And without the New Testament—or, at the very least, at least one of the gospels and a smattering of Pauline theology—you might be able to have Christianity, for a little while, in oral traditions, but certainly not the religion it is today. The New Testament is the foundation of Christianity—it is both the "evidence" for its truth and the theological structure of the religion.
The Bible—or, more accurately, some framework of mythology that has been codified over the years that makes up a good portion of the book now known as the Bible—forms the platform of the Christian faith. You can have Christianity without your other so-called pillars, but without the Bible-framework, Christianity would not exist. Do you agree?
Qingu, I would say that most priests I know are more likely to cite literature or movies in their homilies than scripture. Also, the most essential part of catholicism -- the mass, have rites that go back before the writing of christian scripture. You really are dogmatic in your ignorance.
My position is this: if Catholics want to simply ignore what their holy scriptures say, that is their prerogative. I've said repeatedly that most Christians today do this.
However, "ignoring what the scriptures say" is not the same as "rejecting sola scriptura." If you are going to ignore passages of the Bible, you need to explain why you ignore those passages but not others (such as, for example, the passages detailing the resurrection, or the anointing of Peter).
Simply invoking the words "context!!!" or "metaphor!!!" is simply not an honest explanation. Neither is "tradition!!!" This applies to Evander's rabbinical tradition as well. Just because a religion has a longstanding tradition of intellectually dishonest Biblical interpretation doesn't magically make that interpretation valid.
Science can give us inductive knowledge about observable, material things.
Nothing more than that. It's useful for what it does, but it cannot give us things that aren't reducible to observable, material things knowable through induction.
Such as?
I mean, you could say math and logic. But then this gets into a semantic argument about what "science" is, because some people consider math a branch of science. Math is "testable" in its own way—a different way than physics, and a different way than biology. And math has always, been extremely informed and influenced by scientific pursuits, chiefly in physics.
I would call logic a branch of math, not philosophy—or, rather, that math, science, and logic are all branches of philosophy, if you define philosophy as "knowing shit."
And what does your computer rely upon to function?
Logic.
And what is that? A branch of philosophy.
What does my computer rely upon to function? Electricity. Seriously. If humans suddenly had different conceptions of the universe, it would matter not one fuck to my machine. It would still run.
And you are unfortunately improperly equating philosophical logic with mathematical logic. If-then, do-until, And, Or, Not, etc, these are not philosophies, they are simple states and statements of consequence. Any being in the universe with a concept of causality could figure computers out eventually.
Mathematical logic is part of philosophy. I had symbolic logic exams when I studied philosophy. Also the philosophy of science underpins science and makes it work better, so that people can invent the computer.
Some of you have a very odd conception of philosophy as some kind of wankstain pettifoggery. I blame Podly, myself.
When a person with whom I was discussing religion told me, flat out, that until I had accepted Jesus as my savior I would never be able to understand, that there was a great divide between those who believe in a God and those who do not when it comes to basic comprehension of the truth of the universe, I fully understood cognitive dissonance.
It is insanity. And absolutely nothing I could say would ever change that person's views. The dearth of evidence of a benevolent God, questioning the discord between the person's professed beliefs and daily actions, nothing defeats Faith.
So now I try to enjoy discussions of religion as something in which to practice my ability to debate, without any serious intent to actually persuade another person of something.
I guess Darwin's Favorite Tortoise isn't coming back.
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was. If more people mentally inhabited the mental space that accepted that we evolved, that the world was around for billions of years, that life arose from non-life, that there's no deity.
What wonders would await us? If some of us can realize this, all can in a hypothetical scenario. What an amazing time that would be to live in, free of silly superstition.
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was. If more people mentally inhabited the mental space that accepted that we evolved, that the world was around for billions of years, that life arose from non-life, that there's no deity.
What wonders would await us? If some of us can realize this, all can in a hypothetical scenario. What an amazing time that would be to live in, free of silly superstition.
