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Budai
07-26-2007, 04:23 AM
^^^ ROFL! ;D :D :P nawww, too many 'degenerates' on that show already. }:D

EmbyRRR 8), I'm truly surprised!

You don't want to bait Simon? Or say "dude" more times than Randy? If you REALLY wanted to discuss epistemology, you could interview prospective contestants acros the U.S. at auditions for the show ...

Embyr
07-26-2007, 04:25 AM
^^^ you're talking to a woman without a TV (by choice... i watch dvd's & such on the lappie). I've only seen clips of the show on youtube. nahhh there are plenty of other people I'd like to go head to head with... and they sit in DC, not in AI. }:D

PaigeDWinter
07-26-2007, 05:01 AM
I'm really only going to dip into this threads to input my look on things...


I believe in ghosts, I've seen em. I believe in astrology, divination, many higher powers, etc. I personally have seen enough proof to believe. I also adore science and math. I am happy to live with both the science and the non science in my life. I am perfectly satisfied with the idea that not everything is provable, and that some things that are proven can change. I have, in the past, taught my belief to others. Including some of the things that recently in this thread would make me be considered a fraud. I DO take offense to being called such. And no, I never seek money for what it is I teach. Belief in something/someone makes people feel happy and safe. As long as they aren't going out at killing in the name of, or other such extremist things, there is no real harm to it. People can, and often are, very much into both religion or belief AND science. A lot of the scientists I work with at one of my jobs are quite religious people. What it really boils down to, for both the spiritual and the science-embraced, is the whole idea of "what I feel to be true". So there is never going to be any gain in arguing it, or telling someone else that they are incorrect. As long as you are happy with how you view life, the world, whatever, there is no reason to dwell on what others think.



I am glad, VERY glad, that this thread has not become flamey. I hope it stays that way.

mollyzmoon
07-26-2007, 05:45 AM
Descartes argued from the premises that body and consciousness were separate entities, and that (as far as his ontological argument goes) existence is a great-making property. I don't agree with either, personally.

And I think miabella said something to the extent that we can't even trust rationality to tell us the sun will rise tomorrow. Hume was such an amazing mind because three hundred years later, it's still a pretty good point. He was the ultimate skeptic of rationality because we can't use the surest a priori principle to tell us most of what we assume we know about the world.

But W.V.O. Quine said that ulitmately, in order for science to progress, we need to focus on what methods and principles prove themselves to be the most reliable. He famously claimed that, if people could test the principles of witchcraft or psychic visions with objective tests, and prove that they were consistently more reliable than the current system of physics---then we should embrace those methods. That is rationality of a different sort I guess. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that, but I think it's clear that we don't just think of 'rational action' in the classic sense of ' a priori facts ' from which we argue to greater facts. Our foundations of knowledge concerning the physical sciences are indeed found outside of the mind...we get input from our world, and we test its reliability. That's what science is, vs. intuition.

But once more, much as I agree with that, I don't think we're ever possibly going to know everything. There is so much mystery to the universe...it's inconceivable to me that we have the capacity to discover every possible truth.

And for a fun philosopher who totally denies the reliability of the sciences, who in fact claims that there are no scientific methodologies without bias, check out Feyerabend. That crazy mofo. He was awsome, and I was always a little persuaded by his refutation of 'classic' rationality. When someone criticized him by saying "well if you really believe all that, why don't you consult witch doctors?", he said "Ja, I do." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend

This is a quote:

Feyerabend described science as being essentially anarchistic, obsessed with its own mythology, and as making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He was especially indignant about the condescending attitudes of many scientists towards alternative traditions. For example, he thought that negative opinions about astrology and the effectivity of rain dances were not justified by scientific research, and dismissed the predominantly negative attitudes of scientists towards such phenomena as elitist or racist. In his opinion, science has become a repressing ideology, even though it arguably started as a liberating movement. Feyerabend thought that a pluralistic society should be protected from being influenced too much by science, just as it is protected from other ideologies.

Andygirl
07-26-2007, 06:07 AM
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b260/Andygirl1974/atheist-imaginaryfriend.gif

Jay Zeno
07-26-2007, 06:30 AM
Yeah, science can certainly have its own mythology, although the mythology shrinks as the pool of knowledge grows. Where science goes wrong is in saying, if it's not scientific, it can't be real.

For instance, theorize for a second that there is such a thing as psychic phenomena. Not reading very subtle postures, not being extremely lucky, but real other-vision stuff. But also suppose it's pretty much a random creativity that happens at odd times. One scientist might say, well, it's extra-science. We can't prove it. Another scientist caught up in his mythology might say, since we can't hypothesize-experiment-predict it, it can't be real. As for me, I tend to be the former kind.

