“We should always be interested in finding truth and peace N. For instance, in the bible it says “Test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil,” (1 Thess. 5:21)” If our way is not working then some other way may help. It is good to test and see the results and not get caught up in prejudice blocking the way. For with such tests, ‘the proof of the pudding will be in the eating’ and decisions on how to live will not be left only to your ego, but will be grounded in peace N."
N responds:
“That quote is meaningless to me, I view “evil” as a religious (Christian) term, and I’m an atheist. I’m not interested in vague horoscopish parables like the ones you spout. When I do bother to derive meaning from them I usually roll my eyes and think “this person is the master of the bleedin’ obvious,” to paraphrase a certain fictional British twit. I think you’re fooling yourself. I don’t think you have any ties to any particular religion because you want to be worshipped like a god yourself. The other gods are competition. You want US to be spiritual, and to regard you with religious awe If you’re interested in truth then study science and forget trying to set yourself up as an object of worship.”
With a science based athiest. There’s plenty of athiests who wouldn’t be as insensitive as that. I did agree with what he said about ‘evil’ being a religious term that attempts to glorify bad into something that is supernatural, for me there’s just good and bad people.
You can’t have the terms “good” and “bad” in an absolute sense unless they come from a higher source, and are objectively set.
Without them, then everyone’s version of “good” and “bad” would be different, and any discussion on the matter would be pointless.
Without a God or the human soul, our actions are no more meaningful than those of an animal. If we hold the premise that there is no God and man has no soul, then it would be pointless to hold anyone accountable for anything. He would just be a bunch of atoms colliding together, and thus would have no control over anything he does. His feeling of “choice” would only be an illusion.
The fact that man is able to think greatly outside of the bounds of time, and can even CONCEIVE a deity is the reason I believe that man has a soul. And if man has a soul, the soul had to come from something that is self-sustained, for it would be impossible to have multiple “greatest things.”
Fundamental principle of science: humans are capable from deducing general rules from the observation of individual instances, by some process that has never been made clear.
Ergo science=self-worship
See, easy. Don’t believe these latter day preachers of science and secularity - their fundamentalism and hypocrisy is worse than that of militant Islam.
Where’s the basis for natural laws? The universe? Let’s ask the universe.
Universe, are there natural laws?
Universe: …
Guess not.
Here’s a hint to all your pro-scientific philosophers out there - try applying your critical criteria to your own beliefs. It’d make you a lot more credible.
We work on a (scientific) system of inadequacy. Nothing can exist objectively if the very laws we use to create our systems are constantly in flux.
And yet, while it is working… we operate with such pride and arrogance.
Who’s to say that we’re even headed in the -right- direction? Perhaps the religious occult does have pragmatic elements to be spotted for a scientific analysis if we were looking carefully enough.
They did a study in DC where they asked a bunch of churches to all pray for a decreased murder rate in the DC area. A very specific request and if I recall correctly they all prayed at the same time. The entire study was for a 1 month period of time.
The decrease in crime was in the 30-40% range, I forget the exact number. That’s one instance, sure, but if you’re interested look into the Electrogaiagram (noosphere.princeton.edu/story.html) program which is essentially getting pretty close to proving at certain type of duality.
Science and philosophy are really quite close and we seem to be getting even closer now.
The prayer experiment from D.C. was notoriously poorly controlled – to the point of being unusable by anyone outside of conspiracy theorists and people longing for that to be true at any expense.
As for the point about scientific laws, I think that my post from the Need for Absolutes thread clarifies that situation quite well:
So, natural laws work only as a model and they are all incomplete at present. Anomalies aren’t proof that there are no natural laws, but rather proof that we don’t understand them.
No they don’t, sorry man. Natural laws do exist, and they’re laws. If the laws are broken they must be changed and they were previously never a true law. Anomalies just refute that there are laws that we don’t understand, or we don’t fully understand what we think to be laws, there’s not enough information.
Horrible analogy when trying to refute my remark. You should be more critical of what you say.
For objective moral laws to exist, there has to be a law giver. Thus there has to be something that exists that responds. Truly atheists cannot believe in objective morals. Thus is why evil means nothing to this atheist you’ve given. Very simple to understand.
Well, I’d be careful about saying things like ‘true law’ since we can’t ever know for certain whether the ‘law’ we’ve created does indeed hold true for all situations. Rather, we say that it ‘works’ and when we encounter a situation where it doesn’t work, we ammend the law to fit that new situation as best we can, or annotate it as an exception.
