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dmarchall491 t1_it2g872 wrote

Reply to comment by sismetic in [Peter Harrison] Why religion is not going away and science will not destroy it by BasketCase0024

> 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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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