However, when you pop that bowl of nachos into the microwave, it ain't demons dancing that melts the cheese. It's molecular excitation by radiation, and it's entirely consistent with the same quantum principles that apply to things from the life cycle of stars to the sending of this post. Witch doctors can't build a calculator or an Internet. In fact, anti-scientific types using the Internet to post their musings strike me as one of the highest forms of irony.

Habinairo
07-26-2007, 06:36 AM
Feyerabend thought that a pluralistic society should be protected from being influenced too much by science, just as it is protected from other ideologies.

Just as that might be so, we all know that the smallest part of anything is an atom right? Well now science has concluded that quarks are even smaller, don't even touch, and just float around together, but are never separate, and bunched together, make up the bases of matter. So, now science is finding things that it thought were never there, for a long time. Some believe the quark is just sound, makes sense, because you can feel sound, thunder rolls, and the earth shakes. And then making it part of Creationism, God spoke, and it was. Others belive sound has nothing to do with quarks, they're just entities grouped together to make up the basic part of everything. Science changes with the wind I think, always finding something else to give answers. Even though some things may be hard fact, and has been since forever, they find that something else is now fact. And I think people are just like that. They want their facts to be real and they are to them. It's okay. We'll know what the truth is when we die, what answers are really there, and what is real. We can only guess until it happens.
But, with my personal experiences, I believe in the spirits and God. I have my Native beliefs with Christian beliefs.

RoseWhite
07-26-2007, 06:43 AM
I think all of y'all might appreciate my devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter)

It started with an honest-to-god (no pun intended) letter to the Kansas school board during a raging debate about teaching creationism in schools, and turned into, well, so much more.

Excerpts:


I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power.


The link is the page that the original letter is on (I especially love his graph that demonstrates the relationship between global warming and the number of pirates in the world), but take a peek around. I especially love their hate mail section.


Yours in His Noodly Appendage,

Amen.

Habinairo
07-26-2007, 06:52 AM
^^^^ hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mollyzmoon
07-26-2007, 07:23 AM
Witch doctors can't build a calculator or an Internet. In fact, anti-scientific types using the Internet to post their musings strike me as one of the highest forms of irony.

I'm not really sure if that's directed at me or not, but I agree. I'm not very smart when it comes to following sophisticated arguments. I'm a solid A- in my philosophy seminars, which is as high as you can get when you are as spastically inconsistent as I am. For the record, I like both pragmatism, and Feyerabend. I believe in the internet and anitbiotics, but I also believe in certain homeopathic tinctures. If it's hypocritical, then it is, and I'm stupid, but I can't help myself.

xdamage
07-26-2007, 07:38 AM
But once more, much as I agree with that, I don't think we're ever possibly going to know everything. There is so much mystery to the universe...it's inconceivable to me that we have the capacity to discover every possible truth.


This may well be, however I guess the difference lies in what one does with that belief.

First though, what we cannot know we cannot know, so we will never know that we don't know it. It's reasonable to accept this could be the case, but not particularly useful. The purpose of the scientific method is not to discard that possibility, but simply that it is pointless to pursue. No inventions, no nothing is learned by focusing on what we absolutely cannot know.

The problem is that's not what most mystics believe. What they really believe is that there are things that we cannot know via science. The do believe that they can know these things via intuition, of feelings, or mystical procedures. That's the area where science and mysticism disagree. Obviously we won't resolve this in this forum, but I do think one thought is worth throwing out there...

I don't personally believe that human brains have evolved to be particularly good at separating fact from fiction; it's not necessary for survival, but I do see that humans have evolved to be very good at creating fictions, and enjoy them immensely. We see humans creating fictional stories, plays, lyrics, today movies, all through history, and very much so today in our societies where people have a lot of free time to do so. 99% of this fiction is created in good conscious that it is just that, nothing but fiction.

It's the last tiny little percentage that I think is contentious. It's when it's no longer clear in the mind of the human that the fiction is fiction. When a single human believes in his own fiction, we call this insanity. When multiple people start believing in the same fiction, we end up with religion, cults, and other mass belief systems. And the problem is that when a group of people believe something that utterly fails to stand up to the requirements of independent proof, and repeatability, the rest of us are left in a position where our choices come down to 1.) Ignoring it, or 2.) Pushing back in hopes that collectively we as a human race will weed out harmless mass delusions before they grow and turn into dangerous mass delusions.

