No such thing as God.

@Didymos Thomas,

Ruthless Logic, Good argument. I agree that 'the components of information that allow this process to occur can only come from our empirical environment' but i have proposed, here and elsewhere, that the artifact-artificer relation, realized by primitive man, led him to suppose the existence of a creator of the world and himself. It reconciles the concept of God with evolutionary development better than Intelligent Design does, but doesn't make God a reality. susceptability to this line of reason remains - but i don't think it valid for the reasons previously stated. To re-itterate, there cannot be a supernatural, omniscient, omnipresent ect God, because these things are inconsistant with what's known to exist.

This speaks to Didymos's argument. Many of the God's of traditional religions are creator God's, artificer's inferred from the artifact of our existence - so it doesn't really depend on how the Bible, or Koran, Talmud ect are read.

de silentio, i'm sorry,but science has achieved a level of validity that the broad sceme of our understanding will not be fundamentally revised. we DO know!

Aedes, thanks for the straight answer to what's admittedly a complexly nuanced issue. Aguably though, you missed the point again. That said, i've never actually got you to acknowledge that action in the course of religious, political and capitalist economic ideology will result in the extinction of humankind. Rather you say:

So in the grand scheme of the universe, or in the context that the world will some day disappear in a ball of fire from the exploding sun, the lives of every organism on earth are negligible and extinction doesn't matter.

But this was my question:
As a consequence of action in the course of religious, political and economic ideologies inconsistent with the scientific facts of the reality we inhabit, humankind will become extinct. But does it matter?

Because i argue: In scientific terms, of course, there's no reason why humankind might not live another million years, or more - but in these terms, to what end? Is it enough just to walk in the sunshine?

I'm really asking if there's something about man that requires us to form these ideologies of superlative purpose, even at the cost of our existence - and is it worth the price?

You see, i agree that the bigger picture is meaningless. You can't really think that i'd protest something as immutable as the heat death of the universe, and yet avoid the point that we induce our own extinction, when we might not. i think this was a straight answer - so is it something you can't bring yourself to acknowledge? were it so, it would be perfectly explicable in terms of my philosophy.

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@iconoclast,

Quote:

This speaks to Didymos's argument. Many of the God's of traditional religions are creator God's, artificer's inferred from the artifact of our existence - so it doesn't really depend on how the Bible, or Koran, Talmud ect are read.

How do you go from some A's are X to all As are X? You're right, many conceptions of God are as you say. However, we might have other conceptions, even by reading Biblical literature.

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Base on this line of thinking, is not the consideration process of God (or something greater then ourselves) completely biased, and consequently invalid, because of the available components of empirical information are completely ill-suited for this "type" of consideration.

Doesn't this boil down to what notion of God is being considered? If God is supernatural, we certainly cannot expect any empirical evidence to suggest the existence of God. But I do not see why notions of God must be necessarily supernatural.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

Aedes, i've never actually got you to acknowledge that action in the course of religious, political and capitalist economic ideology will result in the extinction of humankind.

Action in the course of anything can result in the extinction of humankind -- why limit it to religious, political, and capitalist ends? Mass international transportation and shipping poses more of a risk for extinction than anything else. Population density also poses a high risk for extinction because any communicable illness is more likely to result in secondary cases after a given primary case. The reason I don't go along with your thesis that it's capitalism and religion that are doing the world in is that the threat of global extinction would exist probably equally in this very moment in time even if we radically altered every single human mind and political system in the world to conform to your ideal.

Furthermore, without rehashing our old debate, we can both accept that one of the major risks we face is the rapid population growth in the developing world as compared to the developed world. Highly developed, industrialized, capitalist societies like Western Europe, Japan, US/Canada, and Australia / NZ are becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of the total world population. But with our high rates of consumption we are completely dependent on raw materials, commerce, and labor with the developing world. And as they become a greater and greater reservoir of human disease with poorer, sicker, larger populations, it poses a greater threat of imported epidemic disease. After all, the world's major reservoirs for tuberculosis remain Africa and Asia, and we've already imported HIV, West Nile virus, SARS, and other lesser known diseases from the developing world. We're constantly importing malaria and dengue (over 1000 cases of the former imported into the US every year), and with growing public skepticism about vaccines we've now had three measles epidemics in the US in the last year imported from outside.

That's the problem. And I just don't think it boils down to one system or another, because the way of the world is that wealth always flows from the poor to the rich in ANY system, and disease and overpopulation always accumulate in the poor in ANY system. The least regulated, most despotic systems, like Myanmar, are places where disasters and disease-ridden aftermaths occur on scales that would never happen here. We have had storms that size. We have had earthquakes the size of the one that killed tens of thousands in Bam, Iran a few years ago. But we have a stable population and a stable infrastructure that allows us to get through a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina with 1000 dead instead of 100,000 dead.

