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Brainiac Five posted:They are, in fact, equatable as claims about reality and your argument makes it clear that you have taken it as a prior that any claims which you process as spiritual are inherently false no matter what. Which is to say that you have designated the truth-value of certain statements as false regardless of evidence. What evidence is there for the spiritual? What even is "spiritual"?
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Mar 8, 2017 23:41
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Who What Now posted:What evidence is there for the spiritual? What even is "spiritual"? For a group of people who believe in absolutes, the religious are curiously quick to make everything equally meaningless and bring all thought down to the level of inconsequential babbling the second their dogma is questioned. Look at this whole thread.
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Mar 8, 2017 23:56
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zh1 posted:For a group of people who believe in absolutes, the religious are curiously quick to make everything equally meaningless and bring all thought down to the level of inconsequential babbling the second their dogma is questioned. Look at this whole thread. B5 isn't religious.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:00
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I'm also not, as it happens.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:10
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Why are non-religious people arguing for the religious? Could it be a part of the moronic and unfounded backlash against atheism?
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Mar 9, 2017 00:15
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zh1 posted:Why are non-religious people arguing for the religious? Could it be a part of the moronic and unfounded backlash against atheism? Arguing that religious people aren't strawmen isn't arguing for them.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:16
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Possibly because as I said at the start i don't think that religion is the opposite of leftism?
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Mar 9, 2017 00:17
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Some of us aren't interested in arguing for a given "side" or whatever.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:18
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Who What Now posted:Arguing that religious people aren't strawmen isn't arguing for them. So you think they're incapable of defending themselves? Wait a minute, they are!
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Mar 9, 2017 00:22
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Call it solidarity 
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Mar 9, 2017 00:24
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zh1 posted:Why are non-religious people arguing for the religious? Could it be a part of the moronic and unfounded backlash against atheism?
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Mar 9, 2017 00:34
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zh1 posted:So you think they're incapable of defending themselves? Well it's hard to defend yourself when you aren't here.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:40
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zh1 posted:Why are non-religious people arguing for the religious? Could it be a part of the moronic and unfounded backlash against atheism? Attributing peoples' beliefs or actions to simply being part of a zeitgeist rather than to considered and rational thought processes, classic. Add a dash of ad hominem for flavor.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:48
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Who What Now posted:What evidence is there for the spiritual? What even is "spiritual"? That's not really the point. The point is that the scientific attitude towards the existence of things which are unproven is ideally an agnostic one, and that dismissing it out of hand is not scientific. That doesn't mean that it's wrong to do so, but it corrupts scientific reasoning by demanding that you reject certain premises a priori, and the natural end result of it, indeed the goal of people like zh1, is to annihilate all religiosity between anti-intellectual religious groups and anti-religious atheism.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:52
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The fundamental issue is that there are a great many people who become atheists from being raised in a bigoted religious environment like evangelical Protestantism without ever abandoning the ways of thinking it produces, so they end up latching onto something as the absolute truth which must push out all "competing" beliefs because they are necessarily wrong, and since this is usually the sciences they become quick to insist that science crushes religion and must destroy it. They do manage to put up a pretense that they have "no problem" with religious people so long as they're not bigoted, but their actions make it clear that their endgoal is to annihilate religion and religiosity.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:57
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Brainiac Five posted:The fundamental issue is that there are a great many people who become atheists from being raised in a bigoted religious environment like evangelical Protestantism without ever abandoning the ways of thinking it produces, so they end up latching onto something as the absolute truth which must push out all "competing" beliefs because they are necessarily wrong, and since this is usually the sciences they become quick to insist that science crushes religion and must destroy it.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:13
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I'm not sure that bravery is characterized by a willingless to crush random things regardless of whether they are an obstacle to you or not, or whether that's more a definition of stupidity.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:16
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OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure that bravery is characterized by a willingless to crush random things regardless of whether they are an obstacle to you or not, or whether that's more a definition of stupidity. Cool dude. *sits back and watches preventable evils ruin the earth*
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Mar 9, 2017 01:17
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I have a feeling that Christian Socialists are not the cause of most evil on the earth.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:21
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Well I think the thread has conclusively shown that zh1 is hostile to religion, and a little stupid. Though I'm not sure the real conflict here is 'science' and 'religion', in regards to 'the left vs religion'. As ways of obtaining knowledge, I think we have to prefer science. But all action does not proceed from only knowledge, but also intent. But there is also other areas that conflict with 'religion' - in particular, political ideology and moral philosophy. Which should be preferred? If we're to live in a pluralistic society, and a society with a foundation of rational discussion as a way to resolve difference, you can't prefer religion, you have to prefer philosophy & ideology, because only the later is amenable to a debate between different sides. A conflict between religions obfuscates the debate over morality/ideology into one about metaphysics. So if you're of a given ideological leaning, and you want to convince the rest of society, you can't rely on your religion to push it, you have to give secular reasons for following that ideology. Believe what you want, have whatever faith (or lack of faith) that you want, in 'private' - when you become a public, you have to drop that poo poo.
