Monotheism vs. Polytheism

[Rippounet]

45 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Again, phrased just like that, duh, of course it can.

Yes, it's kinda the point. Because:

45 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

There is no rule. The question we are debating, again, is "can religion and science coexist". Not "do science and religion always coexist", to which the answer is no.

Yeah, that's kinda the point you chose to defend. The original point made was that religion (through religious fervor/fundamentalism) hinders scientific thought/progress.
Then someone deftly inserted this idea of "co-existence" which could mean anything, really: I mean, on some level, religion and science have always co-existed, everywhere, all the time. That doesn't say much about how well they co-existed, and what it means.

It's actually a pretty good example of what I pointed out earlier, about internet conversations quickly devolving into rhetorical exercices, because people keep subtly changing the subject and/or trying to shift the burden of proof.

[polishgenius]

41 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Today its becoming very rare to see someone that has "mystic" mindset that is also not opposing acientific progress,

.

Not really sure what this means tbqh. You appear to be deliberately ignoring PoA's definition of 'mystic'  - which he hasn't .defined, but very specifically included 'mystically-minded people who aren't impeding science' within it - so that you can dismiss his position base on a set of people he made sure he was accounting for. Which is quite a weird thing to do. 

 

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

To my eyes it's like saying the LGBTQ community can coexist with religion.

I mean sure, it can, and it does, but it would be absurd to start claiming religion has helped the LGBTQ community.

 

Yeah, come on man, no. Making that comparison is, once again, to ignore those times in history where religious institutions have not just allowed scientific progress but actively pursued it or funded and promoted it. You're trying to appeal to emotion by tying the Abrahamic religions' treatment of homosexuality (almost universally heinous, and never encouraging) to its treatment of science. They're more or less unrelated.

 

[fionwe1987]

On 1/20/2024 at 7:05 AM, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I have to say I fundamentally disagree with the (predominately western) notion that faith and science cannot coexist. I mean, I get how that idea developed out of conflicts and events such as for example the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo, but that still doesn't make it a hard and fast rule.

This is the post that set off the current round of discussion.

43 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Yes, it's kinda the point. Because:

Yeah, that's kinda the point you chose to defend. The original point made was that religion (through religious fervor/fundamentalism) hinders scientific thought/progress.

I didn't "choose" to selectively defend something. I made my points based on what I read. 

43 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Then someone deftly

The OP wasn't being sneaky, and this kind of casting of unfounded aspersions because you're running dry on points to make is really ridiculous. 

43 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

inserted this idea of "co-existence" which could mean anything, really: I mean, on some level, religion and science have always co-existed, everywhere, all the time. That doesn't say much about how well they co-existed, and what it means.

Then that's what you could have said, instead of repeatedly stating religion and science cannot coexist. There's no hidden meaning of co-existence here. 

43 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's actually a pretty good example of what I pointed out earlier, about internet conversations quickly devolving into rhetorical exercices, because people keep subtly changing the subject and/or trying to shift the burden of proof.

That's precisely what you're doing, changing the subject and altering the burden of proof, and coming up with ludicrous rhetorical statements. And it's particularly absurd because, as this is an internet conversation, we have an actual record of people's statements. 

Maybe you find internet conversations "devolving" for you because you don't pay close attention to the actual words people are saying?

Edited January 21 by fionwe1987

[Conflicting Thought]

47 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Not really sure what this means tbqh. You appear to be deliberately ignoring PoA's definition of 'mystic'  - which he hasn't .defined, but very specifically included 'mystically-minded people who aren't impeding science' within it - so that you can dismiss his position base on a set of people he made sure he was accounting for. Which is quite a weird thing to do. 

sorry, wasnt my intention to take him out of context. 

i think that mystically minded people that are not impiding science are a very small fraction of these kind of people.

idk maybe i am being unfair about all of this becaus i see that mystically minded poeple impide science (when they can) and they belive (in the mayority of cases) very unscientific things, that i considere to be very dangerous. i see how people that self identify as mysticall or spiritual often fall into a rabithole of increasingly unscientific thought, and it has to do with many factors, not just being spiritual, but i do think it plays a mayor role (being "spiritual" or "mysticall) in people going anti science.

maybe its cuz how i think of the world that i have a hard time seeing spirituality or/and religion as a good thing or compatible with scientific thought. though i do think some concepts attachted to spirituality can be good, like for dealing with existential dread, etc. i just wish people that self identfy as spiritual wherent so conspiracy minded, but is see it as a logical conclusion of being "spiritual" or "mystically" minded.

