46% of Americans Believe In Creationism

[B_B]

It's easy and defensible to argue that neither eugenics nor phrenology ever were legitimate sciences...

Things like eugenics and phrenology certainly have been taken very seriously by scientists as 'science' at some time or another.

What separates science from religion/faith based belief systems is that when the evidence against these things became overwhelming, or the evidence for them was underwhelming, scientists stopped investigating them. Religion/faith based belief systems look at truths as being provided by a higher power, and no matter the overwhelming evidence against, or the underwhelming evidence for, they continue to believe it (particularly if it fits in their desired worldview).

[JimD]

[Keith Wilson]

You cannot be neutral or objective or tolerant or broad-minded or anything but obsequious, in confronting this external will;

Existence proof again. TomF is a Christian who posts here regularly , and he's about as tolerant and broad-minded as people get, and doesn't seem at all obsequious. I know quite a lot of theists who do every day what you claim is impossible. It depends on what kind of God you believe in. There are many theists who don't think God is anywhere near as narrow minded, petty, and vengeful as human beings. There are of course others who take most of humanity's worst characteristics, enlarge them, and project them on the sky to make a God to grovel before, but I suspect they're mistaken.

[TomF]

I think it's important to observe that the kind of God that John, Osborne and various others find untenable ... is also the kind of God that one helluva lot of people who believe in God also find untenable.

Literalists of any religious tradition have been successful in convincing non-believers that theirs is the only possible notion of what God is. I find that unsurprising, because if non-believers consider that such extremism is the only possible approach, it legitimates their disbelief. But the distortion in the logic is conflating the term "literalist" with "religious." The conflation's understandable because the Literalists themselves loudly claim it's true, and loudly claim that believers with other ideas are beyond the pale ...

Y'know, reading the political threads here ... there really are moderate, thoughtful yet committed Republicans - and they're different from moderate, thoughtful yet committed Democrats. There is also another kind of Republican that's become a lot louder in the public life of the Party in recent years - which created the term "RINO" and beats up moderate Republicans with it. Dems are well served by knowing the difference. The same's true respecting religion.

[B_B]

I think it's important to observe that the kind of God that John, Osborne and various others find untenable ... is also the kind of God that one helluva lot of people who believe in God also find untenable.

Literalists of any religious tradition have been successful in convincing non-believers that theirs is the only possible notion of what God is. I find that unsurprising, because if non-believers consider that such extremism is the only possible approach, it legitimates their disbelief. But the distortion in the logic is conflating the term "literalist" with "religious." The conflation's understandable because the Literalists themselves loudly claim it's true, and loudly claim that believers with other ideas are beyond the pale ...

Y'know, reading the political threads here ... there really are moderate, thoughtful yet committed Republicans - and they're different from moderate, thoughtful yet committed Democrats. There is also another kind of Republican that's become a lot louder in the public life of the Party in recent years - which created the term "RINO" and beats up moderate Republicans with it. Dems are well served by knowing the difference. The same's true respecting religion.

Tom, you lost me at "I find that unsurprising, because if non-believers consider that such extremism is the only possible approach, it legitimates their disbelief."

Non-believers don't need extremists to justify their non-belief, they take the extremists and say "if one accepts the possibility that there IS a God, then one must give as much credence to those extremists as to those who espouse a more benign idea of what God is."

This fundamental reality is something that most believers in a benign God, or ANY gods/God, just don't want to accept. They believe their gods/God is the one true gods/God and all the other's are 'misinterpretations' or 'misrepresentations' or 'apostasy' or 'kill the witch' what have you.

If there is a God, or there are gods, they could be anything. What they are, who God is, is up to the believer, and the non-believer, to decide.

[pumpkin]

I'm reminded that 50% of the population has below average intelligence.

[PhaseLockedLoop]

You cannot answer questions about how the physical world works using religion; it simply does not work.

Keith? Modern science is only a couple hundred years old, and people have been around for (hundreds of thousands? Millions?) of years, during nearly all of which they coped with the physical world, and (as far as we know) usually under the rubric of religious notions. It worked. A hell of a lot of people even today regard the physical world in a non-scientific way and get along fine until they're obliterated by munitions made available by scientific ignoramuses.

