posted
The "means" to create violence is the only sort of way you'd expect science to cause violence, though, because science is not particularly good at any other sort of knowledge - it gives us "means" rather than "shoulds". Science is not really equipped to answer questions like what is morally right, or who should owns what piece of land, or who ought to be governing us, or any of the other issues that tend to inspire wars. However, if science gets into the business of telling nations and peoples what they deserve and what they are morally required to do, I'm sure that would also eventually bring it into the business of triggering wars. (Extremist environmentalism is an example of this, as people have done violence, although thankfully not yet wars, in the name of what they believe science told them was necessary.)
Darth Mauve's point seemed to be that science is in someway better than religion or other epistemologies because it doesn't trigger wars. My point is that it simply leads to violence in its own way (given the sort of knowledge it provides.)
...
Side note: you are using "science" in a way that effectively makes the term meaningless if you define ANY useful study of the mechanisms of the world as science. Much of religion would be included in science if you defined it that way. It does a disservice to science if you ignore the rules that differentiate a scientist performing science from all the people who learn things about the world in much more casual ways.
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quote:Side note: you are using "science" in a way that effectively makes the term meaningless if you define ANY useful study of the mechanisms of the world as science.
Why? There's casual religion, bad religion, and thoughtful religion; in the same way, there can be casual science, bad science, and thoughtful science. No?
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Tre, let me rephrase what I was trying to say, but this time I won't take short cuts.
When ever I hear the phrase, "Science has been wrong in the past, and will be wrong in the future, so is not where you should get your information from." it has always been followed with something like, "The Bible (Koran, Torah, etc) however, is universal and always correct."
The universal perfection of any religious text is a matter of faith. As such, it is not something easy to debate.
However, even assuming that your holy text is divinely perfect, translations and interpretations of it have proven to be wrong in the past and since we have such differing opinions in religious scholars today, they are wrong now. Hence even gathering your information from your understanding of the Bible is wrong, according to the thesis of "It was wrong, is wrong, and will be wrong" that started this thread.
The example of when such interpretations have been wrong include wars, persecutions, torture and other historically accurate depressing episodes in Christian history (or Islamic etc).
Questions in whether information is correct or incorrect in the sciences result in lost funding, name calling, and email flaming.
Questions in whether information is correct or incorrect in the areas of religious interpretations of the Bible have resulted in blood.
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Humans barely need an excuse to kill each other. Religion is no more to be blamed than capitalism. A whole lot more war has been conducted to grab someone else's resources - including 95% of the wars blamed on religion.
That things are not done in the name of science only means that science is not connected to human beings' hearts and identities.
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quote:The example of when such interpretations have been wrong include wars, persecutions, torture and other historically accurate depressing episodes in Christian history (or Islamic etc).
Questions in whether information is correct or incorrect in the sciences result in lost funding, name calling, and email flaming.
You are being way too generous to science. "Bad Science" has been used to justify things like genocide and slavery. "Bad Science" can have very serious consequence, ranging from explosions to cancer. We are all a couple of IQ points lower because of bad science (tetra-ethyl- lead). Right now, "Bad Science" is being used to justify a lack of action on climate change. "Bad Science" is as dangerous as any other kind of "bad" information.
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quote:"Bad Science" has been used to justify things like genocide and slavery.
The key difference though is that religion is prescriptive and science is not. Science doesn't tell you to do things. As soon as you say "and therefore eugenics is good!" you are doing something other than science.
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I think more importantly, science is self-correcting. Religion--not so much.
You are right that bad science has caused death, destruction, explosions, disease, even genocide.
But science eventually finds it errors and corrects them with better science.
Eugenics and racial disparity were promoted by bad science, and by bad religion.
However it was science that proved eugenics and racial disparity were wrong. Many religions, including unfortunately, the LDS, that were behind others in making that same correction.
Kath. I never said, nor ever will say that religion is the major, or a major cause of war. Capitalism may be--or just plain greed--but in this discussion no one has ever suggested we should use greed, or capitalism as a source of our information.
That is what we are talking about here--what source can we trust to get our information from.
I never blamed religion or The Bible for atrocities. I said that erroneous interpretations of them have had bloody results.
If pressed, I believe that the atrocities that some blame on religion are more rightly blamed on ego and us-vs-them thinking--what I call Bi-Polar Thinking.
Bi-Polar thinking has nothing to do with the psychological disorder of that name. It is thinking in black and white only, good and evil, us vs them. If there is only one Good, I will try to be that Good. If I fail I am evil, and I know I am not evil, so I am the Good. That means that anything not like me is not Good. Not Good, in bi-polar thinking = Evil. So the more you are not like me--the more Evil you must be. Evil must be hurt and destroyed because that is what evil will do to us. So wars are waged, deaths are created, and religion is blamed.
When actually the culprit is some short-sighted bi-polar thinking leaders who are afraid of "the Other".
But I digress.
I think we can all agree that Science is a fair to good source of our information. It is no better than some, but no worse either.
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quote:However it was science that proved eugenics and racial disparity were wrong.
Science can't prove whether eugenics or racial disparity is "wrong" unless you carefully define what "wrong" means in objective, measurable terms. If you are talking about moral wrongness then science has absolutely nothing to say on the topic. Religion could go either way, depending on which religion you subscribe to and where that religion is in its evolution.
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quote:I think more importantly, science is self-correcting. Religion--not so much.
You are correct in suggesting that the strength of science is that it prescribes clear methodology for rejecting ideas that are wrong. You are however incorrect in suggesting that religion is not self-correcting. Any study of the history of religion will show that religions do change and do correct themselves. The fact that some religions have been slow to change certain things is irrelevant. The scientific community has also, at times, been slow to accept change. In fact, there have been many occasions when a generation of scientists has had to die off before new theories could be fully accepted.
What you are missing, is that the weakness of science the methodology it prescribes can only be applied to physically measurable phenomena. It is useless for asking questions about what is morally or ethically right and wrong. Science can not determine what is lovely or virtuous.
The problem with comparing science and religion, as methods of knowing, is that there is extremely little overlap between the questions which can be addressed by science and those that are most commonly addressed by religion. When science and religion are in conflict (say Creationism vs Evolution), I'm fully in support of accepting the scientific view over the religious one. But what about all the questions that science can not begin to address? Some would argue that these questions are unimportant, but they are not unimportant to me and the billions of religious people on the planet.
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posted
Trying to use science to answer the "why" questions is like trying to use a seismometer to measure sugar.
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quote: But what about all the questions that science can not begin to address? Some would argue that these questions are unimportant, but they are not unimportant to me and the billions of religious people on the planet.
Yes, yes, but religion doesn't answer these questions either; that is, it gives something that looks like an answer, but you have no idea whether it's true or not. At some point you're just going to have to deal with not knowing.
Trying to use religion to answer the "why" questions is like trying to use a sieve to measure sugar.
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quote:The problem with comparing science and religion, as methods of knowing, is that there is extremely little overlap between the questions which can be addressed by science and those that are most commonly addressed by religion.
Frankly, I just don't buy this. Historically religion has claimed to answer all kinds of scientific questions, and made no effort to correct itself until science came and figured out the truth.
Nor has religion made an effort to correct itself when it comes to, say, recommending that we stone children that curse their parents to death. Religious ethics change, but rarely do so before society had changed anyway.
As for science and ethics: no, science won't tell you how to frame your moral worldview. But most of the work you do in determining right and wrong has to do with what the actual consequences of the action will be. And those are questions science is perfectly qualified to answer. Sometimes the answer is pretty simple (stabbing someone in the heart will kill them) and sometimes its complicated (dumping toxic waste into the ocean will cause a wide array of ecological damage which will harm animals and humans both). It's up to you to decide if you care about harming animals and/or humans, but once you've made that decision, it's science that will tell you how to best prevent it.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: [QUOTE]At some point you're just going to have to deal with not knowing.
easier said than done. you may have reached an acceptable appeasement to the absurd contradiction of living yet never knowing why, but to expect others to surrender their pursuit is not realistic. we all push our own rock.
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quote:Frankly, I just don't buy this. Historically religion has claimed to answer all kinds of scientific questions, and made no effort to correct itself until science came and figured out the truth/
Perhaps you can give some examples because all the ones I can think originated in Aristotelian "science" not religion.
quote:
quote: But what about all the questions that science can not begin to address?
That'd be the realm of philosophy.
And what does secular philosophy have to recommend itself over religious philosophy? There have been more than enough atrocities committed in the name of secular philosophies.
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quote:Perhaps you can give some examples because all the ones I can think originated in Aristotelian "science" not religion.
Young earth creationism. (this includes *many* scientific claims) Israelites in ancient America. Global flood. (see: YEC)
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quote: But what about all the questions that science can not begin to address?
That'd be the realm of philosophy.
And what does secular philosophy have to recommend itself over religious philosophy? There have been more than enough atrocities committed in the name of secular philosophies.
Good secular philosophy is informed by scientific fact and itself follows a process akin to science in being open to correction and change in light of new evidence. It is an ongoing process of attempting to explain and understand the world, rather than assertions with no rational base. Bad philosophy is dogmatic. Many of us that have issues with religion don't have them solely because of what we believe to be false views on the existence of the supernatural, but also just as importantly, the dogmatic philosophies that underlie them.
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quote:Perhaps you can give some examples because all the ones I can think originated in Aristotelian "science" not religion.
Young earth creationism. (this includes *many* scientific claims) Israelites in ancient America. Global flood. (see: YEC)
Read my original post on the topic. I already listed this as an exception where at least some religions are in conflict with science. Ray implied there were many more. I would like to know what he is thinking of because I'm not coming up with any.
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quote:And what does secular philosophy have to recommend itself over religious philosophy?
Simplicity, for one thing. Honesty about its axioms, for another.
So your now you are saying there is no such thing as "bad philosophy", or "casual philosophy"? I disagree. There are plenty of secular philosophies that are needlessly comples and many that are no more honest about their axioms than astrology. There is as much irrational secular philosophy out there as there is irrational religion.
It is not intellectually honest to compare secular thinking at its best with religious thinking at its worst. Your reasoning is so colored by user bias as to be absurd.
[ December 09, 2010, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:So your now you are saying there is no such thing as "bad philosophy", or "casual philosophy"?
No, not at all. But good philosophy, unlike good religion, is not unnecessarily complicated and honest about its axioms, whereas good religion is not.
A religion that is both uncomplicated and honest is a philosophy; it ceases to be a religion in any meaningful way, since it has dispensed with supernaturalism, prime mover arguments, doctrine, etc.
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posted
So to you the only "good" religion is indistinguishable from philosophy. You have a bad definition.
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posted
That's not necessarily the case. I don't know how you'd decide what constitutes a "good" religion from a "bad" religion in any authoritative way; I'm merely taking it on faith that religions can be so distinguished.
However, I was pointing out that philosophy has two primary advantages over religion: simplicity and honesty. If the response is that some religions have these things, my response is that they cannot have them and remain religions.
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When you disagree with someone, that doesn't mean the other person is automatically lying. Your assumption is that there is no divine, so any claim of the divine must be a lie.
None of this is a problem with religion.
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My issue is not whether they are lying or even deluded, my issue is that when I have multiple religions telling me different things, they don't provide me with a means to figure out which one is right.
For the record, I DO think religion can be valuable, and I judge a good religion by whether it provides comfort, stability and community to people who need it, without also instilling an attachment to false scientific claims that will create a negative influence on a person's life (faith healing on a micro scale, creationism on a macro public-policy-influencing scale).
Religion by no means has a monopoly on comfort, stability and community, but it can accomplish those things effectively. None of those things have to do with reliable epistemology though.
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posted
Well, yeah. The question I was answering was, remember, "what does secular philosophy have to recommend itself over religious philosophy," not "do you think religion is incapable of being useful to people?"
posted
Your declaration that religions are not being honest hinges on your assumption their claims untrue and therefore lies.
All this comes from your original assumptions, which are less enlightening about religions than it is of your biases.
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not really, because assuming a claim is untrue is not assuming that these claims are automatically, therefore, lies.
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No. I mean intellectually honest. Lots of people, for example, do not perceive existing logical paradoxes in their beliefs (religious or otherwise); this does not mean that they are lying about their beliefs, but rather that they are unaware of the flaws. (Someone who says, for example, that he hates all root vegetables but is unaware that steamed carrots -- his favorite food -- are root vegetables is not lying. He's simply wrong about the particulars of his belief, and has therefore misstated it in a way that presents an incorrect model to a listener.)
They are not being dishonest, but neither would their statement of belief be intellectually honest; it is incomplete in ways they have not perceived.
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posted
All of this comes back to you disagreeing, and you blaming their inadequecies for causing the disagreement.
No matter how you try to put it, you disagreeing doesn't mean there is a problem with them. It is revealing only of your own assumptions.
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quote:All of this comes back to you disagreeing, and you blaming their inadequecies for causing the disagreement.
Broadly, yes, this is true. However, the things about which I think they're wrong are not quite as facile as you're supposing; while I do in fact disagree with "them" on, say, the issue of the existence of a particular god, that's not the core of the problem. We disagree on the quality of their axioms, and even what those axioms are, and therein lies the rub.
They are wrong, and I am not. I suppose you could uncharitably (if technically accurately) label this an "inadequacy" if you want, and insist on blaming them for it as if it weren't simply an honest mistake, but this isn't something I'm interested in doing.
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posted
On the topic of philosophy of science, check out my (partly take-home) final for the class. http://pdfcast.org/pdf/phil It's pretty much a beast. Assigned tonight and due on Monday.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: On the topic of philosophy of science, check out my (partly take-home) final for the class. http://pdfcast.org/pdf/phil It's pretty much a beast. Assigned tonight and due on Monday.
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