(sorry if its kind of rambly, or i dont get my point across well, adhd mind is a bitch)

[Rippounet]

47 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

This is the post that set off the current round of discussion.

But the one who answered that post was Ty, not me (page 5).

Then, when I came back to the discussion (top of page 7), it was to say this:

Quote

Depends what one means by "co-existence."

And the reason I did so was because I had explained my position on page 5 (before "co-existence" was brought in):

Quote

[...] there's a world of difference between "taking things on faith" (which is something it is reasonable to assume another sentient species would have to do - assuming it's likely they are embodied rather than omniscient) and developing religion. In fact, while we all use faith on a daily basis, the degree to which the beliefs in the supernatural or religion get involved is extremely relative to each individual. Some humans will see the hands of Gods everywhere ; others almost nowhere. But religion isn't a logical conclusion of the scientific process, it's a hindrance to it.
For instance, you can only start analysing and understanding evolution if you admit that it exists, which means that you admit that no God created humans, at best they only created the process which saw humans emerge. In this case, the scientific approach requires that one limit the powers of God and replace it with a different approach to the Truth, i.e. to believe that there is a Truth to be found through reason but that such a quest will take time and may be open-ended, instead of ascribing natural phenomena to a form of divine will that may or not be well described and understood.
I don't buy the idea that a scientist can be deeply religious. I think it's reasonable to say a scientist can have spirituality, or some form of agnostic faith. But religion? It seems to me that, by definition, religion can get in the way of having a dispassionate or objective approach to the analysis of what can be observed, which is the common definition of science.

 

47 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Then that's what you could have said, instead of repeatedly stating religion and science cannot coexist.

Repeatedly? I didn't even say it once.

Go on, re-read my posts, carefully (I just did, just in case). There's only one post that could be misread as such. In fact, I did not say that science and religion couldn't xo-exist *a single time*. Quite the contrary in fact, I made sure to clarify my own perspective a couple of hours ago (page 7). All this to say:

47 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Maybe you find internet conversations "devolving" for you because you don't pay close attention to the actual words people are saying?

There's a bit of projection here.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Then we don't disagree. But then, from the start, there was little (if any) disagreement in the thread, just a knee-jerk reaction to religion being given a bad name.

To be clear, my comment wasn't written in response to anything you had posted.  I don't have any real problems with anything you've written here. I either mostly agree, or can understand where you're coming from.

My comment was in response to various comments that I've seen peppered throughout the thread. If I had to quote one of the worst examples, it would be @Mr. Chatywin et al.'s comment that "religion is just folklore."

Sorry Ty. You're a smart guy, but you don't give this particular topic any real time or effort. I'm the same way with sports. Any pontification I might offer would really just reflect how little I respect it all, and would be similarly boneheaded. 

@maarsen's comment "what major questions have any religion ever given a definitive answer to? Science has given too many to count" was another one. This is more reasonable than Ty's dismissal, but I wanted to make clear the obvious point that it takes a hell of a lot more than knowledge and technology to make a satisfying and meaningful life. 

2 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Yeah i think all those problems are not from science but from capitalism.

Yes, that's true. My point is that science does nothing to circumvent those problems, and in fact typically goes hand in hand with them. And yet the problems do need to be dealt with.

That's why I said: "People need meaning and a sense of purpose, community, a connection with some sort of tradition. One doesn't need to delve into the supernatural for these things, but science sure as hell isn't going to provide them." And "at very least, we need some sort of humanistic philosophy, some governing moral narrative and supporting norms." 

If communities don't try to work on those aspects of human life, well, then, people will simply turn to other options, including fundie churches providing feel-good narratives and easy answers.

