Sciences vs. Religion

[mkotova]

Can religion and science co-exist? Does one hinder the progress of the other? Copernicus and Galilei tried to make people see reason that one does not hinder the other. Did they succeed?
Copernicus: “it is an endeavor to seek truth in everything”
Galilei: "If we have these gifts from God (intellect, curious), why should we not use them and just let them sit"

[chris_eriksson]

Science and religion can co-exist. The problem comes in misinterpretations of either.

[krishna_lit]

I love these lines from Dan Brown's ANGELS & DEMONS book "Science and religion are not enemies! There are simply two things where science is just too young to understand."

Well, that explains a lot.

[cacian]

yes one feeds from the other. take one out and the other means nothing.

[Calidore]

I love these lines from Dan Brown's ANGELS & DEMONS book "Science and religion are not enemies! There are simply two things where science is just too young to understand."

Well, that explains a lot.

Good grief, is that actually a word-for-word quote from a published novel?

[cafolini]

They have always co-ex-isted as they do today and will do tomorrow. Neither ever had to justify the other.

[Volya]

Good grief, is that actually a word-for-word quote from a published novel?

I believe it's actually 'Science and religion are not enemies, there are simply some things that science is too young to understand'

[cacian]

I believe it's actually 'Science and religion are not enemies, there are simply some things that science is too young to understand'

or that religion is too old and dated to be understood and science therefore lags behind not knowing what to do.

[Nick Capozzoli]

or that religion is too old and dated to be understood and science therefore lags behind not knowing what to do.

That is an interesting way to look at it, though I'm not sure why science should have a problem understanding religion just because it is "old." Doesn't science deal with varying degrees of success, with very old things (like the origins of the universe and life)? If you think of "science" (derived from a Latin verb, scire) as "knowing and understanding the world), then this activity could also describe a purpose served by religion. Certainly early humans, having developed the capacity to reason, employed that capacity to explain for themselves what the world is and how the world works. And this reasoning ability served useful purposes that allowed humans to successfully interact with their world and survive.

What we call "religion" or "religious thinking" came much earlier in human evolution than what we today call "science." But you could argue that both activities derive from the same human psychological substrate and drive to "make sense" of the world. Indeed, nearly all religions have "creation stories" to explain how the world came to be, and also have various stories to account for natural phenomena (e.g. Zeus throwing thunderbolts, Haephaestus's forge blowing off sparks in erupting volcanos (his latin equivalent was Vulcan), etc.).

The main difference is that the explanations ("stories") of modern science involve (or should involve) "verifiability," which is to say that they should be allowed to be subject to tests of their "truth." These tests are what we call "experiments," which basically involve in various ways comparing our explanatory "stories" with our experience of the world. Both "experiment" and "experience" share etymology. Religion as we understand it today doesn't allow for such "testing." Science gives primacy to human reason and experience. It, like religion, is driven by a human need to have psychologically satisfying "explanations," but unlike religion, it allows its explanations to be uncertain and always subject to testing and revision. Religion, on the other hand, demands what we call "belief" in its explanations, and generally doesn't allow for questioning or testing of its ideas. Because of this, one can see that religion offers believers a greater degree of "certainty" that could be considered more "comforting" than science to those who want a final sense of certainty.

It's hard to say when in the recorded history of human civilization that "science" began to distinguish itself from "religion." For Western Civilization, I think that the separation began with the ancient Greek mathematicians/physicists, though the distinction occurred much earlier in prehistory. Certainly we can see people thinking "scientifically" about the world in, for example, the experimentation that led Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the earth with great accuracy. He was able to do so by assuming that the world corresponded in some way to mathematical (geometrical) ideas, and he was intelligent enough to figure out a simple experiment to test that correspondence. In many ways this was not very different from what Einstein did two millennia later when he proposed a mathematical explanation of the world that was tested and (for the time being) confirmed by astronomical observations of stars during a solar eclipse.

The difference between religious and scientific thinking has nothing to do with "logical reasoning." There is a long history of complex "logical reasoning" by religious thinkers. Thomas Aquinas employed logic in an effort to prove the existence of God based on basic assumptions about Nature. The "physics" of Aristotle is for the most part an attempt to describe nature by the application of assumed a priori physical principles. Aristotle came to a lot of conclusions about things, such as how a falling body should behave, based on "logical" extrapolations from these assumptions (in modern terminology "hypotheses"). Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas were "scientists" in that they did not really allow any way for their hypotheses to be tested by experiment. They were certainly capable of thinking logically. But they were by no means "scientists."

Religion itself is, contrary to some popular belief, not inimical to rationality. Some of the greatest religious thinkers have been master logicians. Aquinas would serve as a great example for Christians. In Judaism we have the example of Talmudic scholarship, which to my mind represents the most extensive and intensive recorded effort of religious thinkers to apply human reason to religious behavior. These scholars were (and are to this day) basically concerned with logically interpreting the "meaning" of the Torah scriptures and determining how they should be applied to guide our life in the world. But however much religious thinkers may value human reason, they do not allow for the testing of and potential "falsification" of the religious hypotheses.

[MorpheusSandman]

Depends on what you mean by "co-exist." In the literal sense they DO co-exist as we have both science and religion in the modern world. If you mean are they compatible with each other, that depends on specifics. Most religions make some scientific claims about how reality works, and most of these claims have already been debunked by science. So, eg, a literal reading of Genesis is not compatible with Evolution, The Big Bang Theory, etc. Most religions are what might be termed "culture dumps," mass collections of how certain people at a certain time thought about everything from politics to morality to cosmology. None of those things are immune to progression, and progression (not just scientific) have, indeed, made a huge amount of religion obsolete. A good article on this subject in general: http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/

[mal4mac]

Religion and science do coexist fairly well in modern liberal democracies, don't they? As long as religious people can't impose their beliefs on others, there is no reason for liberal, atheist, scientists not to coexist happily with religious people. Even Dawkins coexists happily with Christians; that is, he doesn't drum up a lynch mob to impose his views on them, he just has a good argument with them. Christian influence still interrupts valuable scientific progress, now and again, e.g., Bush banning stem cell research. But, even then, religion & science seem to be co-existing fairly well, in general, in the USA (and even better in Europe!)

[cacian]

the other thing to think about is this:
whilst science and religion may or may not co exist they still are part of the daily grind. the question could we live without them?
and if not why not?
science goes beyond what is considered the norms because it thinks it can. in a lab it makes and bakes but also burns. the purpose of science is to lurk behind nature to see if it can copy it. copycat style.
religion packs morals to hound the individual and gives him sins to think about and the more it brags on about wrongs and the more wrong it gets.


Copernicus and Galilei tried to make people see reason that one does not hinder the other.
reason? what reason? a human is a reason to see one is to see reason.


Copernicus: “it is an endeavor to seek truth in everything”
I do not think so. i think one needs to seek logic if one is to get anywhere. it is not about the truth it is about how one go from A to B without destroying all and each other.


Galilei: "If we have these gifts from God (intellect, curious), why should we not use them and just let them sit"
I don't know about gift but I think necessity is the word . it is needed to make sense of what life is about.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Religion and science do coexist fairly well in modern liberal democracies, don't they? As long as religious people can't impose their beliefs on others, there is no reason for liberal, atheist, scientists not to coexist happily with religious people. Even Dawkins coexists happily with Christians; that is, he doesn't drum up a lynch mob to impose his views on them, he just has a good argument with them. Christian influence still interrupts valuable scientific progress, now and again, e.g., Bush banning stem cell research. But, even then, religion & science seem to be co-existing fairly well, in general, in the USA (and even better in Europe!)

mal4mac,

I completely agree with your comment. Excellent. Thank you.

[Melanie]

...As long as religious people can't impose their beliefs on others, there is no reason for liberal, atheist, scientists not to coexist happily with religious people. Even Dawkins coexists happily with Christians; that is, he doesn't drum up a lynch mob to impose his views on them, he just has a good argument with them....
Why am I not surprised that an atheist, would label their beliefs "a good argument" while labeling Christian's beliefs as "imposing their beliefs on others". Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.

[mal4mac]

Why am I not surprised that an atheist, would label their beliefs "a good argument" while labeling Christian's beliefs as "imposing their beliefs on others". Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.

In that sentence I was suggesting that *both* Dawkins and his Christian opposition have an interesting argument *together*. I wasn't, there, trying to suggest that Dawkins has the best argument, although, of course, he does :)

Dawkins never imposes his views on the people he is arguing with. How could he? If he pulled out a gun and said, "Deny God now!", he'd (quite rightly!) be arrested.

A recent example of religious people forcing their views on others is the LSE (London School of Economics) officials who kicked atheists out of the Fresher's fair for wearing a Jesus & Mo t-shirt. They should not be allowed to do that, just as atheists should not be allowed to kick Christians out of the Fresher's fair for wearing a t-shirt making fun of Dawkins. In fact, when have you ever heard of atheists getting violent because Dawkins has been insulted? It's always the religious types who have become violent in these situations, never the liberal atheists.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/oct/08/censoring-atheists-lse-oppression-religion

[mortalterror]

There's probably as much anti-clericalism on the other side as there is religious people becoming violent, Mal4mac.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-clericalism

And we don't have to look far to see atheists tampering with science, imposing their ideologies on it, and retarding it's progress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda. Biblical literalists push Creationism and guys like Erich von Daniken peddle their ancient astronaut jibberish. The problem isn't religion. The problem is pseudo science. People don't know how science works or lack critical thinking skills and that needs to be addressed with better education.

[AncientSunlight]

Why am I not surprised that an atheist, would label their beliefs "a good argument" while labeling Christian's beliefs as "imposing their beliefs on others". Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.
The majority of Christians aren't imposing their beliefs, but it is doubtful the new atheist movement would have even started if all religious people kept their views to themselves.

I live in Europe in a quite secular country, and I have never felt the need to argue or even be slightly irritated by religious beliefs; for every religious person I know is liberal with his or her beliefs, talking about them only with those interested, as hopefully I do with my lack of religion. Unfortunately, there are places where religion is used to combat homosexuality, stem-cell research, abortion, or indeed even kids wearing t-shirts at a college. (It is equally annoying, incidentally, when one goes around telling others they'll burn forever in hell.) The imposing people mal4mac is speaking of are a minority, but they are a vocal one: he didn't imply every religious person imposes his beliefs.

[mal4mac]

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda. Biblical literalists push Creationism and guys like Erich von Daniken peddle their ancient astronaut jibberish. The problem isn't religion. The problem is pseudo science. People don't know how science works or lack critical thinking skills and that needs to be addressed with better education.

These are problems common to all, but there are other problems specific to religion, that have nothing to do with science or pseudo-science. This is highlighted by the ejection of atheists from the LSE Fresher's fair. Many religious people cannot stand satire directed against their religious figureheads, but liberal atheists are happy to accept satire aimed at atheists with good grace; they might argue against the satirical argument, but they will not stoop to physical aggression, like the religious stormtroopers of the LSE.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

I think that science never has hindered the reality of any heaven religion because science in many times discovers the truth systematically depending on facts and the religion purpose itself is fact, thus if we ask a question:
Because of what there are many different doctrines or different ways of belief ?
No doubt, the matter has its ideological ideal thoughts, which depends on logic, therefore logic is considered the pillar of thoughts as someone has said: because I think, I am a part of the existences..

[MorpheusSandman]

Dawkins is certainly imposing his beliefs on others.How so? Keep in mind that writing books, articles, etc., engaging in public debates, giving public lectures, appearing on talk shows, etc. is not "imposing beliefs on others," and this is all I've ever seen Dawkins do. That's hardly on the level of The Crusades, or any of the other thousands of examples of religious people violently forcing their beliefs onto others. It's not even the type of force that the religious exert when they attempt to outlaw homosexual marriage, for which there is no secular argument against.


For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda. And you have statistics to prove this? I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.


Unfortunately, there are places where religion is used to combat homosexuality, stem-cell research, abortion, or indeed even kids wearing t-shirts at a college. (It is equally annoying, incidentally, when one goes around telling others they'll burn forever in hell.) The imposing people mal4mac is speaking of are a minority, but they are a vocal one: he didn't imply every religious person imposes his beliefs.I wonder if those types aren't actually the majority in America, where gay marriage is still illegal in most states, and all of those states also happen to be the most conservative politically and religiously. Many people seem to forget that the imposing of such beliefs does include political policy, and how anyone can say that the religious don't impose their beliefs on people while looking at the conflict in the Middle East, down to the (trivial only by comparison) "debate" on gay marriage in the US is just being blind or ignorant.

[Eman Resu]

If you think of "science" (derived from a Latin verb, scire) as "knowing and understanding the world), then this activity could also describe a purpose served by religion.


For Western Civilization, I think that the separation began with the ancient Greek mathematicians/physicists, though the distinction occurred much earlier in prehistory. Certainly we can see people thinking "scientifically" about the world in, for example, the experimentation that led Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the earth with great accuracy. He was able to do so by assuming that the world corresponded in some way to mathematical (geometrical) ideas, and he was intelligent enough to figure out a simple experiment to test that correspondence.



One must wonder whether or not having the lexicon to distinguish between the types of knowledge mightn't have played an hand in the latter (and to some extent, in your analogy regarding Ἐρατοσθένης and Einstein, since Einstein had the benefit of standing upon the shoulders of a scientific "lexicon" formed over the course of several millennia). Your point regarding the comparitors "knowledge" and "understanding" being drawn from the verb "scio" rather than from the noun, "scientia," would seem to give the Greeks similar "shoulders" upon which to stand (and from which to build), since "ιδέα" (the germ of thought), "ιδείν" (the ability to see, from whence springs the secondary concept of metaphysical knowledge), "oida" (to know as fact, or, more literally, to become conscious or learnéd, as from "εἶδος"), and "γνῶσις" (knowledge derived from fact alone) are all distinct concepts. As amusing as one might think it that the early (Christian) Church Fathers 'borrowed' the word "gnostic" from the same Greeks who, just a millennium before, had used the word derisively as being anti-Hellenist¹, one must still wonder why the Church (and here I refer primarily to what would grow into the modern Roman Catholic tradition) was unwilling or unable to suffuse its views with the same linguistic distinctions (thought, belief, Faith and fact) as had their predecessors. Is it possible that if the Articles of Faith or Canon in the Judeo-Christian tradition had made allowances for a differentiation between professing "knowledge" and encouraging "Faith," that the modern Church(es) might have gained wider acceptance in the secular world, or am I searching a darkened room for a black cat which isn't even there?



¹Yes - I'm aware that the later Gnostics used the definition, "inquire into" rather than "knowledge," just as the Greek tradition stole it from the Hebrew, דַּעַת, which leans more toward the noun, "understanding."

[YesNo]

How so? Keep in mind that writing books, articles, etc., engaging in public debates, giving public lectures, appearing on talk shows, etc. is not "imposing beliefs on others," and this is all I've ever seen Dawkins do. That's hardly on the level of The Crusades, or any of the other thousands of examples of religious people violently forcing their beliefs onto others. It's not even the type of force that the religious exert when they attempt to outlaw homosexual marriage, for which there is no secular argument against.

If one finds it acceptable to blame Christianity for the Crusades, then it should be acceptable to blame atheism for anything done by an atheistic state. Here is a list of states following state atheism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism



And you have statistics to prove this? I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.

I haven't seen the original source, but here is a comment from another Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_atheism


Theodore Beale has argued that approximately 148 million people were killed from 1917 to 2007, which is three times more than the deaths from war and individual crimes in the whole 20th century, by governments headed by leaders who were atheists.

Based on that information, one should be more worried about the atheist crazies.

[Calidore]

Seems to me the stat that would matter most is the number of people atheists, Christians, etc. are responsible for killing for religious reasons, either because of the victim's religion or the killer's.

[YesNo]

I consider atheism to be a religion. So when an atheist kills, it is for religious reasons.

But regardless of whether one thinks atheism is a religion or not, if atheists think it is fine to blame a religion such as Christianity for the Crusades rather than blame the politics of the time, then I think it is fair to blame atheism for North Korea, the Khmer Rouge or the violence done by any atheistic state whatsoever.

[MorpheusSandman]

Based on that information, one should be more worried about the atheist crazies.We've already been over this before, but in almost every case of "atheist crazies" the "crazy" was generated by political and not atheistic ideologies; which is not the case for the vast majority of "religious crazy" in which the crazy is directly promoted in the tenets from which the religion derives. There's a difference between "religious crazies" (killing in the name of religion) and crazies who happen to be atheists (killing in the name of political ideology). The lesson to be learned that any ideology, be it political or religious, can very easily lead to genocide. What do you think would've happened if those during the time of Crusades had had access to modern weapons of mass destruction and a worldwide population similar to today? Plus, the issue was really the NUMBER of religious VS atheist crazies, not "the number of people killed by" religious VS atheist crazies.

