Submitted by BasketCase0024 t3_y8sp94 in philosophy
dmarchall491 t1_it282oy wrote
Isn't that mostly a marketing issue? It's easier to sell lies than selling the truth. And science isn't even doing a good job at marketing itself. Meanwhile religion has hardcore indoctrination from young age. On top of that humans seem to have a hard time shaking of that indoctrination later in life, you have to wait a couple of generations before science and technology can have any real effects.
That said, I have a hard time seeing religion continuing without major changes. The wonders science and technology has brought us far outpace anything religion could even imagine. And that's going to get a lot more clear in the near future with the rise of AI systems, when your magic human soul turns into something your iPhone can run. The last bit of magic will vanish from this universe and we'll have a reasonable good explanation of almost everything. Religion just isn't compatible with that, you need some mystical unknown and science has been pushing that further and further away.
The art world is already facing that problem, where the magical human creativity is not just getting replaced by AI, but completely outpaced. Paintings that takes a human hours, the AI can crank out in 10sec. Give it another few years, and we'll have completely AI generated movies, with AI written scripts, AI generated voices and video.
anarchietzsche t1_it2d8ar wrote
I mean, don't you think "science is the way for humans to gain an objective understanding of the world" is equally an ideological position? The idea that science is truth begs the question - look at all the truth that science has given us... as long as we accept that science is the only way to understand truth and that non-science is not the truth.
dmarchall491 t1_it2hqqh wrote
> "science is the way for humans to gain an objective understanding of the world" is equally an ideological position?
No, because it works. It's a completely pragmatic position. If you don't believe in it, you are free to try to replicate and falsify it. Science does not claim to know the truth, quite the opposite, science being wrong is a fundamental part of it, but it has the mechanisms to slowly filter out all the things it gets wrong and replace them with something more accurate.
anarchietzsche t1_it2ie6k wrote
Yes, but it still maintains that it can find the truth and that understanding objective reality is possible.
Even then, you've arrived at your conclusion through begging the question again - we should use scientific reason because it is reasonable. The truth of science presupposes that the science will be correct because we have used scientific reason to understand the world.
And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?
dmarchall491 t1_it2li1i wrote
> And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?
Because it works. Simple as that. You don't even have to believe in it for it to work. Just look around you, look at the computer you are currently typing on. How do you think that came into existence? I have yet to see any other form of knowledge seeking produce anything even remotely as impressive as that. Heck, even if you take the Bible as literally true, there is nothing in there half as impressive as what science has produced. Having Jesus running around and making some blind people see is pretty unimpressive accomplishment compared to say the discovery of germ theory of disease.
anarchietzsche t1_it306su wrote
Well, the Christian fanatic would probably say the same. Or the homeopathist. Or the psychopath.
Sorry, I don't necessarily agree with the above. I've just been reading a lot of Kierkegaard lately.
Fishermans_Worf t1_it370pz wrote
The principle difference is science is inherently self questioning and a fanatical application of it would be fanatically self questioning, not fanatically confident.
Science doesn't expect to provide the truth directly—it provides a mechanism to move closer to the truth by showing previous assumptions are not true. It's a process of elimination. I can't think of any other widespread worldview that operates on similar grounds.
This is a huge generalization, but overall religion and philosophy looks for truth and then tries to prove it with logical arguments—science looks for truth and then tried to disprove it with practical experiments.
anarchietzsche t1_it381na wrote
But what I'm saying is that there is a fanatical adherence to reason as a methodology. It's unquestionable that reason can be wrong, even though we know that it is going to be proven wrong eventually.
The faith in human reason is the same as the faith in a greater power. It's impossible to justify one without using the system that it is built upon. The Munchausen paradox, in short, and why living rationally is actually based on an irrational idea or begging the question.
Fishermans_Worf t1_it3kukf wrote
The Munchausen trilemma does neatly show the metaphysical impossibility of knowing anything for certain though it is somewhat self defeating. If all arguments and knowledge are based on unprovable assumptions—so is the Munchausen trilemma. The assumptions it makes are reasonable... but... that's its point. Reason depends on assumptions.
My question is—once you've reached the inevitable metaphysical conclusion that no truth is perfectly confirmable—where do you go from there? You must make assumptions to live. Presumably you assume you exist or that oxygen is necessary for life.
Does the uniform lack of absolute certainty affect the relative merits of arguments for truth? If not, can you say that having faith in something you directly experience and can confirm through repetition is the same as faith in something you've been told but cannot experience or test? You can't say either are True—but can you justifiably lean in a direction? Can you approach the truth? If you can approach the truth, are there methods that appear more likely to lead you in the correct direction?
