Yes, agreed, but there's another essential ingredient: critical thinking. The scientific method doesn't work if the would-be scientist doesn't understand or use it.
-- -- Martin | martin at Gregorie | gregorie dot org
Hmm, interesting... That does fit with the idea of coming arbitrarily close to the truth without actually getting there.
That nicely takes care of creation science...
-- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ / | but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Well no.
In the end conventional science versus creation science is about what you find the most inconceivable - a Big Bang N billion years ago in which a broken symmetry started time in the exact way it appears, or a supernal Being who dreamed it all up a few thousand years ago and faked it to *look like* it was N billion years old. Or whatever the current figure is.
And those are not the only narratives that exist. And they are in the end metaphysical. They can't be proved to be correct, only more or less useful, in any given context.
Its not turtles all the way down, it's *models*.
--
?Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of
other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance"
- John K Galbraith
If you're one of those who is going to accept that it all started in 4004 BC, then it would be equally valid to accept that it all started 2 seconds ago, no I mean 3, sorry, no hold on, 4 secs ago.
And so on.
But then such people would probably be unable to answer *why* the Supremem Being bothered to fake it up to look like billyuns.
-- Tim
They've probably been following too many politicians.
-- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | "Some of you may die, \ / | but it's a sacrifice X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | I'm willing to make." / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lord Farquaad (Shrek)
Why go for such extravagance ? All that's required is now.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
No, I meant hammers. Dumber than hamsters still implies more intelligence than many of the whackos possess.
-- Jim H
Except... science has something much more demonstrable than "belief" to hang its hat on.
-- Jim H
That's equally valid, yes.
-- Tim
Ultimately it does not, science hangs its hat on the belief that the universe actually is self consistent rather than just appearing to be so most of the time.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
And that what appears to be the case is likely actually the case, and not just made to appear so as an almighty joke played on us saps by an Almighty trying to be witty.
-- Tim
Perhaps it did. As I am trying to point out, its purely a question of which *narrative* you *choose to believe*. And the consequences of that particular belief.
The reason the creationists believe what they do - and I spent an interesting dinner party finding out, is that there is, for them, only One True Word, and that's in the King James Bible. All else is delusion inspired by the devil
To test mankind, allegedly. So there's the bible, which takes you to heaven, and all this other stuff that goes to the Hot Place. Your choice, don't say you weren't warned, they are really only trying to
*help mankind*. Just like Greta Thunderpants. And the Orange Jesus. We are overwhelmed with Good People carrying infallible moral compasses all trying to Help MankindI think you should make the effort to try to understand the non-technical mind. And metaphysics.
The fact is that there is no fact that is not interpreted in terms of some underlying world-view.
That is what is really meant, when people say 'truth is relative to culture' (without usually understanding what it means)
You are a techie. We like stuff to be reliable predictable and physical. The materialist world-view gives us a physical world ruled by natural law. That means we can do science. Our world-view allows us a great power. In many ways we can predict the future.
But it - is as Kant would say - *a-priori* to our understanding. Although the idea of a material world is supported by the evidence that science works, it is not *proved* by it.
Those of a religious or spiritual persuasion that argue on favour of belief in a sentient Creator who actually gives a shit, would argue that this gives life a purpose and a moral dimension that it otherwise totally lacks. And that is as *useful* as science is, in terms of species survival. A most sustaining and comforting _lie_, if you like.
You are looking for the One True Stick. dude, it ain't there. Plenty of people will try and sell it to you, but is it the real one?
All we can do if we are intellectually acute enough is to note the problem. And the problem is we have to assume something in order to proceed at all, and we have no way other than our progress, to establish whether what we assumed was true or not.
Think Matrix. The material world is one humongous glorious act of faith, that we assume to be true, because it *works for us*.
God concepts are one humongous glorious act of faith, that they assume to be true, because it *works for them*.
You see my dilemma?
-- ?Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.? M. de Voltaire
Indeed. And that is not inconsistent with some interpretations of the world, where time space and the material world are simply a rather inadequate way of relating to the Mysterious All.
A view that is becoming less inconsistent with science the more physics pushes the limits of quantum reality...
-- There is nothing a fleet of dispatchable nuclear power plants cannot do that cannot be done worse and more expensively and with higher carbon emissions and more adverse environmental impact by adding intermittent renewable energy.
Perhaps. That depends on what your purpose is. Science is about predicting the future, better, that's all. When you bother to think about it.
Religion is about regulating a crowded society, and giving people in large societies a personal meaning and purpose in life.
Just as useful in many respects.
Before you can *do *science, you have to 'believe' in the material world of space time. If you don't there is nothing that science can demonstrate. There is no future to predict, is there?
