Kropotkin: If you cannot give us any examples of science being “corrupted”, why should we believe you?
M: You don’t have to. Noone has to. But I am not in the spotlight here. You are. So let me ask: if you cannot prove that science isn’t corrupt, why should we believe you when you say that science is good and religion is bad?
K: how do I “prove” a negative? how do I prove that science isn’t corrupted if
it isn’t corrupted? as far as science and religion goes, I will be writing those
threads shortly…
You asked this question before – you started a thread, if I recall correctly – and I responded to it.
Note that in order to endorse a belief, any kind of belief, you have to be convinced that it is true. In a very real sense, you have to prove it to yourself.
For example, in order to be able to believe that there is no apple on your kitchen table, you have to somehow convince yourself that this is the case. It’s not a default position. The default position is that of neutrality i.e. “I don’t know whether or not there is an apple on my kitchen table”. If you happen to already believe that there is no apple on your kitchen table, and if someone asks you “How do you know that?”, one way you could respond is by saying “I looked at it, I looked at every corner, and I saw nothing.” That’s not a definitive proof but it’s something. All in all, what you’re expected to do is to uncover the process that prompted you to conclude that there is no apple on your table.
K: so, how do I “prove” that something that doesn’t exists, exists?
for example, how would I “prove” that “unicorns” exist, if they don’t exist?
how would I “prove” that leprechauns exist? what method would I use
to “prove” that what we think of as leprechauns exist?
The only thing I expect from you [Kropotkin] as well as anyone else is to clearly state your reasons for believing what you believe. In other words, I want you to expose what caused you to believe what you believe. It may not convince anyone but it’s a step in the right direction. Basically, if you believe in a negative, I want you to explain what made you believe in a negative. Something obviously caused you to move away from the neutral position (absence of belief) to a negative position (a presence of a belief that something does not exist.)
I have the impression that this “You can’t prove a negative” thing is used to avoid exposing one’s reasoning. And even they seem to know that it isn’t really true.
First, they admit that there are negatives that can be proven. They call those “specific negative claims that are made with rather well defined limits”. An example would be “There are no unicorns in my house”. Another one would be “Square-circles do not exist”.
Second, they admit that it is possible to prove what they call universal negatives such as “There are no unicorns anywhere in the world” but only “within the limits of our knowing”. But how does this differ from what science does? How did science prove that evolution is real? Did it go back in time and observe it in its entirety? That’s impossible, isn’t it? Yet, it has no trouble claiming that evolution is real. But obviously, for some strange reason, such is only allowed with respect to positive claims. Negative claims are a special class requiring special treatment.
Third, if you can’t prove something, how can you believe it? If you can’t prove that there are no unicorns in the world, how can you believe it? why are you believing it?
The bottom line is that every belief was formed via some sort of process. That process may be a rational one or an irrational one. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the belief was formed in some way. And when someone asks you to justify or prove your claim, they are asking you to expose that process. That is all. By responding with “You can’t prove a negative” you are merely avoiding exposing it, not because it’s impossible to do so, but because you are either personally unable to expose it or simply unwilling to do so.
I’m inclined to believe that they originally had the same exact referrent – nature – but that due to corruption they later degenerated into madness. This madness is what you call “religion” and what you think is less prevalent in what is nowadays called science.
I’d say that is a massive problem for both.
I’m aware of your beliefs, so it’s a bit pointless to repeat them if you’re not going to make an effort to show how you arrived at them. You have quite a bit of confidence in what is nowadays promoted as science. It would be useful if you could explain to us where that confidence comes from. I’m not expecting you, or anyone else, to do that, I’m just saying what would be interesting to read.
Hmm… are you saying America has become more religious as history unfolds? Or perhaps less scientific? Do you have anything to back that up?
Sure, we can equate America with any Golden Age–the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Nordics, the British–in fact, America is arguably the culmination of a great movement, starting with the Renaissance, to resurrect the ancient traditions of the Greco-Roman empire.