IMHO—the idea that we cannot know anything for certain merely pushes me further towards worldviews that are inherently self questioning rather than ideological. Reason demands to be abandoned if it can be shown to be unsound.
anarchietzsche t1_it4y87r wrote
Well, that's Kierkegaard's position - when you're presented with the choice between selfish hedonism, reason, and the spiritual life, we're given a contextless question with no way of building context or understanding why we have to make a choice without relying on one of the above categories to build context.
Instead of viewing the spiritual life as ideological, we might see it as submissive in the face of overwhelming knowledge - we are finite and in the face of the infinite, so we can't possibly begin to create justification within our finite spheres of understanding. See the contrast between Kierkegaard's treatment of the story of Abraham and Isaac and Kant's - if we side with Kant (the ethical/reasonable thinker), we basically deform the infinite into a greater (but imperfect) version of ourselves.
So, although ideology definitely plays a part, I see the spiritual thinker as someone who admits they don't understand and can't understand something because they are limited by their finite nature. You might also think about Lovecraft here - on being confronted with otherworldly horrors or four-sided triangles, how can we begin to create explanations for something that lies outside of our abilities to reason about?
Although it sounds like crackpot nonsense at first, the bigger question really comes down to whether the limits of our language and understanding as the limits of our world are the limits of the world. If we're not careful, we're at risk of claiming beyond what we can.
iiioiia t1_it3pmsb wrote
> No, because it works. It's a completely pragmatic position.
How pragmatic is climate change?
sismetic t1_it2c5f6 wrote
What do you mean by truth? What has science to do with truth? Science is not aimed for truth. It is aimed at models of prediction and practical tinkering. At best it may speak a very limited, localized and shallow truth. But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science. They have different goals in mind. Science never says "this is true" because it doesn't seek it
GoSeeCal_Spot t1_it2tjk5 wrote
if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.
and Yes science seeks truth, but science can never be absolute because previously unknow variable may modify the result.
Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."
iiioiia t1_it3phvv wrote
> if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.
Have you a scientific proof of this fact?
> Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."
So do religious people.
Is this all that science (and its disciples) say?
sismetic t1_it4qwhf wrote
> if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.
That's a terrible philosophical outlook. It is to be ridiculed as much as flat Earthers. Who argues that nonsense?
> Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."
No, it doesn't. It says here's the model that best fits the observations we have. Nothing to do with truth, and not even relevant, to what I said, profound truths. It makes no metaphysical claims, no ontological claims, requires a philosophical model for its limited epistemic claims, and it says nothing about the human experience as such. It doesn't answer as to the essence of humans, as to the very experience of reality, as to the nature of reality, as to the source of reality, as to morality, as to meaning, and so on. Science is useful only in its limited practical scope, nothing more.
dmarchall491 t1_it2g872 wrote
> What do you mean by truth?
Here is the experiment I ran, here is how to reproduce it, and here are the numbers I got. This formula is the best way to approximate the results and this is how tall my error bars are. That kind of stuff. The numbers aren't fudged, the math doesn't contain any deliberate mistakes, stuff like that. That doesn't mean the formula always gives the right predictions or that the experiment was free of mistakes. But it means you can go and try to replicate it. You don't have to believe the gospel. It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.
> But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science.
That is utter bollocks. Humans like to hear pleasurable stories, they don't care about gaining an understanding. If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.
sismetic t1_it2kswy wrote
> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.
Sure, but what has that got to do with truth? What is meant by truth? That you have a coherent model of practical tinkering(like I said before) has little to do with truth, especially existential truths. If we are in an illusion, for example, the models and the experiments would still be useful and practical, but they would not be truth.
> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.
No. What is reality? Is reality accessible to sense-experience? How do you know? We have scientific evidence to the contrary. Naive realism is dead and it's not coming back. Science is useful for practical reasons, but the claim of truth or existential truths is just ignorant(I don't mean this in a rude way). It doesn't ask the questions nor posits to have answers, all the questions it makes are of an immediate sort to the sense-experience to gain control of the environment and from that we make models of prediction. Truth is not in-built into science, only observation, community trust, experimentation and on a later stage theoretical models around prediction.
Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?
GoSeeCal_Spot t1_it2tnul wrote
They aren't truth in made up circumstance, well done.
sismetic t1_it4qjhq wrote
I'm not sure what you even mean.
dmarchall491 t1_it2nzk7 wrote
> Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?
I consider truth seeking a colossal waste of time. Since not only is there good reason to assume we'll never find it, but also very good reason to assume it is fundamentally impossible to find. If we all live in a simulation, how can you ever hope to find that out? All we can do is describe the rules of that simulation, since that's what we can observe and interact with. What's outside that simulation is completely out of our reach.