Finally, there's also the increasing evidence that the most peaceful, happy nations in modern society also happen to be the most secular: One Study (http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf) and Another (http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf).


I consider atheism to be a religion. So when an atheist kills, it is for religious reasons. Do you also consider a tomato a vegetable? Because both considerations are equally wrong. See here: (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/)
People feel the need to squeeze the argument onto a single course by saying "Any P, by definition, has property Q!", on exactly those occasions when they see, and prefer to dismiss out of hand, additional arguments that call into doubt the default inference based on clustering.

So too with the argument "X, by definition, is a Y!" E.g., "Atheists believe that God doesn't exist; therefore atheists have beliefs about God, because a negative belief is still a belief; therefore atheism asserts answers to theological questions; therefore atheism is, by definition, a religion."

You wouldn't feel the need to say, "Hinduism, by definition, is a religion!" because, well, of course Hinduism is a religion. It's not just a religion "by definition", it's, like, an actual religion.

Atheism does not resemble the central members of the "religion" cluster, so if it wasn't for the fact that atheism is a religion by definition, you might go around thinking that atheism wasn't a religion. That's why you've got to crush all opposition by pointing out that "Atheism is a religion" is true by definition, because it isn't true any other way.

[Melanie]

For every crazy religious crackpot there is a crazy secular atheist pushing a dumb pseudo-science agenda.

I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.


Well, as a member of the CheshireCat religion, here's a word from our Leader:

"We're all mad here...you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tale when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad. We're all mad here."

Now, with that said, continue on with this "sane" discussion of Science vs. Religion :D

[MorpheusSandman]

Cheshire Cat religion, eh? I'm more of a Pastafarian. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster)

[Eman Resu]

Melanie and MorpheusSandman - what a shame to see how misguided you are. I hope that soon or late, you're blessed by reading the True Word, which is contained in the LolCat Bible.

YesNo - for the benefit of those if us with limited intellectual resources, would you please define "religion" and tell us under whose auspices the Crusades were carried out? Thank you.

[MorpheusSandman]

My Flying Spaghetti Monster could beat up your LolCat with all noodles tied behind his eyes... unless your LolCat is Garfield, and then my Spaghetti deity is in serious trouble.

[Eman Resu]

My Flying Spaghetti Monster could beat up your LolCat with all noodles tied behind his eyes... unless your LolCat is Garfield, and then my Spaghetti deity is in serious trouble.


My Ceiling Cat cannot even say, "Flying Pesghetti Monster."

:redface:

[mortalterror]

These are problems common to all, but there are other problems specific to religion, that have nothing to do with science or pseudo-science. This is highlighted by the ejection of atheists from the LSE Fresher's fair. Many religious people cannot stand satire directed against their religious figureheads, but liberal atheists are happy to accept satire aimed at atheists with good grace; they might argue against the satirical argument, but they will not stoop to physical aggression, like the religious stormtroopers of the LSE.

Are you willing to bet that no religious person has ever been asked to leave an atheist convention? Besides the level of your oppression is laughable when you reach for such low hanging fruit. You would think you were all enslaved and forced to build the pyramids the way you talk.

[YesNo]

We've already been over this before, but in almost every case of "atheist crazies" the "crazy" was generated by political and not atheistic ideologies; which is not the case for the vast majority of "religious crazy" in which the crazy is directly promoted in the tenets from which the religion derives. There's a difference between "religious crazies" (killing in the name of religion) and crazies who happen to be atheists (killing in the name of political ideology). The lesson to be learned that any ideology, be it political or religious, can very easily lead to genocide. What do you think would've happened if those during the time of Crusades had had access to modern weapons of mass destruction and a worldwide population similar to today? Plus, the issue was really the NUMBER of religious VS atheist crazies, not "the number of people killed by" religious VS atheist crazies.


I treat atheism as a hate religion. I would like to not consider atheism as a religion at all, but I see no way around that.

Atheists embrace a variety of dogmatic beliefs. Like typical religious fundamentalists, they are quick to reject scientific evidence when that evidence conflicts with their belief system. One can take the atheistic subgroup that believes in the mythology of "many worlds" as an example of this behavior. Atheism also has adherents who engage in self-righteous missionary activity. Dawkins and Hitchens would be examples of such missionaries. They make targeted enemies out of those who refuse to convert to their worldviews. The study I cited earlier showed that most of the violence in the last century can be traced to atheists.

When atheists blame religious groups for political violence while excusing themselves for the same kind of violence, no matter how they formulate this hypocrisy, they demonstrate that their religious thinking is also inherently irrational.

[mortalterror]

How so? Keep in mind that writing books, articles, etc., engaging in public debates, giving public lectures, appearing on talk shows, etc. is not "imposing beliefs on others," and this is all I've ever seen Dawkins do. That's hardly on the level of The Crusades, or any of the other thousands of examples of religious people violently forcing their beliefs onto others. It's not even the type of force that the religious exert when they attempt to outlaw homosexual marriage, for which there is no secular argument against.
I'm pro gay marriage but there are secular arguments against it. It took about five seconds of a google search to find this site: http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/a-secular-case-against-gay-marriage/ I'm not saying he's right. I believe he is wrong. But there are secular people against gay marriage.


And you have statistics to prove this? I'm fairly sure if we starting trotting out examples the religious crazies would be the atheist crazies by a landslide. There are no doubting there are crazies on both sides, but one side generates the crazy inherently in its core beliefs.
Actually yes, I believe I could prove it. On a per capita basis Atheists and non believers are just as nutty as religious people. You see more religious nuts because they are the majority of the population. I don't want to derail the discussion here but I'll repost a comment I made on another forum that addresses this issue.

There is a secular atheist version of every religious delusion or error.

Rapture, apocalypse, Ragnarok:doomsday preppers, Y2k, Timewave Zero, Mayan Calendar, singularity, mass extinction events
Healing through Prayer: anti-vaccination
anti-evolution: anti-GMO movement, anti-nuclear movement, climate change deniers, AIDS deniers
Genesis story of creation: ancient astronauts
strange beings: angels and demons, cryptozoology, bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, Chupacabra, Mothman
Pseudoscience:

Examples of pseudoscience concepts, proposed as scientific when they are not scientific, include: acupuncture, alchemy, ancient astronauts, applied kinesiology, astrology, Ayurvedic medicine, biorhythms, cellular memory, cold fusion,[38] craniometry, creation science, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's engram theory, enneagrams, eugenics, extrasensory perception (ESP), facilitated communication, graphology, homeopathy, intelligent design, iridology, kundalini, Lysenkoism, metoposcopy, N‑rays, naturopathy, orgone energy, Oyagaku, paranormal plant perception, phrenology, physiognomy, qi, New Age psychotherapies (e.g., rebirthing therapy), reflexology, remote viewing, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), reiki, Rolfing, therapeutic touch, and the revised history of the solar system proposed by Immanuel Velikovsky.

Robert T. Carroll stated in part: "Pseudoscientists claim to base their theories on empirical evidence, and they may even use some scientific methods, though often their understanding of a controlled experiment is inadequate. Many pseudoscientists relish being able to point out the consistency of their ideas with known facts or with predicted consequences, but they do not recognize that such consistency is not proof of anything. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition that a good scientific theory be consistent with the facts."[39]

In 2006, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) issued an executive summary of a paper on science and engineering which briefly discussed the prevalence of pseudoscience in modern times. It said, "belief in pseudoscience is widespread" and, referencing a Gallup Poll,[40] stated that belief in the 10 commonly believed examples of paranormal phenomena listed in the poll were "pseudoscientific beliefs".[41] The items were: "extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, and channelling".[41] Such beliefs in pseudoscience reflect a lack of knowledge of how science works. The scientific community may aim to communicate information about science out of concern for the public's susceptibility to unproven claims.[41]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience

Racism in the bible used as a justification for slavery: racism in science (anthropology, craniometry, phrenology, anthropometry, ethnology, polygenism, eugenics) used to justify racism, slavery, the Holocaust, imperialism, apartheid,


In the United States, scientific racism justified Black African slavery to assuage moral opposition to the Atlantic slave trade. Alexander Thomas and Samuell Sillen described black men as uniquely fitted for bondage, because of their "primitive psychological organization".[57] In 1851, in antebellum Louisiana, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright (1793–1863), considered slave escape attempts as "drapetomania", a treatable mental illness, that "with proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented". The term drapetomania (mania of the runaway slave) derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, "a runaway [slave]") + μανια (mania, "madness, frenzy")[58] Cartwright also described dysaesthesia aethiopica, called "rascality" by overseers. The 1840 United States Census claimed that Northern, free blacks suffered mental illness at higher rates than did their Southern, enslaved counterparts. Though the census was later found to have been severely flawed by the American Statistical Association, John Quincy Adams, and others, it became a political weapon against abolitionists. Southern slavers concluded that escaping Negroes were suffering from "mental disorders".[59][60]

At the time of the American Civil War (1861–65), the matter of miscegenation prompted studies of ostensible physiological differences between Caucasians and Negroes. Early anthropologists, such as Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, Robert Knox, and Samuel George Morton, aimed to scientifically prove that Negroes were a human species different from the white people species; that the rulers of Ancient Egypt were not African; and that mixed-race offspring (the product of miscegenation) tended to physical weakness and infertility. After the Civil War, Southern (Confederacy) physicians wrote textbooks of scientific racism based upon studies claiming that Black freemen (ex-slaves) were becoming extinct, because they were inadequate to the demands of being a free man — implying that Black people benefitted from enslavement. In 1850 Louis Agassiz commissioned a series of daguerreotypes of slaves of Columbia South Carolina for studying of races
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

Secularism used to justify social innequality:

The term social Darwinism is often used to describe the use of concepts of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism; but similar concepts have motivated ideas of eugenics, racism, imperialism,[4] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

Then you said you wanted statistics about how crazy the different groups are. I have these studies that shows that raising your kids with religion makes them mentally healthier:

A study of 2604 US children ages six to nineteen found positive correlations between physical and psychological health and religious affiliation and/or church attendance.[18] This included 272 children whose parents (children 6–9) or the children themselves (12–19) expressed no religious affiliation. However, of this group, 22% state that religion is important and 35% attend church. The study found children ages six to nineteen who attend religious services are at lower risk of suicide or suicide attempts, as well as alcohol and drug use and dangerous sexual behavior. Some religions prohibit blood transfusions, vaccinations, contraception, and abortions, which may lead to adverse health consequences. Membership in religious groups can moderate unhealthy behavior, provide social support, and enhance marital or financial prospects, and strengthen family bonds if the religion is shared by the whole family. Religions can also help both adults and children with self-esteem, as well as provide meaning to life and reduce anxiety, but can increase guilt over perceived misdeeds.[18]

85 percent of religiously affiliated children are healthy overall, as opposed to 79 percent of non-affiliated children. 79 percent of religious children are deemed psychologically healthy compared to 73 percent of non religious children. 85 percent of children who attend church at least weekly are healthy and 83 percent of those who seldom or never attend are healthy. For psychological health the numbers are 82 and 74 percent respectively.[18]

62 percent of children say religion is important to them, 26 percent say it's somewhat important, and 13 percent say it's not important. 81 percent of those who view religion as important were found to be healthy and 65 percent of the not important group were healthy. There was no difference found among the various religious denominations in regard to health. The positive correlation between religion and health was strongest for 12-15 year olds. Overall religious belief and participation have the same positive health effect as being breastfed or having a mother who went to school 2.2 years longer than one who didn't. It has half the health benefit of living with both parents. Why religious belief and participation had these positive correlations was however unknown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_children


More Americans than ever are turning away from religion. A recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 1 in 5 adults has no religious affiliation -- under the age of 30, the numbers increase to a third -- compared to the year 1950, when the percentage of adults who identified as having no religion was just two percent. And the biggest increase among the non-religious is what researchers call the "nones," the people who are largely indifferent. They're not atheists or disenchanted former believers; they just don't care.

This indifference is being passed on to children, but at what cost? That all depends. While a study out of the University of British Columbia found that spirituality is more important than religion in making kids happy, religion certainly has been shown to come with certain benefits. Participation in a religious community may help kids develop a strong moral core; specifically, it has been shown to reduce the incidence of teen drug use and pregnancy, while increasing feelings of self-esteem and overall hopefulness.

A Mississippi State University study found that younger boys whose parents practice religion are better behaved and adjusted than those raised in homes without religion. These boys also display better self-control, social skills, and ability to work with others.

In addition, religion seems to be somewhat comforting to kids in particular, and indeed it can provide a certain stability that children welcome in a world that's full of changes. When talking to Sam later that night, Nora was able to remember that as a child she had enjoyed going to church for one main reason: It never seemed to change. For a generation of children that's required to be more adaptive than ever before, simple acts like reciting prayers and getting dressed each week for service can help impart a feeling of safety and groundedness. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peggy-drexler/why-kids-and-religion-mix_b_2605554.html

Then there are the positive effects of prayer on adults mental faculties:

Praying 'aids mental health'

People who pray frequently are less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, according to a study.

Much research has recently focused on the relationship between mental health and religion - with conflicting results.

A study by psychologists from Sheffield Hallam University looks into what aspects of religious observance are particularly likely to influence mental well-being.

They found that personal prayer was much more likely to have a positive effect than going to church for social reasons.

They studied 251 men and 223 women aged between 18 and 29, and measured their reasons for having a religious belief, the frequency with which they attended church and their tendency to depression.

Women were more likely to be religious than men, but for both the frequency with which they prayed was strongly associated with fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.

And although people who saw religion as being present in every aspect of their lives were less likely to be mentally ill than others, only those who also prayed frequently had noticeably higher self-esteem.

Those who attended church for social reasons were likely to be more depressed and the mental health of those who were religious, but constantly questioned their beliefs was unaffected by their beliefs and practices.

Stress

The researchers, led by Dr John Maltby, say their findings suggest that the relationship between mental health and religion is linked to the way people use prayer to deal with stress.

Writing in the British Journal of Health Psychologiy, they said: "This finding would apper to support the view that a religious coping model is integral to the understanding of the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being."

A spokeswoman for the Mental Health Foundation, which recently published a book on religion and mental health, said it had also found that those with a personal spirituality and life philosophy were more likely to be able to cope with stress.

"People who are religious on a personal level rather than adopting an organised religion, who perceive reasons for things and their role within a wider universe, appear less likely to suffer mental ill health," she said.

"They seem to be calmer and have a sense of order and a personal perspective which makes them feel more in control instead of passing responsibility to someone or something else."

The foundation runs a strategies for living programme which looks at what people find helpful in coping with everyday stresses.

It suggests health professionals should take a holistic approach to mental health, rather than just dealing with a person's symptoms.

The spokeswoman said it appeared spirituality in its widest sense had a positive effect on mental health.

"It may be as simple as having personal time and space and prayer may give people that," she said.

"Not having enough time to focus on yourself can contribute to mental distress."

However, the National Secular Society dismissed the idea that prayer helps mental health as "absolute rubbish".

It said research also showed bingo helped mental health.

"It is nothing to do with prayer," said a spokesman. "It is to do with community and togetherness."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/516350.stm

As for Atheists misrepresenting science for their own ends I think that John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, the nineteenth century originators and popularizers of the religion/science conflict thesis, which is propaganda and no good modern historian believes, also originated the popular myth that people thought that the earth was flat until modern times. They created and popularized a number of myths about science in order to discredit religion.

[Eman Resu]

There is a secular atheist version of every religious delusion or error.

Rapture



mortalterror - this all seems wholly plausible with the exception of the above. The Rapture absolutely cannot be denied by any rational person. Long ago, while at Trinity, the bowler on the Dublin University Cricket Club simply refused to wear an athletic supporter and was hit straight-on by a batsman and fell victim to it before a sizable crowd of spectators.

[Eman Resu]

Oh wait... never mind, then. That was The Rupture. Carry on.

[The Atheist]

My Flying Spaghetti Monster could beat up your LolCat with all noodles tied behind his eyes... unless your LolCat is Garfield, and then my Spaghetti deity is in serious trouble.

<<<<<<<<<< I have the One True FSM!



Oh wait... never mind, then. That was The Rupture. Carry on.

Brilliant!

[YesNo]

As for Atheists misrepresenting science for their own ends I think that John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, the nineteenth century originators and popularizers of the religion/science conflict thesis, which is propaganda and no good modern historian believes, also originated the popular myth that people thought that the earth was flat until modern times. They created and popularized a number of myths about science in order to discredit religion.

I didn't realize that the topic of this thread goes back only to the mid 19th century, but your description of Draper and White's "conflict thesis" seems correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis

[mal4mac]

Are you willing to bet that no religious person has ever been asked to leave an atheist convention?

So you can't find an example then?