English does have grammar laws, after all. Despite the numerous exceptions.
That is where SIATD makes a good deal of sense, that we shouldn’t mistake man-made models for the Truth of the situation. I just think he goes absurdly far in his rejection of the models of the situation.
What would scientists say about the principle of induction? I hope I understood Russell.
The principle of induction is a principle that cannot be proven. Others try to discover knowledge about the world starting with other presuppositions. These can be accepted or rejected by each of us.
In any case, I think there is a little pragmatism involved in how widely these principles are accepted. They must serve some function. Some are found as totally useless while others as supremely valuable and useful. Some seem to stagnate and a new principle comes along which gives forth a burst of creativity.
I think most principles people ascribe to are based on the assumption that there is an objective reality out there to be understood. Maybe at some different levels all everyone is describing the same reality from different world-views. Some just seem to give deeper descriptions than others, though maybe some fail to gain depth because people constrict these principles far too much with extraneous laws.
The principle of induction has been extremly useful. What has happened is that people attach the assumption of materialism to it, and this has created those atheistical meanies as well as corrupted and distorted the spirits of many. It bears down hard on those who would like to believe in any other doctrine other than materialism.
This destroys the more elevated and spirit lifting world views that start from other principles, but this will not be permanent. It is creating grounds for a new religiousness that will sweep over the remnants of western civilization. I believe that was Spengler’s view.
Statistics and utility are my replies to skepticism.
If something is very statistically likely, then you can plan around it occuring again. Especially as the probability of it occuring again approaches 1.
The other is that, given the statistics of it working, what model is most useful for the situation at hand? When dealing with pH, I’m just going to care about [H+],[OH-],[H2O], and [weak acid/base] present. Other ions don’t really effect the situation (at least not significantly. If I say the pH is 6.37, that is close enough. The fact that it is actually 6.37xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx until you’ve reached the quantum levels of the afformentions ions doesn’t really bother me. Similarly, I disregard any other ions present in the solution (as long as they don’t percipitate!) since they don’t matter. Heck, I also don’t wonder about the quantum states of the individual water molecules. The ratio of ortho- to parawater (or even whether heavy water is present, on a more macromolecular level) don’t enter into my equation.
So, is the solution really just [H+],[OH-],[H2O], and [weak acid/base]? Well, functionally, it may as well be. So why bother with the rest?
I guess in the 20th century scientists seem to have given up the view that they can discover what certainly happens. This was a break with the prevailing scientific view that certainty was possible for 300 years. Now it’s all about the uncertainty principle, probabilties in QM and statistical mechanics.
I don’t know if I’ll understand that mysterious wave-particle and its supposed fundamentally random nature that at the same time seemingly obeys group tendencies. Are they even particles, are they just waves, are they strings, are they branes, geometric distrubances, monads?
The truth is dead or is it semantics and different views of the one.
Oh how this is most perplexing and I am most off topic…
The law term we’ve given to something. We could be wrong, if we are it’s not true. Do you believe in true laws? Is truth a law? I think so. There is no way of escaping truth. But perhaps in some weird form, someplace, some random way you can. Or that laws can be broken, etc. But this just doesn’t seem possible, or that the impossible would ever be possible. That I could be non existent and yet existent on the same time, place, situation, everything. None of that seems possible, but perhaps we can wonder.
But true laws are only true laws if they are actually laws. Thus it seems you are almost saying Xunzian that we must be skeptical of everything because there’s always that chance of being wrong. Which in any case pretty much eliminates any kind of productive discussion anyone would want to have; could just pick my nose.
I tend to be rather agnostic about whether the Natural Laws actually exist or if they are merely man retrofitting his ideas onto the universe – an anthropomorphic understanding of a Universal phenomenon beyond our grasp.
Personally, I do believe that there is an underlying Truth to it all. Again, whether we can ever truly realize that or if we can just approach it asympotically, I do not know.
Incorrect. (1) There are no absolutes. (2) The highest source conceivable is still only conceived within the human mind, ergo the highest source remains ultimately humanity. (3) The terms “good” and “bad” when referring to society mean “useful” and “useless”. Surely there are many forms of government that are “good” ideas, but which is the most “good/useful”?? Even better, from the bible it says [Genesis 1:31] “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” It was “very good”, eh? A world and universe filled with many things that would be “bad” for humanity is hardly “good”, much less “very good”.
Not true, as there is a natural morality devised by humanity that will serve the purpose of deciding what is “useful” and what is not for society. Accountability is held upon that which would benefit society the most.