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Mar 9, 2017 02:46
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Brainiac Five posted:They are, in fact, equatable as claims about reality and your argument makes it clear that you have taken it as a prior that any claims which you process as spiritual are inherently false no matter what. Which is to say that you have designated the truth-value of certain statements as false regardless of evidence. You've been ping ponging between semantic games ad absurdum and false dichotomies so let's define things more clearly. Making a claim about reality based off of physical evidence is not equivalent to a claim about reality based on a spiritual argument. They simply aren't. I'll spell out again why they aren't. Claim based off of physics evidence: All of the data collected indicates that the physical brain receives and responds to stimuli via chemical and electrical signals. Physical changes to the brain, be it chemical or actually cutting into it, alters thoughts, emotions, and even memories. There has never been any indication that stimuli outside the physical environment have ever had an effect on how the brain operates. Therefore, it is with extremely high certainty that we can claim that the human experience is contained within the limits of the organic body. Claim based off of spiritual argument: People have a spirit, or soul, that has a connection to a divine being. We know this because God said so, also because people have believed this for a long time. I can feel God's presence. You cannot completely disprove my assertions, therefore it is with reasonable certainty we can posit that people have souls. Physical evidence claim: We can date the age of the universe and Earth with reasonable certainty, as well as when life began. We have an extremely solid framework for how life developed from early, more simple and smaller life to the diversity we see today on Earth. We have observed methods in nature by which organic building blocks can be created by nonorganic events. We have seen some (shaky) "hints" that life may have existed on Mars. We know with the size of the universe there are literally trillions of planets with a diverse composites and environments. We can therefore conclude with reasonable certainty that life probably exists elsewhere in the universe. Spiritual claim: Life on Earth is completely unique. We have never actually seen full solid proof that life exists elsewhere. We are basing this off of the fact that humans have never been anywhere else but our local solar system. God has made people, even if done through the mechanism of evolution, to be special beings. Therefore we can conclude with reasonable certainty that life probably doesn't exist elsewhere. There's a big loving reason that spiritual arguments are always invalid. They rely on a supernatural aspect at some point. If you want to say that just blanket defines and categorizes them, fine. But if magic is part of any argument you are making then it isn't a real argument. Before you get all pissy about me labeling things, spiritual, by definition it means having to do with the soul (explicitly not physical) or religion or religious belief. Show me a single shred of evidence for anything relating to any kind of mysticism to be real. Just one. Then we can entertain arguments not based off of wrong axioms. It's not unscientific in any way. I'm open to and even hoping that we discover some sort of juju that makes humans, or life, or the universe in general have something more going on. But we don't. And disingenuous people like you keep insisting that we entertain arguments based off reality as being equivalent to arguments based on magic. tl;dr Spiritual arguments by definition involve a supernatural element, and equating it to an empirical physical argument is complete bullshit
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Mar 9, 2017 04:16
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As a leftist, I think Calvinism is insanely good.