There's another example at Reading University Fresher's Fair, last year, where the atheist students labelled a Pineapple Mohammed. After "a struggle" they renamed it Jesus. Then they got kicked out of the fair. OK this wasn't great satire, but why didn't the religious types fight back with better satire, rather than physical eviction? Religious zealots just can't stand their opposition having freedom of speech, and they certainly don't have a sense of humour.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/04/reading-university-atheist-society-thrown-out-blasphemous-mohammed-pineapple_n_1939317.html

[mortalterror]

So you can't find an example then?

There's another example at Reading University Fresher's Fair, lasy year, where the atheist students labelled a Pineapple Mohammed. After "a struggle" they renamed it Jesus. Then they got kicked out of the fair. OK this wasn't great satire, but why didn't the religious types fight back with better satire, rather than physical eviction? Religious zealots just can't stand their opposition having freedom of speech, and they certainly don't have a sense of humour.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/04/reading-university-atheist-society-thrown-out-blasphemous-mohammed-pineapple_n_1939317.html

These ejections could have less to do with atheism and more to do with the atheist acting like a jerk and disrupting the event. I really don't have a problem with hecklers being thrown out of comedy shows, rowdy drunks being bounced from bars, or people yelling at the screen in a movie theater being asked to leave. As for why I can't find a lot of articles about religious people being thrown out of atheist conventions, there could be a couple of good reasons for that. Maybe, religious people don't write an article about how they felt persecuted every time something happens to them? Seriously, atheists are the biggest bunch of crybabies ever, dedicated to claiming victim status, and are an extremely vocal minority. Maybe, it's just not news when it happens to a religious person, like reverse racism doesn't create headlines when it happens to white people? Maybe, since atheists only account for 2% of the population and religious people are 88% there are just 44 times as many opportunities for atheists to disrupt religious proceedings and get thrown out? Maybe, religious people are just better behaved at conventions and don't get thrown out?

[mal4mac]

I'm pro gay marriage but there are secular arguments against it. It took about five seconds of a google search to find this site: http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/a-secular-case-against-gay-marriage/ I'm not saying he's right. I believe he is wrong. But there are secular people against gay marriage.

This a bad argument by a lone secularist. Is there an international secular organisation against gay marriage? One as large, in atheist circles, as the Roman Catholic church is in Christian circles?

[MorpheusSandman]

I treat atheism as a hate religion. I would like to not consider atheism as a religion at all, but I see no way around that. The "way around that" is to get a clue and realize atheism is not a religion at all and doesn't hate anything in isolation. What you're talking about is anti-theism, which is, of course, totally populated by atheists; yet even the term "anti-theism," as I've said before, is more properly termed "anti-fundamentalism," as the things the supposed "anti-theists" rail about are the most extreme, fundamental religious beliefs and acts, which DESERVE to be railed against and hated (unless you think it's OK to believe that suicide for your religion will lead you to paradise).

Take a trip to any of the secular, atheistic societies I linked to in those studies and see how "hateful" these people are without the oppressive force of religion trying to dictate social, moral, and political policy everywhere they look. What you're suggesting is not unlike how privileged white males try to label feminists and minorities as "hateful" when the latter rail against inherently sexist and racist social policies. It's a trick, and illusion, to keep the social structures in place that empower the former groups. Religion does the exact same thing, and when atheism rails against, it gets labeled as "hateful."


Atheists embrace a variety of dogmatic beliefs. Like typical religious fundamentalists, they are quick to reject scientific evidence when that evidence conflicts with their belief system. One can take the atheistic subgroup that believes in the mythology of "many worlds" as an example of this behavior. :rolleyes: I am NOT going to start another Many Worlds discussion with you. You have displayed ad infinitum that you don't even understand what Many Worlds is despite having four different people attempt to explain it to. You never even responded to my list of evidence in the last thread:
MW:

1. MW’s first basic claim is that QM works all the way down, which would mean everything is in a state of superposition. So far, this has been confirmed by every test done on molecules with 2424 particles. There is no evidence for a “collapse” that separates the quantum and classic worlds.

2. MW’s second basic claim is that the wavefunction is real, which would mean that we should be able to use it to make the exact kind of predictions we’re able to make.

3. MW is compatible with everything we know about classic physics, the same classic physics that have been consistently accurate in modeling large objects in spacetime. The only exception is gravity; however, in being deterministic, local, and real, MW is at least capable of being reconciled with gravity as we learn more.

4. MW being compatible with classic physics would follow the pattern of a more comprehensive theory subsuming an approximate theory, the same way GR did with Newtonian Physics and modern evolution did with Darwinian evolution.

Compare with CI:

1. CI claims that there is a collapse and that this collapse separates the indeterministic world of QM with the deterministic world of GR. So far, this collapse/split has NOT been found in any tests that have been done, and it is certainly not required in any of the mathematical formulas.

2. CI treats the wavefunction as non-real, and if it’s non-real then we shouldn’t be able to make the predictions that we do.

3. CI is incompatible with everything we know about classic physics.

4. CI being incompatible with classic physics would be the first time in the history of science that a new theory completely contradicted a previous, merely approximate theory. What’s more, it would be the first time that we found that things work differently at different levels, despite the fact that classical physics works exactly like we’d expect if it was QM all the way down.

The ONLY advantage CI has is that it can derive the Born rule, but it does this by assuming things that is has absolutely no reason/evidence for assuming. It’s not all that different than assuming the existence of God to explain lightning before we knew about meteorology and electricity. Sure, it explains lightning, but there’s no reason for assuming its true. What’s more, there’s no reason to assume that MW can’t derive the Born rule as technology, especially quantum computing, advances. Instead of addressing these issues, you chose to make the MW/CI issue about the nature of choice, and your Wishful Thinking that choice must exist because you want it to, and that choice can only exist in an indeterministic universe. Until you deal with the evidence above, you're the one believing in "collapse" mythologies in spite of the evidence.

In your last post you even stated the absurdity that: "The world is not divided between the indeterministic quantum world and the deterministic world after some sort of collapse. The whole world allows for indeterminism..." which shows that not only do you not understand MW, you don't understand CI. CI very much DOES divide the world between the indeterministic quantum world and the deterministic macro world; that's PRECISELY what the collapse DOES! It says that an indeterministic wavefunction collapses to a particle that then functions "like a well-behaved billiard ball" as one poet put it. After the collapse, particles DO function according to the determinism of Einstein's GR. It's stunning to me that you didn't know this (although I'm not sure why, at this point, I'm stunned by what you don't know about QM).


Atheism also has adherents who engage in self-righteous missionary activity. Dawkins and Hitchens would be examples of such missionaries. They make targeted enemies out of those who refuse to convert to their worldviews. The study I cited earlier showed that most of the violence in the last century can be traced to atheists.:rolleyes: I love how you equate publishing books/articles, engaging in public debate/lectures, etc. as the equivalent of being a "missionary." In the 19th century, what they're doing would've got them labeled "public intellectuals," (which they are). I think you should learn the difference.

The study you cited linked atheists with violence, but it did not link violence with atheism rather than political ideology. Again, I've explained the difference between that and violence directly condoned by religious tenets and, again, you've ignored the argument. What's more, you ignored the articles I linked that not only connected religious societies with more violence, but showed how the most secular/atheistic societies were the most peaceful. In fact, if you look at the atheist societies that produced that violence in comparison with the peaceful atheist societies mentioned in my studies, you might find that the difference is political ideology, and a will to enforce that ideology on everyone within reach.

I know it's convenient for you to ignore arguments that make your points look bad, but you're not doing yourself any favors.

[mal4mac]

These ejections could have less to do with atheism and more to do with the atheist acting like a jerk and disrupting the event.

Read the reports! They were sat quietly at their tables, wearing their t shirts, or displaying their pineapple.



I really don't have a problem with hecklers being thrown out of comedy shows, rowdy drunks being bounced from bars, or people yelling at the screen in a movie theater being asked to leave.


I agree with you in these matters, in their most extreme versions (a good comedy show needs *some* heckling!). But how can you equate behaviour like this with people sitting quietly wearing a t shirt?



As for why I can't find a lot of articles about religious people being thrown out of atheist conventions, there could be a couple of good reasons for that. Maybe, religious people don't write an article about how they felt persecuted every time something happens to them?


Grasping at straws! Can you find any articles at all? Keep on ploughing Google...



Seriously, atheists are the biggest bunch of crybabies ever, dedicated to claiming victim status, and are an extremely vocal minority.


Did you see the picture of the LSE guys? They looked like cool dudes to me, hardly cry babies, and this was right after they were attacked by a bunch of religious zealots and the security guard "just-doing-my-jobs". Are you saying they weren't victims of bigotry? Are you saying it's alright to kick people out of a Fresher's Fair for wearing a t shirt?


Maybe, since atheists only account for 2% of the population and religious people are 88% there are just 44 times as many opportunities for atheists to disrupt religious proceedings and get thrown out? Maybe, religious people are just better behaved at conventions and don't get thrown out?

Where do you get those figures from? They certainly don't apply to the UK. A Fresher's Fair is not a "religious proceeding". The atheist students were not being disruptive, unless you think wearing a t shirt is disruptive!

[Eman Resu]

Where do you get those figures from?

The World Factbook reports the percentage of people who identify as "Atheist" at 2.01%.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm pro gay marriage but there are secular arguments against it. It took about five seconds of a google search to find this site: http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/a-secular-case-against-gay-marriage/ I'm not saying he's right. I believe he is wrong. But there are secular people against gay marriage.Those "secular reasons" are identical to the ones religious conservatives constantly make because they can't come right out and say "my religion prevents me from considering gay marriage moral!" Such arguments are rationalizations dressed up as secular arguments in an attempt to disguise the illogical religious fundamentalism underlying it all, and they're terrible, awful, half-nonsense, half-ignorance, completely irrational arguments to begin with. Do some secularists believe them? Probably, but I'm very skeptical that they came up with them on their own as opposed to just parroting them from the religious conservatives. (I especially laughed at the "Anti-Minoritarianism" argument, given that recent polls show that the majority are actually in favor of gay marriage!)


Actually yes, I believe I could prove it.Actually no, I believe you didn't. I would never, ever deny that pseudo-science exists and thrives with or without religion. To me, that's just indicative of the bias of the human brain towards mysticism, in general, of which religion is merely one aspect.* Nor would I deny that racism exists independent of religion (although religion can easily be used to reinforce racist and anti-feminist beliefs). Really, I just see religion as the most common result of the human bias for mystical thinking (of creating arbitrary systems of causality). Rejecting religion does not mean eliminating that bias completely, but it is one step on the path to rejecting all mystical thinking and the cognitive biases that produce them.

*That said, I would NOT include the singularity in your list of secular delusions/errors. The singularity is a hypothetical possibility regarding the end result of technological advancement. The things we do now with technology would've appeared no different than magic to people even 100 years ago; and seeing as such advancement is not steadily progressive but accelerative, some version of the singularity seems like a logical outcome. The debate on the issue is whether or not we'll run into some kind of "wall" before AI can reach above-human-level intelligence, but we haven't hit that wall yet.


Then you said you wanted statistics about how crazy the different groups are. I have these studies that shows that raising your kids with religion makes them mentally healthier: ...Then there are the positive effects of prayer on adults mental faculties:Firstly, I don't really see how those studies are relevant to the discussion when I already provided studies that linked heavily religious societies to more violence and less health/happiness and equally linked heavily secular/atheist societies to less violence and more health/happiness. Secondly, the "heath effects of religion on children" section of Wikipedia has this banner on it: "An editor has expressed a concern that this article lends undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, controversies or matters relative to the article subject as a whole. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message. (September 2012)" I notice there are no other studies posted. Thirdly, I wouldn't doubt the positive mental benefits of prayer for the same reason I wouldn't doubt the positive mental effects of meditation, but I'm not sure what that has to do with "religion," since even secularists can mediate or "pray" in some sense. Finally, such health benefits, even if true, do not necessarily correlate either into adulthood or on a larger social level, as my studies suggested.


As for Atheists misrepresenting science for their own ends I think that John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, the nineteenth century originators and popularizers of the religion/science conflict thesis, which is propaganda and no good modern historian believes, also originated the popular myth that people thought that the earth was flat until modern times. They created and popularized a number of myths about science in order to discredit religion.This just sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense. I don't know how anyone can claim that science doesn't frequently contradict claims that were once in the authoritative domain of religion, be it cosmology, nature, history, etc.

[MorpheusSandman]

The World Factbook reports the percentage of people who identify as "Atheist" at 2.01%.By the same study the "non-religious" are at almost 10%, and I wonder if the difference isn't purely semantics caused by a host of negative connotations that have gotten attached to the label "atheism" over the years by religious groups. When I first rejected religion I identified as "agnostic" because I'd grown up hearing horror stories about evil atheists, and it took many years before I was comfortable with the label, even though my beliefs as an agnostic and atheist were identical.

[Eman Resu]

When I first rejected religion I identified as "agnostic" because I'd grown up hearing horror stories about evil atheists, and it took many years before I was comfortable with the label, even though my beliefs as an agnostic and atheist were identical.

Without seeming to pry (and if you choose not to answer, I'll surely understand, since this is a somewhat personal matter, though it remains closely connected to the topic at hand), might I ask what precipitated this rejection of religion, and whether it was by introspection or comparative study (e.g. "science versus religion") that you eventually rejected belief in a deity altogether?

[MorpheusSandman]

Without seeming to pry (and if you choose not to answer, I'll surely understand, since this is a somewhat personal matter, though it remains closely connected to the topic at hand), might I ask what precipitated this rejection of religion, and whether it was by introspection or comparative study (e.g. "science versus religion") that you eventually rejected belief in a deity altogether?Not prying at all, and thanks for your interest and the question; I don't mind talking about it. However, I must stress that my apostasy was a very long, convoluted process, and certainly not something that was instantaneous or overnight. In fact, I don't think I point to a singular moment where I consciously went from a highly religious Christian to an "agnostic" to an "atheist." All that said, it began with my health problems that started in my early teens. That lead to my initial doubt. At the time, though, I was till very much "Christian," but was merely having a crisis of faith. This lead me in a lot of directions, to online religious/atheist debates, to articles, to philosophy, even to YouTube videos. I really inundated myself with the subject from both sides.

At the same time, though, I was really developing an interest in logic and rationality, because not only was I having a crisis of faith, I was having an... I guess you could call it "epistemological crisis" of wanting to know HOW we could know anything. So as I developed my understanding of logic/rationality, I began to simply find that the arguments against religion were, in general, stronger and harder to poke holes in than the arguments for religion. As I alluded to earlier, there wasn't ONE argument or point that sealed it for me, but it was merely an accumulative effect. EG, one question I never could find a satisfactory answer to was: "If I was never been TOLD to believe this, would I have ever believed it on my own?" To me, the obvious answer to that was NO.

What's more, I never found a satisfactory response to the Problem of Evil, particularly as it came to theodicy (and I read a great deal on this). It may also have had a lot to my burgeoning interest in the arts, where I found filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman that seemed to express in so many of his films my own crisis; or William Blake, who seem to have came up with a psychological explanation of religion and mythology that, to me, made more sense than any religion being "right." There was also Carl Jung and his ideas of the collective unconscious and universal symbols that developed into religions. There was also my interest in cognitive science, especially in biases, where I equally found probable causes for man developing religions that were external expressions of their mind (the "mind-projection fallacy" as ET Jaynes termed it).

Perhaps what sealed it was my extensive reading of the website Lesswrong (http://lesswrong.com/), which seemed to clarify so many things in my mind and lead me to a place where I could no longer even consider any religion plausible, much less probable; especially when it came to devastating articles like this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/), for which, no matter how many times I've posted it, I've never heard a substantial rebuttal from theists. The process, all told, stretched from when I was about 13 to the time I was about 21. I think I was 21 when I first consciously thought of myself as "atheist." I probably started thinking of myself as "agnostic" when I was about 16, so that's an indication of how long and involved it was.

[Eman Resu]

...especially when it came to devastating articles like this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprovable/), for which, no matter how many times I've posted it, I've never heard a substantial rebuttal from theists....


First, thanks for your well-considered reply. Without delving into the "complexity of the Universe" remark in the above article, as it regards the Old Testament, this quote:

"Maybe someday, humanity will advance further, and anyone who endorses the Bible as a source of ethics will be treated the same way as Trent Lott endorsing Strom Thurmond's presidential campaign..."

struck me as odd, since the author failed to stress "all ethics..." (and one must presume that this was the intent). (Any) ethical (not philosophically moralist, but ethical) platform is simply too easy to cite; Genesis 1:27 and the subsequent 1:26 spring immediately to mind - God fashioning Mankind "after his ideal" after appointing them "stewards" of the earth and its inhabitants (although the unfortunate choices in the translation of the Vulgata of Saint Jerome from the Hebrew to Latin, forward to the 1611 debacle of King Jimmy which insists that Man is awarded "dominion over" the world) surely stands as an example of Ethics per se, nonpareil.