Jay Zeno
07-26-2007, 08:08 AM
I'm not really sure if that's directed at me or not, but I agree. Noooo, just borrowed the "witch doctor" part. Sorry for the confusion.

The atom is not the smallest unit of matter. It does exist, and without scientific principles would not have been found. Subatomic particles also exist. Again, without science, they would not have been found. The CERN project is hoping to find the Higgs boson - now you're talking small - which would help subtantiate the theory of the Higgs field, which theoretically is the fabric of the universe. Yes, plenty exists out there yet to be found.

Knowledge is growing at an ever-increasing rate. The knowledge that is out there makes now grade school material of 1960s nuclear physics, even though the knowledge base of the vast majority of the population is barely up to 1930s chemistry.

But yeah, as you go through your air-conditioned home, pop the breakfast in the microwave, catch up on the morning news on the tube, check for e-mail, get a swig of milk out of the fridge, apply your newest coolest shiny lipstick, turn off the bathroom light, head out to the car, pop a CD into the player, and drive along the nicely paved roads with synchronized lights - that's all science, all technology. Prayers and spiritual insight and natural living, no matter how valid, didn't provide the physical means for daily life that we use every second.

Embyr
07-26-2007, 10:04 AM
Just as that might be so, we all know that the smallest part of anything is an atom right? Well now science has concluded that quarks are even smaller, don't even touch, and just float around together, but are never separate, and bunched together, make up the bases of matter. So, now science is finding things that it thought were never there, for a long time. Some believe the quark is just sound, makes sense, because you can feel sound, thunder rolls, and the earth shakes. And then making it part of Creationism, God spoke, and it was. Others belive sound has nothing to do with quarks, they're just entities grouped together to make up the basic part of everything. Science changes with the wind I think, always finding something else to give answers. Even though some things may be hard fact, and has been since forever, they find that something else is now fact.

There is something wrong with this logic, sorry... You say that because PEOPLE have varying beliefs on a subject, that it is therefore "unknowable" and easily chalked up to the abnormal/surreal/paranormal/whatever category of phenomena.... again, this is making a very false link about knowledge... just because humans DON'T know something doesn't mean they CAN'T know it. An astute critical thinker will discard most of these "other beliefs" by rationally applying the SEARCH or scientific method to his hypothesis....

This will also get rid of the dancing gremlins in my microwave that eat pixie dust when I'm not there. While I COULD say that was "unfalsifiable;" we can all agree that it is totally out of thin air, absolutely AD HOC, and that the idea of PArsimony (though it is not always the case, simple/relevent hypotheses are often correct ones) goes a long way.

BTW... people postulated about atoms and their existence long before they could be scientifically proven. Saying "we didn't used to know, so because WHat we know is always changing we can never quite be sure of knowing ANyThinG) is ridiculous. There are some hypotheses that have been proven and disproven as we have come further in technology, but they have always been pHYSICallY possible (as in, doesn't defy laws of nature.) SAying "we don't know things in the spirit-world so they could be real" is defying physical possibility as well as logic.

xdamage
07-26-2007, 10:04 AM
[...very good stuff clipped out...]

Knowledge is growing at an ever-increasing rate. The knowledge that is out there makes now grade school material of 1960s nuclear physics, even though the knowledge base of the vast majority of the population is barely up to 1930s chemistry.


Yea, and the total pool of knowledge cannot be grasped by anyone person. It's simply too large. That knowledge is now kept in the memories and minds of multitudes of individuals.




But yeah, as you go through your air-conditioned home, pop the breakfast in the microwave, catch up on the morning news on the tube, check for e-mail, get a swig of milk out of the fridge, apply your newest coolest shiny lipstick, turn off the bathroom light, head out to the car, pop a CD into the player, and drive along the nicely paved roads with synchronized lights - that's all science, all technology. Prayers and spiritual insight and natural living, no matter how valid, didn't provide the physical means for daily life that we use every second.

Couldn't have said it any better.

And strangely, all of those modern day wonders have also resulted in longer life spans, more efficient sharing of knowledge, and a lot more free time for people to indulge in speculation and fictions. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with doing so, just that we increasingly have to be careful that just because someone believes something that we don't immediately accept it as fact.