To most people, scientific facts are things authoritative people tell them. I hear people say how much we know nowadays, and usually what they mean is not that they know but that somebody knows--or so they've been told.

Certainly modern science has made wonderful technologies possible, which I suppose is what you mean when you say it "works." My cell phone and the infrastructure which makes it significant is a product of oodles of scientific discoveries. Such science goes hand-in-hand with technology, to the point where they are hardly distinguishable nowadays, pretense to the contrary notwithstanding. How that is working in the larger sense is questionable.

[B_B]

....Modern science is only a couple hundred years old, and people have been around for (hundreds of thousands? Millions?) of years, during nearly all of which they coped with the physical world, and (as far as we know) usually under the rubric of religious notions. It worked. ....

Please define what "it worked" means.

Most people would think traditional religious ways of treating epidemics (burning people at the stake, sacrificing animals, imploring God for forgiveness, etc.) is slightly less effective than, say, washing hands and building sewers.

[TomF]

Tom, you lost me at "I find that unsurprising, because if non-believers consider that such extremism is the only possible approach, it legitimates their disbelief."

Non-believers don't need extremists to justify their non-belief, they take the extremists and say "if one accepts the possibility that there IS a God, then one must give as much credence to those extremists as to those who espouse a more benign idea of what God is."

This fundamental reality is something that most believers in a benign God, or ANY gods/God, just don't want to accept. They believe their gods/God is the one true gods/God and all the other's are 'misinterpretations' or 'misrepresentations' or 'apostasy' or 'kill the witch' what have you.

If there is a God, or there are gods, they could be anything. What they are, who God is, is up to the believer, and the non-believer, to decide.

Braam, the God I experience could surely have many other facets that I don't experience. I'm finite, after all. But my own experience is what speaks to me most strongly. And that experience is at odds with what John, or Osborne (or the Fundamentalists they reject) tell me that an experience of God has to be.

I think that there are elements of "confirmation bias" in picking a model of God which one finds repulsive, and concluding that such is the only viable option for religious belief. It makes one's rejection of religious belief very reasonable, if lunacy is the only alternative.

I've no problem with people not believing - not everyone's had the kind of demonstrative experiences in their lives that have marked mine and my family's. I dunno if I'd have retained belief without that, so I sure can't blame someone else for reaching such a conclusion. But I do have problems with setting up the logical syllogism in such a way that my experience and type of belief - and that of countless other people I know - is a priori ruled out as one actual strand of religious life.

And finally, if as you say there is or are Gods, what or who they are is not up to the believer to decide. As Keith's sig line notes about material things ... what is, simply is. Quite irrespective of what we say or believe about it. That's as true if God(s) exist and some disbelieve, as it is if God(s) don't exist yet some do believe. Human (dis)belief isn't the determining factor in the Gods' existence ...

[B_B]

Braam, the God I experience could surely have many other facets that I don't experience. I'm finite, after all. But my own experience is what speaks to me most strongly. And that experience is at odds with what John, or Osborne (or the Fundamentalists they reject) tell me that an experience of God has to be.

I think that there are elements of "confirmation bias" in picking a model of God which one finds repulsive, and concluding that such is the only viable option for religious belief. It makes one's rejection of religious belief very reasonable, if lunacy is the only alternative.

I've no problem with people not believing - not everyone's had the kind of demonstrative experiences in their lives that have marked mine and my family's. I dunno if I'd have retained belief without that, so I sure can't blame someone else for reaching such a conclusion. But I do have problems with setting up the logical syllogism in such a way that my experience and type of belief - and that of countless other people I know - is a priori ruled out as one actual strand of religious life.

And finally, if as you say there is or are Gods, what or who they are is not up to the believer to decide. As Keith's sig line notes about material things ... what is, simply is. Quite irrespective of what we say or believe about it. That's as true if God(s) exist and some disbelieve, as it is if God(s) don't exist yet some do believe. Human (dis)belief isn't the determining factor in the Gods' existence ...

The human reaction to (dis)belief, or their interpretation of God(s) existence, certainly is the determining factor in the human experience of God, as you suggest in paragraph one. Whether God is or isn't is secondary to what one experiences with regards to whether God is or isn't; one only knows what one experiences. Despite the varied and extensive attempts at forcing religious hegemony, there isn't any - while there is extensive commonality within any given religion, most adherents have slightly differing sets of beliefs.