Sadly, we have proven mighty poor stewards, it would seem.

[Melanie]

Yes, collectively, we have "proven mighty poor stewards" of our earth,
but on judgement day, God will look at us each individually.

"I have come to terms with the future:
From this day onward I will walk
easy on the earth. Plant trees.
Kill no living things.
Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the earth where I am.
Use no more of its resources than I need.
And listen, listen to what it is telling me.
— M.J. Slim Hooey

[Eman Resu]

Yes, collectively, we have "proven mighty poor stewards" of our earth,
but on judgement day, God will look at us each individually.

"I have come to terms with the future:
From this day onward I will walk
easy on the earth. Plant trees.
Kill no living things.
Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the earth where I am.
Use no more of its resources than I need.
And listen, listen to what it is telling me.
— M.J. Slim Hooey


I like this as a secular philosophy - until a wasp begins annoying me in the garden.

For the billions of Catholics, however, it's the second member of the Trinity who'll be the Judge - even for us wacky cultural anti-Papist Catholics - and remembering what he did to that fig tree in Matthew 21:20, I figger my goose is cooked.

[mortalterror]

Actually no, I believe you didn't. I would never, ever deny that pseudo-science exists and thrives with or without religion. To me, that's just indicative of the bias of the human brain towards mysticism, in general, of which religion is merely one aspect.* Nor would I deny that racism exists independent of religion (although religion can easily be used to reinforce racist and anti-feminist beliefs). Really, I just see religion as the most common result of the human bias for mystical thinking (of creating arbitrary systems of causality). Rejecting religion does not mean eliminating that bias completely, but it is one step on the path to rejecting all mystical thinking and the cognitive biases that produce them.
You are creating a false dichotomy that assumes that belief in atheism is rational and belief in theism is irrational. Unfortunately for your argument, the reasons people become atheists or theists is rarely the result of prolonged thought and logic. If you study the literature on the subject, you'll see that the strongest factor in the conversion to either is usually what the person's family believes, specifically the spouse. The next biggest indicator is how well the religion caters to their lifestyle and other beliefs, ie the utility. It's almost never a rational decision based on rational logic about the truth or falseness of claims. In fact, I believe that it's largely temperamental whether one is an atheist or a theist. Rationality is what we use after the fact to justify our decisions to ourselves not the mechanism by which we choose to believe or disbelieve.


*That said, I would NOT include the singularity in your list of secular delusions/errors. The singularity is a hypothetical possibility regarding the end result of technological advancement. The things we do now with technology would've appeared no different than magic to people even 100 years ago; and seeing as such advancement is not steadily progressive but accelerative, some version of the singularity seems like a logical outcome. The debate on the issue is whether or not we'll run into some kind of "wall" before AI can reach above-human-level intelligence, but we haven't hit that wall yet.
You do know that Ray Kurzweil's singularity theory is just a knock off of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point theory don't you? Except instead of God it's AI.


Firstly, I don't really see how those studies are relevant to the discussion when I already provided studies that linked heavily religious societies to more violence and less health/happiness and equally linked heavily secular/atheist societies to less violence and more health/happiness. Secondly, the "heath effects of religion on children" section of Wikipedia has this banner on it: "An editor has expressed a concern that this article lends undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, controversies or matters relative to the article subject as a whole. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message. (September 2012)" I notice there are no other studies posted. Thirdly, I wouldn't doubt the positive mental benefits of prayer for the same reason I wouldn't doubt the positive mental effects of meditation, but I'm not sure what that has to do with "religion," since even secularists can mediate or "pray" in some sense. Finally, such health benefits, even if true, do not necessarily correlate either into adulthood or on a larger social level, as my studies suggested.
Your studies don't indicate that more atheistic societies are less violent than religious ones. They indicate that Western societies are currently less violent than Eastern societies. Correlation does not imply causation. The people who conducted those studies chose to look for atheism, but they might just as well have looked for which society has the more blue jeans. Increased levels of atheism is incidental to the success of Western society and not it's cause. The real factors appear to be largely economic. Besides, your 2 percent of society isn't wagging the dog. To put it mildly, your conclusions are irrational and self-serving.

As for adulthood and mental health, I linked an article above on how religion leads to better mental well being. I'll quote another study here about how it lowers depression levels and prevents suicide.

METHOD: Depressed inpatients (N=371) who reported belonging to one specific religion or described themselves as having no religious affiliation were compared in terms of their demographic and clinical characteristics. RESULTS: Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members. Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. No differences in the level of subjective and objective depression, hopelessness, or stressful life events were found. CONCLUSIONS: Religious affiliation is associated with less suicidal behavior in depressed inpatients. After other factors were controlled, it was found that greater moral objections to suicide and lower aggression level in religiously affiliated subjects may function as protective factors against suicide attempts. Further study about the influence of religious affiliation on aggressive behavior and how moral objections can reduce the probability of acting on suicidal thoughts may offer new therapeutic strategies in suicide prevention.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=177228



This just sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense. I don't know how anyone can claim that science doesn't frequently contradict claims that were once in the authoritative domain of religion, be it cosmology, nature, history, etc.
Look up the conflict thesis of religion and science and you will see that it is based on nineteenth century propaganda by atheists twisting facts and lying to discredit religion. The people who believed in the conflict thesis have been disproved and discredited by modern historians of science. Your theory is out of date by a century, constantly disproved by experts, and yet you cling to it rather than accept the facts. Reminds me of the creationists.

[mortalterror]

By the same study the "non-religious" are at almost 10%, and I wonder if the difference isn't purely semantics caused by a host of negative connotations that have gotten attached to the label "atheism" over the years by religious groups. When I first rejected religion I identified as "agnostic" because I'd grown up hearing horror stories about evil atheists, and it took many years before I was comfortable with the label, even though my beliefs as an agnostic and atheist were identical.

Apparently there are several types of atheist and several types of non-religious, and it's a bit of a spectrum the same as conventional religion.

1) Intellectual atheist/agnostic

This type of nonbeliever seeks information and intellectual stimulation about atheism.

They like debating and arguing, particularly on popular Internet sites.

(Ahem.)

They're also well-versed in books and articles about religion and atheism, and prone to citing those works frequently.

2) Activist

These kinds of atheists and agnostics are not content with just disbelieving in God; they want to tell others why they reject religion and why society would be better off if we all did likewise.

They tend to be vocal about political causes like gay rights, feminism, the environment and the care of animals.

3) Seeker-agnostic

This group is made up of people who are unsure about the existence of a God but keep an open mind and recognize the limits of human knowledge and experience.

Silver and Coleman describe this group as people who regularly question their own beliefs and “do not hold a firm ideological position.”

That doesn't mean this group is confused, the researchers say. They just embrace uncertainty.

4) Anti-theist

This group regularly speaks out against religion and religious beliefs, usually by positioning themselves as “diametrically opposed to religious ideology,” Silver and Coleman wrote.

“Anti-theists view religion as ignorance and see any individual or institution associated with it as backward and socially detrimental,” the researchers wrote. “The Anti-Theist has a clear and – in their view, superior – understanding of the limitations and danger of religions.”

Anti-theists are outspoken, devoted and – at times – confrontational about their disbelief. They believe that "obvious fallacies in religion and belief should be aggressively addressed in some form or another.”

5) Non-theist

The smallest group among the six are the non-theists, people who do not involve themselves with either religion or anti-religion.

In many cases, this comes across as apathy or disinterest.

“A Non-Theist simply does not concern him or herself with religion,” Silver and Coleman wrote. “Religion plays no role or issue in one’s consciousness or worldview; nor does a Non- Theist have concern for the atheist or agnostic movement.”

They continue: “They simply do not believe, and in the same right, their absence of faith means the absence of anything religion in any form from their mental space.”

6) Ritual atheist

They don't believe in God, they don’t associate with religion, and they tend to believe there is no afterlife, but the sixth type of nonbeliever still finds useful the teachings of some religious traditions.

“They see these as more or less philosophical teachings of how to live life and achieve happiness than a path to transcendental liberation,” Silver and Coleman wrote. “For example, these individuals may participate in specific rituals, ceremonies, musical opportunities, meditation, yoga classes, or holiday traditions.”

For many of these nonbelievers, their adherence to ritual may stem from family traditions. For others, its a personal connection to, or respect for, the "profound symbolism" inherent within religious rituals, beliefs and ceremonies, according the researchers.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/15/the-six-types-of-atheists/
The non-religious and agnostics can be sub-divided into separate categories of their own but you get the idea. It's not all one thing.

[Eman Resu]

For accuracy's sake, "...alea iacta esto." Cæsar was not yet in Italy when he said this, but was at the Rubicon bridge, in Gaul (his own journal tells is that this was spoken at the north end of the span). Plutarch (in Βίοι Παράλληλοι) records Cæsar's quotation from Μένανδρος in the third person present imperative: "ἀνερρίφθω κύβος." The transcription error from Suetonius' De vita Cæsarum has been carried down through history, doubtless in this generation by the Great Oracle Wikipedia.

[Nick Capozzoli]

I have enjoyed reading the well-argued posts in this forum thread, and I've learned much from them. However I am dismayed by what seems to me to be an inability of members of two opposing camps, the religious and the atheist, to meet somewhere in the middle and live peaceably. Instead it seems we have what amounts to a state of ongoing war between the two camps, each one claiming to be arguing logically and "scientifically," and each seeking to prove the other somehow wrong. Both camps here claim to have "reason" and "science" on their side. This current debate between science and religion is not like the former great debates between science and religion, such as the debates between the Church and Galileo, or between Darwin and Wilberforce, or even the legal debate in the Scope's trial. Those older debates pitched religious dogmatism against scientific rationalism. What we seem to have here is a debate between folks who claim to be scientists and other folks who claim to be religious, both appealing to "reason" and "reality" to make their arguments.

For the purpose of full disclosure I must say that I am a scientist. I do understand how science views the physical and biological world. I also happen to believe in God, and I do not believe that belief in God is incompatible with being a good scientist.

"Dogmatism" is antithetical to science. True scientists, however much they believe that their science "explains" the world must always be willing to question their scientific beliefs. Religion is often presented as an unquestioning dogmatic acceptance of beliefs, and this has historically been the case. Scientific thinking is a relatively recent human enterprise, and religious/magical thinking is much, much older. It is easy for us to understand and criticize, from our modern perspective, the previous dogmatic arguments of religion against science (e.g. Galileo and Darwin). It is perhaps a little more difficult to appreciate how dogmatism can corrupt scientific thinking.

The fact is that supposed "scientists" can succumb to dogmatism. Scientists, as much as the religious, are still human beings with human minds, and they are subject to the same sort of psychological predispositions as folks who are not "scientists."

You would think that a "true" scientist would be free of such common human psychological prejudicial "baggage," and I would hope that this is so. Unfortunately many so-called scientists have not achieved such a state.

[YesNo]

Take a trip to any of the secular, atheistic societies I linked to in those studies and see how "hateful" these people are without the oppressive force of religion trying to dictate social, moral, and political policy everywhere they look. What you're suggesting is not unlike how privileged white males try to label feminists and minorities as "hateful" when the latter rail against inherently sexist and racist social policies. It's a trick, and illusion, to keep the social structures in place that empower the former groups. Religion does the exact same thing, and when atheism rails against, it gets labeled as "hateful."


To see atheistic hate at its extreme, watch The Killing Fields about the Khmer Rouge.



:rolleyes: I am NOT going to start another Many Worlds discussion with you. You have displayed ad infinitum that you don't even understand what Many Worlds is despite having four different people attempt to explain it to. You never even responded to my list of evidence in the last thread: Instead of addressing these issues, you chose to make the MW/CI issue about the nature of choice, and your Wishful Thinking that choice must exist because you want it to, and that choice can only exist in an indeterministic universe. Until you deal with the evidence above, you're the one believing in "collapse" mythologies in spite of the evidence.

You have provided dogmatic statements that you believe in. That's fine. I enjoy listening to atheists present their belief system. However, you have not provided evidence.

I think the closest we came to agreement is that many worlds does not account for the Born probabilities. That's enough to discredit it.



:rolleyes: I love how you equate publishing books/articles, engaging in public debate/lectures, etc. as the equivalent of being a "missionary." In the 19th century, what they're doing would've got them labeled "public intellectuals," (which they are). I think you should learn the difference.

I can understand that Dawkins and Hitchens want others to view them as better than missionaries for marketing purposes. Nonetheless, they are missionaries: they are looking for converts to their worldview in a religious context.



The study you cited linked atheists with violence, but it did not link violence with atheism rather than political ideology. Again, I've explained the difference between that and violence directly condoned by religious tenets and, again, you've ignored the argument. What's more, you ignored the articles I linked that not only connected religious societies with more violence, but showed how the most secular/atheistic societies were the most peaceful. In fact, if you look at the atheist societies that produced that violence in comparison with the peaceful atheist societies mentioned in my studies, you might find that the difference is political ideology, and a will to enforce that ideology on everyone within reach.

Because of the quantity of violence involved, the evidence of violence traceable to atheists is adequate for my purposes. Atheists are a small proportion of the population. According to the study, they account for three times the amount of violence as others.

Given that, I have to ask what is wrong with atheists?

What I am doing is mirroring the argument you have made against theists back onto atheists. When I do that, the evidence reflects even worse on atheists than it does on theists.

[YesNo]

I have enjoyed reading the well-argued posts in this forum thread, and I've learned much from them. However I am dismayed by what seems to me to be an inability of members of two opposing camps, the religious and the atheist, to meet somewhere in the middle and live peaceably. Instead it seems we have what amounts to a state of ongoing war between the two camps, each one claiming to be arguing logically and "scientifically," and each seeking to prove the other somehow wrong. Both camps here claim to have "reason" and "science" on their side. This current debate between science and religion is not like the former great debates between science and religion, such as the debates between the Church and Galileo, or between Darwin and Wilberforce, or even the legal debate in the Scope's trial. Those older debates pitched religious dogmatism against scientific rationalism. What we seem to have here is a debate between folks who claim to be scientists and other folks who claim to be religious, both appealing to "reason" and "reality" to make their arguments.


I didn't realize it until mortalterror posted the information about the "conflict theory", but the underlying assumption of this thread is something created by Draper and White in the 19th century. That is when they aligned atheism with science and then pitted science against religion. What we are discussing is the continued influence of that association.

There is no inherent conflict between science and religion. Both are ways to seek the truth and they can easily coexist. However, there is actual conflict between atheism and theistic religion. That is the conflict between two general views of the universe each seeking to persuade others to join their side.

I'm reading John William Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science http://www.templeofearth.com/books/historyoftheconflictbetween%20religion%20and%20sci ence.pdf embarrassed by how much of my own view of reality has been influenced by this thesis even though I thought I was opposed to Draper's position.

[MorpheusSandman]

Sadly, we have proven mighty poor stewards, it would seem.Have we been poor stewards or were we never stewards to anything more than our relative moral systems that invoked a God to legitimize those systems in our own minds? Don't you find it quite easy for mankind to establish a God in their OWN image, ascribe their own moral systems to that God, and then use that God to justify pretty much anything they want to? I think Yudkowsky gives a superb example with the Egyptian plagues:
Intrinsically, there's nothing small about the ethical problem with slaughtering thousands of innocent first-born male children to convince an unelected Pharaoh to release slaves who logically could have been teleported out of the country. It should be more glaring than the comparatively trivial scientific error of saying that grasshoppers have four legs. And yet, if you say the Earth is flat, people will look at you like you're crazy. But if you say the Bible is your source of ethics, women will not slap you. Most people's concept of rationality is determined by what they think they can get away with; they think they can get away with endorsing Bible ethics; and so it only requires a manageable effort of self-deception for them to overlook the Bible's moral problems. Everyone has agreed not to notice the elephant in the living room, and this state of affairs can sustain itself for a time.I think the crux of the argument is situated in that paragraph. Even if we were to accept that The Bible has a few good grains of moral truths, the underlying morality espoused in much of it is so far out of step with our modern conception that it's a marvel more people don't recognize it and "don't get slapped" for suggesting that's where they get their morality. Plus, even when thinking of something so many take as definitive like The Ten Commandments there are glaring (and very humorous (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE8ooMBIyC8)) problems with it.

[MorpheusSandman]

You are creating a false dichotomy that assumes that belief in atheism is rational and belief in theism is irrational.No, not at all. As Luke Muelhausser's banner on commonsenseatheism says: "Atheism is just the beginning; now it's time to solve the harder questions." In fact, I said as much when I said "Rejecting religion does not mean eliminating that bias completely, but it is one step on the path to rejecting all mystical thinking and the cognitive biases that produce them." I do believe that any true rationalism will reject religion and all mystical thinking, but rejecting mystical thinking does not endow one with a "perfected rationalist" membership card. Most atheists I know are only marginally (if at all) more rational than most of the theists I know. However, all of the most rational people I know are atheists.