-- Of what good are dead warriors? ? Warriors are those who desire battle more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump their spears on the ground and talk of honor. Those who leap high the battle dance and dream of glory ? The good of dead warriors, Mother, is that they are dead. Sheri S Tepper: The Awakeners.
Aha. You really get it.
--
?The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
- Bertrand Russell
So you have to believe in the Devil, for starters, an entity I don't believe in and for which I've never seen any evidence.
And then there's King James, eh? I wonder why that one. My SWMBO, who did some theology at Uni, says that any modern version of the Bible has been copied and translated back and forth over the centuries by scribes with greater or lesser degrees of care, and greater or lesser detailed knowledge of the languages they were translating from, that you're bound to have transcription errors. Second, you can pretty much always find a Bible passage to support and another to oppose any particular PoV.
So it's interesting as any other history book but shouldn't be taken as the firm unalterable direct and final Word of God. To do so is to make the same error that the Islamists make.
-- Tim
Of course, at any point in history one could take the view that Now is good enough, and that any inconsistencies we observe are just us noticing the folks at Reality Control adjusting the scenery.
In fact for us today, we'd not have to bother worrying about dark matter keeping the galaxies together, because they were only created 10**-43 secs ago and that in a million years held together only by Newton/Einstein they will fly apart doesn't matter. Convenient that!
-- Tim
That of course is why you need to really understand the Matrix proposition.
That what appears to be the case could actually be utterly and completely wrong.
And that is why Einstein smashed materialism unwittingly. He came up with an equivalent narrative that was utterly different from Newtonian metaphysics.
Which was true? They couldn't *both* be true. And that shattered the assumption of materialism, that the world in facts was pretty much the way it appeared to be, with all the secrete hidden Laws swept up into a tidy bundle of linear differential equations..we kept the linear differential equations, but we traded in absolute time and absolute flat space for accuracy of prediction.
And now with quantum physics, we are trading in strict Causality as well.
And that is why philosophers of science have retreated from the position that you espouse, to a more useful working relationship with science, not as revealing facts, but as the construction of efficient models that work and give accurate predictions
God theories work, but not to give accurate predictions. They work to bring meaning to peoples lives and to regulate the behaviour of societies.
Once you abandon the idea that science or materialism and its underlying assumptions, its 'a-prioris', are the One True Stick, and see them just as another set of assumptions that need to be made to achieve certain things then you realised religion is no different except in its purpose.
Neither has any monopoly on the Truth. Both are in the end inductive hypotheses - working from effects to causes - and therefore subject to the Problem of Induction', namely that given an effect, the here and now experience of your life, you cannot unequivocally say what *causes* it, and indeed the notion that *something must have*, is another unwarranted assumption that you are making.
That the material world, space time, and our normal reasonable assumptions of cause and effect *work*, especially in physics (though less well in politics) is, in the end *not* 'strong evidence' that they are *correct*. Newton could have said the same about his forces, Neo about the Matrix. Galileo did say that about his heliocentrism, and yet all of them proved to be only limited approximate *models*. Which is precisely what the Catholic church tried to tell Galileo.
To say more than that is to claim certainty where none exists, We appear to be beings that do not have unlimited computing power at our disposal, and the approximation of a 'real solid objective world out there, comprised mostly of 'things' we can ignore because 'they don't eat us and we can't eat them'' is a *useful* way to handle it. A good ad hoc working *model*. And if you can't handle the loneliness, and absolute lack of any hint as to what you ought to be doing about it, by all means shove an omniscient-creator-that-gives-a-shit in there, if it gets you through the night.
Religion and science have their place. But neither is demonstrably true or indeed can be said to have any decidable truth content.
My argument is to dethrone *both*, and see them for what they are. Useful *models* that in their own way work, but neither of which should ever be held up to the the One and Only True Stick.
--
?The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
- Bertrand Russell
Nope, you just have to accept that there are people who do.
That translation was supposed to have been guided by God or somesuch, I forget the exact details.
Hence the need for a translation guided by God to be the official version.
You either believe this stuff or you don't - for the record I don't.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Faced with a proposition odf a One True Perfect God and the manifest imperfection of the world, the devil simply embodies all the chaitic destructive forces - if you have Yang, you need a yin. If you have matter, you need antimatter...
That's the one they took to America.
Remember the pilgrim fathers were religious bigots.
Too stuffy even for protestant England.
My SWMBO, who did some
she is completely correct.
I am saying that to them, that is the One True Word. Every metaphysic has to start *somewhere*, with some assumption, even yours....
--
?I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
thread, into the fabric of their lives.?
? Leo Tolstoy
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