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The dominant religion in any society must by necessity form part of the foundation for that society. So religious figures are respected and, conversely, only people of 'respectability' ever become major religious figures. Now that's all well and good, except for the fact that that 'respectability' is going to be defined by adherence to the dominant ideology. Which is going to include excusing the oppression and excesses of current social hierarchies, because that's the kind of society we currently live in. Ergo, religion and religious communities are, more often than not, going to be reactionary. That's basically the long and short of it.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:30
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While it's important not to marginalize or ignore the positive social change that has occurred, and will occur, from specific religious people and organizations, it's also important to acknowledge what religion has historically done, politically, and to take a broad view of what an involvement in politics means for a religion. Historically, religion has been a bastion of conservatism and reaction, a well which is drawn on frequently whenever the opportunity presents itself. It has also been a source of conflict, and the empowerment of any one religion has come at the expense of every other religion and the irreligious. So, secular government is just smart thinking. Secular politics is also a necessity. We are well past the age of political theology. We are in a modern age of political ideologies. As we should be, because the language of political ideology is a lot more intelligent & rational than the archaic ideas of divine leadership, being that ideology is founded on reason. Materialistic political ideologies are just better, because they're logical (they start from principles, and then logically derive policy - conflict between ideology is then conflict over those principles, not simply conflict over arbitrary group membership) So all future politics must have a secular basis. In one sense, a certain hostility towards religion in politics is entirely justified, because we can't have the return of political theology. But for the left, specifically, there's the extra problem of what religious piety usually involves - conservatism. Its not exactly been a neutral party, in the left-right conflict. That's just a sociological fact. That doesn't mean that all religious groups are reactionary, or that religious belief necessarily involves support for reaction, but just as water flows downhill, religious groups tend to not value progress, being rooted in the past. So while I don't think it's justified to have any 'personal beef' with religion or the religious, in the long view I can't see it as a positive thing. Its probably gonna have its ups and down, but I'm pessimistic that anything positive is going to be salvaged from it, overall. Having said that, I'm not going to resent the people who do earnestly try to do just that - I just think they're wasting their time.
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Mar 7, 2017 05:33
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The fundamental assumption of religion is the 'leap of faith', i.e. the adoption of a non-parsimonious assumption in your knowledge base, because of 'divine revelation'. The fundamental assumption of science is universal skepticism and the application of parsimony to all beliefs (to state it more rigorously - minimize the total entropy of all beliefs). They're not equivalent, but you have to go beyond theories/knowledge into the process of deriving beliefs/knowledge to tell the difference. But it exists, and so for the purposes of this discussion, you can proceed from that assumption.
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Mar 8, 2017 05:02
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These kind of threads are interesting, but repetitive, because they tend to attract the same kind of people with the same kind of 'chip on their shoulders' - religious apologists who feel they have to defend themselves from what they feel are unfair accusations (contextually important in the first world because of declining church membership/attendance), and atheists who want to make their objections about religiously dominated politics known. The problem with that is that threads on religion end up turning into the same kind of things over and over again, as those same insecurities get expressed in each time. In this case, religious apologists who are left-of-center want to be able to reconcile their religiosity with their politics, and so naturally latch onto any relationship, however tenuous, between progressive ideology and religions-as-a-whole, i.e. liberation theology or whatever. Ultimately though,, all religions function as arbitrary communities with an inherited culture, and that culture gets determined by people in positions of authority, and the authority structure of religions tend to lean towards highly hierarchical, because that's what all communities where like when these religions started. Ergo, they tend to excuse hierarchy, and tend to integrate well into societies with large disparities between classes/groups/whatever. Being arbitrary tribes, they also enculture tribalism, and all the other prejudices that follow from that (heretics & heathens). So, strictly speaking, you can believe almost any metaphysical structure you want, and have whatever politics you want, there's no real restrictions there. But practically speaking, religious communities will tend to lean right-of-center, support right wing politics, act as a recruiting base for right-wing paramilitaries, etc etc, and there's no real way that's changing in the near future, short of the total abolition of religion.