...the reasons people become atheists or theists is rarely the result of prolonged thought and logic. If you study the literature on the subject, you'll see that the strongest factor in the conversion to either is usually what the person's family believes, specifically the spouse. The next biggest indicator is how well the religion caters to their lifestyle and other beliefs, ie the utility. It's almost never a rational decision based on rational logic about the truth or falseness of claims. In fact, I believe that it's largely temperamental whether one is an atheist or a theist. Rationality is what we use after the fact to justify our decisions to ourselves not the mechanism by which we choose to believe or disbelieve.I largely agree with this, however I'd put the qualifier "most" before "people become atheists" as I do think there are some people that develop an interest in rationality that lead them one way or another. I said in my post describing my apostasy, my interest in logic/rationality and epistemology developed during my years of doubts and true agnosticism (when I was genuinely unsure). I think the more interesting question is: if we you were to introduce a true agnostic to rationality and logic, and if they were to genuinely "perfect" the arts of both, would they be more likely to choose theism or atheism? Obviously based on my own experience I'd say the latter, because I do feel that it was rationality that was one of the major things that lead me away from theism to begin with.

One minor correction: In your last sentence, I think you're confusing rationality with rationalization, and they aren't the same. Most rationalizations contain logical flaws and cognitive biases that reveal what the believing brains WANT to believe. Genuine rationality exists to prevent such mistakes. I've said before that I'm only interested in the truth. If God announced himself tomorrow then I would have no qualms about converting to theism and whatever sect he said (and demonstrated) was the right one. Obviously, there are some atheists (mostly the anti-theists) that have deep-seated prejudices against religion for any number of reasons (a gay friend of mind has been brutally persecuted by Christians in his past, so his hatred of the religion stems primarily from that), but I am not one of them. If anything, given that my entire family is Christian, it would be much easier on me if I DID believe. The only thing preventing me from believing is, well, my adherence to genuine rationality.


You do know that Ray Kurzweil's singularity theory is just a knock off of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point theory don't you? Except instead of God it's AI... Look up the conflict thesis of religion and science and you will see that it is based on nineteenth century propaganda by atheists twisting facts and lying to discredit religion. The people who believed in the conflict thesis have been disproved and discredited by modern historians of science. Your theory is out of date by a century, constantly disproved by experts, and yet you cling to it rather than accept the facts. Reminds me of the creationists.I grouped these two rebuttals together because they're both committing a different form of the genetic fallacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy) I don't think it matters where any idea comes from, it only matters where the evidence is pointing at the time. I know more than one AI researcher who strongly believes that the singularity is not only a possibility but an inevitability. Most of the arguments AGAINST the singularity come from decidedly non-experts in AI that want to lump it under the category of jet-packs and underwater cities. FWIW, I am not convinced the singularity is an inevitability, but I am no AI researcher either. I'm just saying I don't think it belongs in the same category as Tarot Cards, as we already have AI. The question is merely can we develop AI sophisticated enough to mimic (and/or better) the human brain. The only people that can answer that are the people that do it for a living, not ignorant schmucks like you or I.

I don't even know what you mean "the conflict thesis has been discredited by modern historians of science." We have an ongoing war in the US between IDers and Evolutionists who deny evolution solely for the fact that they believe in the literal Genesis creation. How is that not a conflict? How was the conflict between Galileo and the Church not an actual conflict? How are the many demonstrably wrong Biblical claims about cosmology, the earth, biology, or even cures for leprosy? How in funk when God says to get the blood of a bird and do incantations to cure leprosy (14:49) is that NOT in direct conflict with science? Of course, it's not all that hard to "interpret away" many problems in Biblical science by claiming they were just allegories. In modern fiction we call this fanwanking.


Correlation does not imply causation.This entirely depends on what you mean by "imply." If you mean it in the strict logical sense, then that's true; but if you mean it in the more usual, common sense of "suggest," (as most do) then it's absolutely false. Really, because of the confusion of terms, that's one phrase that needs to be put to rest along with absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/) The correlation/causation one is a bit trickier than the latter (the latter is simply wrong), but correlation does indeed IMPLY causation (in the common sense of "imply" meaning "suggest'), it just doesn't PROVE causation (which "imply" means in the logical sense). To PROVE causation requires eliminating other variables that could be effecting either side of the correlate.


To put it mildly, your conclusions are irrational and self-serving.The conclusions were those of those who did the studies, not mine. You just don't like what they suggest. That's not my fault. If you feel the issue is more about economy than atheism then I'm sure you can provide a study that shows that correlate.


As for adulthood and mental health, I linked an article above on how religion leads to better mental well being. I'll quote another study here about how it lowers depression levels and prevents suicide.Many things have been shown to lower depression levels and prevent suicides including meditation, music, having pets, having friends, etc. Such a thing is hardly the sole domain of religion and, again, as my studies suggest, such a thing does not aggregate to a larger social level. Besides, the issue is (or was) really about whether more "crazies" were crazed due to religious beliefs or atheism. Showing that belief is mentally beneficial to normal people isn't really limiting the issue to the demographic we're talking about.


Apparently there are several types of atheist and several types of non-religious, and it's a bit of a spectrum the same as conventional religion.I would agree with that, but such considerations make such demographics and statistics a bit sketchy and indefinite. To me, it really comes down to "do you believe in God?" That is either a binary yes/no. If you are unsure, then that's as much a "no" than it is for someone to say they believe strongly there is no God at all. I still consider myself an agnostic atheist, and I define that as someone who doesn't believe in God, who believes the probability of God's existence is extremely low, but also recognizes there is still a huge amount of THE UNKNOWN existing out there where God could possibly be hiding himself.

[Eman Resu]

Don't you find it quite easy for mankind to establish a God in their OWN image, ascribe their own moral systems to that God, and then use that God to justify pretty much anything they want to?


Despite the word "cosmology" not having come into existence until the middle of the eighteenth century (Wolff, wasn't it?), Humans have been trying to explain how the universe came into being from before Mnemosyne gave birth to Urania (a-muse-ing, no?) right through modern Big Bangers like Steinhardt, Baum et al (in fact, the earliest surviving written texts - the Rigveda - deal with [physical] Origination five millennia in the past) and we've yet to see a scientific explanation for the origination of matter / energy which precipitated it. Personally, I'm in favour of the theory that an enormous elephant shrew was alone in the infinite void when it sneezed itself out of existence and subsequently ejected the initial phantom dark energy from its vast wiggly nose, creating the "hot dense state" which developed into the relationship between Leonard and Penny, but since so few people are familiar with elephant shrews (let alone their wiggly noses), I've thrown in with the 98% of Humanity which doesn't actively believe that there is no God.

Could that other 2% be correct in their assertion that there is no God? The Law of Probabilities says there's a 50-50 chance that they might be - but they still can't explain where that original elephant shrew with the wiggly nose came from.

[MorpheusSandman]

I am dismayed by what seems to me to be an inability of members of two opposing camps, the religious and the atheist, to meet somewhere in the middle and live peaceably.As I suggested elsewhere, if believers were content to keep their beliefs personal and not project them into everything from public policy to morality to missionary work, I don't think most atheists would have a problem with "living peaceably" with them. Historically, however, this has not been how believers have behaved and, indeed, it's not what's taught in most churches or even in The Bible. Richard Dawkins got into the debate because he discovered that believers were resisting having evolution taught in schools because of religious fundamentalism and were going so far as trying to introduce a pseudo-scientific textbook on Intelligent Design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People) into the public school curriculum. To me, when you have those kinds of situations (and there are many similar ones related to religious beliefs inserting themselves into social policy), I don't see how it's possible for the two sides to "live peaceably."


For the purpose of full disclosure I must say that I am a scientist. I do understand how science views the physical and biological world. I also happen to believe in God, and I do not believe that belief in God is incompatible with being a good scientist.I don't believe that belief in God is incompatible with being a good scientist (Francis Collins is one superb example), but I do believe it's incompatible with the scientific method. One can not get to God from the latter, and most of the claims made by revelations attributed the former have been debunked thanks to the scientific method. How much do we have to learn before we realize that science is an infinitely better way of understanding the world (and even ourselves) than religion is?


The fact is that supposed "scientists" can succumb to dogmatism. Scientists, as much as the religious, are still human beings with human minds, and they are subject to the same sort of psychological predispositions as folks who are not "scientists."You would think that a "true" scientist would be free of such common human psychological prejudicial "baggage," and I would hope that this is so. Unfortunately many so-called scientists have not achieved such a state.Knowing what I do about cognitive biases I would not expect scientists to be free of such "psychological baggage," because getting rid of such things require a concerted effort, and becoming a scientist doesn't require such an effort. I absolutely agree that scientists can be dogmatic, but wouldn't you also agree that the whole process of testing, retesting, and peer-review keeps such dogmatism in check? What I mean is that it doesn't allow any given scientist to say "this is how things are, and I neither have to test my claims, or submit the results to my peers for extensive criticism!" In fact, one could argue that scientific super-stardom happens when a scientist contradicts a previously paradigmatic model (Einstein over Newton, eg). Science progresses by bettering past science in demonstrable ways that leave little doubt as to their correctness. Religion lacks this testing, peer-review, or demonstrability. It relies entirely on the pronouncements of leaders saying "this is the way it is, and I neither have to prove my claims or submit them to my peers for criticism."

To me, those two ways of coming to understand the world are completely incompatible. What's more, it seems that those scientist that do ascribe to the scientific method (including peer-review) have to mentally compartmentalize to maintain a believe in God, and create a kind of "special pleading" that they wouldn't allow for any other hypothesis or theory. What do you think about all of this?

[MorpheusSandman]

However, you have not provided evidence. Then please address the points in the quoted part of my last post that you conveniently snipped off and have not addressed once either in this thread or in any of the QM threads.


I think the closest we came to agreement is that many worlds does not account for the Born probabilities. That's enough to discredit it.Then CI conflicting with everything we know about past physics without being able to disprove those past physics or subsume them or account for them or explain why that contradiction exists should discredit it.


I can understand that Dawkins and Hitchens want others to view them as better than missionaries for marketing purposes. Nonetheless, they are missionaries: they are looking for converts to their worldview in a religious context.This would make every academic and published intellectual a missionary. Helen Vendler (poetry critic) is a missionary because she published books and gives lectures on her interpretations of poets/poetry and she wants converts to her worldview.


Because of the quantity of violence involved, the evidence of violence traceable to atheists is adequate for my purposes. Atheists are a small proportion of the population. According to the study, they account for three times the amount of violence as others.

Given that, I have to ask what is wrong with atheists?This is identical to noticing that, despite being in the minority, blacks and hispanics are responsible for more violence in the US than are whites. What's wrong with blacks and hispanics? Actually, it's just an indication of why correlation does not PROVE causation, because the explanation for the violence statistics amongst minorities are better accounted for by population density and economics than race. Similar with your atheist/violence statistics. If there was a genuine correlation between violence and atheism then the studies I linked to shouldn't suggest what they do, that many modern secular/atheistic societies were more peaceful than most heavily religious nations. Here's a nice big graph (http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/06/atheist-nations-are-more-peaceful.html) based on a 2009 Global Peace Index study.


What I am doing is mirroring the argument you have made against theists back onto atheists. When I do that, the evidence reflects even worse on atheists than it does on theists.You're not mirroring squat except the fact you don't understand statistics, correlation, causality, or QM; but don't let that stop you.

[Eman Resu]

As I suggested elsewhere, if believers were content to keep their beliefs personal and not project them into everything from public policy to morality to missionary work, I don't think most atheists would have a problem with "living peaceably" with them.


This would bring scientific thought to an absolute halt, for, if under the assumption that it was "wrong" for those of Faith to bring "their personal beliefs" into Life, it would necessarily follow that science couldn't very well ask them to accept on Faith the scientific principles which they espouse - and this is precisely what the scientific community does daily: expecting the average person to accept on Faith such principles as are beyond their ken.

Most of us are dumber than a paper bag full of screwdrivers, Sandman, and simply haven't the intellectual wherewithal with which to grasp even quantum mechanics, let alone to remember to feed Schrödinger's cat. The street of "acceptance on Faith" has no "one way" sign; both voices should be heard equally.

[MorpheusSandman]

This would bring scientific thought to an absolute halt, for, if under the assumption that it was "wrong" for those of Faith to bring "their personal beliefs" into Life, it would necessarily follow that science couldn't very well ask them to accept on Faith the scientific principles which they espouse - and this is precisely what the scientific community does daily: expecting the average person to accept on Faith such principles as are beyond their ken.I absolutely did not mean it was wrong for people to bring their "personal beliefs" into life. However, if you ARE going to bring them into life, you better be prepared for backlash, criticism, and scrutiny, especially when your belief rests on a combination of ignorance, illogic, and arrogance. Most believers seem to want to bring their beliefs not only into life, but into social policy, and then complain when there is backlash, resistence, criticism, and scrutiny, many going as far as to complain that there's an immense scientific conspiracy against their God. All of that is easier than admitting they're simply wrong, ignorant, and illogical. IDers, eg, has had their days in court, and have failed every time because they're always forced to demonstrate their ignorance on the subject they're trying to get pushed out of schools (meaning evolution).

Conversely, science doesn't require faith in its principles because belief in those principles pay rent in anticipated experience. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/) It would be like saying that it requires faith to believe the sun will rise tomorrow; well, no it doesn't, because you can actually test that belief by watching the sunrise. Likewise, look at what belief in the scientific method has given us; our entire modern lives are a testament to its success for understanding how the world works (the means by which we're communicating now being one glowing example; computers were founded on a combination of binary logic and electricity).

Similarly, I don't believe most science is beyond the ken of most people; maybe mathematics, but most science can be simplified to where someone can understand it. Give me a few days and I think I could teach you what the current "debate" in Quantum Physics is all about without using any technical math. What's more, even if an individual doesn't understand gravity or rocket science, they can appreciate that science has used their understanding of both to travel to the moon. So, again, how much faith does it require once we've seen the results of such supposed understanding? Maybe those scientists are just pulling our leg and just saying they understand gravity and combustion when they're really wizards! But after such a demonstration, even a laymen would realize there has to be some explanation (be it scientists understanding gravity/rocket science or them being wizards) for such feats.

Religion utterly lacks such demonstrations, even though some are reported to have happened in The Bible, as in that "Religions Claim to be Non-Disprovable" article on Lesswrong, which opens with a Biblical example of a scientific experiment:
The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.

The people of Israel are wavering between Jehovah and Baal, so Elijah announces that he will conduct an experiment to settle it - quite a novel concept in those days! The priests of Baal will place their bull on an altar, and Elijah will place Jehovah's bull on an altar, but neither will be allowed to start the fire; whichever God is real will call down fire on His sacrifice. The priests of Baal serve as control group for Elijah - the same wooden fuel, the same bull, and the same priests making invocations, but to a false god. Then Elijah pours water on his altar - ruining the experimental symmetry, but this was back in the early days - to signify deliberate acceptance of the burden of proof, like needing a 0.05 significance level. The fire comes down on Elijah's altar, which is the experimental observation. The watching people of Israel shout "The Lord is God!" - peer review.Isn't it funny that The Bible uses scientific means by which to prove that the Christian God is the real God, but that same God is no longer willing to participate in such experiments? Or provide us with mass demonstrations like a 40-day flood (which remarkably resembles the supposed flood in Gilgamesh written much earlier)? Yudkowsky puts it best: "The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened."

[Eman Resu]

I absolutely did not mean it was wrong for people to bring their "personal beliefs" into life.


MP - that wasn't intended personally; the intent was simply to state a premise: "if this, then that." There are, however, some people whose convictions are sufficiently strong that they can see only one argument.







Isn't it funny that The Bible uses scientific means by which to prove that the Christian God is the real God, but that same God is no longer willing to participate in such experiments?


The Old Testament God and the New Testament God are seen through widely varying cultural worldviews - almost after the same fashion as Plutarch and Suetonius. When the sun goes down, Cæsar is still Cæsar; the Vast Elephant Shrew is still the Vast Elephant Shrew, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster is still a figment of your imagination.

That said, we - all of us - bring to the table out Life experiences - our own "baggage" if you will - but the manner in which we treat that "baggage" is what defines us. My Life experiences would never allow me to embrace Atheism, but that doesn't mean that an a-theist philosophy isn't right for anyone who chooses it, nor does it mean that I'd personally refuse to defend the right of any scientific atheist to espouse their beliefs in a public forum.