2 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

What do you mean by a more mystical mindset? Today its becoming very rare to see someone that has "mystic" mindset that is also not opposing acientific progress, many of them held some belive in some form of psudoscience, specially  comon in these mystics is to be anti vaxx, anti "western" medicine (that i will admit has problems with the more human side of medicine). And in my mind most of this mystic kind of thoughts can be traced to a religeous kind of thought.

The problem (as i see it) with potential allies that are on the mystic spectrum belive thing that take them away from a materialistic analysis of the world and allot of times leads them to reactionary philosphies. Its very easy to fall down the alternative therapies and such rabbit hole, and that almost always ends up with the conspiracy mindset, to me the two are extremely interconected.

First, my use of mystical there wasn't technical. I simply used it to indicate some sort of spiritual or religious feeling. Second, my focus was explicitly on people who don't oppose scientific progress. Even if it is true that these folks tend to oppose science (and I don't think that's necessarily true), it's still important not to lump everyone in the same category. If someone is religious and is okay with scientific consensus and new developments, then we should respect them and treat them as allies. That was my main point.

Now, as for the new age spirituality types, sure, I can accept that they veer into weird pseudoscience. Some of it may actually beneficial, at least for social and emotional health. I certainly feel like medical care has gotten colder and more impersonal, and so if someone wants to supplement that with some woo treatment that gives them a sense of dignity and human connection, that's fine by me.

Anti-vax attitudes can certainly be a huge problem. But the core problem there isn't supernatural belief per se--it's a lack of trust in institutions. It's possible for atheists to veer into weird conspiracy theories too, not to mention outright cultish behavior, like the worst of the communist regimes. If we can find better ways to cultivate respect for knowledge, skepticism, and various cultural institutions, I think the spiritual or religious dimensions would not seem nearly as problematic. Authoritarianism and sectarian distrust are far more important problems in my opinion.

Edited January 21 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

My comment was in response to various comments that I've seen peppered throughout the thread. If I had to quote one of the worst examples, it would be @Mr. Chatywin et al.'s comment that "religion is just folklore."

Sorry Ty. You're a smart guy, but you don't give this particular topic any real time or effort. I'm the same way with sports. Any pontification I might offer would really just reflect how little I respect it all, and would be similarly boneheaded. 

The subject doesn't need any effort. Every religion is a creation of humans and then tends to be used to control humans. Full stop. This is why I said spirituality makes more sense. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

The subject doesn't need any effort. Every religion is a creation of humans and then tends to be used to control humans. Full stop. This is why I said spirituality makes more sense. 

Lol, you reinforce my point with every comment you make! Keep it up, and I'm gonna start my own sports "commentary" thread...

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Really?  They wouldn’t leave when you told them you weren’t interested.  Wow.

Missionary work has always seemed counterproductive to me.  If someone is going to find a path to faith it has to be their own path for it to be genuine in my earnest opinion.  Using fear and other coercive techniques really misses the point of “faith”.

Yes they were extra aggressive about trying to get an audience at our place.

This was in the mid 2000's in Salt Lake which is sort of the LDS Mecca so the locale likely was an influence to thier fervor.

For my part I mustve encouraged it because I took a workmate up on an offer of a tour of thier tabernacle and temples. As a builder I love checking out such things and all the buildings were getting retroffitted to withstand earthquakes making it even more of a curiosity to my Midwest background. My final faux paus was likely signing up for a free Morman Bible, which I thought of as a neat addition to any book collection just as I would a Qoran or any sacred text tbh.

That combination of events set off an entire summer of unwelcome visits, also those flynts never even gifted the Bible thats supposed to accompany those tours. Lesson learned, and looking back how naive of me to have apparently signed something with my address on it?

Still they would not stop coming till I had to make them very uncomfortable, no respect for my expressed wishes multiple times to not visit and please leave me alone.

So yeah I had a hand in making it worse but it left a horrible impression with me over the multiple attempts as if I was on a fence or something when im saying " No thanx piss off" etc.