One area for example where we have made big strides in knowledge is in the area of psychiatry. No longer do we confuse mental illness with possession by demonic forces, or witchcraft. Unfortunately we also now know that human brain chemistry is very sensitive. We know that imbalances, damage, and drugs can lead to all sorts of hallucinations (e.g. seeing things, hearing voices). In fact it's very easy to stimulate these hallucinations when someone is undergoing brain surgery just by applying a little electrical stimuli to various areas of the brain. So we know more then we did, but as a sideeffect, we have greatly increased our evidence that we simply can't trust that just because someone experiences something, that it is real. We increasingly know that human brains and our physical senses can trick us, and actively do trick us (as is shown in so many popular psychological tests). You could say in a sense that our society is slowly growing up, out of or childhood when we believed in spooks, demons, witches, and into one where we realize our brains can easily fool us, and we need to be vigilant in separating out fictions and hallucinations from facts.

xdamage
07-26-2007, 10:18 AM
Just as that might be so, we all know that the smallest part of anything is an atom right? Well now science has concluded that quarks are even smaller, don't even touch, and just float around together, but are never separate, and bunched together, make up the bases of matter. So, now science is finding things that it thought were never there, for a long time.


They were teaching kids that the atom is not the smallest particle at least over 30 years ago in elementary schools, and it's been known by physicists much longer.

But you are using a throw out the baby with the bathwater argument, that because sometimes what you learned is incomplete, it all must be... which is none sense.

Also it's important not to confuse the layman's interpretation of what is known, with what is known. Most research physicists are too busy researching to be teaching HS and elementary school kids, nor are they writing layman's articles - journalists do that. That you learned a very limited portion of what is known, and very dated, and that someone added the egotistical spin to the info "this is the finale of all human knowledge" has nothing to do with the scientific process. Don't confuse the message with the messenger's re-write. What you learned about physics in HS or elementary school or in a popular magazine is like a vague and heavily twisted shadow of what is really understood.




Some believe the quark is just sound

I've never heard of this, not that it matters.

mollyzmoon
07-26-2007, 11:24 AM
This will also get rid of the dancing gremlins in my microwave that eat pixie dust when I'm not there. While I COULD say that was "unfalsifiable;" we can all agree that it is totally out of thin air, absolutely AD HOC, and that the idea of PArsimony (though it is not always the case, simple/relevent hypotheses are often correct ones) goes a long way.



That's kind of what unfalsifiable means--- out of thin air, and could be any old ridiculous thing, which is why I think 'unfalsifiability' is generally considered a trademark of a bad argument. If something can't be disproved, it's almost meaningless to claim its truth. But this is the kind of stuff people like to cling to, because it makes us feel more at ease about general human ignorance. And I don't mean that in a condescending way.

carolina6
07-26-2007, 01:33 PM
But W.V.O. Quine said that ulitmately, in order for science to progress, we need to focus on what methods and principles prove themselves to be the most reliable. He famously claimed that, if people could test the principles of witchcraft or psychic visions with objective tests, and prove that they were consistently more reliable than the current system of physics---then we should embrace those methods.


I never thought I would see Quine quoted on this board, haha. He who had the question mark removed from his typewriter because he only dealt in certainties.

In accepting scientific theories, I look at it this way: When you accept A, a theory, you are also accepting A1, A2, and A3, which are all facts which may not have been discovered yet. When scientists first discovered some of the priciples of genetics, they had no idea about different gene locations and crossover and things like that, although they knew that anomalies occurred. It doesn't mean that crossing XY and XY wouldn't create a 1:2:1 ratio of offspring, it just meant that there was further investigation to be done. I don't discount current theories just because I feel we will discover more about them later.

Habinairo
07-26-2007, 02:32 PM
OH NO!! I was misunderstood!
Not that because we don't know it, we can't know it, I meant that everything changes with time, and what is the truth of everything. With everything changes so much, mutations within species, people being cured from AIDS for no reason, the ability to look more closely into the make up of life, and such, that it can all be our truth right now, but later who knows? What could be moer than there is now? The WHY of everything is there and can change with each different person. What is a fluke of nature and what is recurring with time and such, it's all just to be seen and watched for later on. I don't know how to explain it.
And yes, with the atom thing, my bad.

badpixie
07-26-2007, 06:32 PM
OH NO!! I was misunderstood!
Not that because we don't know it, we can't know it, I meant that everything changes with time, and what is the truth of everything. With everything changes so much, mutations within species,

I'm sorry, what do mutations within species have to do with mysticism? They aren't caused by fairies. The mechanisms are actually pretty well understood.


people being cured from AIDS for no reason,

Nobody is "cured from AIDS for no reason". I'm not sure where you're getting that from. It's true that sometimes people do recover from illnesses in a way that looks like a "miracle", but it's not happening for no reason - the reason either hasn't been discovered by doctors or is ignored by the family or media because a "miracle" is more sensational. There are environmental, genetic, metabolic, or medicinal reason for why people's diseases go into remission. Closing our eyes and calling it a miracle, an intervention by god or angels, or the power of prayer or spells does us a huge disservice. Studying misunderstood or subtle "miracles" objectively is what causes breakthroughs in medicine and plenty of other fields. Saying god or your psychic healer did it, case closed, no questions asked, will never help save other lives.


the ability to look more closely into the make up of life, and such, that it can all be our truth right now, but later who knows? What could be more than there is now? The WHY of everything is there and can change with each different person. What is a fluke of nature and what is recurring with time and such, it's all just to be seen and watched for later on. I don't know how to explain it.
And yes, with the atom thing, my bad.