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But this was my question: As a consequence of action in the course of religious, political and economic ideologies inconsistent with the scientific facts of the reality we inhabit, humankind will become extinct. But does it matter?

Well, that wasn't your question as phrased. But at any rate it is an extremely presumptuous question, because it excludes the possibility that we can become extinct for other reasons, including misappropriation of science (look at Chernobyl, or look at nuclear warfare, which are the other edge of the science sword). Your question is self-consciously leading and biased because it is incomplete, and therefore strikes me as dishonest. Or if not dishonest at least polemical and rhetorical rather than philosophical.

You also have fundamentally disagreed with me in the past that health care interventions prevent population growth. Well, that is science and it's thoroughly documented in the scientific literature, so you can't be selective about which science you dislike just because of your own politics. And absent data you're not presenting any kind of scientific argument of your own. You have some kind of 'world order' in mind. But we don't need to look to deeply at history to see what happens when we force a world order where it doesn't naturally fit.

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I'm really asking if there's something about man that requires us to form these ideologies of superlative purpose, even at the cost of our existence - and is it worth the price?

I'm not sure you prove that the price we're paying is due to that -- and you certainly haven't presented a solution with any specifics.

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@iconoclast,

Iconoclast, Smile

"Is it enough to walk in the sun?" Good question, it is problematic only to the living. Extinction might be said to be perfection, life is problematic, only death/extinction is no trouble.

1 Reply

@boagie,

Boagie,

I think I can support an apparent inductive inference in this case as I've identified the origin of the concept of God in the history of human conceptual development. Even if, presently, not all ideas of God are creator Gods, by arguing that the concept of God originates with primitive man's recognition of the artifact-artificer relationship, the concept can be re-conceived any number of ways - but any re-conceptualization remains a subset of A.
On your other point, I don't know of any idea of God that's not supernaturally characterized - and thus incompatible with a consistent reality we know to exist. Please provide examples.
That said, even if you do provide examples, because evolutionary development can be shown to have occurred with reference to human remains and artifacts, it must be that at some point man began to ask 'how does all this come to be here?' and 'how do I come to be here?' and imagined an omnipotent artificer.
It's this argument that convinces me there's no such thing. After all, if we asked those same questions today, of an impartial judge, given the available evidence, he wouldn't arrive at the omnipotent creator hypothesis, but at bang theory instead. And this leads into how bad ideas get entrenched in human culture - translated in pseudo-realities we act upon, in contradiction of actual realities.

Aedes,

I question your assertion that disease - carried by international travel and shipping poses a threat of human extinction. Certainly, there's a threat of spreading disease, and even a pandemic - the spread of which might be aided by transportation of goods and people around the world, but extinction from disease is highly unlikely.
Here in Europe, we've had two main pandemics - one in 1666, of bubonic plague, and one in 1916 - of influenza. In the first pandemic, half the population of Europe died - and the other killed somewhere between 10 and 15 million people. Fleas carried by rats, from ships returning from foreign parts spread the former, and the latter followed troops to the western frount and back - so I take your point about mass transportation. However, such outbreaks are therefore, thankfully quite rare, and at their worst don't seem to pose a threat of extinction.
Furthermore, I refute your assertion that I disputed the relation between healthcare and addressing over-population. If you remember correctly, while putting forward specific, scientifically conceived measures to address the real threats of extinction we face, I merely stated that it would be necessary to implement sustainable energy technology world-wide before tackling poverty - including inequalities of health, despite population pressures.
I'm aware of the theory that suggests there's a correlation between standards of living, (including healthcare outcomes) and family size - but it's not scientific fact. It's true that most population growth has, and is set to occur in developing countries with a lower than average per capita GDP - but correlation is not causation. It's also true that fertility is declining in most nations with a higher than average per capita GDP. It also seems reasonable to me that women will choose to have less children if, (A) contraception is available, and (B), if their children are likely to survive the first 5 years of life, rather than unlikely to survive - but if you look at figures for European population growth from the beginning of the industrial revolution - you'll see that fertility takes almost a century to tail off to replacement levels.
I've looked at this quite closely as it bears upon the assumptions made by the UNDP in predicting that population will level off at 9.5 billion around the middle of the century. This mid-level prediction not only depends upon this theory - but also on the assumption that fulfilling the MDG's will rationalize reduced family size. But the MDG's haven't nearly been met.
Development continues apace in China, India, and South America, but it's not sustainable development - and in the course of a capitalist rationale - the distribution of wealth is highly asymmetric. Take Brazil as an example. According to Wikipedia: 'Brazil is today South America's largest economy, the world's ninth largest economy, and fifth most populous nation.' Clearly, exploiting natural resources has generated a great deal of wealth, however, the article continues:
'Brazil's most severe problem is arguably its highly unequal distribution of wealth and income. By the 1990s, more than one out of four Brazilians continued to survive on less than one dollar a day.'
From Encarta we note: 'In 1950 Brazil had 51,944,000 inhabitants, and by 1980 the population had more than doubled, rising to 119,002,700. The most recent census, in 2000, recorded a population of 169,799,170. A 2005 estimate placed the population at 186,112,794.'
Thus, Brazil's population has more than tripled in the past 55 years, and while massive exploitation of the natural environment has generated huge wealth for the few, the benefits of economic development have failed to reach the poorest 25% of the population.
Which is to say there are still 50,000,000 people in Brazil without access to education, healthcare and so forth, that might, one day lend itself to reduced family size.
But even if the product of development were not so unevenly distributed, the Earth simply cannot withstand 5 billion people developing such standards of living over the course of the next century, unless such development is founded on a sustainable energy basis. No, the actual threats we face are quite specific - and the result of action in the course of religious, political and capitalist economic ideology. For the record they are: the energy crisis, climate change, over-population (insofar as it exacerbates the others) and environmental degradation. This nest of issues is caused, and cannot be addressed by action in these terms. The only context in which this is rational, and seems possible is in the context of a scientific conception of reality.
i don't see this as a: 'radically altered every single human mind and political system in the world to conform to your ideal' - but acceptance of sound reason and established fact.
You say 'Your question is self-consciously leading and biased because it is incomplete, and therefore strikes me as dishonest. Or if not dishonest at least polemical and rhetorical rather than philosophical.'
My arguments are leading in the sense that i wish to demonstrate an epistemological argument - but they're not misleading and therefore not dishonest. I don't know what polemical means - but you have some cheek accusing me of rhetoric!!! By stubborn argument - you could convince the sun that day is night. But not me - i know what i'm talking about, why i'm talking about it and that it's important.