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Mar 9, 2017 04:53
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zh1 posted:Isn't the whole point of communism that it's a good idea, with a proven track record lmao
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Mar 9, 2017 04:58
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RasperFat posted:You've been ping ponging between semantic games ad absurdum and false dichotomies so let's define things more clearly. "Supernatural" is not a meaningful term here, because before the discovery of nuclear fusion the means by which the sun gave off heat and light was supernatural, since the sun could not, by any known means, have given off sufficient heat and light to warm the Earth for long enough to be consistent with the fossil record. So if we had good physical evidence for the soul, it would not be supernatural anymore. The argument is rigged.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:23
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Brainiac Five posted:"Supernatural" is not a meaningful term here, because before the discovery of nuclear fusion the means by which the sun gave off heat and light was supernatural, since the sun could not, by any known means, have given off sufficient heat and light to warm the Earth for long enough to be consistent with the fossil record. Escaping to semantic bullshit again? Supernatural would be saying that God gave the sun power and put it in place to give us heat and light. Not knowing how something works doesn't automatically make it supernatural. We can say we just don't know, without automatically filling the gap with magic. Do we know how quantum physics works? Not really yet. That doesn't make it supernatural. Saying God is intervening and loving with scientists on a tiny level is a supernatural explanation. If we had evidence for anything similar to a god or mysticism I would concede that supernatural things exists. We don't have any evidence of this though. It's unfortunate that secular discoveries continuously contradict every spiritual claim they come up against, but that is the world we live in. Maybe if life worked like an anime or fantasy novel things would be different, but that's not the reality we live in. Lighting, the sun, earthquakes, eclipses, plagues, fire, wind, and life itself have been interpreted supernaturally for the majority of human history. It's very recent that we realized that there are non-mystical explanations for why diseases spread, how combustion works, why the wind blows, how fission works, cellular biology, etc. The history of discovery shows that yes, supernatural explanations for phenomenon are wrong and a natural process can explain and predict these phenomenon better. That doesn't mean that we can never have supernatural things happen, it just means it hasn't happened yet and we don't have any reason to think they ever will. There's a lot of events that any god, from omnipotent to a tiny Shinto yokai, could perform that would clear all of this up. Until that time, we should probably reject any supernatural explanations. It's only a rigged argument because one side has never been able to answer the call for evidence.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:55
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Brainiac Five posted:"Supernatural" is not a meaningful term here, because before the discovery of nuclear fusion the means by which the sun gave off heat and light was supernatural, since the sun could not, by any known means, have given off sufficient heat and light to warm the Earth for long enough to be consistent with the fossil record. The Sun wasn't supernatural even before the discovery of fusion. The mechanism was just unknown. On the other hand, there is nothing in the human experience that would indicate the existence of a soul, or any unknown process that would justify theorizing that a soul exists. If a bright flash of light occurred every time someone died, or if there were ghosts floating around that everyone could very clearly see, then I suppose some kind of a metaphysical soul would be a reasonable theory. One of the biggest disservices apologists tend to commit is to waive off faith as a matter of attempting to explain real phenomena, when that is more of an apples to oranges kind of thing. That's not really how religions, particularly modern ones, came about, nor is it the function it should serve. At best, it is a method of explaining morality in a fashion that is easy to digest. Or it is an insidious lie used to control humanity. Take your pick.
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Mar 9, 2017 06:10
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The Kingfish posted:As a leftist, I think Calvinism is insanely good. Calvinism is the only logically consistent form of Christianity, yeah.
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Mar 9, 2017 06:16
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Brainiac Five posted:The point is that the scientific attitude towards the existence of things which are unproven is ideally an agnostic one, and that dismissing it out of hand is not scientific. Agnostic in this case shouldn't mean, "maybe witches/god/fairies could be real, there's no proof they aren't" but "they aren't real, but if we get evidence to the contrary I'll be willing to reassess my stance".