Yes, the atom thing. This is what the OP and others are concerned about - magical thinking, belief in ghosts/astrology/etc has caused you to stop focusing on reality and has made you scientifically illiterate. You are confusing your lack of knowledge as being indicative of humanity's general ignorance of the universe.

Again, in this thread I've seen many people say "we don't know everything, the universe is so vast, so all this magical stuff has to exist somewhere". Many of you also think that science is a belief system or religion. This is exactly the problem we are talking about. You did not pay attention in grade school, or your schooling system failed you utterly, and since this is happening on such a huge scale, our society will pay for it, as it always has when people look to superstition over the facts.

I'm going to paste this again, because I don't think any of the astrology believers have actually read it, and I want them to respond to this very important article: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html

And since you guys also have problems understanding the words "proof" and "theory" in the scientific context, I'll point out again that no one has ever shown any reliable, repeatable evidence of ghosts, possession of psychic or magical powers, or the like. No one. Why do you believe in something that isn't there, or worse, has been actively disproven (again, http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html!)?

badpixie
07-26-2007, 06:50 PM
Another good editorial on this topic: http://skepdic.com/refuge/weird.html


Other beliefs seem to be adhered to simply because they are possible. Even though the evidence is overwhelmingly against them, why do people believe in such things as dowsing? Many, of course, believe because they do not understand how easy it is to deceive ourselves. They do not understand the need for controlled studies to eliminate self-deception from influencing our beliefs. Yet, others seem to believe such things simply because they are possibly true. They are unaware of the fallacy of the argument to ignorance. However, simply because a claim is possibly true--in the absolutely loosest sense of the term 'possibly'--does not mean it is reasonable to use an act of will alone to accept the claim.

jaizaine
07-27-2007, 12:10 AM
I think you misunderstood me... I meant that religions and mystic tenet-sets in general usually have some law that says "you must only worship blah blah blah...." in which case if you BELIEVE or actually FOLLOW something, it is almost required that you disregard the entire category of alternatives.

i.e. if you believe in jesus, you must ignore monotheistic religions, as well as those who do not agree w/ the idea of him coming back to earth.
By adhering to certain belief systems, they usually necessitate that you dump the alternatives.... mysticism pretty much dispels itself this way.


oh yes i do see what u mean. this is one of the reasons that I do not follow any organised religion. I have my faith that I have developed during my life time but i do not attend church and i don't follow the rules that other human beings have made up.

Nicolina
07-27-2007, 12:45 AM
But when it comes to some aspects of numerology and astrology, I tend to fall quiet. Here's my problem there:

Say you have identical twins born 20 minutes apart, on either side of midnight. A birthday numerology may say that they will have entirely different personalities. I'm guessing that will probably be wrong.


Depends on whether they are raised together or apart! Interestingly, monozygotic twins raised together are less alike in personality than MZ twins raised apart. So, if raised together, they might indeed have very different personalities. If raised apart, they'll probably be more similar.

Sorry, just thought I'd share that little tidbit. It makes sense if you think about it. And it says a lot about the complex interplay between nature & nurture, doesn't it?

As for the original question: Science is my preferred way of understanding the world. And I tend to side with Harris & Dawkins in believing that organized religion does more harm than good in human societies. I also think that blind faith in anything--including the "mythology" of science--can be dangerous. I am not afraid to say that some cockamamie beliefs are just plain bunk.

However, I'm in the same epistemological boat with Jay and Paige, who seem to love and respect science, but also leave some room in their belief system for things that are "extra-science." I tend to believe that there are rational, scientific explanations for some of the things that we currently think of as "extra-science," and we just don't know what they are yet. But maybe there are some things that are somehow outside the realm of what science can measure or investigate. I don't know.

Honestly, the deeper I get into science, the more I realize that a lot of things I think of as "scientific facts" are based on statistical analyses and mathematical principles that I simply do not truly understand. So basically, I'm taking it on faith that the "facts" follow from these principles. If I were smarter, this wouldn't necessarily be the case. But the extent to which you have to take science on this kind of faith, I find, is determined by the limitations of your intellect.

pookie
07-27-2007, 04:35 AM
Lots of interesting things on this thread. Its good to see lots of different views.

Its interesting how some people see science and spiritual beliefs separate.
Although i have seen shows and documentary where people were using modern science to have a better understanding of what was going on during a spiritual event. One show was a person who was going through a stigmata. they took the blood that was coming off of the persons hands and feet to see if it matched up with their own or did not.

Although i have had some interesting and scary spiritual stuff happen in my life. I sometimes wonder if i asked a scientist what their theory would be to explain it. somehow i highly doubt there would be a real scientific answer. but thats ok science and spiritual beliefs are still not as popular when being used together sometimes.

I don't think everybody should have to believe everything. But if one person goes through an experience that another person does not then that person has not, then that person had not been exposed, so they wouldn't have a reason to need to believe what something was/is.
but then if two people goes through the same experience, they still may see the experience differently anyway.

xdamage
07-27-2007, 08:52 PM
Honestly, the deeper I get into science, the more I realize that a lot of things I think of as "scientific facts" are based on statistical analyses and mathematical principles that I simply do not truly understand.

Nic,

This is a big key point in my mind. The sum total of human knowledge simply exceeds what any of us can understand. It seems to me that fortunately sometimes people are born with exceptional talents (i.e., in math, art, music, and so on). To me this balances out against those who end up damaging society.

But the most important points come down to one simple thing to me. I think fundamentally many religious beliefs, and beliefs in mysticism are nothing more then egotistical reactions. I know this is an un-popular belief, but I believe in honesty, and honestly I believe we are NOT all born with exactly the same brains, or exactly the same talents. Me, I have no ego problem with the fact that some are born genetically stronger then I, or with a better singing voice, or with better looks, or with mathematical talents that just don't come to me no matter how I much I study, and so on. I'm okay with that. But I honestly think this is the key to why so many people turn to mysticism and throw up their hands and argue in favor of magical thinking vs science. It's because fundamentally it's difficult for them to accept, to acknowledge, "I don't know" and worse, others do. That's simply not an ego stroke for most of us, and terribly difficult to accept if you're someone who needs to feel as smart, talented, attractive as the rest of humanity. So they latch on to mysticism that requires no proof, not stepping up to any plate, nothing but ego stroking from those who want to feel smarter then science because it makes them feel good to do so, no matter how nonesensical the beliefs. Like I said, I know this is a terribly un-popular viewpoint, but I really do think it is key to why so many people value mysticism over science. Mysticism is easy, Science is hard.

So Nic, kudos... I wish more people could acknowledge "I don't know" and be happy that there are those in society who do, and have contributed in very real, and tangible ways to the sum total of human knowledge. They deserve at least as much credit (more really) as rock stars, movie stars, and pop idols.

Budai
07-27-2007, 10:09 PM
But the most important points come down to one simple thing to me. I think fundamentally many religious beliefs, and beliefs in mysticism are nothing more then egotistical reactions. I know this is an un-popular belief, but I believe in honesty, and honestly I believe we are NOT all born with exactly the same brains, or exactly the same talents... That's simply not an ego stroke for most of us, and terribly difficult to accept if you're someone who needs to feel as smart, talented, attractive as the rest of humanity.

xschaden:

Religious beliefs are fundamentally egotistical reactions? I guess you must have pulled King Henry VIII's card! ;D

Your ideas triggered an association with , which is actually a rebuttal of solipsistic conclusions. Although solipsism has not been embraced by any of the "great" philosophers, Andy & Larry Wachowski adopted it as the backbone premise for the immensely popular "Matrix" trilogy (which is far more accessible than literary "facts" these days)...


Excerpt from the introduction to :


"Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that "I am the only mind which exists," or "My mental states are the only mental states." However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, "existence" means for me my existence and that of my mental states. Existence is everything that I experience -- physical objects, other people, events and processes -- anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the space and time in which I coexist with others and is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness..."

Embyr
07-27-2007, 11:44 PM
hmmm... ^^^ i am fairly positive (although I will let him answer for himself) that xdamage is NOT a solipsist, as solipsism implies a subjective reality, where "such is true for you but not for me," which is a nicely self-refuting argument that kills the idea of an objective, reasonable world, where most things are able (at some point) to be known.

