Real World Philospohy

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Well South Park is a show of political satire.

Oh really, I did not realize that. I thought is was a kids show. Hummmm, I guess all those adult jokes and humor should have tipped me off. Guess I will have to forbid the kiddies from watching it. Heaven knows we don't want our childrens mind to be poluted by such evil as this.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
They had that on South Park 2 weeks ago... Cartman formed a christian rock band and just copied a bunch of love songs, inserting God or Jesus.

Ouch. Unfortunately, there's a lot of truth in that...

[deccan]

Originally posted by Erax:
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.

Once you go down this route, why choose religions at all? Personally I'd advise people to study history, philosophy and be well read generally, to travel and visit different cultures if possible, and sample as much of the fine arts as you can.

[deccan]

Originally posted by General Woundwort:
One of my favorite quotes from Nietzche goes something like "If you were to prove God to me, I would believe in Him all the less." Hardly sounds like a detached observer to me.

In defense of Nietzsche, I think he might have meant "believe" in a different sense. One can say believe as in "believe in the existence of", or believe as in "have trust in". I think the statement refers to the latter sense of believe.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by deccan:
In defense of Nietzsche, I think he might have meant "believe" in a different sense. One can say believe as in "believe in the existence of", or believe as in "have trust in". I think the statement refers to the latter sense of believe.

Possibly, but this is also the fellow who said "If there is a God, how could I bear not to be one?" Also, his whole argument was similar to what is seen here - religion was a human construct which allowed the 'slave' caste to gain the upper hand over the 'masters'. Even the very existence of God would undermine his whole project.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by spoon:
That's because science has a great track record at solving problems. You call it a "faith statement", I call it betting with the odds on favorite.

They have a great track record for stuff that can be locally checked, and repeatedly done (physics, electronics, chemestry, et cetera). On things that happened in the distant past, science has a track record of primarily agreeing with popular politics of the day and place.

Originally posted by spoon:
Of course, the statement should have a conditional in there, like, "...they will LIKELY answer all objections, or provide a new model that does."

Such an alteration fits under the heading of "something like...".

Originally posted by DavidG:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jack Simth:

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.

Isn't that the way physics works? The theoretician makes some theory which has some unobservable element. Then the applied physicists design experiments to attempt to observe those elements thus proving the theory.

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To an extent - but you can't properly experiment on the universe to test things.

Also (this is just nit-picking on language use, feel free to ignore): Technically, no theory is ever "proven by" observation or experimentation - only "supported by" or "contradicted by".

Originally posted by DavidG:

quote:

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Few suggest that there may be a more fundamental flaw in the model.

Thus implying there may be no better theory.

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Not when there is a loosly organized power structure which pretty much controls what gets funding/equipment access for research and publishing space in credited journals that has much work invested in specific theories. Anything too terribly contradictory to those theories gets quietly suppressed; papers/textbooks don't get published (they don't fit with what the review board "knows" is right, so they are deemed "wrong" and left unpublished), grants aren't granted (again, they don't fit with what the review board "knows" is right, so it is deemed a waste of money to research), with the net effect being that there are extreme difficulties involved in researching anything which might threaten the status quo, which in turn means it is neigh impossible to flesh out any potentially better theory to the point where they can be tested against each other (not that one can properly test anything about the distant past in any event).

Sure, that is the peer review system, and it does filter a fair amount of bull - but an amount of bull still makes it through, and it is functionally impossible to determine how much non-bull it also filters, and difficult to tell exactly how much bull successfully masquerades as non-bull.

Originally posted by DavidG:
if like religion a large majority had different theories then you would have to question it much more.

As compared to the current state of the larger scientific community where any creditable voice that dissents too much or too loudly on certain topics is discredited and left out of the conversation?
If you were in, say, one of the early North American puritan settlements, and those voicing different beliefs were exiled, you'd almost never hear an argument (much less a coherent, well-reasoned one) against that particular settlement's belief system, regardless of how reasonable or outlandish that particular belief system was. By your implied theory count method of the reasonableness of questioning something, it would not be reasonable to question that belief system under such circumstances, and hence unreasonable to construct an alternative.

[ November 10, 2003, 23:20: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Fyron]

Such an alteration fits under the heading of "something like...".

Not very well. Your statement had a totally different effect than what Spoon proposed...

[spoon]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
They have a great track record for stuff that can be locally checked, and repeatedly done (physics, electronics, chemestry, et cetera). On things that happened in the distant past, science has a track record of primarily agreeing with popular politics of the day and place.

