If someone was about to push a person off a building because he thinks that a god is keeping us to the floor, and that if he really prays hard enough then the god will stop that person from falling, do we want to say that we can in no way use our knowledge that gravity will pull people towards Earth, to save that guy? That the only possible way to save that person is only to have a stronger faith to counter the other guy's faith? Are you going to tell me that Science can in no way judge that the faithful person is not just wrong, but dead wrong? (Of course you can contrast this story to the one found in the bible where the devil tries to get Jesus to jump of the cliff and have god save him, maybe the lesson to be learnt is not so much as not to test god, but not to test gravity.)
No! Science should have a say in that, and faith must have none at all. By definition faith is something we believe that is not based on evidence, how does that in any ways apply to the real world? Without evidence how can we claim that our statement made based on faith are true and apply to the world we live in?
Now, most people see the problems that this causes (if you can't, you must be quite thick) and so changes NOMA such that Science gets the entire domain of the real world, leaving faith to before time exist, after death, morality and other subjective matters. Well, this division still seems a little to kind, giving Science access to only things that can be reasoned out from evidence, while faith takes everything else. Again we ask the question do we really want such a situation to exist? No doubt if Science starts approaching these areas, as psychology is doing, faith is expected to retreat. If this is the case, then why did we even give faith any concession at all in the first place? Why do we allow faith to explain everything wrong first, and only as Science catches up, then attempt to correct it?
So where do gods come in? Well...
"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." - Douglas AdamsGods are humanity's first attempt at understanding the world, and quite a bad one at it too. If humans did not live in a world where some complex things exist because we invented them, then there's no reason at all to suggested that anything else of complexity must be invented by some kind of very smart(-ass) guy, and all for the benefit of humans. Why? Because we are able to use the things around us so well. The trees can be used for wood, animals are food, rock and stones can be made into tools. Wow! Someone all-powerful must have put all these things here especially for me! It is a huge inferential step, and it always has been so, now only more obvious since evolution can explain that away.
Now some people tells us that we shouldn't get rid of gods since they allow us to die in peace knowing that there's an afterlife of reward, or that families need it for occasions such as funerals, and the priest locked up in the confession box makes a very good listener. However, maybe it just doesn't occur to them that what is consoling doesn't make it all the more true, and if that's the case, then what we should have done is investigate the causes of these consolations and reproduce them with greater effectiveness. In fact, I don't know which is worse, that people would endorse something fake just because it consoles them, or that they don't ever want to subject what they endorse to a test.
The most irritating thing about religion and NOMA is that these people says that there is no way to ever prove or disprove that there is a god. Well, maybe there isn't, except maybe if some giant guy float down from outer space and starts bringing the dead back to life. However just because there isn't any way to prove the existence of gods doesn't mean that the chances of it is exactly 50-50! If I were to tell you that there exist a dragon in my room that is invisible, able to pass through solid objects, and breathes fire at exactly the same temperature as the room, would you believe me and say that the chances of it existing is exactly 50-50? Or would you be inclined to believe that the dragon does not exist at all? Now, why are gods any different from my unobservable dragon? With the exception that they are believed based on faith by millions of people all over the world. But just because everyone believes in it doesn't make it any more true. We have found out long ago that the universe stopped revolving round us, it's time to apply the same standard to religion.
God, get out!
24 comments:
Jan, i can see that you obviously believe very strongly in Science, but you got to learn to be sensitive and tactful (notice i didn insert "more", and i mean it, very seriously). I say all this with reference to both your "blog entries".
Firstly, I know there are religious ppl on the streets who try to shove their beliefs down your throat, like "If you dont believe in God, you're going to Hell you sinner! SO BELIEVE NOW!" and what have you. Now, I do not advocate that AT ALL because at the center of Christianity is God's love and THAT is the main point, not eternity in hell. You, my friend, happen to be the atheist version of those kind of ppl and very much like they destroy the reputation of Christians, "YOU GIVE SCIENCE [Love] A BAD NAME" - Bon Jovi (if you know the song... ok random)
If you cant relate to ppl, then ppl wont be able to relate to you and they wont listen to you or your "science is everything" ranting. i.e. If your ppl skills=0, say "goodbye,world!" and "hello,isolation!"
Secondly,and more importantly coz this concerns a huge community of ppl, you are putting our school's reputation on the line. So watch your words before you put yourself, but more imptly, us on the front page of the Straits Times.
Thirdly,(my apologies for being so blunt, but you obviously cant take a hint) you are NOT as smart as you think you are. There are ppl who have spent their lifetime studying this debate at a level that is beyond what you'll attain in the next 5 years, so who do you think you are to PUBLICLY comment about it, let alone argue and mock religious ppl? You think you're superior? You're just a young fart with a blog. If you think ppl are impressed by any of this, think again. NO ONE gives a shit that you know this or that. SO what? You think that makes u entirely superior? Coz i can think of PLENTY of other fields (in fact, including your own) where you're bacterial/primate butt will get completely owned a thousand times over. So STOP being so arrogant, you're not THE BEST. You can strive to be, and even if you do get to the top, that doesn give u the right to be arrogant. No one likes a show-off. You can go on deceiving yourself and thinking that ppl relations are not impt, we'll see where u end up. THINK about it, and reflect.