That would never happen. People either stick to religion for motivation or out of stupidity.
Science can give us inductive knowledge about observable, material things.
Nothing more than that. It's useful for what it does, but it cannot give us things that aren't reducible to observable, material things knowable through induction.
Such as?
I mean, you could say math and logic. But then this gets into a semantic argument about what "science" is, because some people consider math a branch of science. Math is "testable" in its own way—a different way than physics, and a different way than biology. And math has always, been extremely informed and influenced by scientific pursuits, chiefly in physics.
I would call logic a branch of math, not philosophy—or, rather, that math, science, and logic are all branches of philosophy, if you define philosophy as "knowing shit."
Science is empirical knowledge, so that without being able to observe it in some form it is not possible to prove anything. We can come to very good theories, and have, but without observing we can't scientifically prove anything.
One example are dinosaurs. We can study their bones and figure out things such as what they ate, how big they were, but we have no idea how they acted and what was physically on their body other then the bones. We can come to good theories based off of compairing them to modern animals, but it's not a perfect picture with so much missing.
Something we're both familiar with over the past few pages. The Big Bang and theories on reality. We can come up with theories that are consistent with everything we currently know and understand, but we also know that there is so much about the universe that we still have no clue about. It is entirely possible that we could be entirely wrong how we think the universe works, not plausible with how consistent our theories of physics are at this point, but still possible.
I would agree that math, science and logic are all a part of philosophy.
Science is empirical knowledge, so that without being able to observe it in some form it is not possible to prove anything. We can come to very good theories, and have, but without observing we can't scientifically prove anything.
We can't observe the behavior of quantum particles. By definition. We know a lot about them scientifically, though.
One example are dinosaurs. We can study their bones and figure out things such as what they ate, how big they were, but we have no idea how they acted and what was physically on their body other then the bones. We can come to good theories based off of compairing them to modern animals, but it's not a perfect picture with so much missing.
We can't observe their behavior, know. But we can infer a lot of their behavior by looking at their fossils. For example, we know certain dinosaurs ate plants based on the shape of their teeth.
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
We can't observe the behavior of quantum particles. By definition. We know a lot about them scientifically, though.
Isn't it that we can observe their effects, or what we believe are their effects and then gain information based on this?
We can't observe their behavior, know. But we can infer a lot of their behavior by looking at their fossils. For example, we know certain dinosaurs ate plants based on the shape of their teeth.
It all depends on how you define "observation."
Isn't that basically what I said?
I would define observation as anything that we can use any of our five senses on, or the effects of something. So we can't see gravity, but we can see it's effects.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
When a word's sufficiently poorly defined, I can say anything about it without it meaning anything at all!
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
oh shit you're right, my car only seems to work because i think it does
When a person with whom I was discussing religion told me, flat out, that until I had accepted Jesus as my savior I would never be able to understand, that there was a great divide between those who believe in a God and those who do not when it comes to basic comprehension of the truth of the universe, I fully understood cognitive dissonance.
It is insanity. And absolutely nothing I could say would ever change that person's views. The dearth of evidence of a benevolent God, questioning the discord between the person's professed beliefs and daily actions, nothing defeats Faith.
So now I try to enjoy discussions of religion as something in which to practice my ability to debate, without any serious intent to actually persuade another person of something.
I guess Darwin's Favorite Tortoise isn't coming back.
I understand the trappings of faith or simply belief from both sides of the fence. I've been a christian, and an an atheist. You're right in describing it as dissonance and essentially insanity. Hive-mind double think. I just think that modus is far more common than people think, and much farther reaching than the spaces of religion or the debate of God.
Those daily actions in and of themselves are merely beliefs. My mortal self is just belief or faith in action, it is intrinsic to everything that I do. What is known to me is truth, whether even false...or true. How many of those instances exist in me, and which of them am I not aware of? Which are hidden for my protection and what might I be if I am aware of the basic truth of all my potential actions and memetic statuses?
