Pellisworth posted:

Do you have a point you wanted to make other than dissecting my language?

Let me be more specific, American Evangelical / Right Wing groups tend to be much more anti-scientific and violate NOMA principles.

Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism (Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, etc) are much more inclined to agree or compromise with NOMA principles.

e: you needn't accept Gould's NOMA scheme, I just think it's a good starting point for consideration of a reconciliation between science and religion

twodot posted:

My primary point has been your language sucks, because I can't actually engage with an argument until it's phrased in non-sucky language. Given this, is the physical existence of a person named Jesus in a particular time and place a claim that Catholicism relies on and is that fact within the magisterium of the Catholic Church?

Pellisworth posted:

yes

I'm not Catholic

Brainiac Five posted:

Ah, so now we're defining religion as the unprovable. So now a significant fraction of political science and philosophy is now religion. Your definitions are not very good at defining things in such a way as to quarantine religion safely into a place where it can be destroyed at your whim and religious people continue to exist on sufferance.

And your defense of the proposition that your previous definition was a good and rigorous one is that religion doesn't offer any explanations for the observable world. Which is contemptibly false. Like, I assume most of the people insisting religion is evil are clash-of-civilizations motherfuckers like TheImmigrant or suffering evangelical-induced trauma like zh1, but you seem to have never actually encountered religion even on the level of movies with devout characters. loving Blues Brothers represents a greater, infinitely subtler grasp of religion and theology than you have, and you propose that your opinions on the subject are worth anything.

twodot posted:

So given that magisteriums don't overlap, science is totally incapable of showing a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place, regardless of what evidence science might produce?

Crowsbeak posted:

What evidence has it produced if you're so sure Jesus didn't exist because SCIENCE?

twodot posted:

So given that magisteriums don't overlap, science is totally incapable of showing a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place, regardless of what evidence science might produce?

RasperFat posted:

I like how you take commonly accepted ideas, even among theologians, and paint them with a crazy brush.

Faith, a core tenant of many practices, requires a lack of evidence. The whole point of faith is believing when evidence points to not believing.

Religion absolutely does not offer any real explanations for the world. It's not contemptibly false, it's a statement of fact about how religions define the world. Religion offers comfort and mystical stories, not an actual explanation for how things work. People don't glean natural truths from holy texts, they learn them from observing the real world.

RasperFat posted:

I like how you take commonly accepted ideas, even among theologians, and paint them with a crazy brush.

Faith, a core tenant of many practices, requires a lack of evidence. The whole point of faith is believing when evidence points to not believing.

Religion absolutely does not offer any real explanations for the world. It's not contemptibly false, it's a statement of fact about how religions define the world. Religion offers comfort and mystical stories, not an actual explanation for how things work. People don't glean natural truths from holy texts, they learn them from observing the real world.

twodot posted:

So given that magisteriums don't overlap, science is totally incapable of showing a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place, regardless of what evidence science might produce?

twodot posted:

None, this has nothing to do with the question asked. Science can't answer questions like "Is feeding people good?", but it can answer questions like "Is the sky blue?" even if all available evidence says "Yes".

twodot posted:

None, this has nothing to do with the question asked. Science can't answer questions like "Is feeding people good?", but it can answer questions like "Is the sky blue?" even if all available evidence says "Yes".

Pellisworth posted:

okay I'm having a hard time unpacking this

science is NOT capable of showing Jesus did NOT exist

regardless of evidence

It's generally agreed by historians that there was an itinerant Jewish priest by the name of Jesus.

Are you asking in the sense, science can't disprove God? Because yeah, that's correct.

twodot posted:

Suppose someone invented a time machine and performed a census of that time and location, would you still think science couldn't show a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place?

twodot posted:

Suppose someone invented a time machine and performed a census of that time and location, would you still think science couldn't show a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place?

Brainiac Five posted:

Suppose the moon was made out of green cheese, would you like a slice? Suppose you made points that were relevant instead of lovely efforts at indirect approach?