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Mar 9, 2017 07:33
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To put another slant on things, the scientific worldview used to mean acknowledging all things are possible, these days it seems it's been appropriated towards whittling away the very idea of possibility itself, narrowing our imaginative horizons and banalising the world to promote a paralysing, pedantic sociocultural stasis. For this reason the left should be more hostile to the turgid scientific (or, more properly, science-fetishist) chauvinism of the new atheists and more open to religion, because at least religion posits an alternative vision of the world beyond the stagnant, exhausted cultural landscape of the early 21st century. Religions are bodies of mythology. Myths are the foundational dogmas of human society, their historicity or factual, scientific basis is irrelevant to their symbolic power and consequent social significance. If the left wants to do away with religion it needs to make new, compelling myths of its own, think beyond reality and posit a vision of something better than this rudderless, meaningless poo poo.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:27
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TomViolence posted:To put another slant on things, the scientific worldview used to mean acknowledging all things are possible, these days it seems it's been appropriated towards whittling away the very idea of possibility itself, narrowing our imaginative horizons and banalising the world to promote a paralysing, pedantic sociocultural stasis. For this reason the left should be more hostile to the turgid scientific (or, more properly, science-fetishist) chauvinism of the new atheists and more open to religion, because at least religion posits an alternative vision of the world beyond the stagnant, exhausted cultural landscape of the early 21st century. How... what? You do understand science is more of a process than a philosophy? Science is a way to test how things work, not acknowledging all things are possible. Once we learned how poo poo actually worked, we developed things like medicine and physics and chemistry. We then make use of that knowledge in applications like medical treatments and new technology. The problem is we are leaning so much so quickly that nobody can keep up with every discipline. We double our knowledge in a period of decades. It's impossible to learn everything. At the same time these disciplines are interconnected. The reason why evolution is such a strong theory is because biology, chemistry, geology, and other disciplines all contribute to aging and placing fossils and understanding the cellular mechanisms for how changes take place. With a constantly building mountain of evidence that almost exclusively supports well established theories, it takes some crazy rear end discoveries to make any drastic changes at this point. I agree that narratives are important to society, but we don't have to create new myths, we can just educate better. However, serious assholery is definitely a problem with many public atheists. Dawkins, Hitchens (was), and internet edgelords can be serious dicks. This seems to be an issue of people that are the loudest proponents of anything though, so I'm not sure that's a full indictment of atheism.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:47
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TomViolence posted:To put another slant on things, the scientific worldview used to mean acknowledging all things are possible, these days it seems it's been appropriated towards whittling away the very idea of possibility itself, narrowing our imaginative horizons and banalising the world to promote a paralysing, pedantic sociocultural stasis. For this reason the left should be more hostile to the turgid scientific (or, more properly, science-fetishist) chauvinism of the new atheists and more open to religion, because at least religion posits an alternative vision of the world beyond the stagnant, exhausted cultural landscape of the early 21st century. Is this one of the themes you explore in your 80,000 word Wallace and Gromit fanfiction?
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Mar 9, 2017 12:47
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What I don't get is why or when the bromance of science, philosophy and religion ended. I've researched enough about religion and philosophy (science hurts my brain) to know that it was only a few short centuries ago when all of these things were bound together and got along just fine. The fascinating Scholastic tradition of Roman Catholicism for instance was built on the idea that humans can learn and understand everything, including God and metaphysical mater. Thomas Aquinas was not a gibbering Christian dope who said "The Lord knows and I'm free to be as ignorant as possible." He was a pretty smart dude and along with a lot of other deeply religious people he sincerely believed understanding of the world was perfectly in line with understanding God. At least, I think so. It has been a while. But somewhere along the way, religion and science went their separate ways and the result is the discussion of the last several pages.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:08
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RasperFat posted:Escaping to semantic bullshit again? These are a lot of words to repeat what you've already said, which is that "supernatural" does not actually mean "beyond what is natural/known" but really means "something I have concluded is impossible a priori". You will undoubtedly respond that your definition is actually "anything which involves magic", never defining "magic", placing the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and other cryptids firmly in the realm of the natural, alongside UFO encounters. What we have here is more or less a fetishized science, where whether you can see yourself loving a test-tube in relation to something is what's really important.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:17
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NikkolasKing posted:What I don't get is why or when the bromance of science, philosophy and religion ended. I've researched enough about religion and philosophy (science hurts my brain) to know that it was only a few short centuries ago when all of these things were bound together and got along just fine. The fascinating Scholastic tradition of Roman Catholicism for instance was built on the idea that humans can learn and understand everything, including God and metaphysical mater. Thomas Aquinas was not a gibbering Christian dope who said "The Lord knows and I'm free to be as ignorant as possible." He was a pretty smart dude and along with a lot of other deeply religious people he sincerely believed understanding of the world was perfectly in line with understanding God. At least, I think so. It has been a while. I'm not sure if there was something inherent about Darwinism that caused this - is Darwinism inherently incompatible with most christian churches and christian communities, or could the church have, in principle, accommodated him ("God creates via evolution, ok no biggie, humans are still special and holy even if they're related to apes, now let's get on with things that matter, like if altar wine is literally transubstantiation into the literal blood of christ?")? Maybe it's just a symbolic event for a larger conflict. TomViolence posted:To put another slant on things, the scientific worldview used to mean acknowledging all things are possible, these days it seems it's been appropriated towards whittling away the very idea of possibility itself, narrowing our imaginative horizons and banalising the world to promote a paralysing, pedantic sociocultural stasis. TomViolence posted:For this reason the left should be more hostile to the turgid scientific (or, more properly, science-fetishist) chauvinism of the new atheists and more open to religion, because at least religion posits an alternative vision of the world beyond the stagnant, exhausted cultural landscape of the early 21st century. Religion still plays a major role, but I don't see how adding even more of it would make things better. Plenty of artists are religious. Many aren't. TomViolence posted:Religions are bodies of mythology. Myths are the foundational dogmas of human society, their historicity or factual, scientific basis is irrelevant to their symbolic power and consequent social significance. If the left wants to do away with religion it needs to make new, compelling myths of its own, think beyond reality and posit a vision of something better than this rudderless, meaningless poo poo.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:18
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Fetishization of scientific aesthetics is anti-science, because if we understand science as being a family of processes of inquiry, treating science as being about lab coats and pith helmets degrades science into a magical process where ritual vestments are what gives it authority and power. But many people cling to science as, in the words of the hymn, the solid rock on which they stand, all other ground being sinking sand and so this mythologization is in a sense inevitable.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:23
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Brainiac Five posted:Fetishization of scientific aesthetics is anti-science, because if we understand science as being a family of processes of inquiry, treating science as being about lab coats and pith helmets degrades science into a magical process where ritual vestments are what gives it authority and power. But many people cling to science as, in the words of the hymn, the solid rock on which they stand, all other ground being sinking sand and so this mythologization is in a sense inevitable.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:52
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Cingulate posted:I think in this world, fetishization of science ranks pretty low on the "list of actual problems for science sorted by how much of a problem they actually are", and religion ranks much higher. Could even imagine it has a net-positive effect in that it allows people who don't actually understand science to appreciate science and scientists. And a lot of good scientists are really insecure and need that validation. Okay good luck re-educating religious people then Cingulate.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:53
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Should university programs in the natural sciences ban religious people from enrolling, or should they be required to undergo indoctrination? After all, they are an existential threat to the program, according to at least some of the people in this thread.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:55
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Brainiac Five posted:Should university programs in the natural sciences ban religious people from enrolling, or should they be required to undergo indoctrination? After all, they are an existential threat to the program, according to at least some of the people in this thread. To the extent that those religious people outright believe that said natural science cannot be valid? Yes. I can't imagine, for example, that a devout Young Earth Creationist is going to have much to offer a paleontology program, and is rather likely to serve as a distraction and disruption in other students' learning. Luckily, most people of that belief system avoid the mainstream educational system and prefer to attend institutions that share their beliefs.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:59
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Liquid Communism posted:To the extent that those religious people outright believe that said natural science cannot be valid? Yes. I can't imagine, for example, that a devout Young Earth Creationist is going to have much to offer a paleontology program, and is rather likely to serve as a distraction and disruption in other students' learning. So you refuse to answer the question and just offer a tawdry deflection. According to a number of people in this thread, science and religion cannot coexist and so religious people, by extension, cannot be good scientists. Shouldn't they, as a group, then be banned or forcibly deconverted, then?
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Mar 9, 2017 14:03
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