Just dropping in for a sec…don’t mind me…Just thought this little snippet from wiki was “cute” and appropriate:
And here is a potential explanation for why some people have such a hard-on agasint PROFESSOR Dawkins (check his bio), or even me for that matter , it’s due to the adage that is so true:
Namely, we tend to dislike in others that which we see in ourselves–or as is more often the case: that which we see others doing that we wish we could do even a fraction as well as they do…
[The preceding edits were brought to you by the fine folks in the “waste management” industry…]*
Yes, I know how that line could be used to insult me and/or my posts. But I’m secure enough in my manhood that I can handle a few pokes here and there…even if the pokes come from me… Besides, it would be very hypocritical for anyone to attack me when I was forced to edit this post because someone felt it was an attack on their own person…
yeah but it also involves evidence. religion doesnt involve the tiniest speck of reliable evidence or repeatable experiments. those things arent neccesary if you have faith, but they are neccesary if you want to be as sure of its truth as science is of its.
religion held societies together because it helped to subdue the peasants. whats more important, the happiness of the population or how “held together” their feudal kingdom is under a smaller number of selfish slave masters?
the scientific era coincided with a lot of things besides the destruction of religion. sure the slow dissapearance of the fear of eternal hellfire retribution has led to more premarital sex, but whats better, fear for all and STDs for none, or STDs for skanks and fear for none? and i think if unwanted pregnancies remained constant (which im sure it didnt) while abortion increased, that is a plus.
you think the gap between the rich and poor would be alleviated if we had the church messing around with society? if they were good and did what jesus said, with poverty and helping the poor at all costs, youre right. but i dont remember the church ever doing that. the last time the church had serious power they taxed those peasants so that they could impress them with their golden chalices. disgusting animals.
not even close. there are a few assumptions that have to be made, like “the four fundamental forces exist in reality and will continue to exist” and “future experiments will resemble past experiments because, in the past, thats what happened”
but its not like THE ENTIRE THING is based on faith. what proof do you have of any piece of christianity that can be compared to a repeatable experiment? absolutely nothing. you have the word of an extremely rich man who wants your money. that is pretty subjective to say the least.
and they have been banned or destroyed in some way. or they destroyed themselves because it was PROVEN with EVIDENCE that they arent as good as they claim. it is impossible to do the same with religion because all of your claims exist in a magical land that no human will ever see.
youre right, it isnt useless, but it is baseless. it comes from nothing credible. claims are made about useful things like condoms, stem cells and abortions with no evidence supporting them. the only problem with that is that ignorant people are willing to believe these claims even without the evidence, and they are HURT as a result. not helped, hurt.
stop the hurt. stop banning things because some priest said he talked to god (but youll never talk to him), and god told him to tell you to not use a condom or stem cells. and dont put gay marriage referendums on my presidential ballot!!!
“Science involves faith. Reason argues on the basis of that which is not in evidence, just like religious faith. Plus religion has held societies together for centuries, the ‘Scientific Era’ has seen massive increases in abortions, STDs, the gap between the rich and poor…”
K: Several things here. First of all, how does science involve faith?
Next I fail to see how your point about “religions has held societies
together for centuries” is valid. Next how to you make the connection
between the “scientific Era” and the increase in abortions, std’s, the
gap between rich and poor"… The increase in abortions is a strange
point, just because there are more people. There is more of everything
because there are more people. Now if you talk about per capita, that
would be really, really hard to prove. Stds, well again, the shift in
diseases has increased some and decreased many diseases. You don’t
see too much bubonic plague any more. The gap in rich and poor
is a function of politics, not of religion or science.
I’m only answering this post because you’ve obviously taken the effort to write a few more words.
Have you ever attended an exorcism?
Science isn’t sure. And it cannot be. Unless there’s the possibilty of the theory being wrong (the condition of falsifiability) then it cannot be counted as scientific.
You tell me. But rationality has sod all to with any such judgement…
‘The church’ isn’t ‘religion as a whole’. Until you understand this pretty basic objection you’ll probably continue to make such arguments.
It was the King who levied taxes, not the church…
Right, so everything that can’t be demonstrated via a repeatable experiment is irrational and should be abolished? Fucking hell that’s a dumb idea…
As to the issue of induction and so forth - you are the one who claimed that science is rational. If it’s method cannot be defended logically then repeatable experiments or no, any claim to rationality is simply a claim.