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Mar 8, 2017 05:16
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Brainiac Five posted:Science is not universally skeptical or else it could not proceed. All knowledge ultimately must proceed on certain fundamental axioms, and the basic process of science as it is actually done relies on further, non-fundamental axioms which are nevertheless necessary to avoid producing a mindless glut of pointless data with every experiment or field observation. This definition is once again useless.
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Mar 8, 2017 05:21
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Induction also falls out of parsimony/assumption of minimal entropy. Do you have something that you want to say? Don't misunderstand me, I'm not challenging your's or other believer's 'progressive bondafides' on the account of your religious belief, I'm trying to talk about religious communities in general and the forces that act on them. I'm sure you're a very tolerant/nice person, but I'm not really talking about you specifically. Does that make sense?
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Mar 8, 2017 05:32
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I'm not using an obscure definition of induction, I mean the standard, philosophical idea of induction. Why does it sound like gibberish to you? edit: ah, just to be clear: 'entropy' here refers to the concept in information theory, not thermodynamics, though the two are closely related.
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Mar 8, 2017 05:39
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Like, I said, I'm not using any obscure definition of induction. You can refer to either the Wikipedia or Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy's definition as the one I'm using. But briefly: induction = reasoning in which data is given as evidence, but the truth value will always remain inconclusive deduction = logic following from presumably true axioms now that we have undergrad philosophy out of the way, perhaps you could clarify why my initial statement sounded like 'gibberish' to you? I'm happy to clarify, but I need to know what to clarify. rudatron fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 05:53
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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?
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Mar 8, 2017 07:01
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Pellisworth posted:You sure like words 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.
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Mar 8, 2017 09:23
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So to take physicalism for example: both physicalist and non-physicalist theories give the same posterior, but your physicalist theories will have a higher prior, so their confidence values are always going to be higher. That's what I mean when I say it 'falls out' of your axiom Edit: fixed a mistake rudatron fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 09:29
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Pellisworth posted:karl popper
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Mar 8, 2017 09:30
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Pellisworth posted:are you a markov chain generator
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Mar 8, 2017 09:59
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BrandorKP posted:Naomi Oreskes talks about this issue: As an analogy, both fascist states and democratic states require you to pay taxes, and they both act as social institutions with a given level of legitimacy, but they are very different kinds of states, and it's dishonest to rhetorically equalize them. rudatron fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 12:41
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The existence of faulty reasoning isn't itself proof that there isn't a process being followed. Ideally, you wouldn't end up with things like drifting values of the charge of the electron, but human beings being human beings, you do get that. But that doesn't invalidate the existence of a process to science, any more than people making faults in basketball invalidates the process of basketball - it's just something that happens.
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Mar 8, 2017 14:34
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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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I don't think science is really 'narrowing our imaginative horizons', but 'all things are possible' is not true. It is not, for example, possible to increase the net carbon dioxide concentration in that atmosphere without having an effect on global temperature. No amount of wishful thinking is going to change that. As we move into an era of more sophisticated technologies, societies and potential crises & catastrophes, the tasks of prediction, analysis and modelling are going to become more important. If it is to survive, any political ideology must face this situation with a clarity of purpose, a strong basis in materialism and scientific thinking, and without any sentimentality for archaic prejudices or relationships. In that context, advocating any kind of return of mysticism, mythology or spirituality to political ideology is dangerous and stupid. You can, privately, believe whatever you want. That's never mattered. But the existence of spiritualism in public debate is toxic. Society, as a whole, must reckon with the material reality it finds itself in. None of this excludes the idea of 'vision', a goal that's is believed possible and that is worked towards, but said vision must be secular in both effect and intent.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:37