[MorpheusSandman]

MP - that wasn't intended personally; the intent was simply to state a premise: "if this, then that." There are, however, some people whose convictions are sufficiently strong that they can see only one argument.I didn't take it personally, I was just trying to clarify what I meant. It comes back to what was said about atheists and theists "not living peaceably," and my point was that when anyone is attempting to impose their beliefs onto others through, eg, social policy, then those beliefs need to be criticized, examined, scrutinized, debated, etc., and it's that process that results in the so-called "war." Peace is only possible when people keep to themselves, which isn't really how society works. In societies, we have a mutual responsibility to examine the policies and beliefs that are being promoted by every group. I think science can withstand that scrutiny much better than any religious belief.


That said, we - all of us - bring to the table out Life experiences - our own "baggage" if you will - but the manner in which we treat that "baggage" is what defines us. My Life experiences would never allow me to embrace Atheism, but that doesn't mean that an a-theist philosophy isn't right for anyone who chooses it, nor does it mean that I'd personally refuse to defend the right of any scientific atheist to espouse their beliefs in a public forum.Why would your life experience not allow you to embrace atheism, out of curiosity (if you don't mind my asking you)? I get what you're saying about us all having our own experiences and baggage, but going back to what I said about society above, it's equally true we aren't alone. Science itself wouldn't have flourished without the scientific community coming together to work through the puzzles in front of them. Personally, I'd like to think that I could come around to any worldview providing that it was true, or for which there was sufficient evidence to suggest it was more likely true than any other possibility. During my own apostasy, truth really became my God, and all of my non-artistic endeavors have been concerned with how we get to that God, and, thus far, rationality and science seem to be the best methods I've found, and it's on scientific and rational grounds I take issue with religion.

[Eman Resu]

Why would your life experience not allow you to embrace atheism, out of curiosity (if you don't mind my asking you)?


I don't mind in the least. I've spent more than four decades in a vocation which I genuinely Love - I honestly cannot wait to get to work every morning. I came of age in an household where reason and learning were revered, and had every possible benefit Life could offer - Parents who acted as guides rather than overlords; tutors whose patience with my inabilities was monumental, and later in Life, three mentors who treated me with incredible kindness. My Life path led through remarkable educational institutions, and prepared me even without my knowledge for the Life I've had the good fortune to live. I was blessed (my belief) with a fair-to-middling memory, the ability to learn and to retain - especially as regards languages - and I have either had extraordinary luck in Life, or I've been under the watchful eyes of more Angels, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I've never had to "work" at anything, and yet I live in comfortable surroundings whose acreage affords me the ability to walk in fields, words or along the edge of what Mister Blanding might have called, "a slow, broad river, deep and still." I've been privileged to handle some of the most beautiful books in the world on a daily basis; I've the fine company of eight rescue cats whose Love is boundless and without condition; I haven't seen a physician in more than fifty years; I can literally count the number of "bad days" I've had on a single hand... honestly, this could go on ad infinitum, but I suspect that the germ of thought is pretty clear. A better question - given the condition of circumstance - might be, "how could I not believe in God?"

[cafolini]

You don't have personal baggage. Whatever you think or do is of God and everyone else. As you approach the end of your time, the only thing you have to act with, in any way, you become fooler by the measure if you don't realize that you stupidly demand to be listened in your idiotic personal baggage which, no one could listen to, if obeying your idiotic contention, it were personal. Who are you trying to kid apart from yourself? Watch closely. I think you just pee and farted galore.

[Eman Resu]

Amusing above, in the penultimate sentence of expository, the typographical error, "words" for "woods." Typical bookseller gibberish, eh?

[MorpheusSandman]

A better question - given the condition of circumstance - might be, "how could I not believe in God?"Well, I'm genuinely happy that you've had such a good life as far too few are afforded the luxury. I suspect that had it not been for my health problems my situation would've been almost identical to yours and, indeed, I probably never would've had a reason to question if God existed myself. However, doesn't your post basically boil down to "my life has been good, so God must exist and be looking out for me," and doesn't that seem an awfully solipsistic reason?

[Eman Resu]

Well, I'm genuinely happy that you've had such a good life as far too few are afforded the luxury. I suspect that had it not been for my health problems my situation would've been almost identical to yours and, indeed, I probably never would've had a reason to question if God existed myself. However, doesn't your post basically boil down to "my life has been good, so God must exist and be looking out for me," and doesn't that seem an awfully solipsistic reason?


Have I put Des cartes before the horse? Could be, yes. We disagree philosophically, and yet we afford one another the courtesy of broad berth. There are worse things, no?

[MorpheusSandman]

Have I put Des cartes before the horse? :smilielol5: Whatever our philosophical disagreements, I'm enjoying your clever wordplay!

[Eman Resu]

:smilielol5: Whatever our philosophical disagreements, I'm enjoying your clever wordplay!


Not nearly as much as I'm enjoying the fact that you've been somehow fooled into thinking that I'm capable of clever wordplay. Besides, I doubt that our philosophies are much in disaccord; that would make us both disaccordian, and we'd be playing one another. Personally, I've never cared for polka music.

[mortalterror]

No, not at all. As Luke Muelhausser's banner on commonsenseatheism says: "Atheism is just the beginning; now it's time to solve the harder questions." In fact, I said as much when I said "Rejecting religion does not mean eliminating that bias completely, but it is one step on the path to rejecting all mystical thinking and the cognitive biases that produce them." I do believe that any true rationalism will reject religion and all mystical thinking, but rejecting mystical thinking does not endow one with a "perfected rationalist" membership card. Most atheists I know are only marginally (if at all) more rational than most of the theists I know. However, all of the most rational people I know are atheists.
I disagree that religious ideas cannot be rational. To quote A.H. Maslow the great American psychologist "One could say that the nineteenth-century atheist had burnt down the house instead of remodeling it. He had thrown out the religious questions with the religious answers, because he had to reject the religious answers. That is, he turned his back on the whole religious enterprise because organized religion presented him with a set of answers which he could not intellectually accept--which rested on no evidence which a self-respecting scientist could swallow. But what the more sophisticated scientist is now in the process of learning is that though he must disagree with most of the answers to the religious questions which have been given by organized religion, it is increasingly clear that the religious questions themselves--and religious quests, the religious yearnings, the religious needs themselves--are perfectly respectable scientifically, that they are rooted deep in human nature, that they can be studied, described, examined in a scientific way, and that the churches were trying to answer perfectly sound human questions." - A.H. Maslow 'Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences' p.18.

Try to think of theology as a constantly evolving discipline that represents the best answers to metaphysical questions we currently have the way that science represents the best explanations for concrete reality that we currently have.


I largely agree with this, however I'd put the qualifier "most" before "people become atheists" as I do think there are some people that develop an interest in rationality that lead them one way or another. I said in my post describing my apostasy, my interest in logic/rationality and epistemology developed during my years of doubts and true agnosticism (when I was genuinely unsure). I think the more interesting question is: if we you were to introduce a true agnostic to rationality and logic, and if they were to genuinely "perfect" the arts of both, would they be more likely to choose theism or atheism? Obviously based on my own experience I'd say the latter, because I do feel that it was rationality that was one of the major things that lead me away from theism to begin with.

It depends. Which side of the fence you land on using rationality is largely going to be dependent on outside social forces such as your time and social norms. Remember that the greatest rationalists, empiricists, and scientists in history have often been religious: Descartes, Pascal, Newton, etc. Then there is a literature thousands of years old comprised of logical arguments for the existence of God. Remember that in the eighteenth century the atheist Denis Diderot lamented that all the science and great thinkers were on the opposite side of the debate from him. What you should wonder, in the case of your own conversion, is if you'd found books X,Y, and Z before you found books R,S, and T, would you still be an atheist? How much of your atheism is dependent on the facts you were presented with, who presented them, and the malleability of your beliefs at the time you found your answers?


One minor correction: In your last sentence, I think you're confusing rationality with rationalization, and they aren't the same. Most rationalizations contain logical flaws and cognitive biases that reveal what the believing brains WANT to believe. Genuine rationality exists to prevent such mistakes. I've said before that I'm only interested in the truth. If God announced himself tomorrow then I would have no qualms about converting to theism and whatever sect he said (and demonstrated) was the right one. Obviously, there are some atheists (mostly the anti-theists) that have deep-seated prejudices against religion for any number of reasons (a gay friend of mind has been brutally persecuted by Christians in his past, so his hatred of the religion stems primarily from that), but I am not one of them. If anything, given that my entire family is Christian, it would be much easier on me if I DID believe. The only thing preventing me from believing is, well, my adherence to genuine rationality.
Yes, I suppose I did mean rationalization.


I grouped these two rebuttals together because they're both committing a different form of the genetic fallacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy) I don't think it matters where any idea comes from, it only matters where the evidence is pointing at the time. I know more than one AI researcher who strongly believes that the singularity is not only a possibility but an inevitability. Most of the arguments AGAINST the singularity come from decidedly non-experts in AI that want to lump it under the category of jet-packs and underwater cities. FWIW, I am not convinced the singularity is an inevitability, but I am no AI researcher either. I'm just saying I don't think it belongs in the same category as Tarot Cards, as we already have AI. The question is merely can we develop AI sophisticated enough to mimic (and/or better) the human brain. The only people that can answer that are the people that do it for a living, not ignorant schmucks like you or I.
Oh, I'm quite aware of the genetic fallacy. The philosopher and psychologist William James covered this aspect of religion in his classic The Varieties of Religious Experience. His point, briefly stated goes:

James believed that the study of the origin of an object or an idea does not play a role in the study of its value. He asserted that existential judgment, or the scientific examination of an object's origin, is a separate matter from that object's value. As an example, he alluded to the Quaker religion and its founder, George Fox. Many of the scientists in James' audience immediately reject all aspects of the Quaker religion because evidence suggests that Fox was schizophrenic. Calling this rejection medical materialism, James insisted that the origin of Fox's notions about religion should not come into account when assessing the value of the Quaker religion. As an aside, many believe El Greco to have suffered from astigmatism, yet no one would dismiss his art based on this medical detail. James proposed, somewhat sarcastically, that his audience's atheism was perhaps a dysfunction of the liver. Some believe science to be superior to religion because of religion's seemingly vain, unfounded, or perhaps insane origin. In his lectures, James asserted that these claims, while perhaps historically or epistemologically interesting, play no role in the separate question of religion's value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieti...ous_Experience
And from the man himself:

Perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value is undone if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances. Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his temperament is so emotional. Fanny's extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter of over-instigated nerves. William's melancholy about the universe is due to bad digestion—probably his liver is torpid. Eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peter would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air, etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticising the religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more earthly object of affection. And the like.[1]

We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it to some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But when other people criticise our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue.

Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.

And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.[2]

Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. Modern psychology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thorough-going and complete. If we adopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure; George Fox was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle was undoubtedly auto-intoxicated by some organ or other, no matter which,—and the rest. But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance? According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does that of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our raptures and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be they of religious or of non-religious content.

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no such sweeping skeptical conclusion. It is sure, just as every simple man is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinary spiritual judgment. It has no physiological theory of the production of these its favorite states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating them with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting bodily affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent.

Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts. When we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life. When we speak disparagingly of 'feverish fancies,' surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem for aught we know to the contrary, 103° or 104° Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem.

Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not always hang together. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most 'good' is not always most 'true,' when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. But its revelations, however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. The consequence of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience we shall hereafter hear much of them that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to every one; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.


It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely medical test. A good example of the impossibility of holding strictly to the medical tests is seen in the theory of the pathological causation of genius promulgated by recent authors. "Genius," said Dr. Moreau, "is but one of the many branches of the neuropathic tree." "Genius," says Dr. Lombroso, "is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "Whenever a man's life," writes Mr. Nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded with sufficient fullness to be a subject of profitable study, be inevitably falls into the morbid category. … And it is worthy of remark that, as a rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness."[3]

Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their own satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of disease, consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the value of the fruits? Do they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of existential conditions? Do they frankly forbid us to admire the productions of genius from now onwards? and say outright that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth?

No! their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong for them here, and hold their own against inferences which, in mere love of logical consistency, medical materialism ought to be only too glad to draw. One disciple of the school, indeed, has striven to impugn the value of works of genius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many) by using medical arguments.[4] But for the most part the masterpieces are left unchallenged; and the medical line of attack either confines itself to such secular productions as every one admits to be intrinsically eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively to religious manifestations. And then it is because the religious manifestations have been already condemned because the critic dislikes them on internal or spiritual grounds.

In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.

Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Va...ence/Lecture_I
Briefly stated, the messenger is not the message. I just found it amusing that you would accept religious doctrine repackaged as science fiction.


I don't even know what you mean "the conflict thesis has been discredited by modern historians of science." We have an ongoing war in the US between IDers and Evolutionists who deny evolution solely for the fact that they believe in the literal Genesis creation. How is that not a conflict? How was the conflict between Galileo and the Church not an actual conflict? How are the many demonstrably wrong Biblical claims about cosmology, the earth, biology, or even cures for leprosy? How in funk when God says to get the blood of a bird and do incantations to cure leprosy (14:49) is that NOT in direct conflict with science? Of course, it's not all that hard to "interpret away" many problems in Biblical science by claiming they were just allegories. In modern fiction we call this fanwanking.
You know that creationists are just a bunch of cranks and most theists believe in evolution though, right? We've all been on the same page since the beginning. Charles Kingsley was a priest and friend of Charles Darwin who was influential in popularizing his theories. Darwin even included a quote of his from a letter in a preface to the second edition of The Origin of Species:

"It's just as noble a conception of God to think that he created animals and plants that then evolved, that were capable of self-development, as it is to think that God has to constantly create new forms and fill in the gaps that he's left in his own creation."
Then you have Darwin's other influential theistic friends who helped popularize his theories. There was Frederick Temple the Archbishop of Canterbury:

Temple had a lifelong interest in science and religion. In 1860 at the famous meeting of the British Association which saw the debate between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, Temple preached a sermon welcoming the insights of evolution.[4] In his Eight Brampton Lectures on the Relations between Religion and Science (1884) he states clearly that "doctrine of Evolution is in no sense whatever antagonistic to the teachings of Religion." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Temple
Asa Gray, the most famous American botanist of the 19th century who popularized Darwin's theories on this continent, and corresponded with him was a believer in God and wrote his book "Darwiniana" trying to reconcile theists and evolutionists.

Gray denied that investigation of physical causes stood opposed to the theological view and the study of the harmonies between mind and Nature, and thought it "most presumable that an intellectual conception realized in Nature would be realized through natural agencies" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Gray#Relationship_with_Darwin

A relationship that continues today.

According to Eugenie Scott, Director of the US National Center for Science Education, "In one form or another, Theistic Evolutionism is the view of creation taught at the majority of mainline Protestant seminaries, and it is the official position of the Catholic church". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_of_evolution_by_religious_groups

The conflict relationship model between science and religion has it's roots in the writings of Draper and White in the nineteenth century, but few modern scientific historians believe in it. It's mostly been disproved and discredited and several decades ago at that.

The conflict thesis, which states that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science, remains generally popular for the public; most historians of science no longer support it.[1][2][3][4] Other contemporary scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, Francisco Ayala, Kenneth R. Miller and Francis Collins hold that religion and science are non-overlapping magisteria, addressing fundamentally separate forms of knowledge and aspects of life. Some theologians or historians of science, including John Lennox, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and Ken Wilber propose an interconnection between them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_religion_and_science
Then in the case of Galileo the Catholic Church did not act as a homogenous whole. The pope at the time had even been an admirer of Galileo's when he'd been a bishop, which encouraged Galileo to publish his theories a second time, leading to the trial. While the trial was ongoing Galileo stayed at the palace of a church official, and during the period of his "house arrest" he stayed for some months at the house of the archbishop of Siena, a friend of his. But this is one example of religion coming into conflict with science. For every such example there are ten more of religion fostering science and helping it along. Consider this article in the economist which brakes down the Catholic Church's finances in the US.

with the result that there are now over 6,800 Catholic schools (5% of the national total); 630 hospitals (11%) plus a similar number of smaller health facilities; and 244 colleges and universities. Many of these institutions are known for excellence: seven of the leading 25 part-time law school programmes in America are Catholic (five are run by Jesuits). A quarter of the 100 top-ranked hospitals are Catholic. All these institutions are subject to the oversight of a bishop or a religious order.

The Economist estimates that annual spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010 (the church does not release such figures). We think 57% of this goes on health-care networks, followed by 28% on colleges, http://www.economist.com/node/21560536
That's right. The Catholic Church spends 48.8 Billion dollars a year on American education, and that is nothing compared to what they've done in Europe over the course of twenty centuries. Practically all of the schools in Europe at one point were probably run by the Church and staffed entirely by Christian scientists.