Which makes it all the more daft that atheists should seek to talk about them all the time…
See my response to Colinsign. Where religious zealots overstep the boundaries of their authority they should be criticised and you have my every encouragement to do so. But this isn’t a justification for the nonsense being spoken by Dawkins…
In other words your objection is to a particular manifestation of a single religion in one place, rather than to religion per se, which is precisely the issue I’ve been trying to drive home. Funny how none of the atheists get it…
Like others, I fail to see where faith plays into science. It doesn’t.
Secondly, an increase in the gap between the rich and poor? Whatever do you mean by that? Religious, caste based India had less of a gab than modern India? Italy has less poverty as the Pope’s personal empire? What?
Richard Dawkins is not to be respected as a scientist, because he presumes his cerebral superiority to be above empiricism.
Richard Dawkins is not be respected as a human being because he excuses such egregious aberrations as murder and pedophilia. Sociopathology is not fixable, because unlike a car, a human is not wholly mechanistic.
The very nature of the repeatable experiment which makes predictions which may be proven wrong (the basis for the scientific method) involves presumptions which can be logically refuted. In logic if the premises are unsound then the conclusion may or may not be true but the whole argument is unsound. In order to use the scientific method as it is one require faith in the method (because it cannot be defended logically) as being sound.
I was being rhetorical, drawing a similarly spurious association between things just as Dawkins does in his attacks. It was intended as mimicry, I don’t genuinely think that the Scientific Era even exists, let alone that it is responsible for the collapse of humanity and civilisation…
Careful with that logic there, when I make a hypothesis, I do not do so out of faith. I infer something from the details that are before me and try to connect them in a novel way. What are the presumptions that can be logically refuted? Support your argument using examples.
Not at all true sir. Subconsciously, you have faith that you have perceived an event to form a hypothesis upon? You have faith that your perceptions are accurate enough to warrant further experimentation? You have faith that the further experimentation, using human prescribed methodology, is the correct manner in which to proceed? You have faith that the empirical data that is manifested from the conclusion of the experiment will create falsifiability or unfalsifiability in your perceptions that was the catalyst of the creation of the hypothesis? You have faith that the empiricism will define the initial perception that lead to the entire process? You have faith that the process works?
This all occurs without your notice, but nonetheless, are acts of faith created from previous experiences and perceptions.
no but i find it easy to believe possession is no more than psychosomatic psychosis. do exorcisms prove that i shouldnt have premarital sex? are they at all related?
i didnt say science was sure of itself, since it will always be faced with the inductive fallacy. but its more sure of itself than religion because it can always be refuted by the inductive fallacy. nothing in religion can even be experimented with. every single part of it must be assumed without consideration of evidence (ok maybe demons posess people, but what about experiments proving the importance of the eucharist/female circumcision/not eating lobster/drinking blood).
really? oppressive selfish kings and independent charter towns are of equal value to the lowest members of those societies? or at least to the average member? you can rationally identify happiness just fine. you took for granted large societies being held together was a good thing, i dont see much rationality there.
theyre called tithes and the church could have spent them on something better than stained glass and godlen chalices
everything that cant be demonstrated to have a shred of reality AND hurts people should be banned. i think thats a fantastically amazing idea, in fact i cant imagine how anyone could disagree, but i live a sheltered life without any brainwashing and only science to teach me.
im not saying that science is 100% true and cannot possibly be the matrix. im saying that science, with its repeatable experiments and recordable knowledge, have provided us with a great many discoveries that have made our lives better and we sort of know why they did. there are few things we dont know for sure but can assume more rightfully than religion can assume what it does.
like i said, science assumes that the universe will stay the way that it has and not suddenly change. theres no full reason to believe this, but it has been TRUE so far. true as in we have observed it happening so far. we have not observed that god really exists. doesnt mean you should or shouldnt believe either, but if you had to say which was more proven, come on.
i dont know who youre talking to or which of those two you think they are talking about. im deist.
you either have a religion that says nothing about the rituals and beliefs that ought to be held by the people (like mine, except you have to believe that happiness is good) or you have a religion just like christianity, with all the same potential flaws. dawkins probably wouldnt believe my religion, but its pretty much impossible for him to have a problem with it as it is merely an ambiguous scheme to undermine atheism and doesnt have any effect on humanity except for the demand for happiness, which dawkins ought to be ok with.
i dont think he thinks the purpose of a human is to reproduce, the purpose of a humans dna is to reproduce, theres a big difference. your mind isnt the same as your dna, but it was created by your dna for the sole purpose of procreating. its purpose is what you make of it. if your purpose is to please god, youve been brainwashed into pleasing priests. if your purpose is happiness, hooray. often the two are mutually exclusive.