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You misunderstand. None of the positive things you mentioned - love, poetry, hope & sentiment - have any foundation in archaic beliefs. They are, and always will be, constants of human desire and motivations. Same with curiosity or experimentation, the desire to explore. So long as people live, they're going to try to push the boundaries of what they can do. The mistake is thinking you need mythology or mysticism to do any of that. You don't. You just have to acknowledge the difference between imagination and reality, and be willing to come to terms with that. Imagination is a critical part of human consciousness, as is dreaming, so it should be encouraged. But visions of the future don't have unlimited degree of freedom. If they are to ever become realized, they must have a factual foundation. Ignoring that is immaturity, childishness. Your other error is thinking collective action can be constrained. It can't. The destruction of collective action through religion will create a new vector of collective action, as class consciousness replaces religious consciousness.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:08
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Please stop getting sucked into B5's endless holy war against perceived threats to his ego. Please, please just put him on ignore, he will go away. This was a not-terrible thread before he showed up and we can turn it around if we believe hard enough.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:19
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I think it's more correct to say that religions have many distinct areas it overlaps into. It makes claims about reality (conflicting with the natural sciences), human beings (conflicting with the social sciences), morality (conflicting with moral philosophy) and society (conflicting with political ideologies). Once you separate out each individual aspect, structure it properly, religion becomes superfluous in its entirety, though of course you need more than just science to do that. The key problem of religion is that that disentanglement is a difficult thing to do, which is what makes its usefulness in any one of those domains questionable - just because something is so, does not mean it should be so, and conversely just because something should be so, doesn't mean it is. Religion mixes those two things together and so ends up with a series of contradictory and useless statements.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:25
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An example would be something like the Scopes trial. Scopes was actually a very moral (and populist) person. His opposition to evolution was not on the basis of scientific fact, but morality - it saw it as advocating social Darwinism, which when you look forward to things like the Nazis, wasn't an entirely unfounded fear. He was, of course, technically incorrect, natural Darwinism does exist, but that fact alone does not justify social Darwinism, and we see in human civilization the social alternative to social Darwinism - intelligent design, of society. But scopes wasn't able to bridge that gap, he lacked the self-awareness and understanding of ideology and philosophy to coherently formulate his opposition. So he was still stuck in the anti-evolution stance. A rigorous treatment of ideology, science and society would have made all of this obvious.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:31
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Yeah, there's that problem to. But my point was in relation to what TomViolence was talking about though, and my response to that. It is a technical, scientific truth that natural selection exists and that people are a product of it. You cannot ignore that. The trick is then to say "so what?". Why does that matter? Religion does not encourage precise thinking, and in an era of fake news and special interests, that's what you need, more than anything.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:08
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Though I should not neglect to say that religion itself is not proof of stupidity, on the part of either modern believers or humanity in general. If you lack the tools of philosophy or ideology, then you of course need religion and theology to even do anything. Expression is the precursor to analytic thought. If you can't express, then you can't think. You have to crawl before you can walk. But it's primitive, too primitive, and you have to replace that tool with better ones, once you find those better ones.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:47
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This is bullshit, we don't live under 'scientific management', we live in a capitalist society, dominated by capitalist ideology. Talking about opposition between religion and capitalism is also bullshit my friend. Right now, the strongest climate-change deniers are the religious right in the US. Guess who even keep promoting libertarian vampires like Thiel? The religious right. This even extends to other religions, Islam right now is under the thumb of autocrats who use political islamism to cement their power base. The worst of the worst, the KSA, has some of the strictest and most fundamentalist religious leaders anywhere in the world. Rather than formulating an opposition, religion has historically, and continues to be, complicit in further entrenching the power of capitalism, and the hierarchy of society. The one counter example of that is the Pope, and I don't know if you realize this, but it was actually very unlikely that Francis would have gotten into the top job, under normal conditions. The reason he did, was because he was the only 'outsider', and the catholic church at the time needed a distraction from child abuse scandals. They needed to put someone in who definitely couldn't have been involved. Outside of that context, there is no way he would have been chosen, and no way any of the other choices would have done half of the things he's done. And guess what? He has internal opposition, that has found new allies in the Trump whitehouse. Do you think that's a coincidence? Here's what Steve Bannon said to members of the Catholic Church, who invited him to speak: quote:"We're at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which, if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting." rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 16:13