I have no opinion as to confirmation bias with regards to the folks you mentioned - it may be so. But you suggest in paragraph one that "the God I experience could surely have many other facets that I don't experience" which suggests that the God espoused by the extremist has as much possibility, or probability, of being true as the God you've experienced. May even be the same God (as an aside: it follows that by rejecting one facet of God one rejects God).

But you ask not that John or Osborne reject a particular facet of God. You’re asking that they reject someone’s experience of God while accepting your experience because you believe yours to be more acceptable (more real/true?). But the extremist experiences rejected by you, and John and Osborne, have as much raison d’etre as your experience – someone’s experienced it.

The only difference appears to be the experiencer, or the assertion of quality by an experiencer. If you feel it’s ok to reject certain experiences, because they don’t conform to your expectations, why feel oppressed by John or Osborne doing the same with your experience? It has as much relevance to their reality as does the extremists' to yours.

Furthermore, you ask John and Osborne to reject their own understanding of God. Since we only know what we experience, and if they primarily experience the God of the extremists (through parents, TV, co-workers, internet bullies, whichever) then that is their experience of God and they may choose to reject it as much as you choose to accept the God of your experience and while rejecting the experiences of others'.

(my head's spinning... )

[wardd]

it's up the believers to give a justification for their beliefs

i don't need a reason to not believe something

[TomF]

Interesting points, BB. And yeah, I've intentionally left room for others, who may have as authentic an experience of God as mine, but different in character.

Still, i think we're experiencing the same thing, the extremists and I - in that however multi-faceted God is, it's still God. And as such, there will be an intrinsic common element to the experience, however it differs in expression. Someone holding your hand or analysing a strand of your hair would have a different description and experience, but there'd be the common link of your DNA regardless. If you like, the DNA is the part with the most "reality," however expressed. And a biologist would observe that what looked and was experienced as very different things were far more alike than say, your hand and a hand-shaped bit of stone.

So what's in God's DNA is the question. What is the common bit across various human experienced and descriptions? And I think it's necessary to stick with what are firsthand experiences - in prayer, in spontanious experiences of "other" or "the numinous.". In "flow" or "peak" experiences, or periods of one-ness or transcendance. Those cross all cultures, cross between believers and non-believers even.

Rejecting a cultural interpretation does not require rejecting any such experience of that kind - rejecting God's DNA. After all, if I'd lived 300 years ago in England, even if I'd never met an African, I could reject notions that Africans were benighted savages without rejecting their actual existence. The "benighted savage" description might fit with someone's interpretation of their own interactions with some Africans, but from a modern vantage point we'd likely say that interpretation had grave flaws. Am I bound to say that such an interpretation is as valid as one recognizing the actual richness of African cultures, just because some Europeans once thought it to be so, based on how they understood their experience? Or worse, the experience someone else had, which they received 2nd or 3rd hand?

[TomF]

it's up the believers to give a justification for their beliefs

i don't need a reason to not believe something

I've expressed mine countless times here before - not going to take the time again. Suffice to say that personal experience is unfortunately not transferrable. But is rather forcefully convincing, to those who have had it. Not, I'll swiftly add, due to anything especially "good" or "holy" in my own nature - I dunno why God would do something clear with me and mine, and not with someone else.

[wardd]

I've expressed mine countless times here before - not going to take the time again. Suffice to say that personal experience is unfortunately not transferrable. But is rather forcefully convincing, to those who have had it. Not, I'll swiftly add, due to anything especially "good" or "holy" in my own nature - I dunno why God would do something clear with me and mine, and not with someone else.

if you proselytize you need to have an explanation

[WX]

Please define what "it worked" means.

Most people would think traditional religious ways of treating epidemics (burning people at the stake, sacrificing animals, imploring God for forgiveness, etc.) is slightly less effective than, say, washing hands and building sewers.

[Peerie Maa]

I've expressed mine countless times here before - not going to take the time again. Suffice to say that personal experience is unfortunately not transferrable. But is rather forcefully convincing, to those who have had it. Not, I'll swiftly add, due to anything especially "good" or "holy" in my own nature - I dunno why God would do something clear with me and mine, and not with someone else.

Because you are predisposed in the design of your CPU to have a Faith, and mine is not? May be the science of evolution will figure out the benefit of having Faith, as a parallel to the theories of Altruism. There is an interesting question for those with Faith in considering why such a large proportion of humanity gets along without any faith.

[PeterSibley]

I don't think most of this is about experience of "God" but rather the endless cultural interpretations, by myth and story ,image or what your mother told you. If there is some core of truth it relies very little or not at all on cultural interpretation .That is just story and the bulking and reinforcement that culture applies to it's chosen myths . The truth of something relies not at all on the stories .

To separate this from modern Christian thought for a moment consider Hinduism, a very complex and ancient system of belief, so ancient in fact that the stories and imagery have become quite grotesque. It is hard to take Ganesha seriously, but the germ of the deity may lie deep beneath 5000 years of story and image. The Old Testament seems similar to me, a tribal history and justification for actions, a Public Relations document from a long gone culture .

There is an analogy that appeals to me, a 70s disco mirror ball. A few thousand mirrors reflecting back at the viewer ,all reflecting back what is on the outside , while the inside remains the same .

I remain agnostic, I've seen and experienced some things that indicate theism but not sufficient to construct a structure and I remain extremely suspicious of the "cultural norms" of religion. The most horrifying thing is to watch intelligent people arguing over the minutiae of their particular brand .

I have half a dozen pieces of a jigsaw but don't know if the jigsaw has 100 pieces or a million. I'll keep a watching brief.

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

I really like the story how the guy in the big hat is god's messenger on earth... I mean, he has the big hat doan he?

[B_B]

Interesting points, BB. And yeah, I've intentionally left room for others, who may have as authentic an experience of God as mine, but different in character.

Still, i think we're experiencing the same thing, the extremists and I - in that however multi-faceted God is, it's still God. And as such, there will be an intrinsic common element to the experience, however it differs in expression. Someone holding your hand or analysing a strand of your hair would have a different description and experience, but there'd be the common link of your DNA regardless. If you like, the DNA is the part with the most "reality," however expressed. And a biologist would observe that what looked and was experienced as very different things were far more alike than say, your hand and a hand-shaped bit of stone.

So what's in God's DNA is the question. What is the common bit across various human experienced and descriptions? And I think it's necessary to stick with what are firsthand experiences - in prayer, in spontanious experiences of "other" or "the numinous.". In "flow" or "peak" experiences, or periods of one-ness or transcendance. Those cross all cultures, cross between believers and non-believers even.

Rejecting a cultural interpretation does not require rejecting any such experience of that kind - rejecting God's DNA. After all, if I'd lived 300 years ago in England, even if I'd never met an African, I could reject notions that Africans were benighted savages without rejecting their actual existence. The "benighted savage" description might fit with someone's interpretation of their own interactions with some Africans, but from a modern vantage point we'd likely say that interpretation had grave flaws. Am I bound to say that such an interpretation is as valid as one recognizing the actual richness of African cultures, just because some Europeans once thought it to be so, based on how they understood their experience? Or worse, the experience someone else had, which they received 2nd or 3rd hand?

The difference between the examples you cite and God is that I've actually been to Africa and can accept and reject representations of it because of my experience, for example.

If I don't share your (collective) experience of God, if I have no experience of God at all, then I think it's imminently reasonable to reject every notion of God.

Much like early folk rejected many fantastic tales of Africa - it held no reality for them. And that would apply to all descriptions thereof, the benign and the savage.

So too with John and Osborne and I, and our rejection of tales of a savage God (I continue to presume to speak for them of course. I hope they don't mind!). We haven't met or experienced the benign God either, so instead of accusing us of confirmation bias against the existence of God, you need to find a way, if it matters to you, to get us to experience your God...good luck with that

"Still, i think we're experiencing the same thing, the extremists and I - in that however multi-faceted God is, it's still God." I completely agree. But I accept their facet of God as much as I accept your facet of God. And much like many serial killers have been described as being nice people, I reject them as people (I don't want them to be my friends) because of their purported killing, not because of their purported good deeds, call me crazy.

[wardd]

Because you are predisposed in the design of your CPU to have a Faith, and mine is not? May be the science of evolution will figure out the benefit of having Faith, as a parallel to the theories of Altruism. There is an interesting question for those with Faith in considering why such a large proportion of humanity gets along without any faith.

blind faith can have survival benefit

if a rabbit sees the bushes move it runs on faith that it may be a fox, it doesn't wait around for proof

[Osborne Russell]

Why do you get to define what a religious belief must include? Elephants can be many colours ... but there's no actual difference between a Jihadist suicide bomber and the Dalai Lama, or even me?

I'm only saying what a religious belief must be, if it is said not to be in conflict with reason.

Are you really telling me that as a religious person, I cannot believe that Darwin was onto something? Or that if I believe Darwin was onto something, I cannot really be religious?

No, I saying that even if you believe that Darwin was onto something, and even if it's true, God can still undo it, at any moment, for any reason, according to your belief. Any proposition, no matter how well supported by evidence and reason, is subject to the supernatural trump card.

So you can go ahead and design airplanes and so forth on a strictly rational basis. What happens when you get to the realm of public policy? What role would your kind of faith play, apart from what is does for you personally? Other things being equal, how would your faith indicate one choice over another?

Wouldn't Occam's Razor suggest that it's more likely that I actually know my own mind on such things? Along with at least tens of millions of others more or less like me?

I don't get what you're saying here. I've never been able to remember what the Razor Thing is.

[Osborne Russell]

So that's the basis for your criticism? That bad things happen under the name of religion?

Atheists do their share of burning, too. Witness Mao, Stalin, et al. Any ideology, whether religious or secular, can be misused. Even science can get carried away. Eugenics. Phrenology. The A-Bomb.

No, its my criticism of your earlier statement:

think tolerance... liberal grasshoppers..... think tolerance. Live and let live...... you don't have the answers, either.....

Which I could interpose in response to your criticism of Stalin etc. "Be Tolerant. You don't have the answers either." But I wouldn't because I find that position cowardly.

[Osborne Russell]

Existence proof again. TomF is a Christian who posts here regularly , and he's about as tolerant and broad-minded as people get, and doesn't seem at all obsequious. I know quite a lot of theists who do every day what you claim is impossible. It depends on what kind of God you believe in. ]

Exactly. If you're going to say I believe in the kind of God in whom I can believe in spite of science, it has to be a certain kind of God. A God that created the processes of the universe and let them run by themselves. But he can change his mind at any time, for any reason, wholly or in part. How can you be anything but obsequious in confronting such a power?

I guess you could be a notch below obsequious if you believed in God's essential benevolence, in the sense that he somehow promises not interfere in the processes. But there's no one to enforce it, and again, God can change his mind.

[Osborne Russell]

I'm reminded that 50% of the population has below average intelligence.

Yeah. What were they thinking when they invented democracy?

[wardd]

Exactly. If you're going to say I believe in the kind of God in whom I can believe in spite of science, it has to be a certain kind of God. A God that created the processes of the universe and let them run by themselves. But he can change his mind at any time, for any reason, wholly or in part. How can you be anything but obsequious in confronting such a power?

god can do anything except go against the expectations of true believers

[Keith Wilson]

Keith? Modern science is only a couple hundred years old, and people have been around for (hundreds of thousands? Millions?) of years, during nearly all of which they coped with the physical world, and (as far as we know) usually under the rubric of religious notions. It worked.

Excuse me? It 'worked" in the sense that they lived their lives as well as they could, sure - burning candles to the virgin to stop outbreaks of the plague, killing the Jews who were poisoning the wells when there was a cholera epidemic, sacrificing captives to Quetzalcoatl to bring rain - yeah, sure it worked. They managed to get by in spite of the fact that it didn't work.

Religion cannot provide accurate knowledge of the physical world, except by accident. It cannot give knowledge that works - i.e. when you do something based on that knowledge, it turns out like you predict. That's how you get technology that works - "works" meaning it does what you designed it to do. This could be removing disease-causing bacteria from the water supply, or causing an entire city to vanish efficiently in an atomic fireball; that's up to us - the point is that one does something with the physical world, and it turns out as we expect. Whether we use that power for good or ill is another matter entirely.

One example: When enough people abandoned the idea of religiously-based knowledge of the physical world and accepted the idea of knowledge based on observation, experiment, and reason, a surprising thing happened. For the first time ever in all the long history of our species, most of our children live to grow up.


Osborne, I haven't noticed that Tom is particularly obsequious. Not at all, in fact. Maybe the God he believes in doesn't want people to be cowering slaves.

[Lew Barrett]

Things like eugenics and phrenology certainly have been taken very seriously by scientists as 'science' at some time or another.

What separates science from religion/faith based belief systems is that when the evidence against these things became overwhelming, or the evidence for them was underwhelming, scientists stopped investigating them. Religion/faith based belief systems look at truths as being provided by a higher power, and no matter the overwhelming evidence against, or the underwhelming evidence for, they continue to believe it (particularly if it fits in their desired worldview).

True, but whenever eugenics....especially eugenics....is raised, I always think of the eugenics of the early fascist years, by which time the bunk of it was already well proven.....and the most serious damage caused by it's use as a "science" just coming into being. Correction (otherwise) humbly accepted. I have to admit I know less about reading head bumps than the average bear and have less to defend myself with on that score.

[B_B]

... I have to admit I know less about reading head bumps than the average bear and have less to defend myself with on that score.

There's a reason for that, and it ain't your ignorance. I wasn't correcting you, b.t.w, just trying to provide nuance and context for my second paragraph, you know, the important part.

[Lew Barrett]

BB:
Ah do we not love a good discussion and the caning of the expired equus?


Science, our studied understanding of the physical operatives of the universe has and will continue to be a moving target, and we all agree on that. What defines "modern" science is the adherence to practices that demand conclusive, repeatable and observable outcomes based on known methods of discovery and which remove to the extent possible the subjective influences of the observer.

How does making conclusions about head bumps fit in?

[Keith Wilson]

I have to admit I know less about reading head bumps than the average bear . . .

Did you know there was a phrenology machine? It was called the Psychograph, and it had lots of little wire doodads that would measure your head at 32 points, and print out a report rating you on various qualities. A few years ago, someone had resurrected a couple of them and was doing readings for a buck, more as a curiosity than anything. I had one. It said I was lousy at science and engineering.




The thing about investigating the world through observation and experiment is not that we never get it wrong - being human, we get it wrong all the time. The important thing is that there's a way to find and correct mistakes. If the theory doesn't fit the observations, the theory eventually will get thrown out and replaced with something better.

[Lew Barrett]

Science, our studied understanding of the physical operatives of the universe has and will continue to be a moving target, and we all agree on that.

The thing about investigating the world through observation and experiment is not that we never get it wrong - being human, we get it wrong all the time. The important thing is that there's a way to find and correct mistakes. If the theory doesn't fit the observations, the theory eventually will get thrown out and replaced with something better.

No doubt, the closer we get to a perceived answer, the further the picture slips away from our grasp.



Having all the answers must be so......boring!

[Keith Wilson]

No doubt, the closer we get to a perceived answer, the further the picture slips away from our grasp.

And yet our understanding gets more and more accurate, and we can build more and more things that work. I think we abandoned the idea of understanding it all about 1920. That's a religious claim.. Science is only better and better approximation.

[PhaseLockedLoop]

Excuse me? It 'worked" in the sense that they lived their lives as well as they could, sure - burning candles to the virgin to stop outbreaks of the plague, killing the Jews who were poisoning the wells when there was a cholera epidemic, sacrificing captives to Quetzalcoatl to bring rain - yeah, sure it worked. They managed to get by in spite of the fact that it didn't work.

So we can write off the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe through the 1700s as bumblers who knew nothing about the physical world? And quite by the way, it's awkward to bring up the efforts to control the weather by primitives. At least it didn't "work," while according to current science, we've managed to change the weather worldwide while attending to other "work."

Look, I'll admit that this discussion doesn't belong under the OP. I think the religion of Creationists is fit for dingbats, in this place and time. The world we live in is glutted by technology. You can't use a divination stick, or even a sundial, to find your way out of a mall.

...That's how you get technology that works - "works" meaning it does what you designed it to do. This could be removing disease-causing bacteria from the water supply, or causing an entire city to vanish efficiently in an atomic fireball; that's up to us - the point is that one does something with the physical world, and it turns out as we expect. Whether we use that power for good or ill is another matter entirely.

The Manhattan Project was the work of scientists, expressly designed to blow up cities. It wasn't funded by World Science, it was funded by the Allies, and the scientists involved, when they bothered to justify their work, justified it on the assumption (correct) the the Other Guys' scientists were working on it too. This is a particularly bald example, but the same principle operates in most research. Quite a large portion of current pharmacological research is to find a slightly different formulation of another company's successful (in sales) product, so that it can be legally offered at market. The guys and gals doing the research are scientists. This ain't science-pure-science.

Most other research money goes to weapons development, since the military is the only outfit that can afford to pay obscene amounts of (taxpayer) money. Research has gotta be funded.

[Keith Wilson]

So we can write off the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe through the 1700s as bumblers who knew nothing about the physical world?

Not at all. They were every bit as smart as we are, and they knew a lot, but they knew less about the physical world than we do. People have always learned about the world by observation and experiment; we just do that more effectively, more systematically, and more thoroughly now. This gives us greater power - i.e we can do more things that work. Whether we do intelligent things or stupid things, whether we do good things or bad things, whether we help people or kill people more efficiently, whether the things we do have consequences we didn't anticipate - all this is beside the point. Accurate knowledge gives power. What we use the power for is up to us. The more power we have, the more careful we ought to be.

My point is that religion can teach us nothing about how the physical world works.

[Lew Barrett]

And yet our understanding gets more and more accurate, and we can build more and more things that work. I think we abandoned the idea of understanding it all about 1920. That's a religious claim.. Science is only better and better approximation.

Good point, though I trust you understand mine as well, as neither is so distant from the other. It is like looking at a fractal. The more you dig into the thing, the more detail is revealed but the deeper you are encouraged to look.

[Chip-skiff]

Good point, though I trust you understand mine as well, as neither is so distant from the other. It is like looking at a fractal. The more you dig into the thing, the more detail is revealed but the deeper you are encouraged to look.

Yet, at some point the fractal resolves as molecules, then atoms, and then as sub-atomic particles, and you are in a quantum universe where the rules are fundamentally different. Which has bugger-all to do with religion.

Religion is a cobbled-up set of explanations and justifications. Campfire stuff.

[B_B]

...Science, our studied understanding of the physical operatives of the universe has and will continue to be a moving target, and we all agree on that. ...
How does making conclusions about head bumps fit in?

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Sure SOME of science is a moving target, but much which used to be moving is now still. Religion on the other hand is perceived to be still but is, and always has been, moving ...

As to phrenology; absolutely, absurd. But wouldn't it be more absurd if thoughts were either accepted without testing, or rejected the same way? While I enjoy a giggle at the scientists who thought such things (phrenology) might have merit and set out to prove or disprove their theories, I laugh heartily at those who can't be bothered to question what they believe.

[B_B]

So we can write off the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome,...as bumblers who knew nothing about the physical world? ...

What remains of these civilizations is not their religion, but their engineering and science - their connection to, and understanding of, the physical world. Their religious beliefs are long forgotten.

[Keith Wilson]

Religion is a cobbled-up set of explanations and justifications. Campfire stuff.

Some parts of some religions consist of that, certainly, and at one time that was a very large part of most religions. Some religions still work that way. But there's a large part of religion that isn't about that at all. Some of it is concerned with how we should treat other human beings, what sort of life is worthwhile, what our lives mean, how does our brief existence fit into the whole, what should our attitude toward the universe be, what is justice and how can we make more of it, how we can best be happy in a world full of suffering, how to deal with tragedy and inevitable death, how to celebrate life and birth and love and all the other good things we experience, and just noting in amazement and wonder and gratitude that we're here at all and can ask these questions. These are not trivial things, and they can't be understood just by studying the physical world.

Their religious beliefs are long forgotten.

Their beliefs about Zeus and Athena and how the world was supposedly made, yes. But people still read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Plato, and find that they wrestled with the same questions we do, and that some of their answers may be helpful to us.

[Garret]

What remains of these civilizations is not their religion, but their engineering and science - their connection to, and understanding of, the physical world. Their religious beliefs are long forgotten.

Are they? I was just praying to Ra the other day...

More seriously though - instead of being forgotten, I'd say that many have been absorbed - such as Christmas falling on the same day as solstice celebrations, etc.

[B_B]

Are they? I was just praying to Ra the other day...

More seriously though - instead of being forgotten, I'd say that many have been absorbed - such as Christmas falling on the same day as solstice celebrations, etc.

That wasn't absorption (a combining of thought), that was co-option (a changing of the meaning of an event, or idea, over time to reflect something completely different than originally intended - removing the original intent from consciousness). Religion moves while selling itself as consistent.

How is Ra, feeling much love, or are you the only relative who visits

[Garret]

Good point. Ra needed cheering up, so I gave a ra-ra!

Sorry 'twas there.

[B_B]

originally posted by B_B Their religious beliefs are long forgotten.

Their beliefs about Zeus and Athena and how the world was supposedly made, yes. But people still read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Plato, and find that they wrestled with the same questions we do, and that some of their answers may be helpful to us.

Absolutely, but not as religion, as philosophy. And there is a difference.

There isn't a sector of inquiry or expression which is immune from the other (science, art, philosophy, all inspire, teach, learn from, etc. each other). The only difference is Religion asserts it's immune, asserts it's above it all (it isn't, it evolves; they just don't like telling folks that as religions' reason to exist is it's divine immutability).

[B_B]

Good point. Ra needed cheering up, so I gave a ra-ra!

Sorry 'twas there.

Don't apologize. I thought it was funny. I know I come off sounding like an uptight, humourless, arrogant prick, but really I'm just an arrogant prick.

[Garret]

Oh - I knew that!

Just kidding. I don't read you that way at all. I see someone actually giving thought to their posts - and I like that - even if (especially if?) I don't always agree.

I spent a # of years working with a guy who really could be one. Someone asked me how I stood it & I replied that it was simple - just be more arrogant. He quickly learned it was a waste of time with me & we ended up good friends.

[Keith Wilson]

There's a lot of overlap between (some kinds of) religion and philosophy.

And only in some kinds of religion do people pretend their beliefs are eternal and immutable, As an example I give you the United Church of Christ, mainline Protestant, about a million members in the US; their motto lately is "God is still speaking". Read about it here. Religion is not just folks like SamF or fundamentalists.

[B_B]

There's a lot of overlap between (some kinds of) religion and philosophy.

And only in some kinds of religion do people pretend their beliefs are eternal and immutable, As an example I give you the United Church of Christ, mainline Protestant, about a million members in the US; their motto lately is "God is still speaking". Read about it here. Religion is not just folks like SamF or fundamentalists.

I think a religion is the institutionalization of a philosophy.

I think philosophy is the attempt to find answers to that which is outside our physical experience.

I think science is the attempt to explain our physical experience without institutionalizing it.

I also think a lot of belief gets labelled as religion and a lot of religion gets labelled as belief.

(swmbo just opened my office door and winked...I'm outta here)

[Lew Barrett]

Yet, at some point the fractal resolves as molecules, then atoms, and then as sub-atomic particles, and you are in a quantum universe where the rules are fundamentally different. Which has bugger-all to do with religion.

Religion is a cobbled-up set of explanations and justifications. Campfire stuff.

I'm not religious in any conventional sense, and the mention of fractals is used strictly a metaphor. No disagreement from me, I presume your expansion to quantum mechanics simply amplifies the point.

[Lew Barrett]

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Sure SOME of science is a moving target, but much which used to be moving is now still. Religion on the other hand is perceived to be still but is, and always has been, moving ...

The place(s) that I believe we may be stymied in our quest, or at least may find that the sun engulfs us before we come to an answer, is in attempting to reach the stars (as a metaphor again). If we really do find ourselves earthbound, or incapable of crossing the sorts of boundaries suggested by Chip's mention of the quantum universe, then science as it pertains to this discussion remains very much a rolling doughnut. When we have those sorts of answers, we may find ourselves as gods, just as we are now seemingly so to our pets (if they are dogs).

The long way of saying: science in this context is very much unsettled. All you need is a vicious cancer or the wrong sort of nerve damage to come to a realization of how little we yet know.

[Keith Wilson]

I am most certainly not a god to my cats. Maybe a can opener.