"Does the Empirical Nature of Science Contradict the Revalatory Nature of Faith?"

[cuddly_tomato]

1: Not all religions believe in God the same way as Christianity does, and yet almost every post on the anti-religion side seems to assume that they do. It is not fair to assume that because somebody believes in a higher power that they cannot believe in Science and vice versa.

This has got to be the most irritating aspect of fanatical atheism. There are easily as many different religious beliefs and practices as there are scientific theories. In fact probably vastly moreso. When your typical anti-theist says ostensibly that religion is wrong because evolution is proven, that is rather like that all science is false because there are scientists who believe that too much cholesterol isn't bad for you [http://www.thincs.org/].

Science isn't some uniform structured society of "this is right, this isn't". It is a method of determining the physical properties of the universe we inhabit, that's all. Religion doesn't have anything to do with that. The two "forces" have little or nothing to do with each other.

 

[I Stomp on Kittens]

Pretty much my point of view. As long as I'm not told how warm and toasty Hell will be when I get there, and as long as they don't try to teach religion as verifiable fact in schools, I don't particularly care what they do with it.

My english teacher does and its annoying

 

[matrix3509]

Glad to see no one truly answered my question.

QFT...

The human system of moral beliefs is inherently unscientific. Why? Because doing things out of interest to the entire community is completely illogical. You won't find many individual organisms in the entire Animal Kingdom that would willing sacrifice themselves for a group. I know there are a few species of animals that do, but they are the exception, not the rule.

To use an example so kindly provided to me, you wouldn't stop a serial killer chasing after a person if said serial killer turned their attention onto you. Why would you, for instance help a blind person cross the road, or feed a homeless person? It makes absolutely no sense to do these things from a logical point of view. Helping these kinds of people as indeed the government is spending tax money to do, only serves to hold the people of a nation back, though the less of these people there are the less detrimental it is of course. But that tax money could instead be used on scientific research. But countries do it anyway. Why?

Because its the right thing to do? Who says it is? The government? Why would you believe the government? What makes them the moral authority? You can't say those basic laws just came about because people just wanna be nice. That's bullshit.

I can come up with, cold logic for "acts of compassion", if you want? Okay.
Say I feed and clothe a hobo and give him the money to go to college and live in an apartment, I used my resources to potentially make a powerful ally out of a homeless man.

Saving a little girl from an murderer? The community would respect you at the very least for trying to save a child, a great relationship booster. Fighting the armed man and winning might cement your reputation with the locals, in that you're not a push-over.

Helping a blind person cross the street? That person getting hit by a car because no one was willing to help them would be utterly stupid, no sizable amount of energy is lost and you really don't lose much time, either. It's almost a non-task.

It's simple, really... we need other people to survive, so if you're not in danger or need you've got enough energy to help someone, which increases your chance of surviving because they can then help you. The "favor" principle.

You completely dodged the main point which is this:

Doing things for other people that carries no benefit for you, or that poses a great risk to you personally is based upon unscientific principles. Who cares about a relationship with the locals? It certainly doesn't impact my life. If fact, I'm safer and have a better chance of gauranteeing my future, if I don't confront the psychopath. Thats an awfully weak reason to put your life on the line.

Also, coming up with an excuse to help someone, because it doesn't take much energy, also doesn't work. You don't see wild animals do this sort of thing. Animals in captivity might, but its entirely different.

There is absolutely no reason to interfere from a biological point of view. Preservation of the self. Selflessness is completely illogical from a Darwinian perspective. So enlighten me... what makes doing that the "right" thing to do?

One, you've got the Darwinian perspective/biological point of view wrong. That perspective calls for sacrifice all the time.

Let's say you and I are both parents past our reproductive age. Our children are in danger. If I sacrifice myself to preserve the life of my child, I have secured an advantage for my genes in the next round of breeding: I'll have one more child, which means I'll have one more chance to pass on those genes.

Leaving aside the fact that the Darwinian perspective often calls for sacrifice of the self, what is we reject of the Darwinian perspective as a guide to human behavior, and belief that the right human point of view is the biological?

The human system of moral beliefs is inherently unscientific. Why? Because doing things out of interest to the entire community is completely illogical.

I can come up with, cold logic for "acts of compassion", if you want? Okay.

Here's the thing: you have to keep logic distinct from premise. In other words, logic is a tool to see if a conclusion is supported by a premise.

First, we have to establish the premise of "what is the nature of the human being." Until we figure that out, we can't really have a discussion about what is 'logical' or not--if we do, we'll only be comparing equally valid arguments, but we won't know which of those arguments is sound.

You missed the point of my post completely. Of course Darwinism calls for sacrifice if your own freaking children were in danger of death, everyone should know that. I'm talking about sacrificing yourself for the good of the community, full of people you don't know personally. I certainly wouldn't, becuase continuing my own personal line of genes is more important to a degree than the community. Thats why alpha males of a lion pride kill the cubs of other males. Because continuing one's own genetic line is more important than the good of a small group.

 

[_Serendipity_]

As both a scientist and an atheist, I don't see how you can be both a scientist and religious.

However, I would say that, wouldn't I? I'm an atheist and I don't really see how people believe in a God anyway, and I'm sure there are christian scientists out there who would say the exact opposite to me.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

How to put this....hmmmm

We obit around our sun, correct?
And the sun, in turn, orbits around our galactic core
Our galaxy orbits the center of the universe
and our universe orbits in a clouds of universes...a multiverse...

well I don't know about you but there's way to many quantum possibilities to rule our an extra dimensional being creating our particular reality.

According to String Theory/M-brane Theory, a tiny interaction between two universes could have disrupted the point of matter that became the big bang. So there is a slight posibility that a being from another dimension could guide it's own bubble of reality into colliding with ours and thus create the big bang.


So, thus, there could be a God in another universe. We just will never know.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Glad to see no one truly answered my question.

I don't think it was answerable.

Let me just clarify some points at this juncture and try to make them thread relevant (out of respect for Labrynth).

The question is - "Can science and religion live alongside each other?".

The response to that from some is simply - "do you ever feel guilt?"

Why is this? Well if you have done something "wrong" in your life, even a small thing, and got away with it but still feel remorse you suddenly have a completely unscientific feeling. A "quality" which does not aid in survival, which is not an evolutionary advantage. The scientific thing to do is to just abandon such feelings and actually be happy that you have managed to get away with whatever it is you have done. A lot of folks don't do that, and a few will even try to make amends.

Let me make an example - anthropological adultery (the practice, not the "sin"). Evolution has programmed the male human to find one female, and settle with her, but to shag as many other females as he can find on the quiet, thus providing a good chance of passing his DNA onto the next generation. The one female is a good guarantee of passing on DNA. The finding other women is about genetic superiority. Find the best examples of humans you can find and try to produce offspring with them. Also, because males can produce sperm several times a day he has nothing to loose by firing his DNA every-which-way he can. Evolution has programmed the human female a bit differently. She will look for a male who can provide for her and any young she produces. Once aquired such a male though she will shag others, as long as they are of higher quality and if she thinks the other male won't find out (doing so would risk him finding someone else, probably due to the risk of the offspring not being his). But because women can't pop out babies week in, week out, she has to be far more picky about possible mates.

That is how humans are made. Why then, do so many people choose monogamy and live with that happily even though it goes against both evolutionary behavioural programming and Darwinian logic? What makes a man, or a woman, stay with a partner when one finds out the other is sterile? Or when one develops a crippling degerative disease that will mean they need looking after for the rest of their lives?

Why would someone cry when they lost a sick spouse? That is unscientific. They should be happy that they are now "free" to find someone healthier whom with they can produce higher quality offspring.

Can those kinds of feelings, can remorse, conscience, and altruism live alongside science? Are all scientists immoral and do whatever they can get away with? Is it impossible to just accept that logic doesn't really apply to everything, and this is no bad thing?

To those few who are saying these feelings and concepts don't exist - would you cheat on your spouse if you knew for a fact she or he was never going to find out?

 

[Legion]

Let me just clarify some points at this juncture and try to make them thread relevant (out of respect for Labrynth).

The question is - "Can science and religion live alongside each other?".

The response to that from some is simply - "do you ever feel guilt?"

Why is this? Well if you have done something "wrong" in your life, even a small thing, and got away with it but still feel remorse you suddenly have a completely unscientific feeling. A "quality" which does not aid in survival, which is not an evolutionary advantage. The scientific thing to do is to just abandon such feelings and actually be happy that you have managed to get away with whatever it is you have done. A lot of folks don't do that, and a few will even try to make amends.

Take make an example - anthropological adultery (the practice, not the "sin"). Evolution has programmed the male human to find one female, and settle with her, but to shag as many other females as he can find on the quiet, thus providing a good chance of passing his DNA onto the next generation. The one female is a good guarantee of passing on DNA. The finding other women is about genetic superiority. Find the best examples of humans you can find and try to produce offspring with them. Also, because males can produce sperm several times a day he has nothing to loose by firing his DNA every-which-way he can. Evolution has programmed the human female a bit differently. She will look for a male who can provide for her and any young she produces. Once aquired such a male though she will shag others, as long as they are of higher quality and if she thinks the other male won't find out (doing so would risk him finding someone else, probably due to the risk of the offspring not being his). But because women can't pop out babies week in, week out, she has to be far more picky about possible mates.

That is how humans are made. Why then, do so many people choose monogamy and live with that happily even though it goes against both evolutionary behavioural programming and Darwinian logic? What makes a man, or a woman, stay with a partner when one finds out the other is sterile? Or when one develops a crippling degerative disease that will mean they need looking after for the rest of their lives?

Why would someone cry when they lost a sick spouse? That is unscientific. They should be happy that they are now "free" to find someone healthier whom with they can produce higher quality offspring.

Can those kinds of feelings, can remorse, conscience, and altruism live alongside science? Are all scientists immoral and do whatever they can get away with? Is it impossible to just accept that logic doesn't really apply to everything, and this is no bad thing?

To those few who are saying these feelings and concepts don't exist - would you cheat on your spouse if you knew for a fact she or he was never going to find out?

An excellent post and why, as much as I'd like to, I cannot completely agree with Science and disregard Spirituality as "unprovable therefore non-existent".

 

[Ace of Spades]

People from a while ago made religion to explain the unexplainable. Now that we've explained some of it with science, we have religion because it's nice to have someone to blame when things go wrong, or at least that's why I believe in God.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

That is how humans are made. Why then, do so many people choose monogamy and live with that happily even though it goes against both evolutionary behavioural programming and Darwinian logic?

Well, one, it may just be a human cultural adaptation to cut down on violence that had genetic consequences: cultures that allow each man only one wife might wind up with less fighting between the males. Humans survive as groups, not as individuals. Even the least fit member of the European gene pool wound up with more genes passed down to today than the most fit member of 99% of the human societies in existence at the dawn of agriculture, even if he or she didn't breed, as long as his or her relatives did.

Two, you can't assume that the most advantageous behavior according to Darwinian logic is programmed into a species just because they are still around. Remember, it's survival of the fittest, not survival of the most perfectly adapted, and selection takes time. So it's perfectly possible that some humans are programmed by evolution to be monogamous, even though it goes against Darwinian logic. Humans did not compete against each other for most of human history: we just migrated. Our ability to use animals and fire allowed us to simply expand rather than fight over an ecological niche. Thus, there was far less evolutionary pressure on humans than on other species. So it makes sense that we follow a lot less of Darwin's logic than other species.

That's not my point though Cheeze. The point isn't where those feelings come from or why they are still around. The point is simply that people can have them, that scientists can have them, even though they can't be condoned by logic. My point is that there are times when we very obviously can say "it's not logical, but what the hell...". If you had a woman in your life, loved her, and she had a serious accident and became paralysed from the waist down, there would surely be no *logical* reason to stay with her right?

So why can't science get along with religion?

If the reason is that religion is not based on reason, but belief and faith, then the same applies here. If people need to be "educated" away from religion then they surely should be "educated" about not pairing up with sterile people? Or "educated" away from spending time listening to music while they could be doing something more constructive such as studying or working? And if we follow the dogma of pure logic, people should also be "educated" away from pairing up with those who are prone to cancer, or MS, or other genetically dependant diseases?

Something else is there telling us that we shouldn't be such cold, robotic, fuck-sticks. Whether it is a soul or just a plain old quirk of the human animal it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it isn't logical, and thank (insert deity here) for that! So, can science get on with "unproven, illogical belief"? It can, it will, and it has to, or else humans will find reasons to turn this world into a cold and unspeakably cruel place.

 

[matrix3509]

Glad to see no one truly answered my question.

I don't think it was answerable.

Let me just clarify some points at this juncture and try to make them thread relevant (out of respect for Labrynth).

The question is - "Can science and religion live alongside each other?".

The response to that from some is simply - "do you ever feel guilt?"

Why is this? Well if you have done something "wrong" in your life, even a small thing, and got away with it but still feel remorse you suddenly have a completely unscientific feeling. A "quality" which does not aid in survival, which is not an evolutionary advantage. The scientific thing to do is to just abandon such feelings and actually be happy that you have managed to get away with whatever it is you have done. A lot of folks don't do that, and a few will even try to make amends.

Let me make an example - anthropological adultery (the practice, not the "sin"). Evolution has programmed the male human to find one female, and settle with her, but to shag as many other females as he can find on the quiet, thus providing a good chance of passing his DNA onto the next generation. The one female is a good guarantee of passing on DNA. The finding other women is about genetic superiority. Find the best examples of humans you can find and try to produce offspring with them. Also, because males can produce sperm several times a day he has nothing to loose by firing his DNA every-which-way he can. Evolution has programmed the human female a bit differently. She will look for a male who can provide for her and any young she produces. Once aquired such a male though she will shag others, as long as they are of higher quality and if she thinks the other male won't find out (doing so would risk him finding someone else, probably due to the risk of the offspring not being his). But because women can't pop out babies week in, week out, she has to be far more picky about possible mates.

That is how humans are made. Why then, do so many people choose monogamy and live with that happily even though it goes against both evolutionary behavioural programming and Darwinian logic? What makes a man, or a woman, stay with a partner when one finds out the other is sterile? Or when one develops a crippling degerative disease that will mean they need looking after for the rest of their lives?

Why would someone cry when they lost a sick spouse? That is unscientific. They should be happy that they are now "free" to find someone healthier whom with they can produce higher quality offspring.

Can those kinds of feelings, can remorse, conscience, and altruism live alongside science? Are all scientists immoral and do whatever they can get away with? Is it impossible to just accept that logic doesn't really apply to everything, and this is no bad thing?

To those few who are saying these feelings and concepts don't exist - would you cheat on your spouse if you knew for a fact she or he was never going to find out?

Exactly. It cannot be answered with scientific principles in mind. Because helping someone at risk to your own life is inherently unscientific. Yet we see or at least hear about people doing this every day. The very concept of the moral compass is unscientific.

You missed the point of my post completely. Of course Darwinism calls for sacrifice if your own freaking children were in danger of death, everyone should know that. I'm talking about sacrificing yourself for the good of the community, full of people you don't know personally. I certainly wouldn't, becuase continuing my own personal line of genes is more important to a degree than the community. Thats why alpha males of a lion pride kill the cubs of other males. Because continuing one's own genetic line is more important than the good of a small group.

Ahh, but see--the adult male of a lion pride comes from *outside* the community. That means they have no genes in common with those cubs. The community you, however, reside in has more of your genes than the communities you don't reside in. So communities with lots of people who sacrifice themselves for the good of the community wind up with more surviving children than communities that don't. That's the competitive advantage.

Remember--if you're going to go down this sociobiological path, there's nothing special about offspring other than the fact that they have half your genes. Thing is, your community has plenty of your genes too.

Glad to see no one truly answered my question.

What was your question?

So when you move into a new community, do you immediately kill every child that doesn't share your genes? No? There you go. You pretty much proved my point for me.