That is simply untrue. Science has a track record of proposing theories that are uncheckable at the time, and then prove out to be true when the means to check them becomes available. And when those theories don't match the observed data, they are modified or replaced with better ones. Popular politics does not even figure into it, except to create a degree of inertia for new ideas to overcome before they are taken seriously.

Originally posted by spoon:
Of course, the statement should have a conditional in there, like, "...they will LIKELY answer all objections, or provide a new model that does."

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
Such an alteration fits under the heading of "something like...".

Just wanted to make sure your straw man was properly stuffed...

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by spoon:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jack Simth:
They have a great track record for stuff that can be locally checked, and repeatedly done (physics, electronics, chemestry, et cetera). On things that happened in the distant past, science has a track record of primarily agreeing with popular politics of the day and place.

That is simply untrue. Science has a track record of proposing theories that are uncheckable at the time, and then prove out to be true when the means to check them becomes available. And when those theories don't match the observed data, they are modified or replaced with better ones. Popular politics does not even figure into it, except to create a degree of inertia for new ideas to overcome before they are taken seriously.

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On repeatable, locally checkable stuff (a few decades of tech lag doesn't preclude the currently unspecified definition of local I'm using), they do have a good track record. I'm not contradicting orbital mechanics, relativity, or quantum theory here; I'm referring to extrapolations into the distant past. For those, the ones considered credible do pretty much correspond to the politicical winds; one example:

From http://www.evolution-facts.org/3evlch29b.htm
LYSENKO—Trofim D. Lysenko (1893-1976) rose to power in the 1930s in the U.S.S.R. by convincing the government he could create a State Science that combined Darwinian evolutionary theory with Marxist theory. With *Stalin's hearty backing, Lysenko became responsible for the death of thousands. Many of the best Russian scientists were put to death.

Long after Lamarckian inheritance had been abandoned elsewhere, Russia retained this belief. Refusing to accept that each generation must be educated anew, Marxism felt that Marxist revolution principles would enter the genes and transform society into thorough-going Communism! Under Lysenko's dominance of Soviet science, "Mendelist" genetics was a forbidden doctrine, a bourgeois heresy. Lysenko was finally ousted in 1965 when his theories produced agricultural disaster for the nation. (He claimed to be able to change winter wheat into spring wheat through temperature change, and wheat into rye in one generation.)

The russian regeme needed a quick change theory, and so accepted the guy on the spot - it wasn't until he caused a famine with his experimentation, and hence his theories became politically untenable, that he was finally thrown out.

Originally posted by spoon:

quote:

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Originally posted by spoon:
Of course, the statement should have a conditional in there, like, "...they will LIKELY answer all objections, or provide a new model that does."

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
Such an alteration fits under the heading of "something like...".

Just wanted to make sure your straw man was properly stuffed...

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Not exactly a straw man, as the clauses I didn't include weren't in the post I had been half-refering to when I listed the faith statement earlier:

Originally Posted by Imperator Fyron (Member # 1794) on March 17, 2003 08:15 in a long-dead thread

[...]
Once all of the evidence can be taken into account, the theory will be adjusted to fit.
[...]

There were no clauses in there about "likely", nor replacement, as your Version would have it include.

[deccan]

Originally posted by General Woundwort:
Possibly, but this is also the fellow who said "If there is a God, how could I bear not to be one?" Also, his whole argument was similar to what is seen here - religion was a human construct which allowed the 'slave' caste to gain the upper hand over the 'masters'. Even the very existence of God would undermine his whole project.

Few people would probably try to argue that Nietzsche doesn't contradict himself on various points at different times in his life. Nietzsche even kept diaries of private writings that differ markedly from his published writings and have academics scratching their heads ever since over which Version represented the true Nietzsche, if there ever was one.

I would also agree that anybody who reads Nietzsche for the purpose of formulating a rational argument against organized religion is looking in the wrong place. In fact, much of Nietzsche's work appears to disparage the rational, or Apollonian, approach to life in favor of the emotional, or Dionysian approach, though I would say that after his relationship with Wagner soured, Nietzsche started to shift in the opposite direction.

Nietzsche's strength was never in appealing to the intellect but in appealing to intuitions and emotions. This is emphasized by his approach in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" which imitated the style and lyrical prose of the Bible for Nietzsche's anti-Christian agenda. Of course, the fact is that for many people, Christian parables and lessons appeal to the emotions and the intuitions as well, and being very aware of that, Nietzsche probably did it consciously.

So to sum up, I agree that Nietzsche would be an atrocious example of a detached starting point, but only the unintiated would even expect Nietzsche to be one.