That said I loved Utah and the people of the state were outstanding overall, I wouldnt trade back my time out thier for anything.

Edited January 21 by DireWolfSpirit

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Lol, you reinforce my point with every comment you make! Keep it up, and I'm gonna start my own sports "commentary" thread...

Look in the mirror. Was Scientology not clearly made up? Was Mormonism not clearly made up? Why are there several different versions of the Bible? We can play this game forever. Let's go back to ancient Egypt. Moses freed the slaves, except Ramesses II wasn't actually the Pharaoh at the time. Or how about the Greek oracles huffing gas? I can keep going if you want and that's before we address the rampant plagiarism. Funny how so many sun gods have overlapping traits. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

16 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Look in the mirror. Was Scientology not clearly made up? Was Mormonism not clearly made up? Why are there several different versions of the Bible? We can play this game forever. Let's go back to ancient Egypt. Moses freed the slaves, except Ramesses II wasn't actually the Pharaoh at the time. Or how about the Greek oracles huffing gas? I can keep going if you want and that's before we address the rampant plagiarism. Funny how so many sun gods have overlapping traits. 

You keep moving the goalposts.  First religion and science can't co-exist.  Now it's that religions are man made.  We all know religions are man made and used to control people.  These are platitudes and cliches.  

Do you seriously think anyone posting here is endorsing the historical textual authority of any religious documents?

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

You keep moving the goalposts.  First religion and science can't co-exist.  Now it's that religions are man made.  We all know religions are man made and used to control people.  These are platitudes and cliches.  

Do you seriously think anyone posting here is endorsing the historical textual authority of any religious documents?

 

Absolutely. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Look in the mirror. Was Scientology not clearly made up? Was Mormonism not clearly made up? Why are there several different versions of the Bible? We can play this game forever. Let's go back to ancient Egypt. Moses freed the slaves, except Ramesses II wasn't actually the Pharaoh at the time. Or how about the Greek oracles huffing gas? I can keep going if you want and that's before we address the rampant plagiarism. Funny how so many sun gods have overlapping traits. 

My God My God, why have you forsaken me?

Okay, you're just jumping to a whole bunch of broad points. I'll try to address some of them.

But first, ask yourself, was the argument I have been making in this thread in any way relevant to the questions you're asking here? Answer: no.

Let me go back to an earlier comment you made, about controlling people. Is this always a bad thing? What are cultural norms, if not ways to control people? Don't we want to get anti-vaxxers to vaccinate? 

Maybe you actually meant "coerce" people. But are religious communities necessarily coercive? Was Martin Luther King coercive, or persuasive? He certainly wasn't coercive within his church community. Given that atheistic societies can also be coercive, maybe the problem is more related to authoritarianism and related mindsets than it is related to religion...

Why are there several different versions of the Bible? Because the history and evolution of scripture across communities is complex and interesting. I'd be happy to recommend some books on the topic if you'd like to learn more.

On Moses and ancient Egypt: that's a fascinating topic within biblical scholarship. I think if you read Richard Eliot Friedman's book Exodus, you'd probably come away with much more respect toward ancient Judaism than you'd ever imagine. Yet Friedman's findings are only possible by his taking the Bible seriously as a cultural and historical artifact. That doesn't mean reading everything at face value, mind you. It means being informed, intelligent, and truly curious about understanding how the scriptures were written and what the real history behind them might be.

 I mean, do you really think I care about these claims? You're basically listing off the simplest fundamentalist claims and then using that as damning evidence.

Even Richard Dawkins qualified his attack on religions in The God Delusion to acknowledge that there are more sophisticated interpretations of religious tradition out there--he acknowledges them, and then sets them aside for the rest of the book. I at least appreciate his qualification, but in all honesty, his focus of choice made for a rather uninteresting book, save for people freshly escaped from a fundamentalist community. Yeah, Moses didn't write the Torah. Congrats on finishing Atheism 101. There are a lot more interesting discussions to be had on religion when one wants to learn a little more than those basics...

 

[polishgenius]

Tywin in this topic:


Arguing with people who don't exist here.

Complaining about people believing in something that doesn't exist. 

