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Two arguments that give the creationists the upper hand.
EricL:
--- Quote from: apothegm ---This is quite a contentious topic, and there's been some good discussion here... I've enjoyed reading it and I feel like I know some of the DB forum posters a lot better now .
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Ya think? We're nothing if not opinionated.
--- Quote from: apothegm ---However, there can be great value in things that are outside of the realm of science, like myths, stories, and symbols.
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I agree there is great value in these things but I disagree they are outside the realm of science. To say something is outside the realm of science is to say it is outside the realm of rational investigation. Why are myths good teaching tools? What makes a story worth retelling? Why do certain symbols have meaning to human brains and how did this evolve? These are scietific questions. I love a good story as much as the next guy, but I don't need mystisism to appreciate it.
--- Quote from: apothegm ---Science has many uses, but when you're trying to figure out what you need in your life to make you happy or what movie to see tonight, science has very little to offer.
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Perhaps. Why are you not happy in your life? Is it chemical of phsycological or behavioural? What are the biological roots of happieness and why do we seek happieness and why some movies contribute positivly and others negativly to that happieness? I'm being extreme to make a point and I agree with you that some things are perhaps too trivial to be worth scientific investigation but that does not mean their causes are not within the realm of science or incapable of being studied. There are companies that woudl pay big bucks for a better scientific understanding of what makes people happy or why certain movies are appealing at certain times and not others...
--- Quote from: apothegm ---As such, when the bible has stories about virgin births or resurrections, it doesn't mean you should dismiss them as scientifically innaccurate and therefore false, but instead look at them as symbols that have helped to shape our culture and our identities, and can serve as common reference-points that allow us to relate to one another more effectively.
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I can do both. I can both dismiss them as scientically inaccurate as well as look at them as symbols that have shaped our culture. I'll be the first to admit that stories and myths have value and that religious stories have played a huge role in our history and culture. Not to do so would be naive. The bible for example is a wonderful book, full of elegant liturature of both historical and literary value. I can enjoy the stories and learn from the parables without actually believing them. It's called fiction.
--- Quote from: apothegm ---Take, for example EricL's post about the DarwinBots bar (which I love btw). It's difficult to quantify or measure the utility of this piece, and the characters of the bartender, the old sage, and the escaped mental patient are certainly symbolic rather than literal, but reading it has without a doubt enriched my experience here.
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Thanks!
--- Quote from: apothegm ---If only fewer people would try to take our myths so literally...
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If only...
--- Quote from: apothegm ---And of course, these views would be completely out of place in a scientific discussion .
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Again, I disagree. Perhaps I'm using a broader definition of scientific discussion than others, but really, there is nothing in my opinion that is outside the realm of rational and reasonable discussion.
shvarz:
This argument has gone long enough and showed enough results to deserve this picture:
Numsgil:
Oh, but we're having so much fun
EricL:
Indeed!
I have to catch a plane to Hawaii in a few hours anyway, so I'll see you all in a week plus!
Numsgil:
--- Quote from: EricL ---If someone acknowledges it is belief itself, in any god, that is important and not the god itself, that any god will do, that while there may be benefits to belief itself, gods don't really exist outsides one's head and don't really perform supernatural acts, then they are no longer religious in my book. I will be the first to admit that there may be benefits to beleiving in a god or gods - physcological, social benefits rooted in evolved brain and social behaviour - but belief in the power of belief is very different than actual belief in the supernatural. The placebo effect is very real. It is actual beleif in the supernatural I have a problem with.
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Then you have a very narrow view of what is "religious". But I digress. As to wether or not there exists a God: no compelling "scientific" evidence either way. But I'm not arguing for the existence of God. I'm arguing for the belief in a God; that it's a Good Thing. Not to be universally scorned, but exalted as a wonderful, telling example of the human condition. It's like the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (ie: the Bladerunner book) by Philip K Dick. Could matter less if a religion is based on something that actually happened or not. Believing in something is healthy and good.
--- Quote ---Religions conflict with one another (and with science) because they proport different and conflicting frameworks for how the universe came to be and which god or gods are in charge, which should be worshiped and how, how to kill those who whorship the wrong gods and so on. If a monotheist acknowledges that another god is just as valid as their own, they have taken a huge step torwards secularism IMHO.
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Creation stories are only cursorally related to the religions they're from. If you view the Judeo-Christian belief and Genesis as the same thing, you've really missed the point.
--- Quote ---Your warm and fuzzy speculation that all religons may somehow be simply mutations of an original truth is interesting and there may be some value in it from a historical perpsective, but it does not add support for the existance of the supernatural. It mearly demonstrates the inventivness and creativity of humans. If you allow the possibility that all of the worlds religons have been modified and changed so dramatically from some root form through human invention, then why not acknowledge that religion itself may also be a product of the same inventivness?
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Religion is universal to all tribes, cultures, and identities. At the very least, that means there's something fundamental that religion fills, the same way that language is something fundamental. Assuming all present religions represent a mutation from an original, if you take the commonalities between all religions, you arrive at what it is about religion that works and makes it valuable. I would claim those qualities are community and spirituality. Maybe a couple others. All the back story you're so concerned with doesn't really matter except as a means of heightening those virtues. Like a laser light show at a rock concert.
--- Quote ---I think that's crap. Religion is mythological hangover from the dark ages rooted in a time before we understood the way the universe actually works. It gets in the way of understanding the universe, it doesn't enhance it. People came up with religion as a way to explain and make sense of the world around them. Before Darwin, there was no competing theory for how life in it's many varied forms came to be. Before cosmology, there was no competing therory for the orgin of the universe or why the stars moved across the heavens. Religion was it. Until recently, religion was science.
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Say my mother dies. Science can tell me exactly what's happening to my mother's body. How the body fluids will turn septic and my mother's flesh will turn rancid, and how little worms will crawl around in her eye cavities. Does my mother exist still, in some way? Well, there's no compelling evidence for that in science. That makes me upset, and will lengthen my mourning, decreasing my utility to society. If my mother is in heaven, I can get on with my life much sooner. I'll meet her later. Doesn't actually matter which is true, because I won't find out until I'm dead. And then I'll either embrace oblivion (and thus not care), or go to heaven with her (and thus be happy).
Religion is about that sort of thing. It's about finding a mental framework that places us in a universe and makes sense of all of it. Do not confuse early science (Atlas and such) with early religion. The two used to be very close only because specialized labor is a luxury not all societies can afford. If your priest is also your doctor, scientist, and psychologist, you're being conservative with your labor. No doubt in the future further specialization will come. But the core of religion fills a purpose that science can not, and that's been true and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future. Science is concerned with the universe and "truth", religion with people and emotion.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---It's really easy actually. Morality is a function of social norms. Humans are social animals and the fact that we all share a set of general principles that one might term "morals" is because it's rooted in our genes. Killing others in your tribe for no reason generally resulted in your genes getting removed from the gene pool. Selection favorred certain behaviours and disfavorred others. You see the same thing in chimps, gorrillas, wolves and so on. There are norms of behaviour, often complex, often with cheaters, often with consequences for being caught cheating, often with a whole economy of behavioural practices. There is always genetic variablity, always the one guy that likes to kill people for no reason, but that person is a rare anomily. So, you use control groups, you use your questionaires to find a baseline across the population and then you test different demographic groups and look for corrolations. It's been done hundreds of times. This isn't hard. I'm surprised you find it so.
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That's certainly a method for describing morality, but it fails to capture the idea of difficult to attain morality that many societies are based on. It's like beauty: if you take the average of everyone's features, you'll arrive at an attractive person. But there's still a higher beauty that you haven't captured. I guess you could ask what people consider moral instead of what it is they actually do, but that begs the question of "what is morality".
--- Quote ---I strongly disagree. As above, right and wrong, immoral and moral, these are social norms rooted in our genetics as highly complex social animals and as such as clearly within the domain of science.
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Have you ever played Star Control 2? Take the Ur-Quan race for an example. Their internal instincts made civilization very difficult for them, because they were deeply territorial. Clearly asocial creatures. Morality for them was defined as fighting their baser instincts in order to achieve civilization. Obviously this is a fictional example, but not all morality necessarily follows from our instincts. If it doesn't come from our instincts, it must come from our thought, from our higher brain functions. A realm that science is decidedly hesitant to scratch (so called black box psychology). Religion fills the gap from the other direction: positing morality based on the human condition, from that black box.
--- Quote ---There are those who would disagree with this. I'm no religious scholar, but from what I've read, the position that Islam is really a kind, gentle religion being misinterpreted by extremists may be wishful thinking. It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.
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This is a complex issue, but basically you have to understand that when Islam was founded, it was surrounded by very pagan, very hostile cultures. Baby sacrifice was not uncommon. Slavery was quite common. Islam fought against these cultures for its very survival, and the liberation of enslaved nations. Any militant scriptures are from this conflict. Towards Christians (and Jews) the scriptures are very clear: brotherly love with a hint of condescension for them missing the whole point. Maybe a trace of pity.
--- Quote ---Surprisingly, I don't necessarily disagree with this. It could be true that belief in a god makes people better members of society on average but this lends no support to the actual existance of gods or the supernatural.
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Well good, I've made you a believer then Remember I did not argue for the existence of God (I argued against the non-existence of God, but that's not the same thing). Just that religion is "Good".
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