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Like my criticism of Dawkins, Hitchens + Co is essentially the exact same criticism I'll level at you: you're not taking ideology into account, and because you don't, you end up with everything going backwards. Eg - "Only religion can motivate mass action!" Not true, the french and russian revolutions were very anti-clerical, and I wouldn't exactly say they 'lacked motivation'. It's a weird early-enlightenment ideal to adopt, when it was the exact inverse implication of that statement (the issues of zealotry) that was their main criticism against religion. It also doesn't stack up against reality. In reality, ideology motivates action, and any ideology will do. Another example: "the science-fetishists are pro-capitalism!" They'll be about as pro-capitalist as the religious, because they're not aware of the space of ideology and the position they occupy with in it. They simply believe that their beliefs are 'natural', 'normal', 'non-ideological'. It's this lack of self-awareness, of the assumptions people implicitly make, when people talk about human behavior/nature/society/whatever, that's part of the problem.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:53
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It's also weird to bring up black churches as proof of success, when you're dealing with a racial struggle that has also racially segregated religious structures. Had those churches not existed, would that struggle not have existed? I doubt it. But turn it around - what about the role of religious institutions in white oppression? Can you honestly say that, on balance, the existence of quote unquote religion actually helped the situation? I doubt it. I mean, you really want to draw a line between good religions and bad religions, and then just say 'look we'll only have the good ones and not the bad ones'. It doesn't work like that. The 'good' ones are only good by happenstance, and the 'bad' ones have a tendency of overstaying their welcome. That's what it means to say 'religion is bad', not that every instance of religion or the religious is negative, but that the overall tendency is negative. And you don't have to look far to see what I mean.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:11
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Well, more strictly speaking, the path towards an atomized existence is laid out by the drive for profit, technological innovation is just a by-product. You don't actually even need technological innovation for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, so long as you can keep increasing your capitalization, but obviously it does help. But, in a practical sense, exactly what you fear has to occur before emancipation. Only after people are 'deterritorialized', free of illusions, can they then create a state that no longer requires illusions. Take what you said: "religion has a powerful grip on people's lives" - that is exactly the problem. That 'grip' you're referring to is the source of all problems mentioned, because that 'grip' represents power, over someone, wielded by someone else. True emancipation means being free of all such 'grips', all illusions.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:27
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I'm not sure you quite grab the problem here. Let me posit something to you: flat earth theory is not incompatible with reality. Proof: whatever piece of evidence you present to disprove, I just throw on another ad-hoc theory to make the whole thing work. "Nasa has pictures" -> "they're fake", "gravity would vary as you move over the surface" -> "gravity isn't spatially independent", "you can see the horizon" -> "that's from a special light bending pattern", etc etc. If I was so specially inclined and gifted, it would definitely be possible to construct an internally consistent theory of why the earth is flat, that fits with every observation I've made. But said theory wouldn't be parsimonious - it makes too many stupid assumptions. Ergo, it'd be unscientific. Your creationism is essentially the same thing, it's a claim about reality that conflicts with science (ie it's unscientific). It's not 'outside' of that area, it's a direct conflict. It's just a conflict that, to you, doesn't seem to matter because it doesn't change your day to day life. But, it's a piece of knowledge about the world outside your head, and thus, in conflict with the scientific way of determining reality. Also, the belief morality can be grounded in science is 100% wrong my friend. There's a deep philosophical problem with that, called the is-ought gap, that means any attempt to derive, in full, intent from knowledge is destined to failure. A statement about truth cannot transform into a statement of preference, without assuming another statement of preference. I'd also question whether or not science is losing to crass consumerism - it seems to be doing quite well for itself. It's religion that's threatened by modern consumerism, and a good thing to, I much prefer consumerism. Societies that don't require citizens to contribute to the good of society are dystopian hellscapes of starvation, poverty, inequality, suffering & death. They're also the precursors to revolution. It's also really funny that taxation and welfare is supposed to be this massive burden, but the constant burden that is the theft of surplus labor from the working class, that occurs every loving day in capitalism, is 'normal'. Maybe societies should be 'extremely careful' about allow such appropriation from the poor to the rich to exist in the first place, hmmm?