That specific delusion which has been popularized and warred over in the minds of men is just the moust famous and prolific tip o' the iceberg.
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
oh shit you're right, my car only seems to work because i think it does
brb wallowing in the futility of the senses
In all seriousness, what we perceive as the world is an interaction between natural phenomena and the senses. The classic example of this is color; nothing in the world has color, color is just our perception of the interaction between certain frequencies of light and our retinas, and our retinas are tuned to a very narrow range because that's the most useful range for perceiving food and enemies and mates on our planet.
So if you wanted to see the world for "what it was," how would that affect color? Would you see every frequency of light? Would you perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum? Would you see tiny, currently imperceptible differences in frequency? Now, assume that yes you could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum with perfect fidelity between tiny differences in frequency... how would your mind filter out data that is relevant from data that is irrelevant? How would you sort out such an overwhelming, mind-boggling amount of stimulus?
In this case, sight is just an example. All of our sensory organs - including the sensory areas of our brain - are attuned to a relatively narrow range of stimuli and a very specific degree of fidelity; we evolved this way so we could interact with other lifeforms on a planet with Earthlike atmosphere at an Earthlike orbit from a Sol-like sun. Keep in mind that we use the sensory areas of our brain for our imagination, as well - suffer severe enough injury to the area of the brain that processes sight and you will lose the ability to even imagine certain types of stimuli, like color. We have problems imagining very small and very large numbers, problems imagining the scale of very large or very small things; this is why classic videos like "Powers of Ten" are so fascinating. These are necessary and inescapable artifacts of having a biological, evolved thinking/perceiving mechanism.
The notion of perceiving the world "as it is" is somewhat nonsensical. We can imagine perceiving the world without some of our more well-known cognitive distortions; we can imagine perceiving the world with slightly greater accuracy; but I don't think it's even possible to imagine what it would be like to perceive the world with perfect accuracy. Consequently, your (and my) definition of "the world" is necessarily limited to "how we agree to see the world," so your statement effectively becomes "I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw the world I see for what it was."
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I don't think MikeMan meant "see" in the sense of "directly perceive". And "the world as it is" doesn't necessarily mean "all of it all at once" either.
I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw it for what it was.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
oh shit you're right, my car only seems to work because i think it does
brb wallowing in the futility of the senses
The notion of perceiving the world "as it is" is somewhat nonsensical. We can imagine perceiving the world without some of our more well-known cognitive distortions; we can imagine perceiving the world with slightly greater accuracy; but I don't think it's even possible to imagine what it would be like to perceive the world with perfect accuracy. Consequently, your (and my) definition of "the world" is necessarily limited to "how we agree to see the world," so your statement effectively becomes "I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw the world I see for what it was."
I agree with you. The idea of seeing the world as it rightfully and truly is is ridiculous. You can attune yourself to different amazing alternate perspectives, drugs, dreams and meditation. You can be schizophrenic and see the world as it is not. Drop acid and see the world as it could never be. Meditate and see the world as it always was...
But the world cannot be seen to be anything but what it is. It's up to us to wade through the lies of life. Find the most basic truth and trust that there is a mechanism of resonation that helps us find the best way or state of...
The sense of rapid evolution is the crack of nature and it gets me reeling. What could be behind the action of evolution, if embedded in it's ideals I find the want to conspire artificial exponential lust-like fucking wings to fly and laser eyes?
I have only made it thought the fist 2 pages so maybe I missed it, but what the OP is talking about is basically exactly what the book Endgame, by Derrick Jensen is about (http://www.endgamethebook.org/) It starts out with some interesting ideas but quickly boils down into flawed arguments and name calling.
Edit: and by exactly i mean really exactly, if his post was a college paper I would be calling plagiarism.
Posts
But, it always seems to me that whenever someone says they reject science, it's just code for "our lives of convenience" or "gee whiz, I don't like feeling dumb whenever some science person talks over my head"
Which, hey, I can at least understand that. As much as I love technology, I do sometimes I wish I could chuck it all and go live a more pastoral and basic life. I'm sure a lot of people have had the same feeling at one point in their lives. And let's face it, there is a certain level of arrogance/smugness/douchebaggery possessed by those in higher academic circles sometimes.
