Real World Philospohy

[Atrocities]

Debating about religion is highly over rated IMHO. But believe what you want, tis the only true freedom any of us truly have.

[ November 08, 2003, 00:59: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Andrés]

Argentina:
nominally Roman Catholic 92% (less than 20% practicing), Protestant 2%, Jewish 2%, other 4%

Curious, according to that page there are no atheists in my country, or they must be included in the "other".
It's interesting to see in numbers what I see that most people is Catholic but only step into a church for weddings.
It's also curious that the practicing % is not mentioned in the countries you quoted. Does that mean that all people mentioned actively practice their religions?
Would it be too wild to extrapolate this "less than 20% practicing" ratio to other religions and other countries.

[ November 08, 2003, 02:45: Message edited by: Andres ]

[Erax]

Ah yes, the famous Gould evasion of the issue, "non-overlapping magisteria" was how he put it I believe.

Yet there are many good objections to this view. For example, if the view of science and physicalism is correct, then humans, including their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, emotions etc. are either physical or supervenient on the physical, and this cannot help but overlap into the whys.

On the other hand, organized religion justifies its "whys" based on its "hows". How many people would be willing to accept the "whys" taught by religion if its "hows" were acknowledged to be wrong?

Taking knowledge about how our thought processes work (for example) and extrapolating that into an explanation for spirituality is still an extrapolation, which (as I said) is apt to fail. There are many people who will do it regardless, but I think it's ill-advised.

For the second part, that's the very reason why Christianity has taken such a beating in Western society. Their 'hows' have consistently been proven wrong, starting with Copernicus. They should drop them altogether and stick to the 'whys'. The Catholic Church, incidentally, tends to evade certain scientific questions with religious implications. For example, "Will sentient aliens have souls like we do ?" "Um, let's wait until we know if there are sentient aliens first." The anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, are just setting themselves up for a fall.

To sum it up: just because many people will get their science and religion mixed up doesn't mean that they should. And science is a poor teacher of moral values anyway.

Edit - this is from further back in the topic, but it merits an answer.

The problem is, Erax, and I'm not saying you do this, but some people won't allow you to tell them anything. Apparently, I have no right to tell my belief's to anyone. That doesn't explain how those same people feel free to tell people their belief that people don't have a right to tell people their beliefs. Have I confused anybody yet?

For the record Narf, I don't think you are 'imposing' your views on anyone. You definitely have them and you defend them whenever necessary, yet you do not criticize anyone who disagrees with you (and you keep your good humor too). I admire your behavior.

[ November 08, 2003, 13:29: Message edited by: Erax ]

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Invented, created, concocted, came up with, thought up, dreamed up, use whatever term you want. Good evidence is the fact that noone begins their life with any set religious views; everyone has to be spoon fed them to have them.

Well, I also know few babies that start life with a conscious knowledge of mathematics or history either - the fact that something is *learned* does not make it false.

Organized religions developed as a means to control people, just like organized governments.

That religion has been used in such fashion is not in dispute. What I dispute is the assertion that that is religion's foundational and only use.

It is a pretty safe assertation that they all had to evolve from somewhere... and "the word of God" is not a good point, as EVERY non-animistic religion (with some form of deity...) can say that (not God, but whatever deity(ies) they worship).

Well, I fall back on what I originally said - if religion has any relation to reality, then some religious system must be closer to that reality, because just about every possible option has been set out by the various religions, and by sheer logic they cannot all be equally right/wrong.

Just make sure to use the site:.edu tag in your searches (assuming I remembered that correctly... check the advanced search formatting help page) so that you can restrict sites to being on .edu domains, thus eliminating the bulk of garbage sites (garbage for any sort of intellectual purposes...).

And of course, higher education on religion is totally unbiased. Spare me.

Of course, there are garbage sites on .edu domains, but at least you start off on better footing with university-owned web space... and they tend to have much better documentation.

Whether .edu, .org., or .nuts, the same rule applies... caveat emptor.

That requires assuming that Christianity is correct...

It does. But my point is that there are logical/reasonable explanations *within religious systems* for the things you use to denounce religion in general. The question of the viability of religion must be answered on the basis of the validity of their truth claims. The number of such truth claims just makes the task less easy.

the fact is that pretty much all religions have the exact same claims of divine revelation and all that stuff, and so all have the truth. But how can you pick which one has the real truth? Quite simply, you can not. Any arguments you could come up with to justify your choice apply equally to many other religions as well.

Only if one takes the assumption that all religious claims are of an ethereal/subjective/detached from reality nature. That is patently not so. All three of the monotheistic religions make very dogmatic assertions about religious events in actual history. I think you may be generalizing things too much.

Sure I would! That would be one interesting conversation. The west has a decidedly atheistic bent nowadays because atheism is the next step in religious evolution...

Devolution, you mean?

The problem with atheism is that, if the premises of atheism are true and taken to their logical conclusions, you are left with nihilism. I don't much like Nietzsche and Foucault as persons, but I admire the consistency and forthrightness in their writings. They were atheists who took atheism seriously. And you can see where it led them...

[DavidG]

Originally posted by General Woundwort:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Invented, created, concocted, came up with, thought up, dreamed up, use whatever term you want. Good evidence is the fact that noone begins their life with any set religious views; everyone has to be spoon fed them to have them.