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Mar 12, 2017 02:30
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whether or not you value parsimony in philosophy isn't relevant, it's the foundation of science as a method/process, and therefore relevant to the point i was replying to. Similarly, if you believe the universe was created with intent, that is in direct conflict with science, because it's a statement about the universe, and science is a method of developing a model for the universe, and a belief in the creation of the universe with intent is unscientific, given what we already know. Now, you're partially correct in saying that this, practically speaking, is not a noticeable conflict, so long as you simply limit that 'intent' to the act of creation. Since we are well past the start of the universe, and there's no real meaningful difference that could result from that, it's again not a conflict that is directly impactful on your life. But the conflict does exist. And lawrence krauss can suck my balls. He's wrong, there's no way to sugar coat it. The fact that he's disappeared up his own rear end in a top hat doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow.
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Mar 12, 2017 09:19
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Also a side-note - the classist bullshit behind 'bread and circuses' has always annoyed me. People need bread to eat, and some level of entertainment to say sane. Mocking people for enjoying what little scraps they have, has always come from people who never have to worry about such concerns, because they're privileged enough to get that handed to them anyway - leaving them free to pursue a 'higher' purpose. When the only thing you have is the clothes on your back, the only real education you had was from the school of hard knocks, and the only people you can trust being your small group of friends, you don't have time to fret over a stupid loving 'higher purpose' - you've got to deal with the here and now.
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Mar 12, 2017 09:22
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I'm not terribly interested in your own personal beliefs, or how you rationalize them, for the purposes of this argument. My point is that, whatever they may be, they are a statement of knowledge about The World™, and a statement of knowledge about The World™, it is in the same magisterium as scientific thought. Going by what we already know, a belief in a continuous creation and destruction, sustained by an entity with intent, must be characterized as 'unscientific'.
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Mar 12, 2017 10:40
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The loss of religion is a necessary stage in achieving real self-awareness. That's a difficult thing to do, because illusions are comforting. For example, believing that 'praying' works is emotionally empowering. That's the illusion. The scary truth is that you are irrelevant, your actions and thoughts have no affect on reality, because the universe does not give a poo poo about you. Worse, lying to yourself always comes back to bite you. You start believing your own bullshit, and it effects your decision making ability. Whatever other value you think religion provides, the truth is that there's always a way to do that, without lying. If you're honest.
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Mar 13, 2017 12:20
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CountFosco posted:Yes. Now go the next step and realize that the self-awareness you feel from abandoning illusions is yet another illusion. What Max Stirner would call a "spook." Also realize that the value religion provides, to help provide meaning, is now something you can create on your own, because any meaning is actually an illusion. If you're being really honest with yourself. You should know that I'm probably the last person you should be talking to about the lack of objective meaning, since that's exactly what I've been saying this entire thread.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:16
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It's the same as any other piece of knowledge, the exact same rules apply. You can't ever really be sure of anything, but there's going to be a better/worse set of knowledge, given a particular set of evidence.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:41
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What? It can only be immaterial if you think the mind is immaterial. Since the mind is not, you can study it, even if you can only do it with high error.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:52
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The lack of an objective morality doesn't preclude moral conviction. If you believe something, then your act on the basis of that belief, at the time you have that belief.
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Mar 14, 2017 07:48
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OwlFancier posted:It's immaterial in that it runs up against the chinese room problem, observation of a mind cannot tell you whether it is self aware, merely that it responds suitably to stimulus.
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Mar 14, 2017 07:53
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Religion teaches you to value emotional attachment towards facts about reality. Emotions are not a viable way of discovering knowledge about the world, because the universe does not give 2 shits about how you feel. It simply does. Similarly, the process of self awareness requires you to confront uncomfortable truths about yourself, constantly. Therefore, a system of beliefs that encourages people to ignore reality in favor of what feels true ('spirituality') is one that teaches people not to confront themselves, and live in ignorance.
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Mar 14, 2017 09:20
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Bolocko posted:So, religion?
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Mar 14, 2017 11:02
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The more challenging idea is that 'assumption = faith'. If you're committed to that idea, then you've subtly changed the meaning of the word 'faith' from what it generally means, to a very specific and abstract meaning, all for purpose of religious apologia. "Well isn't everything faith when you think about it?" Is a really, really dumb reply to the issues brought up against religious belief.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:56
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