Budai
07-28-2007, 12:34 AM
hmmm... ^^^ i am fairly positive (although I will let him answer for himself) that xdamage is NOT a solipsist, as solipsism implies a subjective reality, where "such is true for you but not for me," which is a nicely self-refuting argument that kills the idea of an objective, reasonable world, where most things are able (at some point) to be known.

True dat, EmbyRRR 8):

xschaden is most certainly NOT a solipsist. IMO, his belief that "many religious beliefs, and beliefs in mysticism are nothing more then egotistical reactions" represents a direction repudiation of solipsism because it underscores xschaden's premise that "When a single human believes in his own fiction, we call this insanity. When multiple people start believing in the same fiction, we end up with religion, cults, and other mass belief systems..."



Religious beliefs are fundamentally egotistical reactions? I guess you must have pulled King Henry VIII's card! ;D

I led off with the quip about King Henry VIII because here you have a monarch (who is more egotistical than a King?) who essentially created a religion for the purpose of killing his spouse in order to marry his side piece!

Excerpt from bio ()
It was not that King Henry VIII had a change of conscience regarding publishing the Bible in English...King Henry VIII had in fact, requested that the Pope permit him to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. The Pope refused, and King Henry responded by killing his wife, marrying his mistress, and thumbing his nose at the Pope by renouncing Roman Catholicism, taking England out from under Rome’s religious control, and declaring himself as the reigning head of State to also be the new head of the...Anglican Church...His first act was to further defy the wishes of Rome by funding the printing of the scriptures in English… the first legal English Bible… just for spite." }:D

Embyr
07-28-2007, 03:25 AM
durrrrr i misread ya. sawwy. :smiley_dr :smiley_dr :smiley_dr

*pops in a cassette tape and listens to soothing "world is as you make it"* ;D

erotictonic
07-28-2007, 03:47 AM
Ok, before we expand to conversation concerning the meanings of another dimension, I would like to say that it really doesn't make a difference. Information only matters in the context to which you find it helpful. Why should I know the fucking meaning of existence when all I NEED to know is how to satisfy a man with a hard cock? That's the dilemma.

Budai
07-28-2007, 06:17 AM
Information only matters in the context to which you find it helpful. Why should I know the fucking meaning of existence when all I NEED to know is how to satisfy a man with a hard cock? That's the dilemma.

:dazzled: D-d-damn!

xdamage
07-28-2007, 08:03 AM
I'm definitely not a solipsist.

Budai, fundamentally it's a simple thing. People like to feel smart. They want to believe they are intelligent, and so if it comes down to feeling not so smart (about what they don't know) versus something they can make up and think that makes them smart, often will people choose the later. There are a variety of ways to react to the fact that science leaves a lot of people feeling like their egos are at risk.

And in a sense, erotictonic demonstrates or iterates the point perfectly. She hand wavingly dismisses information because it doesn't benefit her, and it's not relevant to sex, which is what she is interested in. OTOH she (like all of us) benefit from the fact that some other people do care. It's because of untold amount of human effort and brain power that went into creating computers, software, electronics, and ultimately, a set of tools that make it easy for her to post her opinion on an electronic forum, that she can post that she doesn't care about this human accomplishment. Ironic to a degree.

The point remains. Dreaming up gods, believing in mysticism, or just not caring at all, is all much easier (and more easier on our egos) then actually delving in to science where there is a lot to be learned that doesn't come intuitively for most of us, and where your peers are very critical and demand that BS be separated from fact. Delving in tends to leave most of us feeling, well, less intelligent then we thought we were (i.e. the more I learn, the more I learn how much I don't know - not exactly ego stroking stuff).

carolina6
07-29-2007, 06:41 PM
xdamage: I think it's very interesting that you feel that people gravitate towards religion due to feeling not so smart. I don't disagree, I just never thought of it that way. I always felt that people choose religion due to it giving them warm fuzzies or feelings of a sense of order in a chaotic world.

Life is a very crazy mess, where terrible things often happen. Without a belief in a higher being, it is sometimes hard to make sense of why things happen or feel ok about what happens after dying. I think we cease to exist and there is no afterlife, but I can understand how that is terrifying and leads people to religion. To believe that God loves you unconditionally or that you will go to a great place after dying is pretty nice. Pascal's wager is hard to turn down.

xdamage
07-29-2007, 07:33 PM
xdamage: I think it's very interesting that you feel that people gravitate towards religion due to feeling not so smart. I don't disagree, I just never thought of it that way. I always felt that people choose religion due to it giving them warm fuzzies or feelings of a sense of order in a chaotic world.

