All you lot have done is replace one set of dogma, religion, with another, science, and it is a contraction to maintain this as being better when, at the end of the day, it's pretty much the exact same position since you can argue that abstract concepts which are fundamental to science, such as mathematics to give an example, require just as great of a leap of faith as does a belief in God.
Discuss.
Posted Mar 25, 2011, 1:02 PM UTC
Everything science claims to be true can be experimented by its 'followers' to proven to be true to that follower. Religion gives you a holy book and says that all the answers are in it, but nothing is subject to evidence or needing of proof, only faith, meaning that while you can believe all you want, you can't truly be sure of what you're saying without delusion.
No I argue that Religion gives you an ontological framework for your own existence, you can either choose to prescribe to in or not.
If you say that everything is derived from experience then that leaves you vulnerable to the absolute skepticism of David Hume, Think of it like this the thanksgiving turkey has absolute empirical evidence that it is going to be fed 364 days a year but that does not mean its reality isn't going to come crashing down on that one day.
Surely this is not serious, is it? If it is, the OP fails at logic and denies the observation that science in practice produces predictive results and admits error when results do not match theoretical stipulations. Religion does not require logic or evidence and demands unchanging truth.
By the way, you started your post with "atheism" and then argued against "science" (did this on a computer!!! oh the delicious irony).
Contraction != contradiction
I'm arguing against Atheism (with a capital) which I characterize as being a religious/political movement with the end goal of creating a deity of science - this I see as being disingenuous to science. I would characterize the feeling of doubt about the existence of a God as being atheism (with a small a).
Also as I've said in a other posts. If you say that everything is derived from experience then that leaves you vulnerable to the absolute skepticism of David Hume, Think of it like this the thanksgiving turkey has absolute empirical evidence that it is going to be fed 364 days a year but that does not mean its reality isn't going to come crashing down on that one day.
OTOH, if you take a position less than this then your contending that reason (i.e., logical and maths) somehow exists in its own reality but, my argument goes, how can you hold this position yet still deny the existence of a God?
I've never seen anyone here whose goal was to create a "deity of science". I doubt that there are any people like that who browse r/atheism.
It sounds like you are setting up a straw man to knock down.
How sad! Public education has failed yet another hopeful young mind.
Sorry, I only discuss with thinking beings.
Are you thinking right now? What is called thinking? namely how would you define thinking, exactly?
I don't see any sense in explaining it to you. Judging by your writing, you barely manage to go through the motions.
Well then couldn't you follow the example of say Heidegger (hopefully not in his political views) and say that what gives 'food for thought' is that you see me as non-thinking which should point the way to true thinking of which you seem only capable of doing.
Learn to think. Learn to construct coherent, sensible sentences. The two exercises go hand in hand.
Derrrr, You're dumb and I'm smart, herp herp
I have faith in Mathematics because just about every aspect of our lives involves some kind of math someone did, from my headphones to flying in an airplane. Mathematics unlike religion is an ever evolving scientific field which seeks to help explain everything it is necessary to help explain. Unlike the holy texts, mathematics is open to change, scrutiny and to be proven completely wrong. It's the ability to do that that makes it worth putting stock into instead of some 'God', who is unfalsifiable, unprovable, and intangible.
I argue Mathematics is a dialectical concept in how you see or describe the world but not something that exists out side of yourself, I argue that as soon as you start to see it as being something that exists in the world, such as like the platonic forms, or monards or the nominal thing-in-itself, then it is no better then religion because if you take this as being your position then you can not refute the existence of a God.
An atheist can also be a nihilist, who doesn't belief in anything, including science. Your definition of 'an atheist' is too exclusive. Sure there are atheists that believe in science, but there are others who believe in lord zenu, talking to trees, or nothing.
Atheism is simply the denial of the existence of a magical father figure in the sky who grants wishes because there's no physical evidence to that end, only "dogma" as you put it.
True... but I am talking in terms of how the impression that most Atheists seem to give, prescribing sweeping generalizations is a pretty dangerous thing to do, but I would still argue that a lot of Atheists, such as Dawkins, do seem to be in the business of creating a deity of Science and merely choose to attack religion because they see it a irrationality to some sort of rationalism. Whether you like it or not I characterize it that this is the form of Atheism that most people will think of when they are asked to define Atheism.
The problem I have is that this rationalism that they purport to have just doesn't exist, and is essentially just an example of Dogma. You can not really deny something but really have to put into place something else, otherwise you can only have absolute skepticism as is pertains to your own existence, and to say otherwise is representative of a form of Dogma.
The problem I have is that this rationalism that they purport to have just doesn't exist, and is essentially just an example of Dogma. You can not really deny something but really have to put into place something else, otherwise you can only have absolute skepticism as is pertains to your own existence, and to say otherwise is representative of a form of Dogma.
What? Let's fill in these pronouns?