"Jan, get it?"
Wow, 3 argumentum ad hominem fallacies in a row, that must be a record.
Oh wait, I remembered some other religious apologist had already done that.
I find the Science/Religion dichotomy unhelpful. Far better is characterising it as Faith/Reason.
And I see you worked anonymous up. Usually when people start insulting you gratuitiously, you know you've won on some level, hurr hurr. =D
Hey, I'm not trying to provoke you, but you have to accept that everybody has a right to an opinion and the right to choose what they believe in. They may think that they go to the great Mushroom Party in the sky when they die and the Great Omniscient Lord of Turnips looks after them while they live, and there's not very much you can do about it.
Some of your beliefs are a bit extremist for most people to stomach; that's fine with me, because I too possess a few beliefs regarding feminism and general human societal structure that are too radical to be openly published.
What I'm saying is, temper your posts with a healthy degree of common sense. If it sounds wrong, don't post it. You're walking a fine line here, and I don't really want to see someone I know on the front page of a newspaper for posting controversial stuff, or worse still, being harassed for posting aforementioned controversial stuff.
By the way, I think there's a sci-fi book you might be interested in. Its "Hellstrom's Hive", by Frank Herbert. You might find some of the concepts interesting.
Well, gee, if you're going to dismiss every argument as ad hominem, no one's going to get anywhere, would they?
I see you're a fan of the conflict thesis. Well, that theory has some serious loopholes in it, I'd think you'd want to be more careful with throwing all your support behind it.
Well, I think Jan dismissed anon's points as ad hominem as she interpreted anon's points as arguments against the points she raised on her post.
However, not all comments on argumentative blog posts need to be arguments made on the topic of discussion, and anon was really dispensing some practical advice regarding what was posted on this blog. Anon was really pointing out that, among other things, Jan might have been too dogmatic and insensitive in expressing her views, and that she would do well to consider our school's reputation when posting here.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that anon went against anon's own advice by being equally, if not more, dogmatic and insensitive in anon's concluding paragraph. Without prejudice to whether anon's arguments should be accepted on an argumentative basis, it seems clear that going against one's very advice isn't the best way to get other people to listen to one's own advice.
If people are going to use ad hominem arguments, there's no shame in calling them out is there? Call a spade a spade.
Asserting that a theory is flawed without pointing out the flaw is useless, and a classic tactic of bad reasoning.
thrawn, I don't believe that everybody have a right to opinion especially if that opinion starts to manifest in physical appearance. Unless there's a stringent level of safety, I don't want to be anywhere near someone who thinks that he must indiscriminately kill everyone.
All freedoms must have a limit, and that limit is reason, and quite a huge deal of my views are judged by it.
So, denying one of the basic rights of sentient beings now, are we?
I did say that everybody has the right to an opinion, not the right to put that opinion into practice.
You can believe that all humans will one day be harvested for biomass by some alien civilization, but as long as you act normally (what society would define as normal is anybody"s guess), I don't think people are gonna give a damn.
You're confusing opinion with mental illness.
~
And, many of the things that you claim you are "pro" have numerous dissenting opinions.
Are you claiming that all evidence contrary to your stand is to be declared null and void, because you don't subscribe to that school of thought?
If you didn't get why I asked the question above, you must be either unimaginably dense or possess a language competency comparable to that of a lemming.
You are blatantly ignoring all the evidence that points to the fact that religion still has a place. And no, this is not an extremist viewpoint, which is more than what I can say for your completely bigoted account of the "epic struggle between science and religion".
You have claimed previously that religion is responsible for conflict. Pray tell, who were the people who instigated those conflicts? Most of those people were misusing religion for their own agenda. Minority religions are extremely easy to marginalize, mainly because they lack the voice needed on the world stage to make their plight known.
Before you launch into another tirade about how religions are bad because of the inherent factionalism that it leads to, consider the same problems with race.
Are you going to propose that we "breed" all Chinese/ Caucasians/ Indians/African-Americans
out because of the same reason you want religion to be "abolished"? Think carefully before you answer.
Religion might have a place, but so does palm oil - it's cheap. That doesn't mean that palm oil is good for health.
If all the evil that comes from religion is because people misuse it, unless you assume a priori that religion is good, it is only logically consistent to assert that all the good that comes from religion comes about through people's extra-religious sense of goodness (and not religion).
You are making so huge an inferential leap that it even surpasses the one made by religion. Just because I make and argument in this manner doesn't mean every single argument and conclusion is like that!
Just because Newton propose gravity from seeing an apple fall from a tree doesn't mean that he needs to see another apple fall to propose calculus.
Where's your brains?
And you can say whatever you want, but you're not going to change a lot of people minds' about not going near someone who has the opinion of killing indiscriminately. No one is going to care whether that guy's going to physically express it or not.
It's too small a step from opinions to actions to risk that. And it's an even more unnoticeable step between two different convictions that can't be reasoned away with.
Im hungry...
Im hungry...
GIVE ME FOOD.....
I like eggs. Do you like eggs, jan?
We can scramble, fry, boil, steam eggs...! mmmm yum
There are tons of ways to cook eggs!
We use eggs to make cake, cookies, muffins... WOW.
We can PAINT egg shells too! It's FUN! you shd try it!
Oooooh i love eggs.
you shd too!
eat eggs, jan. It's full of proteins! good for building muscles... and your brain.
Oh but you are entitled to your own opinion about eggs. damn.
Now now, we are conducting an attempt at a reasoned argument here.
Now now, in things so passionate as Science and God, how can we even begin to discuss reasonably..? The subject is only as logical as it's creator.. and so the statement as the reason it is being argued.. Perhaps a question as to why we actually bother to discuss these things should be asked silently. Can one truly say that at the very bottom it's just the pursuit of truth? Even that pursuit is not dispassionate.
All I'm saying is, just to perhaps try to rephrase thrawn a little, there's more to be lost and less to be gained from such discussion if it involves any amount of innate bias or slant against the other side at all.. After all, aren't you arguing against religion for it's supposed illogicality and appeal to emotions. Unless people can calm down and at least make an attempt to discuss things quietly WITHOUT making any snide remarks at all, I honestly think we're all better off shutting up, cause the harm that we might cause would outweigh any value we could gain from the truth that could be.
Nonsense, ignorance is not bliss, no matter how much you wish it to be.
Who ever said anything about ignorance being bliss? see, thrawn's point about language competency.. All i'm saying is, if you're going to make not effort whatsoever to NOT offend people, you're doing more evil than good, friend.
Well you got it wrong when you said I wasn't offending anyone, I'm not offending people, I'm offending religion itself, if people take that personally that's not my fault.
And I have the right to offend it, I didn't ask them to let me listen to some brainwashing speech made by a brainwashed teenager. I didn't ask them to frighten me with hell when I was just a 6 year old kid. I didn't say they can tell me stories of total absurdness when I was little enough to believe anything an adult tells me. I didn't tell them to put a pastor in every funeral I attended and make be listen to some boring sermon. I didn't like being forced to go to church because my grandmother had to go to one.
How would you feel, if a Roman priest was there to talk about worship to Jupiter on each of these occasion, infringing on your personal life? You think that they can get away with all these offensive behaviours and expect me not to be offensive in my response? Well, dream on.
and we bring ourselves back to thrawn's point on being unimaginably dense...
no one ever forced religion on you. You had the choice to walk out anytime. If you want to argue that, you with this blog are trying to force science on religious ppl, hypocrite. You call religion something completely absurd, prove it wrong then. And i dont mean argue, prove. Coz it seems to me, you cannot be 100% certain of your belief either, so if you cant prove it either way, who are you to "infringe on my personal life"?
"I'm offending religion itself, if people take that personally that's not my fault." Can you offend science without pissing off the scientists? Can you offend, say, a Secondary School without offending the students? Hard to see where you're coming from. And, if i might add, I do feel offended and im sure im not the only one. So who's fault is it then? The internet? Your scientists? (but im sure they never expressed their arguments in such a mocking tone)
Would i have the right to offend you, then? I didn ASK to listen to all your talk about evolution etc either. Doesn seem to make sense if we all have the right to go around offending ppl.
And whatever happened to the principle of charity eh? You start almost every response rejecting a comment. (e.g. "Nonsense..." or "Well you got it wrong...") Very typical of you, if you haven't noticed. If you're more keen on defending yourself then on looking at the bigger picture, then your comments section is just a means to frustrate ppl.
And before you go "NO, but im defending the truth!" , STOP.LISTEN.THINK.FEEL.CONSIDER OTHERS. THEN you write. Honestly, your blog is getting old and we're all wasting our time here if you're only gonna continue discussing "why I am right".
^ Well said.
Jan Lin, if you're going to win any arguments or convince other people, you need to learn to look at things from the opposite point of view.
"no one ever forced religion on you"
Interesting comment, have you ever said that with a straight face?
If no one forces religion on anyone, there wouldn't be any religion left in the world. But science is different because, science is studying reality. You can come to similar conclusions when what you look at is the same thing. Much less can be said for religion. Have you ever thought why children become religious? Why more than half the world's population follow their parents' equally unproven beliefs? Only one reason: force!
"Can you offend Science without pissing off scientists?" Sure you can, if you can find an objectively better method to do Science. The problem is that people usually can't, all they care about is making unconstructive criticisms about science.
well that's interesting. it may be poor argument, but if you just take what you said and applied it to science.. teaching little kids who don't know any better that the whole universe can be understood scientifically from when they're young, hammering it into their little growing brains. is that giving them a change? but that's how science has become such a big thing in our society.
Giving them facts and equations that WORK is an entirely different thing, I'm talking about a belief system. Scientists says the expanding universe points to a big bang, nobody ever said go worship the big bang.
Post a Comment