[MorpheusSandman]

I disagree that religious ideas cannot be rational. To quote A.H. Maslow the great American psychologist... Try to think of theology as a constantly evolving discipline that represents the best answers to metaphysical questions we currently have the way that science represents the best explanations for concrete reality that we currently have.This would depend on what you mean by "religious ideas." I would define religious ideas as any systematic theory centered around some supernatural deity that exists and who has "revealed" those "religious ideas" to believers. To me, the entire last sentence cannot be reconciled with rationality. I suspect that many of the "best answers to metaphysical questions" religion could give us are not the unique property of religion to begin with. That quote by Maslow reminds me of the writings of William Blake and Carl Jung, both of whom explored what one may call "religious quests, yearnings, and needs" themselves. In fact, I wrote this recently about both on another forum:
Speaking a someone with a love for mythology, art, and as someone who very much believes in transcendental (some may call them "religious") experiences, I very much like the idea of God as an idea. After my apostasy in my teens, I spent many years feeling that "God" was just this stupid lie invented by stupid people, but then I read authors like Carl Jung, William Blake, and I began to see that God could very much represent the "eternal" within man. I loved Jung's interpretation of Genesis as being an allegory about how knowledge pulled man away from his origins, represented by God/Eden, which he associated with the rise of consciousness, even with the individual maturation process where the child begins to recognize him/herself as an individual separate from their mother (so we have these interlocking associations between Eden/God/Mothers/The womb and knowledge/fruits/Good/Evil, etc.).

William Blake had, IMO, an even more enlightening interpretation on the matter. For Blake, much like Jung, religions were just allegorical expressions of the psychological inner life of man, but Blake delved deeper into both the positive and negative aspects of this. For Blake, the God of the Old Testament was akin to his "Urizen," the God whom, after the fall, tries to create order from chaos, and order comes in the form of rules and law and the suppression of emotion (emotion represented by his "Orc"). Blake saw the unleashing of "Orc" as representing the uprising of, eg, people against government, of chaos over the existing order. But Blake later incorporated Los as well, or the power of imagination. For Blake, Los was the equivalent of Jesus, the God that came in the form of man, the God that told stories and parables. Blake thought that it was Los's responsibility to transform the raw power of Orc into something visionary, prophetic, which is what he saw in Milton's Satan; ie, a "Los/poet" in Milton who "descended to hell" to transform "Satan/Orc" into a revolutionary, visionary force. So Blake had a very elaborate, eloquent, allegorical take on The Bible, one which he never dismissed as wholly bad or wholly good, but rather one in which he felt he could subsume into his own mythology.

So I guess that's what I mean when I say I like God as an idea, but I dislike God as a fundamental, external, concept that can actually explain nature in any remotely scientific manner. The chance of there being an external "God" out there that created the universe and man is almost zero, in my estimation. But the chance of there being "God" in an abstract sense within man is 100%. I just wish more would get acquainted with Blake's God/Jesus rather than taking the God/Jesus of The Bible literally. The way you talk about religion and quote Maslow reminds me of the vestiges of religion I still think have some validity, as allegorical expressions of human psychology, but NOT as systems for understanding anything about objective reality.


Which side of the fence you land on using rationality is largely going to be dependent on outside social forces such as your time and social norms... What you should wonder, in the case of your own conversion, is if you'd found books X,Y, and Z before you found books R,S, and T, would you still be an atheist? How much of your atheism is dependent on the facts you were presented with, who presented them, and the malleability of your beliefs at the time you found your answers?I don't like the notion that what side of the fence you land on "using rationality" is dependent on social forces, as what would be the point of rationality if you couldn't use it to change your mind when "social forces" were wrong? It reminds me of a section of this article: (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl/what_is_evidence/)
This is why rationalists put such a heavy premium on the paradoxical-seeming claim that a belief is only really worthwhile if you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise. If your retina ended up in the same state regardless of what light entered it, you would be blind. Some belief systems, in a rather obvious trick to reinforce themselves, say that certain beliefs are only really worthwhile if you believe them unconditionally— no matter what you see, no matter what you think. Your brain is supposed to end up in the same state regardless. Hence the phrase, "blind faith". If what you believe doesn't depend on what you see, you've been blinded as effectively as by poking out your eyeballs.Indeed, there's also the oft-used quote amongst Bayesian rationalists (of which I'm one) that true rationalists can't agree to disagree. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem) Now, you may (fairly) say that the "social forces" would be an integral part of any individual's priors, which is why I specified a "true agnostic," meaning someone who may put the probability of God at precisely 50%, as that would imply that their priors, the "social forces," would've only lead them to the place where their belief is 50/50. Hence the question of where rationality would lead in that specific situation, since in that situation the ultimate belief should be affected more by rationality rather than social forces.

As for the question you ask about me personally, one thing I should stress is that when I began my odyssey of apostasy I grudgingly gave up ever inch of ground of my belief. I started out very much wanting to believe, wanting to find answers to my questions, wanting to maintain this thing that had been an integral part of my entire life up until that point. However, it was equally my realization that I couldn't give into easy, cliched, rationalized answers--hence my simultaneous interest in epistemology and rationality. I (perhaps unconsciously at the time) wanted to establish a method for evaluating the evidence on both sides, and not falling for convincing but ultimately empty/false rhetoric. So I don't think it was a matter of what books/evidences I encountered when as I read A LOT on both sides, even a lot of debates where I got to hear both sides back-to-back. So, again, I credit my interest in rationality with my inability to buy into the theist arguments despite my extremely strong proclivity FOR believing them. Even today, the social pressures around me (my family, friends, most of my past girlfriends) are pushing me towards belief. Were it not for my subscription to rationality I don't see any other reason for me not to believe.


I just found it amusing that you would accept religious doctrine repackaged as science fiction.Again, I'm not accepting it, what I'm saying is that I don't think the singularity belongs on the same list as things like Tarot Cards and the like as genuine experts in the field feel it is a very real possibility if not an inevitability. These are people that are already capable of making advanced AI, so AI is a reality; singularity is a possible end-point of that current reality. It requires, IMO, more serious consideration than the other "pseudo-sciences" (actually, the singularity isn't even a "science," pseudo or otherwise).


You know that creationists are just a bunch of cranks and most theists believe in evolution though, right?Yes, but they're a noisy bunch of cranks with a lot of money and power backing them, enough to have made it to the US Supreme Court, enough to have made several attempts at getting ID taught in public schools. However, you still must admit that they are one very real, very current examples of religion opposing science. Whether they're a minority or not is really beside the point.


The conflict relationship model between science and religion has it's roots in the writings of Draper and White in the nineteenth century, but few modern scientific historians believe in it. It's mostly been disproved and discredited and several decades ago at that. And what of the other conflicts I mentioned? What of all the passages in The Bible, especially about physical reality, that are out of step with modern science? Do believers just sweep them under the rug? Read them all as allegories? Pretend they were just errors made by fallible humans? Besides, even besides all of those, I still maintain that the scientific way of understanding reality VS the religious way are completely opposed, and the only way to reconcile them is to compartmentalize, to claim that science is limited to certain areas and that in those areas that religion can maintain authority. I maintain that this "separate magisterium" theory is complete BS, as the Yudkowsky article I've already posted twice (I think) argues.

[mortalterror]

And what of the other conflicts I mentioned? What of all the passages in The Bible, especially about physical reality, that are out of step with modern science?
Limiting Christian thought to the Bible is akin to limiting medical science to Galen. There has been a wealth of progress and thought since then. Some things don't hold up but then some things do. Science is an evolving discipline like Theology, and when one idea becomes outdated it is replaced with a new one that better explains the available evidence. Your argument is a straw man. You wouldn't claim that philosophy is disprovable garbage and stopped with the ancient Greeks. And I don't see you claiming that subjects like art, literature, and music are in conflict with science. Come to think of it, atheists always frame their argument in such a weird limited way. I've never seen a theist ask an atheist to justify the scientific and metaphysical beliefs of Epicurus and Lucretius, and then pretend like atheist culture never changed after them. You're not engaging with Christianity as a 21st century culture.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Knowing what I do about cognitive biases I would not expect scientists to be free of such "psychological baggage," because getting rid of such things require a concerted effort, and becoming a scientist doesn't require such an effort. I absolutely agree that scientists can be dogmatic, but wouldn't you also agree that the whole process of testing, retesting, and peer-review keeps such dogmatism in check?

I would agree in principle that these processes should provide a check on dogmatism, if this constant questioning, testing/retesting, and peer review were honestly were honestly pursued. I'm not sure that this is guaranteed. For example, consider the science regarding "global warming." I have no scientific expertise in this area, but it does seem that there have been some legitimate questions about the objectivity of global warming researchers...concerns that were raised by the release of emails suggesting that one of the major research groups in the UK had some pretty clear biases when it came to deciding (via "peer review") the research that they would publish. Legitimate concerns were raised that these global warming "experts" were less than honest in rejecting out of hand any research that didn't "tow the party line" regarding global warming. Indeed, it does seem that folks, who were otherwise acting as good scientists, but who had ideas that didn't support the global warming "party line," were dismissed out of hand as "global warming deniers," just like, say, Holocaust Deniers"...

What I mean is that it doesn't allow any given scientist to say "this is how things are, and I neither have to test my claims, or submit the results to my peers for extensive criticism!" In fact, one could argue that scientific super-stardom happens when a scientist contradicts a previously paradigmatic model (Einstein over Newton, eg). Science progresses by bettering past science in demonstrable ways that leave little doubt as to their correctness. Religion lacks this testing, peer-review, or demonstrability. It relies entirely on the pronouncements of leaders saying "this is the way it is, and I neither have to prove my claims or submit them to my peers for criticism."

No argument there. That is a real difference between religion and science. My point was that science can suffer from the same sort of dogmatism as religion, if so-called scientists succumb to human psychological tendencies to become dogmatic. Scientists are not immune from this tendency. My point is that honest scientists should be aware of this pitfall and have the intellectual ability to avoid it.

To me, those two ways of coming to understand the world are completely incompatible. What's more, it seems that those scientist that do ascribe to the scientific method (including peer-review) have to mentally compartmentalize to maintain a believe in God, and create a kind of "special pleading" that they wouldn't allow for any other hypothesis or theory. What do you think about all of this?

All that is necessary for a rational and honest person who takes the scientific approach is to recognize what he can and cannot "explain" via observation of the world and the scientific method. Any aspect of human experience is a legitimate subject for science. The scientist's goal is to try to explain our human experience of the world. That includes discussing things like the idea of God, life, etc.

[MorpheusSandman]

Limiting Christian thought to the Bible is akin to limiting medical science to Galen. There has been a wealth of progress and thought since then. Some things don't hold up but then some things do. Science is an evolving discipline like Theology, and when one idea becomes outdated it is replaced with a new one that better explains the available evidence. Your argument is a straw man. You wouldn't claim that philosophy is disprovable garbage and stopped with the ancient Greeks. And I don't see you claiming that subjects like art, literature, and music are in conflict with science. Come to think of it, atheists always frame their argument in such a weird limited way. I've never seen a theist ask an atheist to justify the scientific and metaphysical beliefs of Epicurus and Lucretius, and then pretend like atheist culture never changed after them. You're not engaging with Christianity as a 21st century culture.Hopefully it's clear by now my primary beef is against fundamentalism, the belief that The Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man. When I think of the "conflict" between religion and science, my mind immediately goes to the parts of The Bible that are demonstrably out of step with science. I'm certainly aware that many Christian thinkers feel the two are not in conflict, and do this by treating much of the Bible as allegorical, or recognizing that much of it was written by erring humans, offering, perhaps, only glimpses (but never perfect ones) of God, or feel that The Bible was only a starting point and that future Theologians have as much of value to add as any of The Bible's authors. I have much less a problem with those views, even if I do feel they're still (naively) holding on to a objective conception of God.

However, I have to take issue with your comparison of Theological and Scientific progress. Science progresses in demonstrable ways; Newtonian physics is demonstrably more accurate than what came before, Einstein demonstrably more accurate than Newton; Modern evolution is demonstrably more accurate than Darwin. I don't see how such progress can be measured in Theology, as opposed to Theology simply changing as societies and cultures change, which isn't unlike most Philosophy (though philosophy tends to intermix with science more frequently, especially considering science was initially rooted in philosophy). I would not label either as garbage until they start talking about the way the objective world works without science. What the Greeks had to say about cosmology is, indeed, pretty worthless to us today except as a historical record of Western thought. If they're addressing aspects of the subjective human experience, then that can be universally, timelessly true; not to mention areas where proofs and science can't tread, like normative ethics. Similarly, the value of art does not exist in the truths it reveals but in its truthful representation of experience. Keats' "beauty is truth, truth beauty" need not be "true" to have validity as a thought/feeling expressed dramatically within the form of his great Ode. However, art doesn't "progress" either, it just changes. Literature has never bettered Homer; perhaps philosophy has never bettered Plato; but science has undoubtedly bettered Thales.

Perhaps to put it another way: if we're talking about understanding how reality actually works, then science has proven the only legitimate means of achieving that understanding, and philosophy and Theology have almost nothing to contribute; if, however, we're talking about understanding the subjective human experience, becoming aware of our thoughts, or thinking through unprovable initial propositions (like in normative ethics), then these are, indeed, areas where philosophy and, perhaps, Theology have validity.

[MorpheusSandman]

I would agree in principle that these processes should provide a check on dogmatism, if this constant questioning, testing/retesting, and peer review were honestly were honestly pursued. I'm not sure that this is guaranteed.I kind of think it is guaranteed over time for a couple of reasons.

1. The worldwide scientific community is huge.
2. Two traits many scientists are afflicted with are ambition and ego.
3. Given 1. and 2., it would take an immense concerted effort for that community to come together to form a conspiracy that promoted false theories. Also given 1. and 2., it wouldn't really be in the interest of scientists to do so anyway as that's not how scientists get ahead and win recognition and prizes. If anything, scientists get ahead by debunking the most popular theories at the time and doing so in demonstrable ways (Einstein's Eclipse experiment, eg).

So, even if there were a group of scientists, even prominent ones, who were trying to "get over" the public by promoting false theories, faked evidence, tests, etc., it's very difficult for me to imagine that, given peer review and subsequent testing, that no other groups or individuals would come along and reveal the attempt. In fact, such things HAVE happened in science's history, and every time it was debunked by other scientists, which does seem to show that there is a kind of internal policing within the community. You mention Global Warming, and whatever the biases of one major UK Group, what would be the point of climate researchers from other countries agreeing with them? Global Warming is something that 97% of climate scientists agree on, and I'm pretty sure one UK group does not account for that 97%, nor do I think you can rationally claim that this group is so powerful that they've deluded or bullied every other global group of climate scientists.


My point is that honest scientists should be aware of this pitfall and have the intellectual ability to avoid it.We're agreed this. This is why I think study of cognitive biases and logic should enter the public education system early. What is the point of teaching kids facts if you aren't also teaching them how to think correctly?


All that is necessary for a rational and honest person who takes the scientific approach is to recognize what he can and cannot "explain" via observation of the world and the scientific method. Any aspect of human experience is a legitimate subject for science. The scientist's goal is to try to explain our human experience of the world. That includes discussing things like the idea of God, life, etc.Ok, so what, in your opinion, can and cannot be explained via observation and the scientific method, and what value does religion have in those areas?

[Eman Resu]

Hopefully it's clear by now my primary beef is against fundamentalism, the belief that The Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man. When I think of the "conflict" between religion and science, my mind immediately goes to the parts of The Bible that are demonstrably out of step with science.


After several careful rephrasings, I'll ask this question with a preamble: this question is not intended in any way to seem "snotty;" it's being asked solely because I don't know the depth nor the breadth of your having delved into the Old Testament.

Have you read the Old Testament (since it's primarily the OT with which you take issue) as close to the source as possible (and here I don't mean the "chronological source" like the Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus, but rather the linguistic source - the Aleppo Codex or the Leningrad Codex - or better yet, the extrabiblical manuscripts from Khirbet Qumran which speak to the immense diversity of the renditions of Originism within the construct of Second Temple [i.e. early Intertestamental Period] Judaism), or are you relying upon more modern "sources?

[mal4mac]

I kind of think it is guaranteed over time...

Yes,"over time" is the key point. There have been individual hoaxes, or very dubious "scientific" results, like "cold fusion" and "Piltdown man", but repeated investigation showed these to be hoaxes, or not acceptable. For "difficult to prove" theories, like "General Relativity" it took decades and many repeated, and repeatable, experiments before general acceptance. "The resurrection", "virgin birth", and other Christian "miracles" have no more prime facie validity than Piltdown man. Why should we accept dubious reports of these events... we need *repeatable* experiments & coherent theories before we can start believing in such things.

[Eman Resu]

Yes,"over time" is the key point. There have been individual hoaxes, or very dubious "scientific" results, like "cold fusion" and "Piltdown man", but repeated investigation showed these to be hoaxes, or not acceptable.