Pellisworth posted:

Yes, if I went back in time and performed a census of everyone in the time and location of the Biblical Jesus, we would find an itinerant Jewish preacher named Jesus.

To get reductionist, you are venturing a prediction rather than a hypothesis. What is your underlying hypothesis?

twodot posted:

Wait, you somehow know this to be absolutely certainly true? Like I agree it's likely, but I don't understand how you accrued such certainty over 2000 years of time.

Pellisworth posted:

No, I'm not absolutely certainly true.

Nor am I absolutely certainly true the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that gravity accelerates everything downward. All the evidence points that way, but I'm not absolutely certain.

That is how science works.

twodot posted:

Yes, I agree. This is how science works. This should mean the physical existence of a person named Jesus in a particular time and place is within the magisterium of science and not that of the Catholic Church, right?

twodot posted:

Suppose someone invented a time machine and performed a census of that time and location, would you still think science couldn't show a person named Jesus didn't exist in that time and place?

Pellisworth posted:

yeah sure

I think you don't really "get" the thesis of the article, maybe re-read it?

Pellisworth posted:

yes

I'm not Catholic

e: also, I don't mean to seem unduly harsh taking people to task on their wording or language. Keep in mind that Christianity exists within a two or three-thousand year old context and there are a lot of philosophical concepts which are simply assumed and take a bit of effort to translate.

Brainiac Five posted:

This is so incredibly stupid it justifies burning down all law schools and going back to teaching law the way it was taught in the early 19th century, because clearly they have failed, by producing a mind like this.


So if I have faith in a general belief that the universe is moral, it is only actually faith if the universe behaves in immoral ways? That definition is once again tailored to conclude that religion is necessarily false.

Religion offers meanings for events. If we wish to see the world as simply a chain of unconnected events, you can try, and I hope you do because it will stop you posting, but if a religion claims that the basic order of the universe is towards justice, that is a claim about the nature of the connections between events, which is a statement about the universe although it exists in the woolly world of emotion and thought that many atheists find uncomfortable, possibly because of how feminized it is in our culture.

twodot posted:

So you are fine with overlapping magisteria? You've agreed the existence of Jesus is both the domain of science and the Catholic Church in this thread.

RasperFat posted:

You're playing a semantic game with faith. Religious faith is specifically defined as believing in the face of difficult evidence. Believing that your friend will pay you back that $20 is not the same as having faith that I am going to heaven.

Even so, if you believe the universe is moral, and all evidence points to it being random and chaotic, then yes you are operating on faith. It's an unsubstantiated claim, and assuming that is true is acting on faith.

I agree religion offers meaning people relate to their own lives, but it also makes empirical claims about the structure of the universe. These are almost universally wrong, mostly because they were written before we knew about atomic/subatomic particles and the astronomical scale of the size of the universe. The claims made by almost every religious sect are based on fundamentally wrong ideas about what humans are and our place in the universe, therefore the meaning that is filtered through religion will always be flawed.

I am also a feminist, and I think that religion plays a large role in reinforcing gender stereotypes. But I appreciate the assumption that I hate women and have no emotional intelligence.

twodot posted:

So you are fine with overlapping magisteriums? You agreed the existence of Jesus is both the domain of science and the Catholic Church in this thread.

RasperFat posted:

You're playing a semantic game with faith. Religious faith is specifically defined as believing in the face of difficult evidence. Believing that your friend will pay you back that $20 is not the same as having faith that I am going to heaven.

Even so, if you believe the universe is moral, and all evidence points to it being random and chaotic, then yes you are operating on faith. It's an unsubstantiated claim, and assuming that is true is acting on faith.

I agree religion offers meaning people relate to their own lives, but it also makes empirical claims about the structure of the universe. These are almost universally wrong, mostly because they were written before we knew about atomic/subatomic particles and the astronomical scale of the size of the universe. The claims made by almost every religious sect are based on fundamentally wrong ideas about what humans are and our place in the universe, therefore the meaning that is filtered through religion will always be flawed.

I am also a feminist, and I think that religion plays a large role in reinforcing gender stereotypes. But I appreciate the assumption that I hate women and have no emotional intelligence.

Pellisworth posted:

rudatron posted:

In what way does it sound jibberish? You've detailed how you feel about it, but you haven't explained why. I understand that's it's only a very short statement, and so explanation is necessary, but you're making an accusation that it's non-sensical. What, precisely, gives that impression, to you?

rudatron posted:

Induction also falls out of parsimony/assumption of minimal entropy.

CommieGIR posted:

What the hell?

Brainiac Five posted:

Oh my god, and there are ethical practices in psychological and biological experiments too. These obviously contradict the point of the article in its entirety instead of being pointless nitpickery to say "religious people must be crushed" without actually saying it at any point.


What exactly is the evidence against an afterlife which distinguishes "I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe" from "I believe in an afterlife", that is, evidence which is not based on probabilistic claims?

Your entire proposition here is that religious faith is different from other kinds because it is inherently stupid, and that seems to be rigging the game- if someone has faith based on their empirical subjectivity, it is no longer religious because they have reasons to believe it. You seem to have taken a statement like "I believe because it is absurd" and concluded that all religion depends on it.

What are these fundamentally wrong ideas about humanity? Like, Islam doesn't claim any particular primacy for humans as intelligent life. Neither does Buddhism. And that's just off the top of my head.

Dude, I was making a general claim, and if you decide to take it personally, I hope you use the opportunity to work on presenting your opinions in a clearer way.

RasperFat posted:

we have already discovered extinct microbes on mars. We have evidence that stimulus such as lightning can cause the formation of lipid layers, like cells use, when striking nonorganic carbon materials. There's a myriad of other ways that organic materials can be created by natural phenomenon, giving us good cause to think life can form in the right conditions anywhere. The idea that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe is based on testable claims

RasperFat posted:

Empirical evidence of an afterlife is completely non existent and based off of wishful thinking. The probability of life existing elsewhere in the universe is essentially 100%, as we have already discovered extinct microbes on mars. We have evidence that stimulus such as lightning can cause the formation of lipid layers, like cells use, when striking nonorganic carbon materials. There's a myriad of other ways that organic materials can be created by natural phenomenon, giving us good cause to think life can form in the right conditions anywhere. The idea that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe is based on testable claims, while the idea of the afterlife is based off of zero testable claims. This is not a difficult distinction.

The fundamentally wrong ideas are central tenants to even moderate practitioners. We are beings created in God's image. God created this world out of love. Good works will be rewarded in the afterlife. There is such a thing as sin.

In Islam, the idea Mecca has some sort of spiritual power that makes it important in God's eyes, as well as most of the problems of the other Abrahamic religions.

In Buddhism, life is defined as suffering. There are correct paths to reach nirvana that will result in enlightenment and nirvana, and allow for good reincarnation. I know not all sects of Buddhism believe in reincarnation, but there are mystical aspects to the overwhelming majority of Buddhist branches.

The most problematic fundamental claim in just about every religion is the concept of a soul. This is a core concept that all other arguments are based off of, and there is zero evidence that it exists in any form described by mainstream religions.

Religious faith is separate because it can never be proven true. Your faith can never be rewarded, at least not by any god.

I'm not taking anything personally, I was pointing out your disingenuous arguments.

Pellisworth posted:

no, I do not, you haven't understood the reading, if I were to summarize:

religion and science can be divided into two "magisteria," or areas of authority
science deals with the physical world, things that are falsifiable or testable
religion deals with the ethical, moral, spiritual world that is not falsifiable or testable
these two magisteria need not be in conflict, but often are and that causes trouble for the interaction of religions with science

for example, young earth Christianity would make an empirically testable claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, which it is not
"New Atheism" would claim that scientific evidence disproves religious belief or the existence of God(s), but that is not something that science is able to do

there are conflicts between religion and science, absolutely, but there don't need to be and many internet atheists have a really poor understanding of philosophy of science


speaking to nothing other than your views on religion, you are stereotyping religion extremely hardly as American Protestantism. most religious people do not think this way

e: just to double triple down, you are describing the very particularly American Evangelical strain of Christianity, and most religious people in the world have extremely different ideas about religion than you're arguing against

RasperFat posted:

Actually, the religious families I grew up around were largely Catholic and Buddhists. I know most religious people are not literalists, and I wasn't implying that if that's what you were thinking.