Make it make sense.

Edited January 21 by polishgenius

[Larry of the Lawn]

22 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Absolutely. 

Huh.  I think I missed the posts where someone was claiming that some religious text is a better authority on something than the prevailing scientific consensus.  Would you care to help me out here?

[Rippounet]

Let's bear in mind that religion is a sensitive topic, and that's it's hard to have a good discussion on it through the internet (of all places).

As a sidestep, to attempt to defuse this conversation, here's a half-related piece of information I found interesting:

Quote

 

This is spelled out in the Fitness-Beats-Truth (FBT) Theorem, which I conjectured and Chetan Prakash proved. Consider two sensory strategies, each capable of N distinct perceptions in an objective reality having N states: Truth sees the structure of objective reality as best as possible; Fitness sees none of objective reality, but is tuned to the relevant fitness payoffs—payoffs that depend on objective reality, but also on the organism, its state, and its action.

FBT THEOREM: Fitness drives Truth to extinction with probability at least (N–3)/(N–1).

Here’s what it means. Consider an eye with ten photoreceptors, each having two states. The FBT Theorem says the chance that this eye sees reality is at most two in a thousand. For twenty photoreceptors, the chance is two in a million; for forty photoreceptors, one in ten billion; for eighty, one in a hundred sextillion. The human eye has one hundred and thirty million photoreceptors. The chance is effectively zero.

Suppose there is an objective reality of some kind. Then the FBT Theorem says that natural selection does not shape us to perceive the structure of that reality. It shapes us to perceive fitness points, and how to get them.

The FBT Theorem has been tested and confirmed in many simulations. They reveal that Truth often goes extinct even if Fitness is far less complex.

This algorithm of variation, heredity, and selection applies to organic beings but, as Darwin recognized, it also applies more broadly and to more abstract entities, such as languages. “Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues.”

Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality, How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, 2019

 

The intriguing idea here is that contrary to common belief, the human brain is absolutely not wired for the truth, because evolution selects for fitness rather than truth. We're not only really bad at figuring out what's true/real/correct, but we may only be able to approach reality - never actually knowing what it is.

So if we assume that the primary purpose of science is to seek the truth (I will readily admit that a secondary purpose is to be used by the dominant classes), then any other paradigm with a social function is very unlikely to do that.

And, funnily enough, even science will only take us so far... We can get closer to the Truth, but we shall never reach it.

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

29 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The intriguing idea here is that contrary to common belief, the human brain is absolutely not wired for the truth, because evolution selects for fitness rather than truth

It seems to sit well with William James' notion of Pragmatism, and James himself was trying to extend Darwin's general insights from biology to a science of the human mind. Thinking is for doing, and the truth value of any belief is secondary or tertiary to its value in shaping individual or collective actions.

Also, I really enjoyed Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. He's more into social psychology than religious studies, but his chapters concerning religion brought together different bodies of research for a useful summary and compelling argument. To his credit, Dawkins praised it as worth reading and thinking about, despite Haidt critiquing his ideas rather stridently.

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, maarsen said:

Mary of England did burn Protestant heretics and Elizabeth certainly had a few Catholics executed but as an Arian Newton would have been seen as a heretic by both sides and would have no protection.

Wrong century. The last burning was well before Newton.

Newton was an eccentric Protestant in the post-Civil War era. In other words, no burning. In fact, he'd have been substantially more safe, given that the post-1688 fear was of Catholics, and Newton safely wasn't that. All those requirements for religious conformity? Done to weed out Catholics, not the likes of him. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

7 hours ago, maarsen said:

The scientific method had a very good record of predicting the future of inanimate objects. Religions not so much. As for animate objects, the scientific method does work but not as well as it could, but with improvements every time I look. Again, with religions or philosophies, not so much. However much I enjoy studying philosophy,  we really have not made much progress since Plato's time. 

You might have noticed that Immanuel Kant pretty much established limits to science... using philosophy.

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

You might have noticed that Immanuel Kant pretty much established limits to science... using philosophy.

Sure, but he was a real pissant who was very rarely stable