A rejection of that idea is a rejection of a logical, ordered universe. I have not observed anything which would lead me to believe that the universe is anything but.
I drop and apple once, it falls to the ground, accelerating at a knowable speed.
I repeat it, and again (within a margin of error due to wind resistance), the apple falls, accelerating at a knowable speed.
If I were to repeat this experiment a billion times, not once would the apple fall up, nor would it fail to fall.
There is a difference between having ‘faith’ that science works and observing it in action.
As to the other poster decrying everything as faith – that’s the flaw of your argument. If all those actions are faith based, then what is not faith based?
someoneisatthedoor… Before I can defend Dawkins, which I most likely will be doing. I need to listen to the radio show in question, can you supply some information so that I can maybe download or steam it?
Scientists love to talk about their methods being based on reason but for the most part don’t seem to understand what reason entails. This is simply an observation. Scientists understand science. Reason isn’t purely (or predominantly) scientific.
everything is based on faith because you dont know what causes gravity and you cant see it. it could be tiny capricious elves who decide to go on strike tommorow for all we know. it really could be.
max planck was so smart he theorized the existence of the tiny neutrino like 50 years before it was seen in a machine. this made theories about electrons follow laws like conservation of mass and did a lot for quantum mechanics. this was a ‘philosophical’ idea that other scientists didnt believe. well they were wrong and if we listened to them defend their stupid papers like their career depended on it, science would have progressed slower.
he doesnt say it’s ok, he says that people are broken instead of evil. can you imagine being a pedophile? no? well then how come somebody else can? because his brain is different. what do you know about exactly how it is different? does he have a soul? did he choose to be a pedophile instead of a normal person?
what about someone with downs syndrome who suddenly discovers that everyone has a pretty red liquid right under their skin and all you have to do is stab them to see it. and he runs around showing everyone their pretty red liquid. is he evil? please explain the exact difference between him and the pedophile, where the line is drawn between their two types of insane brain malfunctions?
whats worse, a selfish billionaire who makes the conscious decision to hurt peasants to pad his un-taxed carribean bank account, or a crazy guy who does crazy things for which we cant even imagine the motivation?
yes it does! he says that if it is, it clearly rules out evil souls who, for some unimaginably evil reason, chose to be pedophiles. because it clearly does! truly mechanistic means no soul, no free will. i dont see him saying that this is undoubtedly the case, he is saying that if the bold statement is the case, then people are broken, not evil.
if you dont think sociopathology can be cured, why do we have prisons and asylums instead of more electric chairs and extremely dangerous mining operations?
what makes you think this isnt true. i read a book about this by steven pinker called how the mind works. it made some good sense.
That is the basis of science though. I’m confused. Science is based on the idea of paring down possible answers by systematically proving other options false. If you read scientific articles, research ‘suggests’ the way things are by disproving the way they aren’t, if that makes sense.
As to the cause of gravity – It has been mathmatically suggested that it is due to a warp in space-time. Push your fist into your bed, and you have an impression as to what gravity is (That is Prof. Kaku’s description, not mine. I’m not physicist, thank goodness.).
As to the Elves, if they are the ones causing gravity, who cares? As long as the Elves always cause objects to fall at the same speed (what wonderfully industrious elves!), there is no functional difference. I believe it was Carl Sagan who said that ‘force’ is a word that scientists use to describe something whose cause we do not understand. While the cause of gravity is not irrelevant to Dr. Kaku and his kind, for the example of the apple it most definately is.
Now, here is my faith: That be it elves or a distortion in space-time, we will eventually be able to describe it and have equipment sensetive enough to measure it. Now THAT is faith.
ah michio kaku, that guy is on tv every day. and einstein came up with the bowling ball trampoline idea, and if you ask me, i think its presupposing the force of gravity existing underneath that trampoline…
but anyway, even if the analogy does make sense, nobody knows what space time looks like or why mass causes it to curve. and if we do know what causes it, we wont know what caused that to exist. we will never know the first cause due to the very nature of cause and effect. because 'what caused that?!’
as for the elves, like i said, they are a capricious bunch and i just killed their union leader so… nail your pets to the floor if you dont want to lose them.
, it’s due to the adage that is so true: