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however just because a view is held in belief, that practise is not necessarily religious. if we were to make that interpretation then we should also identify superstitious beliefs, like walking around ladders or building hotels without a 13th floor, the same way. |
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Convinced or not, you're still just describing your beliefs. |
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You can speak with conviction of whatever you're convinced is the truth, but it still wouldn't be more than your belief in most cases. What I'd say you could have knowledge of is that a thing is and what this thing is, but what it tells you will have to be rooted in belief; if you find a petrified frog, you have the assumption and belief that for something to be petrified, it would have to be so-and-so old, but the object itself isn't telling you how old it is. This also goes for the results of carbon dating; you can know the data, but interpretation is up to you and your beliefs. This doesn't, however, degrade the possible quality of your beliefs, it's just important to keep this, that your theory is a system of beliefs and not knowledge, in mind, and especially if you're going to be a scientist. |
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No, so I will. The flying spaghetti monster is the gayest "argument" ever devised and proves nothing. |
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Word! |
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atheists like IDM |
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monoid is part of the wank stars |
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i agree. its funny but the more we think about the nature of truth, we realise the need to keep a distance in order to approach it. |
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ok, let me rephrase how i feel i basically dont think about anything it never comes into play i never think about whether there is/are god(s) or not i don't strongly believe or hold that there isn't a god, i just have a void in that area of my conscience. dunno how to explain it really. i dont think about religion, i wouldnt say i truely believe in anything, but i guess if pressed i'd say i dont really "believe" in a god. it's just a null area of my life. |
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i think you are wildly glossing over the differences between empirical observation and faith based dogmatic belief. i don't have to take on faith the decay rate of carbon 14. i don't have to take anyone who makes any claim about the decay rate of carbon 14 at their word. if i so wanted i could conduct experiments to test their claims, and if i were able to set up good experiments that disproved those claims, the theory of carbon dating would be tossed from scientific acceptance. the verifiability, and falsifiability of claims is central in science. the same absolutely cannot be said about faith based belief. they aren't the same at all. |
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What I was getting at was that your knowledge is only of the decay rate, the, "objective" part of the observation (No observation is objective in one sense, but in the sense of the word that I'm using it in (which I also believe is a more correct sense), objective means that which is only in relation to the object, in other words, its physical properties). However, only knowing the objective won't get you very far ("C14 decays at a rate of [whatever]"): you need a theory, a system of beliefs, that makes sense out of these data, and that is science. In this case, the general belief is one of inference, that C14 always decays at this steady rate at which it has decayed up until now. A more specific belief in this context is that if the first statement is true (which you believe it to be), you can determine an object that contains C14s date by calculating how much it has decayed. That said, as rockenjohnny pointed out, to believe in what science tells you also requires a "leap of faith;" your leap into believing what you believe isn't justified in any way by the world around you, you just choose to believe it based on your other beliefs. Whether or not this faith is exercised in the same way in religion as it is in science, I won't say with certainty because I'm not religious, so I wouldn't know, but I would indeed assume that it is so. |
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Hmm.. well, without reducing the argument to discussions about absolute truth, which i don't think we have to do, I think it is entirely accurate to point out the substantial difference between something that is verifiable and falsifiable (the atomic half-life of c14) and something that is not (the existence of a god). One could imagine a controlled experiment in which the atomic decay of c14 is tested, does not fit the current theory, and the theory of radioactive carbon data is from that point on invalid. It doesn't matter how much faith someone has in C14. Once the theory is disproved it is no longer good science to continue to use it. That just isn't the case with religious faith. So, I think your claim that the "leaps of faith" are equal is just not right. And, in reference to scientific observation, your quote "your leap into believing what you believe isn't justified in any way by the world around you, you just choose to believe it based on your other beliefs." -- I think that's incorrect. |
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Well.. I'd say falsifiability is an ideal within science, and not necessarily everywhere else. If you were to take the more general form of it, you arrive at experience (it is through experience something is proved or disproved), but experience is a rather wide term, and it makes perfect sense to talk about a religious experience. Now, most of your beliefs are based on experience, an experience that in most cases isn't about the falsifiability of the thing, but rather about the properties of the thing, but what do the properties of the thing tell you? Now comes the leap of faith. In a way the world doesn't make sense; there's nothing about the world in itself that you could ever understand (try imagining the world objectively in the strictest sense, excluding even your own experience of it). However, you are indeed making sense of the world (as indicated by the sentence, you are making the sense; the world doesn't make sense unless you make sense of it), but you are making sense of it, not in its relation to itself, but in relation to you, and you have your system of beliefs. This system of beliefs is necessarily, for a normal person, coherent (contradictions may occur, but in cases where you aren't aware of the contradiction, it still makes sense to you.. the classic example of the morning star and the evening star which you could hold two different and mutually excluding beliefs about, while they are both indeed the same planet), but not unchangeable; you can modify your system of beliefs with new information gained through experience (you experience your own reasoning), but you can never justify it in the world in itself. Just try backtracking your beliefs, and you'll end up somewhere next to Descartes without being able to trust his appearance to you. |
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I'm not sure I agree with this. It's a bit of a simplification to draw a clear line making science distinct from religion on the grounds that within science (at least at a given moment in time) everyone "believes" (or rather, accepts as fact) the same thing. A large proportion of what is published in journals is critcising and sometimes (occassionaly without even suggesting an alternative) claiming another theory is wrong, or that the proof it rests upon is "bad science". This could be considered analogus the different denominations of a church arguing over the fine points of scripture and ministers denouncing certain practices as heresy. There is a lot of evidence to suggest natural resources are dwindling and without changing to renewable energy, we will soon (in under 100 years) be doomed. A great deal of the scientific community agree on this. A sizeable number of scientists, however, believe this to be untrue; that we have at least a couple of hundred more years of use of fossil fuels and some even believe they come not from fossils, but from the earth's core and new ones are being made all the time. A prominent scientist (and I'm damned if I can remember his name, but one of his books has "cornucopia" in the title) used to "believe" in the established viewpoint. His own research that he undertook for his doctorate convinced him that the latter view was more accurate. Indeed, he even describes himself as a "convert" to his new point of view. If the evidence of science really was conclusive, either there are an awful lot of dim scientists (many of whom hold professorships and are published in the most esteemed journals) or there's some intentional plot to generate doubt in the field. Science isn't really a great deal more black and white (in terms of everyone agreeing on it) than religion. Yes, you get some branches like maths which are more "pure" and less debated than others, but even then, when you stray into practical applications of it, you begin to encounter differing v |