I think religion has a bad rap of being confounded with dogmatism. Sure, there is no shortage of dogmatic religious zealots out there, but that’s because non-dogmatic religious people don’t go out doing crazy things and drawing attention to themselves. I think the enemy here is dogmatism and authoritarianism–which can manifest in religion or in secular ideologies–and stands orthogonally to religion or science/secularism. What I mean by “orthogonally” is that it is like its own dimension connected perpendicularly with the dimension of religion and secularism (if we were to draw it graphically). So you could make a square out of it with four quadrants:
-----------------------religion------secularism
authoritarianism—Islam--------Communism
libertarianism------Buddhism—Science
In other words, there can be religions that are free from dogmatism and authoritarianism and there can be secular ideologies that are radically dogmatic and authoritarian. I gave some examples in the box above. The Islam of today seems radically dogmatic and authoritative, at least among groups like Isis or Al-Qaeda. Communism is also quite authoritative and dogmatic (in the sense that you’re not allowed to question it) but tends to be anti-religious (at least when based on Marxism). Buddhism is a good example of a religion that is non-authoritative (I don’t know if it’s libertarian* but there’s very few elements of authoritarian philosophy built into it) and is more open to philosophical inquiry than dogmatism. And finally, science is an example of a secular practice, which is very open to inquiry and reason (thus, anti-dogmatic) and anti-authoritarian as it appeals to nature and evidence rather than the words of an authority. The point is that it’s more about how dogmatic and authoritarian an ideology is (religious or secular), which in turn is determined by the content of the ideology–i.e. what it says–religions that discourage the questioning of authorities (whether that be the clergy or God himself) are antithetical to science. Religions that encourage questioning of authorities are (potentially) open to science. The exact same is true of secular ideologies.
Christianity only became authoritative and dogmatic when the authorities who were more interested in power and control canonized the Bible only with texts that discourage any questioning of their authority or their doctrine. Before that, there were numerous Christian secs that were open to debate and allowed for skepticism and questioning conventional wisdom, gnostic Christianity being the best example I can think of. I think what you meant to say above was that Islam became more authoritative and dogmatic once certain radicalized groups took over and suppressed the scientific, philosophical, and creative flourishings we saw between the 800s and the 1200s–groups that wanted to establish their power by force and coercion, not by reason and scientific investigation.
I wonder if Buddhism is the best example of a “libertarian” religion. Libertarianism, as far as I understand, means valuing freedom from government without necessarily eliminating government (thus, not quite anarchism). I don’t think there’s anything in Buddhism that speaks to that. The only other example I can think of is new-age hippy religion–they’re definitely anti-authoritarian (at least they were in the 60s) and spiritually oriented (thus, sort of proto-religious). Then again, maybe the label “libertarianism” is wrong. I need something that connotes a sort of decentralized source of truth and permits discussion and diversity of views.
Depends on the nature of the religion in question. So far, I haven’t seen a huge conflict between religion and science in America. Most Americans, from what I can tell, have managed to sort of “compartmentalize” their religious views apart from their scientific views. They seem to maintain quite a tricky balancing act between holding true to a bit of religious faith while also embracing a bit of science. In fact, I would say the Golden Age of America was the 1950s when she was at her economic and military peek in the world–which also happened to be one of her most religiously strong and scientifically active decades–both at the same time.
The Roman Empire was never not religious. It just got overtaken by Christianity. And not long after that, the religion was canonized at the council of Nicaea by (like I said) power hungry authoritarians who wanted to infuse Christianity with authoritarian themes and discourage questioning and challenging the doctrines. Pagan religion was much less like this. Paganism was a lot more diverse an unstructured, and also polytheistic, which promotes diffusing centralized authority.
You see, this proves my point. Like Buddhism, it’s often questioned whether Confucianism is really a religion or a philosophy of life for society to follow. And the content emphasizes, as you said, the ideal in human behavior, which encourages scorning of deviations from this ideal, which discourages openness to such deviations, which ultimately leads to accepting the ideal dogmatically and rejecting deviations dogmatically.
Yes, but not because they were religious, but because of what the religions taught: that questioning authority and being open to different ideas was wrong.
I see this fall into third world country status as well, but I see radical leftism and wokism as the culprits. They’re tearing apart the fabric of American society. Religion, if anything, is doing its best to hold it together. Radical leftists and wokists are the ones most against religion, and the result is a sick nihilistic post-modern amoralism that encourages victimhood and violence, narcissistic self-entitlement and neuroticism, a disease hell bent on coercively spreading as fast as possible and plunging the psyche of all whom it inflects into utter hell. It is the most authoritarian and dogmatic movement I have ever seen–about up there with the Nazis (the real ones) and Stalin’s Soviet Union–borrowing from their play book at every turn. ← That’s what’s destroying America.