Does that mean I reject science, facts, and common sense. Hell no. Just like I don't reject the idea of faith just because a bunch of assholes in robes and sceptres think they can talk to god.
I just believe that there is nothing that is immune to corruption. If science were to gain dominance over religion, it doesn't suddenly mean we've become less corrupt as a society. We'll still fight wars and still be assholes towards one another. Corrupt scientist vs corrupt priest: what's the difference?
Is that what the OP is arguing. I kinda doubt it, I'm just saying I can sorta understand hating both science and religion. Both sides can be rather dickish. I just think this is another situation where all we hear from are the extremes from both end of the spectrum but we never hear from the more reasonable silent moderates that are able to think logically and still have faith and not let either side get out of hand.
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I hope you mean psychology.
I mean, not a lot.
Consider a meteor striking the moon. Played forward, one can can predict the moment of impact and subsequent behavior. Played backward, however, the whole thing is unpredictable. Once the debris settles and cools, the crater continues in an unchanging state indefinitely. You would have no idea when to expect the debris to heat itself and then gather implosively and race away into space.
This is leaving aside quantum indeterminacy, which makes the arrow of time so much the more forceful.
Although I have to say I find religion the more interesting of the two.
Goddammit. We're back at this again. Look, unless you are a Protestant or otherwise embrace the heretical doctrine of sola scriptura the scripture is not an exhaustive account of what Christianity is or is not. It is a historical record of the Jewish faith and the life of Jesus, and within the context of the other pillars of the faith - namely the Church, its traditions, and reason - one is able to find moral and religious teachings therein.
I'm not a Christian, but you are willfully posting a strawman version of religion, by taking the most absurd and infantile examples of fundamentalist Christianity and its heretical and shallow theological doctrines possible, and using those examples to further your own positivism.
That is, "enlightenment morals."
I would say that you are using the term enlightenment morals so broadly as to be meaningless. You aren't referencing any particular moral theory - in fact, you seem to only obliquely be referencing Locke or Rousseau, in terms of their political philosophy. Or, in the case of this:
John Rawls, whose political and moral philosophy is a product of the 20th century.
I don't respond to people who attempt to brow beat me into submission by ignoring my points.
HERMENEUTICS. I'm talking about scriptural interpretation. I'm not a biblical scholar, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not looking to defend any particular theological point. What I'm trying to establish, Qingu, is that reading a text requires more than simply reading the words on the page. What is the context of the work? When was it written? By whom? What historical, political, or social realities informed the writing of this work, and what can I gain from that? Who was the author? How was the author informed by these realities?
In terms of the Bible, Qingu, we can establish that the Bible was only ever canonized and codified in the 4th century, principally by Athanasius, although Origen, I believe, made an attempt earlier than this. We can glean that in terms of Christian practice, the Church (the ecclesia) existed before the scripture, that the episkipos and the presbyteros also existed before the scripture, and that an ecumenical meeting of all members of the episkipos was and remains to be the highest form of legislative authority in the Christian world, as recognized, at least, by all of the small-c catholic churches.
I could go on, but then I'd just be repeating myself. Qingu, the Bible must be interpreted in the context of the Church, its tradition, and reason. That is what I am trying to establish, and what you are doing is not an intellectually honest critique of things.
Are you seriously not a recovering Protestant? Because this is categorically false. Christianity existed for centuries without the Bible, and it has only been since the Reformation that the Bible has been so venerated. The Bible is not necessary for the existence of Christianity, and while I'm not trying to diminish its importance - it is only one part of the larger organizations and institutions of the faith, and you, like the doctrine of sola scriptura, needlessly and ahistorically inflates the importance of scripture to the detriment of all other pillars of the faith.
You sound like a Calvinist.
Science mostly attempts to discover what can be done with what we have. So, science can make a lightbulb. This does not necessarily provide insight into our existential state of being but, rather, gives us a way to make it not dark sometimes.
For my part I tend to shun both religion and science and focus upon philosophy. I think philosophy is not burdened by the problems of either religion or science and ultimately might let our ant-selves come to a full realization of how our ant selves are.
hmm yes my computer certainly is a solipsist statement which will surely vanish in a poof of logic upon my reading of descartes
no seriously stop with the bullshit about how science has given us toilets that flush feces. we get it.
do you have any idea how irrelevant and condescending that argument is?
Uhm... what in hell are you talking about?
No, never mind, I don't want to know.
And what does your computer rely upon to function?
Logic.
And what is that? A branch of philosophy.
Science can give us inductive knowledge about observable, material things.
Nothing more than that. It's useful for what it does, but it cannot give us things that aren't reducible to observable, material things knowable through induction.
The earth is fully capable of creating new species and will continue to do so for about the next few billion years. No action humanity could take, even if we truly made an enormous effort to do so, could kill everything and even a single deep sea vent with a few microbes and plants survived our insane war on all life(and even likely if it didn't) the earth would be teeming with life within a few thousand to a few tens of millions of years. In terms of 'number of species there ever will be' human activity can make absolutely zero impact at our level of technology.
Is the Polar Bear somehow better than the Tyrannosaurus? If not, why will the earth care (and why should anyone taking a long term view of simply biodiversity) care when it is extinct. Hell, even the Polar bear wont care, because its a bear and thus doesn't know about its existence as a species or the possibility of extinction.
Things have value ONLY because humans assign value to them, since we are the only creatures with any real concept of value to things which are beyond simple survival needs. As such, science, which is effectively a quest for value through understanding and creation of new items and ideas is important.
Hell, even a pretty determined effort by the human species couldn't kill us off, even if a really bad global warming event occurs there will still be people wandering about.
But, really, one of the most interesting aspects of science is the study of animal intelligence. Humans aren't quite as unique as we imagine. We don't really know whether or not a bear is aware of its own existance or what it thinks about. Bears are extremely intelligent and, in studies, have shown signs of self-awareness.
What does my computer rely upon to function? Electricity. Seriously. If humans suddenly had different conceptions of the universe, it would matter not one fuck to my machine. It would still run.
And you are unfortunately improperly equating philosophical logic with mathematical logic. If-then, do-until, And, Or, Not, etc, these are not philosophies, they are simple states and statements of consequence. Any being in the universe with a concept of causality could figure computers out eventually.
You are drawing a false equivalency between "sola scriptura" and "caring what the Bible says."
1. Attributing my reading of the Bible to fundamentalist Christianity is itself a strawman. I am reading the Bible the same way I would any other historical text.
2. My positivism has absolutely nothing to do with my reading of the Bible.
I'm using it broadly, but not meaningless. I'd wager most people on this forum have a good idea of the spectrum of philosophical moral views that I mean when I use the term.
I absolutely agree. Which is why I always try to read the Old Testament in terms of the nascent Mesopotamian culture in which it was written (which should be obvious if you've been following my commentary on the Bible discussion thread). Likewise, I read the Prophets in the context of the Babylonian captivity, and the New Testament in the context of late antique Jewish and Greco-Roman culture. I read the Bible using the same methods I read the Iliad or the Mahabharata—I try to interpret it through the lens of the culture(s) that produced it.
I'm failing to see how I'm "taking the Bible out of context."
Except that's nonsense. Why on earth should the Bible—a document written in ancient Mesopotamia, during Assyrian and Babylonian occupation, and during late antique Roman occupation—be read in the context of the culture that decided to canonize the work?
That's like saying that your fancy Collected Works of Shakespeare book should be read in the context of the 20th century American culture that published it.