Life is a very crazy mess, where terrible things often happen. Without a belief in a higher being, it is sometimes hard to make sense of why things happen or feel ok about what happens after dying. I think we cease to exist and there is no afterlife, but I can understand how that is terrifying and leads people to religion. To believe that God loves you unconditionally or that you will go to a great place after dying is pretty nice. Pascal's wager is hard to turn down.

There is certainly a lot truth in what you wrote carolina. Richard Dawkins tackles this tough question in his latest book, and comfort is certainly a reason why.

I guess it could be said differently. I guess I should have written, people seem to want answers that they can understand first, often truth second, especially if the truth is complex. It's kind of secondary then that complex answers, even if true, can leave people feeling ego challenged, particularly if they just don't understand it.

The problem is that a lot of what makes sense to believe in a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago is making less and less sense today as we learn more. For example, it's relatively simple and easy to get one's head around an idea like a god created everything. Putting aside which god or gods you believe in (since there is some disagreement about the specifics among different people), much like magic, it's sort of answer unto it self that even a child can basically understand. People don't really need to look too much deeper then that. Snap fingers, bing bang boom, poof, things exist, and there's an explanation. It's sort of like looking at a tree and declaring it's made up of "wood"; true, but it's also a non-answer in that but what is wood made of, and what if it turns out (as it has) that what wood is made of is something totally not-at all like wood? In fact not at all like anything we experience with our 5 senses. It's a totally different world of energies and masses with strange wave like and particle like properties. Anyway, the believing that it all came to be by snapping one's fingers is easy enough for a kid to grasp, but it's also arguably presumptuous that the whys, what's and hows of the Universe are simple enough that any of us understand it, let alone a child. OTOH, there is also something wrong with the type of mind that has decided that we can't know more, or that has trouble accepting that we (as the human race) have learned a lot more then the answer the child understands.

But anyway the problem is that in the face of what has been learned about genes, and what is being learned in the area of physics, biology, chemistry, and other fields, it has become increasingly contentious to believe the simpler explanations thought up a few thousand years ago. So what is that's hold people back from accepting that what they thought they knew and learned as a kid is, well, according to science, not only incorrect, but quite complicated and they are going to have to spend many years, possibly decades studying to get caught up on what we've learned so far?

I guess some would call it "faith" but I'm curious as to why it is that people can cling to their faith so strongly in the face of somethings that should be obvious, like it's obvious and expected that we should know more about the universe today then we did several thousand years ago. And why is that even the vast majority of those who have faith will almost invariably choose to put it a side in a heartbeat if they need the help of science (e.g., medicine, a brain scan, xrays, and much more all of which is deeply rooted in science, not in faith).

I'm also curious as to why it is that we still have so many people who are anxious to buy into various ologies, and magical-thinking, systems that are based on beliefs that seem to me to be the kind of thing that have beliefs that are fundamentally far easier to understand then areas of science where we have to learn concepts that are by all rights far more complicated and difficult to learn, and requires being among people who require far greater levels of proof then we hold our average fortune teller or religious figurehead too.

Also as we saw in this thread, and we see it in the general population, there seems to be a certain popular way of thinking which is to say things like oh, we don't need science; life was better when things were simpler; oh science is just another belief system; science is constantly changing anyway; and much else which I still have to wonder if this just doesn't come back to a simpler truth, say that people found science (to really understand it) very difficult, and that their egos are happier just believing they are above it or see some grand truth that strokes their own egos while entirely managing to avoid acknowledging their lack of knowledge.

carolina6
07-29-2007, 08:20 PM
I think it's probably a little of both. It is obviously easier to understand that a creator made everything that exists rather than to study the causes and effects and emerging theories of how our universe came to be. Part of the reluctance to revise religious beliefs or do away with them is tradition. Your parents were Catholic, your grandparents, etc. Your parents teach you morals based on the Bible, send you to Catholic schools. It's hard to reject all that, especially when the people you love still believe it. I can't tell you how many times I've debated with my mom over how I believe there's an alien in the sky and she should really be praying to HIM, rather than the god she's always telling me to pray to.

People's rejection of the obvious doesn't surprise me much anymore. While I wouldn't say it's obvious that there's no God, I think it is obvious that carbon dating is an accurate method of determining the age of fossils. Yet, religious people continue to deny that it is accurate, claiming that the earth really is only 4,000 years old or whatever. I can't accept that kind of reasoning.

I will have to read Dawkins' new book. I read a bit of him when I wrote a paper for a philosophy of science class, interestingly enough on whether or not science is a religion.

Sorry for my bias towards using Catholocism as my example, but that's what I'm most familiar with.