[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Fyron]

You appear to have missed the second half of my post.

No, I was on my way out, and did not write a full reply. I was just clarifying that it had nothing to do with faith as used in a religious sense.

Jack:

Originally posted by Andr&eacutes Lescano:
You cannot measure the diameter of a hair with a measuring tape with lines every centimeter.
Different instruments must be used to measure different orders of magnitude, and every measure has an error interval.

Scientists know Radio-isotope dating is not an accurate measure and can only give an approximate result. They admit that, that is honest and gives more value to the result.

It's not a matter of faith to say "We estimate this rock is 10,000,000 y.o."

It would be a matter of faith it they said "It is written this rock was created 10,000,000 years ago.

Actually, there is little more to say after what Andres said. No legitimate science has ever claimed that radio-isotope dating is an exact science. It is an estimation, based off of thorough experimentation and calculation as to the half-lives of the relevant isotopes. This is why using radio-isotope dating is not a matter of faith; it is based off of verifiable data. It is not a matter of: the Bible says so, so it is true. That is accepting something on religious faith. You are trying to use the connotations of the word faith to equate "believing in" science to believing in religion. This does not work, because there is no ground of comparison between science and religion. Scientific belief is always open to being wrong. If you find evidence contradicting religious beliefs, the evidence has to be wrong. The religious beliefs don't change to reflect accurate new evidence; scientific beliefs do. I do indeed have faith in science, but it is not at all like faith in religion. I can easily look at the data collected by scientists to see if their conclusions make sense. What religion does is to say, "this is how it is, accept it." I do not simply accept scientific suppositions as fact. In order to believe them, you have to accept religions suppositions as fact, as there is no possible evidence or experimentation to prove them. Religious "faith" is accepting something because that is what they say it is like. Scientific "faith" is accepting suppositions that have been based off of careful experimentation. It is accepting that there are people out there with more scientific knowledge than myself, and trusting them to know how to run experiments. It is being able to examine their data, and also to be able to run their experiments myself to see if I get the same results. All of this is lacking in religious "faith", so your argument that by me believing scientific principles equates to me being religious is baseless.

[ March 14, 2003, 23:36: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Cheeze]

I have to make mention of this supposed inability of religion or religious people to accept change or contradictory evidence. If that were true, there would have been no Judaism, since it links to a founder in Abraham as having turned to Yahweh first. Christianity was built on the introduction of "new evidence or theory" to Judaism, and Islam was a radical change from either of those two but also claiming some connection. The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther challenging Rome by presenting a series of theses that argued inside of Christendom. Hinduism is replete with examples of individuals changing the religious practices (Krishna stands out), and Buddhism ran counter to much of the prevailing Hindu or other beliefs, whether you talk about Siddhartha, Bodhidharma or Padmasambhava. And there are instances where the leading individuals in one or another religion found reason to change to another through personal conviction, not coercion.

And it also goes to say that many scientists have, in their day, been attacked, ostracized or ignored by the other scientists because what they presented ran counter to whatever the current theories and understandings were. Many scientists, like artists, gained much of their appreciation in times after they first published or made known their ideas, sometimes after their death.

[Fyron]

My point was that religions do not make progress (in the sense of overall advancement, not just a different set of essentially the same thing), whereas science does. Converting to a different religion is not "progress", it is just taking a different set of dieties and stories on faith. Using new religious practices does not equate to changing because of accurate new evidence, it equates to placing your religious faith in a different direction.

I also never once said that all scientists were 100% accepted. Science does not change itself overnight. It takes good solid evidence for theories to change, not just some guy saying, "hey, it's like this!" and then suddenly everyone starts believing him. That would be an act of religious faith, not scientific reasoning.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
My point was that religions do not make progress (in the sense of overall advancement, not just a different set of essentially the same thing), whereas science does. Converting to a different religion is not "progress", it is just taking a different set of dieties and stories on faith. Using new religious practices does not equate to changing because of accurate new evidence, it equates to placing your religious faith in a different direction.

I also never once said that all scientists were 100% accepted. Science does not change itself overnight. It takes good solid evidence for theories to change, not just some guy saying, "hey, it's like this!" and then suddenly everyone starts believing him. That would be an act of religious faith, not scientific reasoning.

This is a fascinating argument. I see you keep repeating it so I have a question: Do you consider the concept of evolution to be science or faith? It was expounded by a guy named Darwin as a possibility in the 19th century, and immediately accepted by the scientific community -- without proof. Ever since then it has been repeated and repeated as fact and anyone who dares to point out any flaws in it is subjected to the same sort of persecution that you see in religious disputes -- character assassination, blacklisting (getting people fired or breaking contracts), etc. It really looks to me like evolution was the 'new faith' invented to replace the old faith, and that's why it cannot be allowed to fail. Which makes it not science. We had a whole thread about it a while back, you can probably find it with the forum search.

[ March 15, 2003, 17:39: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Andrés]

Evolution theory is science, and it's based on observation.
It's not repeating what makes it valid, it's that it is still the best explanation consistent with most available data.
There are many fossil evidences of evolution of many species and examples of natural selection (the mechanism of evolution) in action in living species.

[Chronon]

I think what Dogscoff had to say about his philosophy of religion is relevant here. As is usual with these discussions, we are operating on a number of different levels. As Dogscoff argued, there is a huge difference between organized religion (the Church) and a personal spiritual journey. I would argue that the path to enlightenment is a sort of personal progress (although the Zen masters would whack me around the shoulders for conceiving of it in this way ).

On the other hand, progress (the Enlightenment philosophes at work again - the same people for whom Catholicism was a superstition) in its modern usage is irrelevent to religion. Early Christianity, for example, eschewed the material in favor of the spiritual (the Papacy of the Medieval and Early Modern periods is another story) and would have scoffed at the importance of worldly progress. Saying that religion does not have progress is like saying you can't score goals in baseball. It simply does not apply.

Moreover,in the spirit of the Devil's Advocate (and post-modernists' advocate, too), I would like to toss out the postulate that progress itself is a modern myth. On one hand we have modern medicine, computers, cd players, SUV's, and Quick Marts. On the other hand, we have the atomic bomb, nerve gas, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, and totalitarianism (impossible without modern technology). Are we really improving ourselves?

About twenty years ago I would have answered a resounding yes. Now I'm not so sure...

[Andrés]

Evidence supporting Evolution vs Evidence supporting Creationism