And beside, it's not like any other form of knowledge seeking will ever bring you truth either. Most of them can't even describe the rules of this simulation.
sismetic t1_it4r74f wrote
> And beside, it's not like any other form of knowledge seeking will ever bring you truth either. Most of them can't even describe the rules of this simulation.
That is because the religious truth doesn't need to deal with the rules of the simulation. It can go meta of it. For example, the nature of how I should think and live are the same regardless of the scenario and the simulation. Virtue, for example, is universal and would be universal in all planes of existence, be them simulated planes or non-simulated planes. The rules of the simulation grant control of the environment, but have nothing to do with the intrinsic being-ness of our psychological nature, or at least not directly. No simulation provides in itself existential orientation, which is what religions aim to provide.
As for whether truth-seeking is absurd or not, without truth that becomes irrational statement. You are claiming that to be true("it is true that truth-seeking is a waste of time"). But there are different kinds of truth and scopes of truth. I do not require an absolute truth because I am not an absolute entity.
iiioiia t1_it3pa0b wrote
> The numbers aren't fudged
Is this to say that it is a fact that numbers are never fudged within the practice of science?
Note: I am not asking for a prediction of the average quality of science, I am asking precisely about this specific claim.
> You don't have to believe the gospel.
Opinions seem to vary on this. As I recall, it wasn't all that long ago that there was an international advertising campaign on the matter.
> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.
It is often claimed to be the sole source of truth - this too is a part of what "science" is, comprehensively.
>> But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science.
> That is utter bollocks.
By what means have you acquired comprehensive knowledge of the entirety of reality? Science?
> Humans like to hear pleasurable stories, they don't care about gaining an understanding.
This seems fairly true - take your comments as a prime example, and those of other atheists in this thread and others.
Wilful ignorance is a human problem, not solely a religious problem. If you disagree, consult science on the matter.
> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science.
Do you know for a fact (as opposed to believe) that deeper understandings of reality are not available via religion?
> But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.
Might this be a two way street? Do you perhaps believe yourself to have a direct line to reality itself (or perhaps: act as if you do, without any conscious awareness of it)?
And are you asserting as a fact that the entirety of the content of all religion is pure fantasy? And if that isn't what you're saying, would you mind stating what it is you are intending to say, in less ambiguous terms?
dmarchall491 t1_it3u2sd wrote
> Is this to say that it is a fact that numbers are never fudged within the practice of science?
You are free to verify and question them. You don't have to take them for granted. It's not that science is never wrong, it's that you are allowed to correct it and many people have done so before you, so it's pretty good most of the time.
> By what means have you acquired comprehensive knowledge of the entirety of reality? Science?
Mostly heuristics. Which ain't as good as science and often wrong, but it gets "good enough" results faster.
> Do you know for a fact (as opposed to believe) that deeper understandings of reality are not available via religion?
Yes. If you can't poke it with a stick, than it's not part of this reality. Your deeper understanding is meaningless when it can't interact with this reality. And when it interacts with this reality, you can just do science on it.
Also the level of understanding that science provides is already so insanely more detailed than anything you can ever hope to find in a religious text, that even called it "deeper understanding" is just nonsense. Religion doesn't even give you really basic understanding of how the world works.
> And are you asserting as a fact that the entirety of the content of all religion is pure fantasy?
Some of it might be "based on a true story", but largely fantasy, yes. That's why we call it religion, not history.
iiioiia t1_it44dgp wrote
>> Is this to say that it is a fact that numbers are never fudged within the practice of science? > > > > You are free to verify and question them. You don't have to take them for granted. It's not that science is never wrong, it's that you are allowed to correct it and many people have done so before you, so it's pretty good most of the time.
I will ask more directly: is it a fact that numbers are never fudged within the practice of science?
>> By what means have you acquired comprehensive knowledge of the entirety of reality? Science?
> Mostly heuristics. Which ain't as good as science and often wrong, but it gets "good enough" results faster.
What does "good enough" mean, in quantitative terms (% correct, objectively)?
When others resort to heuristics, do you have no issues with it?
For example:
>> But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science.
> That is utter bollocks.
Why are heuristics here "utter bollocks", but yours are "good enough"?
>> Do you know for a fact (as opposed to believe) that deeper understandings of reality are not available via religion?
> Yes. If you can't poke it with a stick, than it's not part of this reality.
Can you poke emotions, the comprehensive, physical/metaphysical phenomenon, with a stick?
Also: can you link to any authoritative scientific resource that makes this claim?