Now, I certainly agree with you that later church traditions and interpretations of the Bible are worth studying on their own merit. But I absolutely disagree that they should inform our reading of the Bible itself.
I probably should have been more clear, though you are being a bit pedantic here. By "Bible," I didn't mean the agreed-upon, canonized collection of texts that form our modern day Bible (which Bible?). I simply meant some collection of texts. Jesus' teachings—or, at least, Paul's teachings, and later gospel interpretations (or inventions) of Jesus' teachings, simply make no sense without the prior existence and context of the Hebrew Bible. Put simply: Jesus is supposed to save us from sin-caused damnation, but what the hell is sin? What is damnation? Who is damning us? Without the Hebrew Bible, these questions have no answers.
And in late antiquity, there was a relatively agreed-upon canon for the Hebrew Bible. It wasn't a "book" (the word "Bible" means "book"), but they had well-preserved and copied scrolls.
And without the New Testament—or, at the very least, at least one of the gospels and a smattering of Pauline theology—you might be able to have Christianity, for a little while, in oral traditions, but certainly not the religion it is today. The New Testament is the foundation of Christianity—it is both the "evidence" for its truth and the theological structure of the religion.
The Bible—or, more accurately, some framework of mythology that has been codified over the years that makes up a good portion of the book now known as the Bible—forms the platform of the Christian faith. You can have Christianity without your other so-called pillars, but without the Bible-framework, Christianity would not exist. Do you agree?
However, "ignoring what the scriptures say" is not the same as "rejecting sola scriptura." If you are going to ignore passages of the Bible, you need to explain why you ignore those passages but not others (such as, for example, the passages detailing the resurrection, or the anointing of Peter).
Simply invoking the words "context!!!" or "metaphor!!!" is simply not an honest explanation. Neither is "tradition!!!" This applies to Evander's rabbinical tradition as well. Just because a religion has a longstanding tradition of intellectually dishonest Biblical interpretation doesn't magically make that interpretation valid.
I mean, you could say math and logic. But then this gets into a semantic argument about what "science" is, because some people consider math a branch of science. Math is "testable" in its own way—a different way than physics, and a different way than biology. And math has always, been extremely informed and influenced by scientific pursuits, chiefly in physics.
I would call logic a branch of math, not philosophy—or, rather, that math, science, and logic are all branches of philosophy, if you define philosophy as "knowing shit."
Mathematical logic is part of philosophy. I had symbolic logic exams when I studied philosophy. Also the philosophy of science underpins science and makes it work better, so that people can invent the computer.
Some of you have a very odd conception of philosophy as some kind of wankstain pettifoggery. I blame Podly, myself.
It is insanity. And absolutely nothing I could say would ever change that person's views. The dearth of evidence of a benevolent God, questioning the discord between the person's professed beliefs and daily actions, nothing defeats Faith.
So now I try to enjoy discussions of religion as something in which to practice my ability to debate, without any serious intent to actually persuade another person of something.
I guess Darwin's Favorite Tortoise isn't coming back.
What wonders would await us? If some of us can realize this, all can in a hypothetical scenario. What an amazing time that would be to live in, free of silly superstition.
That would never happen. People either stick to religion for motivation or out of stupidity.
Science is empirical knowledge, so that without being able to observe it in some form it is not possible to prove anything. We can come to very good theories, and have, but without observing we can't scientifically prove anything.
One example are dinosaurs. We can study their bones and figure out things such as what they ate, how big they were, but we have no idea how they acted and what was physically on their body other then the bones. We can come to good theories based off of compairing them to modern animals, but it's not a perfect picture with so much missing.
Something we're both familiar with over the past few pages. The Big Bang and theories on reality. We can come up with theories that are consistent with everything we currently know and understand, but we also know that there is so much about the universe that we still have no clue about. It is entirely possible that we could be entirely wrong how we think the universe works, not plausible with how consistent our theories of physics are at this point, but still possible.
I would agree that math, science and logic are all a part of philosophy.
