I really hate these things but why not Some of you may know me, despite my cunning disguise Been around on this forum for almost three years. When I came back after a bit of a break to discover that everyone had gone somewhere else I decided to make a new start. I'm not a hippy. I am interested in politics, demonstrations for political change and against war, I'm interested in environmental issues - that's the stuff that first got me into posting here. These things I regard as the positive legacy of the hippy movement. But I don't think it's possible to seriously call yourself a hippy anymore, to regard yourself as belonging to a movement which died out more than 30 years ago. It's as meaningless as if I were to declare myself a Renaissance poet, an Edwardian gentleman or a Vietnamese prostitute (sucky sucky five dollar). Things move on. In fact I regard those who insist on slavishly wearing the uniform and listening to the music of a bygone era as either slightly tragic or as fashion victims. Having alienated half of the people here, I might as well go on and alienate the other half. I'm an atheist. I'm a scientific materialist; a rationalist; a Bright. I think religion is and has been an incredibly destructive force throughout history. Not least because it is about keeping yourself wilfully ignorant. I see 'New Age Spiritualism' in all its forms, which has sprung up in the wake of the decline of organised religion in the West as coming from exactly the same mindset, just as backwards - and potentially just as destructive. I think we need to abandon the whole vocabulary of superstition and magic and embrace objectivity, reason and knowledge. I don't know why people still have superstitious ideas in a well-educated, technologically advanced society. It baffles me. Maybe science isn't taught properly in our schools, maybe it's the tenacious folk-influence of generation upon generation, or maybe the need for meaning is so great that the majority are unprepared to truly embrace the notion of a purposeless, meaningless existence in a cold universe. So that's me... And that's it for now I think
I agree with the first half. But definately not the second half. I believe there's more to life than meets the eye (or indeed what you can rationally or objectively prove) and I think dismissing the "irrational" is a terrible thing. I think it's possible to be spiritual without being supersticious. I agree that religion is responsible for some terrible things but I also believe that that's more politics than God. I won't continue, I'll just start a Yin thread about people like you (my dad and brother are exactly the same, and it really infuriates me; anything I feel to be true but can't scientifically justify often gets shot down by one of them). If you could be a colour, which one would you be? Do walls really have ears? Fire or water? Do you need glasses?
I know that there's more to life than meets the eye, and more than we can rationally or objectively prove ... yet I would never dismiss irrationality, I think it's hugely important. Some of the things we now know or can do would never have come about without a massive leap of irrationality in the first place - see that pale grey disc in the sky ... let's go and STAND on it! But at the same time in order to be achieved they required focused, objective, rational work. Often people make the mistake of thinking a scientific worldview is closed-minded. Really it's totally the opposite. Scepticism is the primary condition for progress of any kind, the refusal to accept what seems to be so. This is closely followed by a total open-mindedness to any possibility (irrationality, if you like). Just add to that the determination to really understand according to the ONLY way we have of objectively understanding phenomena which manifest themselves in the universe - a logical scientific methodology. And no knowledge however hard-won is ever final, it's always open to yet more doubt, and that's how more progress is made. Science is total openness to any and all possibilities But ... to accept something as true on the basis of a hunch, without trying to rationally investigate it, or to accept it as true in the face of evidence to the contrary - now that's closed-mindedness. Ghosts, magic, spiritualism, yadda yadda yadda; it's tiresome and childish, and it seems like the people who profess such things really just aren't interested in understanding how things actually work. I shan't go on, I shall just make a yang thread about people like you I think I would be blue, a deep blue. I don't think walls have ears unless you're talking metaphorically during the war or perhaps have just been to a gallery of conceptual art. Fire or water - both, and keep the water within reach unless it's an electrical fire in which case CO2 Of course I need glasses, I read a lot as a child! Thankyou for the questions they made me use my brains.
I know who you are now! Well I didn't expect that, a pleasant surprise to be sure, mister... SHOWMET!
I completely agree with your take on the science vs. religion debate. I wouldn't go as far to say that believers are childish, as it's a natural state of being, I think, to want to understand the world. And faith, in the lack of certainty, is something we all have. I'm not talking about God here. I would assume God doesn't exist, given that there's no evidence for it - and given no evidence either way I can't see a reason to simply invent a concept, such as an invisible teapot orbiting Mars as Dawkins puts it. But the universe exists, and we don't know how it came to exist. Religion is happy to rest upon faith in the first - it was God what dunnit. But science seeks answers through, as you say, scepticism and falsification. However as far as you go down that route, eventually you have to come up with a theory without all available evidence, and there has to be an element of faith involved. I believe that the universe started with a Big Bang, I can say that because it is expanding outwards from a single point and because radiation traces suggest that to be the case but I can't know given current evidence, I can only believe the theory at present. Where science is superior to religion, I'd say however, is that the paradigm under which it operates constantly seeks to prove theories to eliminate belief and knowledge gaps, whereas religion does not. In the past reason might have been used to prove God's existence, such as Aquinas' five proofs, or Descartes scepticism of everything except his own scepticism, but science blows such things out of the water and now religion can rely only on faith - whereas science possesses both faith and reason. Your point on fire extinguishers, however, evokes images of obsessive steward woman who seemed to want to prove her extensive knowledge of fire safety to the fireman.... What's your favourite day of the week?
Oh aye, it's Showmet for sure. Even if my method of discovery was somewhat Italian, at least it was accurate....
Yes I agree, and I think I read that it's more than 90% of the Earth's population that has some form of mystical/supernatural belief system. This in itself is fascinating - why we have these hard-wired cognitive systems which make it 'natural' and 'normal' to make all these erroneous assumptions about the fundamental nature of the universe. Science is itself highly technical and specialised, and you could quite easily say it's an "unnatural" way of understanding things. It's only done by a small fraction of humanity, and it's only a few hundred years since the whole project really began. I did a lot of reading about the fairly new field of evolutionary psychology in the first half of this year, and learnt loads of new things, and it still fills me with awe and wonder to glimpse an understanding of how the universe works. Religion does not have a monopoly on awe-inspiring ideas; I would say that neuroscience and quantum theory more than rival anything the Bible has to offer in terms of moving us to be awestruck at the nature of existence Yep, some good points well made Just one more point to add - there is a fundamental difference between the kind of "faith" as you call it which is inherent to science and the kind of faith which is inherent to religion. Religious faith is (almost) always concerned with a final statement of truth, an unassailable belief about how things are. Scientific theories and hypotheses are always provisional and never unassailable - when new evidence comes along, the whole thing can get overturned in an instant. It's fluid, and it's open, and it can always be proved wrong - this is something entirely alien to most superstitious belief systems. Now that's a hard one Can I pass?
You can't pass no And have you read Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment? Part of their argument is that the paradigm of science still operates along the same principles as mythology, religion and superstition. Although science provides theories that are falsifiable and that one is encouraged to question, unlike religion, no one in post-Enlightenment society supposedly questions that science can provide all the answers. So although the answers themselves may be questioned, the overall framework is not. And this can lead to some very dangerous forms of society. Of course, you'd have to bear in mind that they were writing just after the Holocaust, and had a very dim view of humanity at the time. And I wouldn't agree with them, but it's an interesting point nonetheless. But to more important matters... What's your favourite day of the week? And what's your worst day of the week?
I haven’t read it, but it sounds like a fascinating position. Without reading their complete argument it’s dangerous to say I disagree, but I suspect I might From what I understand it talks of the failure of the Enlightenment project. Based, presumably, on the misuse of science by ideologues such as the Nazis. That sounds like blaming a kettle for scalding a child. Science has no position to argue, it isn’t a viewpoint. I talked before of science being a methodology, in truth it isn’t even that, really. It’s a principle of objectivity and logic. Pretty much everything else is open to question. But true enough there has to be a foundation, a ‘position of faith’ if you insist on calling it that. And the one thing I can’t see changing are the principles of logic which underpin scientific method. There is nothing to which logic can’t be applied, even though there may seem to be. Much of our knowledge and technology would’ve seemed totally illogical 100 years ago! That doesn’t mean logic was at fault – it was that our understanding was not yet complete enough to enable us to apply logic correctly. Similarly, there are many things which seem beyond the grasp of logic now, but it’s just because we don’t know enough yet. Logic is something I’d be prepared to put faith in as being a trustworthy foundation on which to build knowledge. But even so, if it was discovered that 2+2=5, then I would reconsider the point. I suspect that 2+2 may well equal five under some circumstances; in which case it means we have to refine our understanding still further. That doesn’t mean the Enlightenment has failed, in fact it re-enlivens it! I'll have to come back to these, these difficult questions are troubling me
OK ... worst day is probably Sunday. Because I have to prepare work for Monday. It's also usually the day off in my cycling schedule so my legs normally hurt quite a bit by that point! Favourite day... toughie this, but I'm having to go for Friday. Not because it's the end of the working week or anything. I do so little work it can't possibly be that! It's more just a memory of really loving Fridays as a child. Double chemistry was the last thing on a Friday afternoon with the cruellest teacher ever. I remember loving that lesson just for the bit at the end when the bell went and I could walk out - freedom! So I think it's really just a chemical memory of that, somewhere deep in my brain, that makes Friday evenings just seem a little special.
Whilst I disagree with Horkheimer and Adorno, I haven't been fair to them in that short paragraph. I'll dig out an old essay where I've summarised them better and post a bit of it here if you're interested. The book isn't a great read in my opinion, though the argument is advanced, it's convoluted, at times non-sensical and draws on literary and artistic parrallels to a level which is really rather ridiculous and unnecessary for the social sciences. I do, however, agree with your reasons for liking Fridays, I've had similar experiences. Sundays are also my least favourite day, not least because nothing's bloody open. If Britain and Finland went to war, who would you support?
Yep I'd be interested ... though I may be tempted to give it back to you with a grade and some pompous comments about grammar Do you even need to ask? The only question would be whether I would move to Ostrobothnia right away or go underground here and organise guerrilla attacks