Lack of gender equality is serious issue in religion worldwide. Not all of it is demanding women be servile, but it still reinforces gender roles in a big way.

Brainiac Five posted:

Ah, so now we're defining religion as the unprovable. So now a significant fraction of political science and philosophy is now religion. Your definitions are not very good at defining things in such a way as to quarantine religion safely into a place where it can be destroyed at your whim and religious people continue to exist on sufferance.

And your defense of the proposition that your previous definition was a good and rigorous one is that religion doesn't offer any explanations for the observable world. Which is contemptibly false. Like, I assume most of the people insisting religion is evil are clash-of-civilizations motherfuckers like TheImmigrant or suffering evangelical-induced trauma like zh1, but you seem to have never actually encountered religion even on the level of movies with devout characters. loving Blues Brothers represents a greater, infinitely subtler grasp of religion and theology than you have, and you propose that your opinions on the subject are worth anything.

team overhead smash posted:

Being unprovable is a defining feature of religion

Brainiac Five posted:

We haven't actually discovered microbes on mars, dead or alive. There's hints but no proof, as it were.

See, you're ignoring the point about probability. It is very unlikely that life exists in any particular location, so far as we know, and the Fermi paradox offers some substantial evidence that life must be rare or limited in the universe. But there is no direct evidence against either life or the afterlife, there is simply unlikelihood of varying degrees. Which is not disproof. Now, you could bring up Russell's teapot, and that would be a good argument against basing many decisions on the hypothetical afterlife, but that's not really relevant to its existence.

Why are those ideas fundamentally wrong?

In Islam, Mecca is important because of historical reasons, not because it alone in the universe has divine mana.

I really don't know where to start with your understanding of Buddhism. I really just don't.

There are some really fascinating implications that come from the nonexistence of the soul, but I don't think you'd be willing to discuss them.

I mean, if I have faith that someone loves me, I can never actually prove it to be true because I can't peek inside their heads and I seriously doubt an MRI or PET scan will ever allow us to determine whether someone actually loves another person or not (and there are good reasons to believe so) so therefore belief that parents love children is now religion. This definition is useless.

Pellisworth posted:

this is mostly incorrect or misleading

RasperFat posted:

we have already discovered extinct microbes on mars.

RasperFat posted:

We have evidence that stimulus such as lightning can cause the formation of lipid layers, like cells use, when striking nonorganic carbon materials.

RasperFat posted:

There's a myriad of other ways that organic materials can be created by natural phenomenon

RasperFat posted:

, giving us good cause to think life can form in the right conditions anywhere.

RasperFat posted:

The idea that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe is based on testable claims,

RasperFat posted:

I'll admit abiogenesis is much more complex then that, and we don't have definite proof of ancient life on Mars. It was an oversimplification for someone who doesn't seem to understand the basics of science.

Pellisworth posted:

You sure like words

Let's rewind, how abouts? I asked you about inductive vs. deductive reasoning and you fumbled the ball.

Can we return to this?


What the gently caress are you talking about, minimal entropy?

Second law of thermodynamics, entropy in a system will tend to increase over time.

e: while we're at it could you define parsimony for me? So far you've failed these quizzes and your overall grade in the course isn't looking great.

rudatron posted:

Your characterization of induction vs. deduction doesn't line up with the majority usage of the term, so I don't know why you feel justified acting as patronizing as you are.

I also explained before, but it seems you missed it, so I'll repeat - entropy, in this context, is referring to the concept in information theory, not thermodynamics - essentially you're trying to minimize the 'error' term in a mathematical model and balancing that against the extra entropy you're adding by making more assumptions.

This is essentially a restatement of solmonoff's theory of induction, which is essentially bayesion reasoning wroth a universal prior, but a prior that is actually computable.