We can't observe their behavior, know. But we can infer a lot of their behavior by looking at their fossils. For example, we know certain dinosaurs ate plants based on the shape of their teeth.
It all depends on how you define "observation."
I've expressed frustration at exactly that point before.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This statement already has the philosophical position that there is a world that is simply the case, and that the human mind can grasp that. Your saying "see the world as it is" is more akin to "see the world as I see it."
Isn't that basically what I said?
I would define observation as anything that we can use any of our five senses on, or the effects of something. So we can't see gravity, but we can see it's effects.
When a word's sufficiently poorly defined, I can say anything about it without it meaning anything at all!
brb wallowing in the futility of the senses
I understand the trappings of faith or simply belief from both sides of the fence. I've been a christian, and an an atheist. You're right in describing it as dissonance and essentially insanity. Hive-mind double think. I just think that modus is far more common than people think, and much farther reaching than the spaces of religion or the debate of God.
Those daily actions in and of themselves are merely beliefs. My mortal self is just belief or faith in action, it is intrinsic to everything that I do. What is known to me is truth, whether even false...or true. How many of those instances exist in me, and which of them am I not aware of? Which are hidden for my protection and what might I be if I am aware of the basic truth of all my potential actions and memetic statuses?
That specific delusion which has been popularized and warred over in the minds of men is just the moust famous and prolific tip o' the iceberg.
In all seriousness, what we perceive as the world is an interaction between natural phenomena and the senses. The classic example of this is color; nothing in the world has color, color is just our perception of the interaction between certain frequencies of light and our retinas, and our retinas are tuned to a very narrow range because that's the most useful range for perceiving food and enemies and mates on our planet.
So if you wanted to see the world for "what it was," how would that affect color? Would you see every frequency of light? Would you perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum? Would you see tiny, currently imperceptible differences in frequency? Now, assume that yes you could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum with perfect fidelity between tiny differences in frequency... how would your mind filter out data that is relevant from data that is irrelevant? How would you sort out such an overwhelming, mind-boggling amount of stimulus?
In this case, sight is just an example. All of our sensory organs - including the sensory areas of our brain - are attuned to a relatively narrow range of stimuli and a very specific degree of fidelity; we evolved this way so we could interact with other lifeforms on a planet with Earthlike atmosphere at an Earthlike orbit from a Sol-like sun. Keep in mind that we use the sensory areas of our brain for our imagination, as well - suffer severe enough injury to the area of the brain that processes sight and you will lose the ability to even imagine certain types of stimuli, like color. We have problems imagining very small and very large numbers, problems imagining the scale of very large or very small things; this is why classic videos like "Powers of Ten" are so fascinating. These are necessary and inescapable artifacts of having a biological, evolved thinking/perceiving mechanism.
The notion of perceiving the world "as it is" is somewhat nonsensical. We can imagine perceiving the world without some of our more well-known cognitive distortions; we can imagine perceiving the world with slightly greater accuracy; but I don't think it's even possible to imagine what it would be like to perceive the world with perfect accuracy. Consequently, your (and my) definition of "the world" is necessarily limited to "how we agree to see the world," so your statement effectively becomes "I often have fantasies about what truths we could discover if more people in the world saw the world I see for what it was."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I agree with you. The idea of seeing the world as it rightfully and truly is is ridiculous. You can attune yourself to different amazing alternate perspectives, drugs, dreams and meditation. You can be schizophrenic and see the world as it is not. Drop acid and see the world as it could never be. Meditate and see the world as it always was...
But the world cannot be seen to be anything but what it is. It's up to us to wade through the lies of life. Find the most basic truth and trust that there is a mechanism of resonation that helps us find the best way or state of...
The sense of rapid evolution is the crack of nature and it gets me reeling. What could be behind the action of evolution, if embedded in it's ideals I find the want to conspire artificial exponential lust-like fucking wings to fly and laser eyes?
Edit: and by exactly i mean really exactly, if his post was a college paper I would be calling plagiarism.