> Your deeper understanding is meaningless when it can't interact with this reality. And when it interacts with this reality, you can just do science on it.
So says your heuristics. Are your heuristics equal to reality?
> And when it interacts with this reality, you can just do science on it.
Is "science" all one can do?
Does only science have utility?
Is "science" what you are doing here today?
> Also the level of understanding that science provides is already so insanely more detailed than anything you can ever hope to find in a religious text, that even called it "deeper understanding" is just nonsense.
How does advancement in science render other ideas nonsense, necessarily? Please explain the physical cause and effect relationship - the actual one please, not your heuristic estimation of it.
> Religion doesn't even give you really basic understanding of how the world works.
Says your heuristics. How much actual (non-heuristic, non-imagined) knowledge (as opposed to belief) do you have about religion anyways?
>> And are you asserting as a fact that the entirety of the content of all religion is pure fantasy?
> Some of it might be "based on a true story", but largely fantasy, yes.
What does "largely" mean, in quantitative terms (% fantasy, objectively)?
> That's why we call it religion, not history.
Actually, that is your imagination.
Perhaps if your religion metaphysical framework and its leaders were more adamant that their followers try to care about the truth, its followers would be able to realize they are speculating and use the resources available to discover truth.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/religion
Delusion comes in many forms - religion is one, Scientism is another.
iiioiia t1_it3nzo1 wrote
I believe that religion has some advantages over science, one being that it can be arguably better at dispelling Maya....or, the sensation of omniscience that is a side effect of consciousness.
Might there be some artifacts of Maya within your words, and in the thinking that underlies them?
Is it only the religious who are infected by delusion?
memoryballhs t1_it39r4t wrote
Science is not a religion it's a method to approach problems. There is nothing to be advertised. The actually religion today is an ideology around success, capitalism, materialism and so on. The empirical evidence is only used to push one or another ideology. The scientific method is valueless and therefore useless as any kind of ideology. It's like saying "this awesome hammer I am using is my ideology"
Emmanuel Kant was against the vaccine because he thought it further increases the already big population. It's very cruel but based purely on facts.
The advertised new ideologies are individualized and group focused. Like the rise of conspiracy theories. Or calls to "follow the science". Also a ridiculous statement. Sabine Hossenfelder as a good video about that.
iiioiia t1_it3pzcl wrote
> Science is not a religion it's a method to approach problems.
If you deconstruct it into its constituent parts, applying some abstraction in the process, I propose that one will find that people's psychological relationship with science is extremely similarly to that with religion.
Faith, or more accurately the cognitive processes that underlie it, are fundamental to human beings - it is our evolved nature. And simply declaring it to be gone does not make it go away - although, it can certainly make it appear as if it has gone away.
> The scientific method is valueless and therefore useless as any kind of ideology.
The scientific method has no volition, it must be implemented by humans....and humans loooooove their ideologies.
> Or calls to "follow the science". Also a ridiculous statement.
Now we're talking - but consider: what percentage of the people who subscribe to the ideology are able to realize and acknowledge that?
dmarchall491 t1_it3k199 wrote
> Science is not a religion it's a method to approach problems. There is nothing to be advertised.
The method is what needs advertisement. When it comes to something like conversion therapy or abstinence-only sex education the issue is not if it's the morally right thing to do or not, but that it flat out doesn't work to begin with. It fails to accomplish the stated goal.
> Emmanuel Kant was against the vaccine because he thought it further increases the already big population. It's very cruel but based purely on facts.
Doubtful. High risk of child death tends to lead to more children, not less. This is exactly what happens when you don't follow the science, but instead cherry pick your science facts to drive your ideology.
Few problems are well enough understood that it's only the ideology that makes the difference. Most of the time people are either willfully ignorant to the science or the science just hasn't well enough understood the issue at hand.
memoryballhs t1_it3nzx8 wrote
No. Science inherently can't give answers to questions on "what to do" It's not an answer machine. It just helps in fact seeking .
>High risk of child death tends to lead to more children, not less.
That's just a correlation, nothing more. Even trying to prove a direct causation is super difficult. Kant's objections against the vaccines were pretty en vouge at the time. And most importantly scientifically "correct". Whatever that means.
Law systems are not based on science. law systems are based on morale systems. Nothing in nature implies that the rule "do not kill" is inherent. It just makes morally sense.
You can build with scientific facts whatever death cult you want for example. First rule is to kill as much humans as possible. Try to use as much technology, organization and empirical evidence on how to kill a human as fast as possible and as many as possible. And so on. Oh wait. That's exactly what happened already in Germany 1940
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