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Originally Posted by Deckard
I agree. It's also this need to respect that often puts something beyond challenge in many circles. On an individual level, what this often amounts to is avoiding embarrassing people by exposing these outlandish claims for what they are - hope without evidence - letting things go unchallenged in a way that we don't with their 'beliefs' about mathematics or geology. We're expected not to enquire too closely into someone's belief in
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you might have noticed, but I tend to not always be so respectful. its not something i'm proud of. But then I don't really find it disrespectful to question or honestly disagree, the people I talk to see it that way, though, unfortunately.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deckard
I agree to a degree, but this is the point at which the difference between dogma and the scientific method (aka an open mind) comes into play. I think we have to be honest and admit that our 'belief' about the working of the atom has rather more to back it up than the belief that Jesus was born to a virgin. And of course the Bohr model has itself been refined over the decades and I don't doubt that it would be dropped just as quickly as the plum pudding model of the atom a century ago were we to uncover something that falsified it. Additionally, there's usually a clear and honest distinction in science between things of which we are fairly certain (a conclusion reached through repeated experimentation and open, honest and robust peer review - e.g. quantum electrodynamics) and things which are speculation, such as string/M-theory. In other words, there's an honesty about what we know and don't know.
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I don't think scientists are as honest as their methods, which is the problem. Being human, and not a computer, they have to dress the probability that something is axiomatically true with subjective descriptors. Unless a theorem is derived symbolically, scientists claiming we "know" its true is converting a numeric probability into an analog english word that expresses the level of that probability. Repeated experiments do nothing more than push the probability to 1, but as the truth value converges to 1 it never reaches the value, unless its proven outside of experiential inference.
For all practical usage, a theory converging to 1 and having the identity value of 1 have been argued to be the same thing, as in the ideas of charles sanders peirce. But even he argues that its still a process of "fixating one's belief". To fixate one's belief I think is the best description of the process we undertake in which to "know" something. But its illusory, because knowledge is no more than just asserted, static belief. I mean this is just my personal philosophy, so take it for what it's worth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deckard
In the sense of faith and worship, or in the sense of pursuing an interest with great vigour?
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Hmmm. Not really what I was thinking. I think being religious has more to do with being authoritarian, dogmatic, unquestioning, hyper-filtering reality, intellectually inert, not only asserting grand simplistic truths, but being completely unwilling to ever question them. None of these things imply a particular set of dogmas, a particular authority, a mystical set of truths to never question. So I just don't think its fair for atheists to pin these qualities on only those who believe in God, whole sale.
I mean before Richard Dawkins came around, it used to be very respectable to be agnostic, or even deist. And because of him there are an army of scientists who are coming out *religiously* against the existence of God.
I don't personally believe in God, I just don't like people telling me I'm a fool for asking the question, which is what a geneticist did at a party a while back. He was angrily shutting down the possibility of anything remotely non random existing in cosmology and when I brought things like kurzweil's singularitarianism, or gardner's biocosm theories, which is not exactly the fucking bible, mind you, he was literally twitching with rage. I left the encounter thinking: I'm really sorry for you because you're going to let nothing awe inspiring ever happen to you.
just as I feel sorry for the mormons against which I'm now so bitterly polarized.
edit: by the way, interesting article relating how the neurochemical responses in terms of happiness are the same between those who are theists and atheists as long as they both have strong convictions
http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=2421