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...differing viewpoints on it. |
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I also think that the reason why you don't want to call it a leap of faith is that you haven't really experienced the leap of faith (nor have most religious people, mind you), but rather slowly crawled across the chasm without looking down as you grew up, and you haven't faced any crisis that could put you on a ground uncertain enough to make you redo the jump, that could make you have to choose to believe modern science over another explanation once more. Imagine yourself having a profound religious experience, no logical explanations, a being appeared before you and you instantly knew that it was god, and you weren't able to understand it any other way. To go back to believing science would require the leap. Now, you may say this is an absurd or extreme situation, and not such an extreme situation would necessarily be required, but things are often more easily distinguished when they are far apart. |
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But, whether or not we find it or not, a truth exists within science which can be discovered. It can be proved to one person, and, through that which we all have in common (that is, the "objective" world ) we can communicate ideas about the "objective" world. This is not so with religion. |
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Religion is finite. Science is truth through discovery, up until the point of alternate discovery. Science is not finite. |
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monoid everyone loves your pop vibe. |
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I agree, it doesn't "prove" anything, but it sure makes for a good parody. |
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Religion threads are stupid. |
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..especially with poor grammar and spelling. |
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When you say objective, do you mean intersubjective? |
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the way we have been comparing science and belief brings up another important concept: beliefs should always be questioned. scientific theories are always being revised. our views on the world are always being challenged. no one of us can ever be totally correct or incorrect. our knowledge is subject to all manner of filtering by the brain and five senses. and then that knowledge is open to the interpretation of others. a buddhist monk, after all their practise of a clear state of mind, will say 'i know this is true, But you shouldnt Believe me, you should find out for yourself' |
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Ya, atheism does not imply belief at all. it just means you do not believe. consider somebody who has never been exposed to religion and therefore never thinks about it. He does not believe. He is by default, an atheist. |
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for me it makes sense to distinguish between an ignorance in a concept, and a disbelief in that concept |
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actually, it . |
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Perhaps...but both cases could be called atheist, since ignorance necessarily implies a lack of belief. I assume also that no religion can be known a priori. |
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i can see why people often have a problem aligning belief with opinion. to be honest i would not have linked the two straight away. the leap of faith required to believe in something supernatural seems to immediately set that kind of conviction apart from a conviction in ones opinion but i like drunken mastahs reasoning, which as far as i understand, suggests that opinion is similar to belief in that both thought processes are based on uncertain empirical values. |
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I think that distinction is trivial. |
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Your earlier post is only describing what that wiki article would call weak atheism. But there are also people who make the point of fact statement that god does not exist. That would be a definite belief, not merely the lack of belief, or the acknowledgment that the are unsure, they're stating a defined belief. |
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i guess i draw the line because i cant justify the classification if someone had never heard the world was round, it would be unfair to classify them as being someone who doesnt believe in that idea. on the other side of the coin, if the commonly held view was that the world was flat and the truth wasnt known, that would still be different from holding the view that the world 'isnt round', as the concept has yet to be introduced. |
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You don't have to be a "strong atheist" to assert that god does not exist. It's perfectly reasonable to regard false what cannot be conclusively proven to be true. |
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But if your criterion for truth is sensory perception, and you have not been exposed to science, then a flat earth is true as true can be. But we know this person's criterion is weak and flimsy, so let's forget about it. |
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Yeah, , I think we're just discussing semantics. :) |
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i agree with you for the most part. however, if i were to picture myself zipping around the earth in a tardis in pre-gallileian times, observing the people in the towns and villages, it wouldnt fit to call them 'a-round-ist', rather i would say 'they are unaware that the world is round' |
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I LOVE AGREEMENT |
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i love these threads :) |
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opinions are the smaller entities in belief systems. |
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buddhism is my favourite religion, for pretty much that reason. it is nowhere near as dogmatic as the abrahamic religions. their beliefs are fixed, and if you think something else you are a heretic. buddhism is open to interpretation. |
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What is considered truth is rarely anything more than a coherent system of beliefs. |
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That letter is class. I particularly like the way it fails to mentions people's freedom to follow religion through non-Christian religions. |
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fucked up |
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Holy Shit that is the scariest thing I've seen in a while. And I just watched a ghost/clown/axe murderer/alien/monster kill my whole family! This is still scarier.. I'd love to meet Alice, sure she'd be a awesome chick. |
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We have lots of people like that here. They're inclined to believe that because we don't follow their god, we're lacking in any moral consciousness. Personally, I don't need religion to have a good moral compass. ...but if it keeps nuts like her on the straight and narrow, I'm all for it! heh. |
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blatantly made to try and convert you. the evolution stuff is laughable. |
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I took that survey, and left a comment calling him a stupid douchebag for saying that Darwinian evolution suggests we arrived on Earth by mere chance or luck. What a 'tard. |
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It doesn't? It's just random that you're here. I don't believe in luck, but chance is most definitely a factor in evolution. |
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mutation is random. natural selection is definately not. evolution is not random. |
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