Well, I also know few babies that start life with a conscious knowledge of mathematics or history either - the fact that something is *learned* does not make it false.

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Mathematics and history? Not really a good comparison. If mom and Dad taught you < insert historical or mathematical fact here > and then you found out a hundred other cultures disagreed with the alledged fact would you not begin to suspect mom and dad were wrong?

[ November 08, 2003, 23:43: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[General Woundwort]

FYI - don't try to login to this board while it's displayed in a frame - it won't work.

Originally posted by DavidG:
Mathematics and history? Not really a good comparison. If mom and Dad taught you < insert historical or mathematical fact here > and then you found out a hundred other cultures disagreed with the alledged fact would you not begin to suspect mom and dad were wrong?

Depends on the circumstances. If say, 100 years or so, many other cultures thought the world was flat, would that make my belief it was round invalid? No, because good observations and proofs exist for its being round - and I would feel obligated to share that information. Again, it's *evidence*, not nose-counting, that is the determining factor.

[oleg]

Originally posted by DavidG:
...Mathematics and history? Not really a good comparison. If mom and Dad taught you < insert historical or mathematical fact here > and then you found out a hundred other cultures disagreed with the alledged fact would you not begin to suspect mom and dad were wrong?

if you want to protest to the modern science ideas and conclusions - insert your Christian/Muslim belives here - you should also give up on internet and the very fact I can communicate to you thanks to these Boards that only exist due to the indifatigable progress of physics and mathematics you apparently question. (sorry if I misunderstood you - not for the first time )

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Debating about religion is highly over rated IMHO. But believe what you want, tis the only true freedom any of us truly have.

I say it again.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by oleg:
if you want to protest to the modern science ideas and conclusions - insert your Christian/Muslim belives here - you should also give up on internet and the very fact I can communicate to you thanks to these Boards that only exist due to the indifatigable progress of physics and mathematics you apparently question. (sorry if I misunderstood you - not for the first time )

That would depend on what ideas and conclusions you are protesting - e.g.: if you don't believe electronics work, you are being silly; If you don't believe in modern Big Bang theory, you can be quite cognizant on it.

For example, If all the mass in the current universe was once pressed into a ball smaller than the black hole thought to be at the center of our galaxy, then the universe shouldn't have ever gone bang - the escape velocity from a black hole (by definition) is in excess of c, which is currently thought to be the speed limit. Any such theory would need to propose one of a number of things to get around this:
1) Modern physical law (or some portion thereof) did not apply at the time
- in which case, the theory needs to also explain where modern physical law came from, why we can't seem to change it, et cetera; besides, such altering of the laws of the universe isn't exactly something that has been observed by what the scientific community would recognize as a reliable source; it requires much speculation based on assumptions - a leap of faith.
2) An as-yet unrecognized force to overpower the super-gravity at such an event, such as "dark energy"
- "dark energy" is a cop-out; it's an unobserved something (reason for the "dark" in the name) thrown in as a correction factor to fix the problem; it's only thought to exist because the universe hasn't collapsed in on itself over the timeframe the universe is thought to have been around. This energy is unobserved; it is required to make certain models work, so it is assumed. Few suggest that there may be a more fundamental flaw in the model. Such a force is also an act of faith.
3) Hesienburg uncertainty allowed things to pop out
- while hypothetically possible, modern QM theory suggests that the probability of at least one particle jumping out of a black hole in a given timeframe is inversly proportional to some power (4, I think it was - I don't recall) of the black hole's mass; more massive -> lower probability. In order to get most the particles in the universe to jump out of the black hole at roughly the same time requires an event of truly negligible probability (if they don't come out at about the same time, all one would get is a bunch of flying particles spread out over zillions of years, too far apart to have a meaningful probability of interacting - no bang, no galaxies, no stars, not even hydrogen). Again, this requires a considerable leap of faith.
4) reserved for future expansion - I'm not all knowing, as far as I know.

There are other severe difficulties with Big Bang theories - current models predict equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, which would quickly annhiliate each other; yet we seem to be made of matter, our galaxy seems to be made of matter, and astronomers can't seem to find any evidence of any anti-matter galaxies to balance us out, to name one.

Of course, now someone is likely to make a faith statment about science, which is likely to go something like "give them time, they will answer all objections" or some such.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by oleg:

quote:

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Originally posted by DavidG:
...Mathematics and history? Not really a good comparison. If mom and Dad taught you < insert historical or mathematical fact here > and then you found out a hundred other cultures disagreed with the alledged fact would you not begin to suspect mom and dad were wrong?

if you want to protest to the modern science ideas and conclusions - insert your Christian/Muslim belives here - you should also give up on internet and the very fact I can communicate to you thanks to these Boards that only exist due to the indifatigable progress of physics and mathematics you apparently question. (sorry if I misunderstood you - not for the first time )

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Wooah I was not questioning science or math in any way. I was questioning the comparison between learning math and history and learning a religion. Everyone learns the same math and history (and I mean the basic facts here). If I found out that that 75%, 80 90%? of the world learned a different history (and again I'm talking basic facts here like WW2 ended in 1935) I think I'd begin to question what I learned.