...and with the advent of Martin Tajmar's gravitomagnetism research and Thomas Smid's Lorentz transformation reconfigurations, more and more, the General Theory seems a pretty close approximation of early religious texts.

;)

[mal4mac]

...and with the advent of Martin Tajmar's gravitomagnetism research and Thomas Smid's Lorentz transformation reconfigurations, more and more, the General Theory seems a pretty close approximation of early religious texts.

;)

GR is a good model, mercury's orbit wouldn't precess as predicted, light wouldn't bend as predicted, certain clock's wouldn't even work, if it was a bad model. God is a bad model; early religious texts are bad designs for a bad model.

[Nick Capozzoli]

I kind of think it is guaranteed over time for a couple of reasons.

1. The worldwide scientific community is huge.
2. Two traits many scientists are afflicted with are ambition and ego.
3. Given 1. and 2., it would take an immense concerted effort for that community to come together to form a conspiracy that promoted false theories. Also given 1. and 2., it wouldn't really be in the interest of scientists to do so anyway as that's not how scientists get ahead and win recognition and prizes. If anything, scientists get ahead by debunking the most popular theories at the time and doing so in demonstrable ways (Einstein's Eclipse experiment, eg).

So, even if there were a group of scientists, even prominent ones, who were trying to "get over" the public by promoting false theories, faked evidence, tests, etc., it's very difficult for me to imagine that, given peer review and subsequent testing, that no other groups or individuals would come along and reveal the attempt. In fact, such things HAVE happened in science's history, and every time it was debunked by other scientists, which does seem to show that there is a kind of internal policing within the community. You mention Global Warming, and whatever the biases of one major UK Group, what would be the point of climate researchers from other countries agreeing with them? Global Warming is something that 97% of climate scientists agree on, and I'm pretty sure one UK group does not account for that 97%, nor do I think you can rationally claim that this group is so powerful that they've deluded or bullied every other global group of climate scientists.

We're agreed this. This is why I think study of cognitive biases and logic should enter the public education system early. What is the point of teaching kids facts if you aren't also teaching them how to think correctly?

Ok, so what, in your opinion, can and cannot be explained via observation and the scientific method, and what value does religion have in those areas?

As regards the value of Peer Review and science's ability to depend on such self-policing, I refer back to a comment I made a couple of days ago:

I would agree in principle that these processes should provide a check on dogmatism, if this constant questioning, testing/retesting, and peer review were honestly were honestly pursued. I'm not sure that this is guaranteed. For example, consider the science regarding "global warming." I have no scientific expertise in this area, but it does seem that there have been some legitimate questions about the objectivity of global warming researchers...concerns that were raised by the release of emails suggesting that one of the major research groups in the UK had some pretty clear biases when it came to deciding (via "peer review") the research that they would publish. Legitimate concerns were raised that these global warming "experts" were less than honest in rejecting out of hand any research that didn't "tow the party line" regarding global warming. Indeed, it does seem that folks, who were otherwise acting as good scientists, but who had ideas that didn't support the global warming "party line," were dismissed out of hand as "global warming deniers," just like, say, Holocaust Deniers"...

Now I am not going to take a position on the veracity of "Global Warming Science" but the emails that were recently exposed in the news media certainly do raise the spectre of bias by those whose job it is to objectively review and publish research on "Global Warming." It is every bit as bad for the reputation of science as was the Piltdown fiasco. Lest we forget, the Piltdown Hoax was easily taken up and even championed by reputable scientists because the skeletal "evidence" so neatly fit the notions of human evolution prevailing at the time the "evidence" was "discovered." Perhaps the UK researchers were affected by a similar willingness to accept prevailing theories about anthropogenic "climate change. Whatever their motivation, the emails, which so far as I know were not "made up" by Global warming critics, must raise questions about the ability of at least some highly regarded members of the scientific community to honestly and objectively police themselves via "Peer Review."

As regards my opinion of what can and cannot be explained via observation and the scientific method, I believe that everything within our human experience of the world is "fair game" to be the subject of science. This includes our experience of consciousness, all aspects of our behavior, including perception, cognition, emotions, and even "morality." Whether or not we can come up with adequate scientific "explanations" for these things depends on our powers of observation and our intellectual ability to formulate testable scientific hypotheses to account for our observations. As to the role of "religion" in all this not really clear to me. Maybe the role of religion is to provide us with some sort of alternative cognitive assurance regarding those aspects of our world that science cannot (as yet) adequately explain.

[mortalterror]

I was reading that comment about the faked Global Warming study, and it reminded me of this article from two weeks ago about a faked cancer study that got accepted by 157 journals.

A cancer drug discovered in a humble lichen, and ready for testing in patients, might sound too good to be true. That's because it is. But more than a hundred lower-tier scientific journals accepted a fake, error-ridden cancer study for publication in a spoof organized by Science magazine.

The fake study points to a "Wild West" of pay-to-publish outlets feeding off lower tiers of the scientific enterprise by publishing studies without any appreciable scrutiny, say research ethics experts. (See "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?")

Some 8,250 "open-access" scientific journals worldwide are now listed in a directory supported by publishers. Unlike traditional science journals that charge for subscriptions or fees from those wishing to read their contents, open-access journals make research studies free to the public. In return, study authors pay up-front publishing costs if the paper is accepted for publication.

"From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees," says journalist John Bohannon, writing in the Science magazine report of his survey-style spoof of review practices at such journals.

The cover of Science magazine.

Image courtesy Science/AAAS

"The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable," Bohannon says. Of 255 open-access journals that said they would review his study, 157 accepted the fake study for publication. "Acceptance was the norm, not the exception," he writes.

Science Spoofs Not New

Spoof studies intended to spotlight problems with individual journals and their review practices have made news before. New York University physicist Alan Sokal spoofed the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996 with a crackpot physics treatise. And last month, Serbian academics spoofed a Romanian journal with a similarly ludicrous data-processing paper.

But the Bohannon study, which claimed to have discovered a cancer-fighting, lichen-derived drug ready for immediate testing on patients, represents a first systematic test of review practices, or their absence, across many journals at once, says research ethics expert Nicholas Steneck of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131003-bohannon-science-spoof-open-access-peer-review-cancer/

So I punched in Science scandals into google and an alarming number of articles showed up from the Sokal Affair:

The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax,[1] was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies – whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross – [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".[2]

The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][4] On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense...structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics".[2]

The resultant academic and public quarrels concerned the scholarly merit of humanistic commentary about the physical sciences; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether the journal had exercised appropriate intellectual rigor before publishing the pseudoscientific article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

to The Schon Scandal:

The Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970 in Verden) who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent.[1] Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics and the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 as well as the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002, which was later rescinded.

The scandal provoked discussion in the scientific community about the degree of responsibility of coauthors and reviewers of scientific papers. The debate centered on whether peer review, traditionally designed to find errors and determine relevance and originality of papers, should also be required to detect deliberate fraud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

And this article from The Scientist on the Top Science Scandals of 2012:

A widely discussed research study published this year showed that more than sloppy mistakes or accidental omissions, retracted papers are most likely to be withdrawn from publication because of scientific misconduct or knowlingly publishing false data. In fact, more than 65 percent of the 2,000 or so papers studied were retracted because of poor ethical judgment. According to that report, high impact journals have been hardest hit by the increasing rate of retractions over the past decade.

In light of these findings, researchers and other observers have proposed several initiatives to help the scientific community with its apparent honesty issues. One suggestion was the creation a Retraction Index. Unlike the Impact Factor, which is based on a journal’s citation rate, the Retraction Index would indicate the number of retractions a journal has for every 1,000 papers published. Following suit, Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch blog suggested creating a Transparency Index, which could include a score for how well a journal controls its manuscript review process, including how it conducts peer review, whether supporting data are also reviewed, whether the journal uses plagiarism detecting software, and a number of other measures. Finally, the lab-services start-up Science Exchange and the open access journal PLOS ONE have collaborated to suggest the Reproducibility Initiative, which would provide a platform for researchers to submit their studies for replication by other labs for a fee. Studies that are successfully reproduced will win a certificate of reproducibility.

Still, The Scientist found no shortage of stories to discuss in this year’s roundup of misconduct stories. Here are a few of the most glaring examples of scientific fraud in 2012:

10 years of fabrication

This year, University of Kentucky biomedical researcher Eric Smart was discovered to have falsified or fabricated 45 figures over the course of 10 years. His research on the molecular mechanisms behind cardiovascular disease and diabetes was well regarded, despite his having used data from knockout mouse models that never existed. “Dr. Smart’s papers were highly cited in the specific caveolae/cardiovascular research field,” Philippe Frank of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia told The Scientist. Smart resigned from his university post in 2011, when the investigation in his misconduct started, and agreed to exclude himself from federal grant applications for the next 7 years. He now teaches chemistry at a local school.

Record-setting retractions

Setting the record for the most publications up for retraction by a single author, Japanese anesthesiologist Yo****aka Fujii fabricated data in a whopping 172 papers. Beginning his career in falsification in 1993 while at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, he continued it at the University of Tsukuba, and at Toho University in Tokyo, where he was finally dismissed in February 2012. According to investigations, Fujii never actually saw the patients he reported in his clinical studies, failed to get ethical review board approval for his research, and misled co-authors, sometimes including their names without their permission or knowledge. Although the retractions are not expected to have a large impact on the field—many of them had low citation rates—Fujii used the publications to further his career, publishing a total of 249 papers.

False forensics

The results from roughly 34,000 criminal drug cases were put into question earlier this year, when forensic chemist Annie Dookhan at the shuttered Department of Public Health Lab in Massachusetts was discovered to have falsified records on samples she was assigned to process. Instead, she forged signatures and did not perform tests she recorded as complete, according to investigations. Suspicions may have first arisen due to her impressive output—she claimed to have processed 9,000 samples in a year, whereas colleagues only averaged around 3,000. As a result of her actions, a number of defendants may have been wrongly imprisoned, while others who may have been rightly accused were freed. This month, Boston police warned of an expected spike in crimes due to the large number of convicted drug offenders who will be released because of Dookhan’s misconduct.

Creative reviewing strategies

Rather than falsify data in order to get published, researchers have taken a new tack this year by writing glowing expert reviews for their own papers. When asked by journal editors to suggest names of experts in their field who were not involved in their research, at least four submitting authors suggested names and emails that then forwarded back to their own inboxes. The trend, first reported by Retraction Watch, was caught by one journal editor when author Hyung-In Moon, assistant professor at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea, offered up names of reviewers with Google and Yahoo rather than university email accounts. “It should be a wake-up call to any journals that don’t have rigorous reviewer selection and screening in place,” Irene Hames, a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33695/title/Top-Science-Scandals-of-2012/
Apparently, this kind of thing happens all the time.

Also Morpheus, Science isn't always rational, logical, or objective. Consider the findings of Thomas Kuhn who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a 1962 book about the history of science by Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in—and beyond—those scholarly communities. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in "normal science". Normal scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of such conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving" of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.[1]

For example, Kuhn's analysis of the Copernican Revolution emphasized that, in its beginning, it did not offer more accurate predictions of celestial events, such as planetary positions, than the Ptolemaic system, but instead appealed to some practitioners based on a promise of better, simpler, solutions that might be developed at some point in the future. Kuhn called the core concepts of an ascendant revolution its "paradigms" and thereby launched this word into widespread analogical use in the second half of the 20th century. Kuhn's insistence that a paradigm shift was a mélange of sociology, enthusiasm and scientific promise, but not a logically determinate procedure, caused an uproar in reaction to his work. Kuhn addressed concerns in the 1969 postscript to the second edition. For some commentators it introduced a realistic humanism into the core of science while for others the nobility of science was tarnished by Kuhn's introduction of an irrational element into the heart of its greatest achievements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
Scientific consensus can often be achieved in some weird ways, such as through the cult of personality that hovers around famous scientists like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. Galen and Aristotle's errors went unchallenged until the Renaissance because they were advanced for their time, and much of what they said was true; so other scientists put their faith in all of the men's theories.

Kuhn made several notable claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way; that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing accounts of reality which cannot be coherently reconciled. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity"; we must account for subjective perspectives as well, all objective conclusions, being ultimately founded upon subjective conditioning/worldview. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn

In fact, you might even question whether the majority of American scientists are atheist because they've been indoctrinated into that society by their peers and elders. This jump to atheism in the sciences is a relatively recent trend over the last couple of decades, and it may just be another temporary fad specific to a culture. Sort of like how, there is some reason to think that universities often espouse a liberal bias reflected in who they hire and what they teach their students; or how a lot of ancient Greek philosophers were homosexual, but homosexuality was not a prerequisite to being a good philosopher. Atheism may be incidental to the logic, objectivity, and scientific rationalism they've been trained in and more a vestige of their human culture, scientific role models, peer pressure, etc. Basically, I'm saying that if all of your teachers are Jesuits you might become a Catholic scientist.

[Bonnetmaker]

Science is a child of religion. But it grew up.

[mal4mac]

Now I am not going to take a position on the veracity of "Global Warming Science" but the emails that were recently exposed in the news media certainly do raise the spectre of bias by those whose job it is to objectively review and publish research on "Global Warming." It is every bit as bad for the reputation of science as was the Piltdown fiasco.


In what way? Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy and tell me how it compares to the Piltdown fiasco. An editorial in Nature stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories." There was a lot of fuss made about a scientist suggesting a "trick" be used, which was explained perfectly well by pointing out that "trick" is often used as shorthand for "easy, useful, not immediately obvious, technique" - I certainly know that to be true, scientists say that all the time!

[Nick Capozzoli]

In what way? Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy and tell me how it compares to the Piltdown fiasco. An editorial in Nature stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories." There was a lot of fuss made about a scientist suggesting a "trick" be used, which was explained perfectly well by pointing out that "trick" is often used as shorthand for "easy, useful, not immediately obvious, technique" - I certainly know that to be true, scientists say that all the time!

My concern was not about the so-called "trick" (discounting dendrochronological "tree ring" data that was discordant with measured air temps), and I understand that the word, "trick" is used in the sense you describe with no intent to deceive or skirt logical rigor. The most rigorous mathematicians frequently use shortcutting "tricks" to solve problems or derive proofs. Often these tricks are the most brilliant aspects of their mathematical reasoning, having the quality of brilliant insight. A famous and perhaps apocryphal example is the story about the young Gauss whose elementary school teacher who asked his class to add up the first 100 integers, assuming it would keep the kids busy for a while. Little Carl put down his pencil after a few moments, much to the teacher's chagrin. Carl came up with the right answer, 5050, apparently by employing "trick" that reduced the laborious summation to a simple calculation of (100x101)/2. Gauss presumably "saw" this solution by imagining the series of integers from 1 to 100, and then he simply noted that you can add 1+100, then 2+99, then 3+98, and so on through 50+51, all of these being 101, which you then divide by 2 to get the sum of the series. This is certainly a "trick," but it is logical and brilliant (especially for an adolescent), and it leads to a formula, n(n+1)/2 for the sum of a series of n integers.

It is true that the EAU emails were investigated by several scientific and governmental panels and they concluded that what they revealed did not indicate fraud or invalidate the EAU published results, and in that sense it was not like the Piltdown Hoax. On the other hand, the emails do contain comments that reveal the animosity of the EAU researchers to research and researchers who submitted papers that disagreed with the prevailing scientific opinion of the EAU group and their strong reluctance to publish any of that research. Most of the outrage of the investigators seems to have been directed against the "criminal" hacking into the EAU email system, and while the reviewers did acknowledge that some of the email comments could seem to raise questions of the researchers' biases, they nonetheless excused the expressed opinions as honest confidential discussion that the writers never meant for the world to see.

Be that as it may, the fact is that it does tarnish the public faith in scientists as free from intellectual and emotional biases, and that was my point. Yes, the folks who hacked into the EAU computer system were criminals. So, for that matter, were the folks who hacked into DoD computer files and published the Wiki-Leak files....

[cacian]

Science is a child of religion. But it grew up.

really? how?

[Sinawza]

Religion in its diversity is more spiritual, apparently it started from creation. Science was not invented either it was a late discovery from the creation. These two always coexisted, the other being spiritual (vaguely understood) and the other being tangeble (creation)

[mal4mac]

Fiction is compatible with science therefore religion cannot be more diverse than science, there is an isomorphism between the supposed factual characters of religion and the fictional characters that science declares these beings to be.

The religious person is not more spiritual than the atheist, as the atheist is equally concerned with "the higher things of the mind", and equally interested in seeking out "awe" and "wonder".

How could religion start from creation? There were no human beings around to make it up. It started from the first people looking at volcanoes and thinking, some heap big "beast" did that, let's call him God.