The problem I have is that this rationalism that pro-science atheists purport to have just doesn't exist, and is essentially just an example of Dogma. A pro-science atheist cannot really deny the existence of god but really have to replace it with mathematics, otherwise you can only have absolute skepticism as is pertains to their own existence, and to say otherwise is representative of a form of Dogma.
Hmm, okay, so it seems like you may be missing the difference between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning would posit beliefs that, while unsubstantiated through the rules of formal logic, provide for face valid (although often unfalsifiable) explanations the real world. Dogma is necessarily inductive because it represents a literature that starts from personal observations or spiritual experiences and works backward to develop a system of explanation for the events, rules for behavior, etc.
Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is a belief system that focuses on conclusions that necessarily follow from a set of testable, falsifiable premises. The rules of formal logic were invented/conceived to attain verifiable conclusions about the real world based on the exclusion of unjustifiable assumptions.
"Scientific dogma", as you put it, is simply a collection of previously tested deductive conclusions that are built on by subsequent generations through similar scientific pursuits. These actually change when new information is brought to light (for instance, the force of gravity was considered constant until Einstein, which subsequently changed formal computations from then on). When testable assumptions are proven false, science redeems itself through changes to the literature. By definition, dogma is not to be disputed, changed, or questioned. Hence, your argument that science is dogma is tenuous at best.
I can't shake the feeling I've read this kind of thinking before. Oh, right, here's a bigger sample of it!
“Reality is impossible,” says Sontag; however, according to Drucker[3] , it is not so much reality that is impossible, but rather the paradigm, and some would say the defining characteristic, of reality. Lacan suggests the use of the structuralist paradigm of narrative to read class. However, Sartre’s analysis of postdialectic libertarianism implies that consciousness is capable of significance.
So your argument is that it is false because you can't understand it enough to refute it?
And yet another point goes WHOOSH! over your head.
Philosophically I am a naturalist. A naturalist believes that the physical universe is the universe. There are only 4 things in the universe: space, time, energy, and matter - that's it. Matter and energy do not influence and are not influenced by supernatural forces. There are no supernatural entities or forces acting on nature, and there is no empirical evidence for anything beyond or outside nature.
If someone like Stephan Hawking wrote a book with the hypothesis that supernatural entities exist and gave empirical evidence to support his hypothesis, I would change my mind.
One of my favorite books: "Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God" by Greg Graffin
Amazon link, for the lazy.
Your naturalist view of the world is not new but was rather shared via the Stoics. Although, admittedly, I'm being a bit disingenuous in representing your opinion on how the world is constructed to imply that you use this as a morality - but I do think this is implied.
Nietzshe, actually had quite a bit to say on this:
You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
His argument being that since philosophy is tyrannical in nature then if you prescribe to a certain world view then you are ultimately going to be constrained by that same world view. Therefore missing the forest for the trees.
Also your conception of the world does seem to be awfully similar to the philosophy of Spinoza, If this kinda stuff interests you. My guess is that the book you've linked to is just a repackaging of this.
Are but don't you see: Nature is completely indifferent to you. It is actually yourself who are prescribing your own views onto nature and using this representation as a filter to how you conceive the natural world. I.E., if you were to kill yourself then the whole of existence would collapse because your conception of nature would no longer exist.
Creating a deity of science would entail demanding unquestioning adherence to it. Science can only be called a religion as a metaphor. Of course there are some superficial similarities (one needs to be trained in them to understand the jargon and concepts, they have rules, etc...), but on any real examination of the 2, we see that they are almost polar opposites. One accepts and even demands critical thinking and examination, the other simply cannot stand up to that. As for your assertion that math has no place outside of human experience, the laws that our universe follows can be expressed with math and be shown to have mathematical relations to one another. This does not necessarily mean that "math" exists outside of human brains, but nor does it allow for these physical laws to be equated to a god that has no evidence whatsoever and is simply a creation of a pre-literate, naive mindset.
What is the color twurple?
You idiot.
Science does not require "faith" (belief without testable evidence).
Fuck all gods and the credulous idiots who believe in them.
Scinece does require 'faith', for example you it is a leap of faith that mathematical modals will reconcile to reality. Also who's to say that just because things have remained a certain way in the past they would remain so in the future. As David Hume pointed out: could not snow one day fall from the sky that burns like fire? I.E., an antithesis to evidence.
Fuck all gods and the credulous idiots who believe in them.
Yes, and I would add those you attempt to turn science into their own false dogma.
Mathematics and science work whether I have faith in them or not. Gods don't work whether you have faith in them or not. End of discussion.
I argue Mathematics does not exist but is merely a dialectical concept. It only works because it provides a means to reduce the world down to your level but in the words of Nietzsche is still representative of a falsification of the word. This does not mean that it isn't a useful tool in being able to understand the how the world works I.E., helping in the survival, but is it not a fallacy to say that it somehow exists outside of your own temporal existence when, at the same time, you maintain that a god does not?
I believe the relevant term here is word salad.
Perhaps you would prefer it from the horse's mouth (that is Nietzsche)...