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@iconoclast,

Quote:

I think I can support an apparent inductive inference in this case as I've identified the origin of the concept of God in the history of human conceptual development. Even if, presently, not all ideas of God are creator Gods, by arguing that the concept of God originates with primitive man's recognition of the artifact-artificer relationship, the concept can be re-conceived any number of ways - but any re-conceptualization remains a subset of A.

That you can identify the origin of notions of God is of no help to your case. Notions of God change over time, therefore, characteristics of the original God-notions are not necessarily characteristics of all God-notions.

You cannot be expected to prove that all notions of God are 'artificer's inferred from the artifact of our existence', but if examples can be shown of God notions that your description mischaracterizes the result is clear.

I think part of the problem is the label - God. You say that despite the changes, all notions of God remain a 'subset of A', A being notions of God. But this is not very convincing. If we were speaking of motors, I could buy the argument as motors all do the same thing. But Gods do not always do the same thing, and notions of god are not always rooted in the belief that because we exist we must have been created by some greater power.

Sufism is a great example. God as a creator language is used, but God is not thought to be some craftsman creating some thing. You might be interested in reading up on their views of God.

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On your other point, I don't know of any idea of God that's not supernaturally characterized - and thus incompatible with a consistent reality we know to exist. Please provide examples.

It's one thing for religious literature to use figurative language and allegory to express values and another thing for the material to be taken literally. While each tradition has allegory, the existence of instructional material does not demand that the God be thought of as literally violating the laws of nature.

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That said, even if you do provide examples, because evolutionary development can be shown to have occurred with reference to human remains and artifacts, it must be that at some point man began to ask 'how does all this come to be here?' and 'how do I come to be here?' and imagined an omnipotent artificer.
It's this argument that convinces me there's no such thing. After all, if we asked those same questions today, of an impartial judge, given the available evidence, he wouldn't arrive at the omnipotent creator hypothesis, but at bang theory instead. And this leads into how bad ideas get entrenched in human culture - translated in pseudo-realities we act upon, in contradiction of actual realities.

And we should always ask those questions of an impartial jury. Science and religion serve two different purposes. If religion demands something of science, the religion has gone too far.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

I question your assertion that disease - carried by international travel and shipping poses a threat of human extinction. Certainly, there's a threat of spreading disease, and even a pandemic - the spread of which might be aided by transportation of goods and people around the world, but extinction from disease is highly unlikely.

Yes, I agree that it's exceptionally unlikely. But not impossible. Europe has had far more than those two pandemics, by the way. The bubonic plague of 1347-1349 was the biggest one. But it's hypothesized that the Roman Empire's final decline was due to an epidemic (probably plague) in the 4th century.

Point is, aside from the moon crashing into the earth or some huge natural calamity, how is it that humans can go extinct? Well, either something kills us directly (like disease) or the living conditions become untenable (like massive pollution or radiation or something).

But consider this -- if we're severely depopulated by an epidemic, humans MIGHT go extinct because our remaining population size and fertility might be insufficient to maintain populations, especially under the remaining conditions in the world.

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I merely stated that it would be necessary to implement sustainable energy technology world-wide before tackling poverty - including inequalities of health, despite population pressures.

Well I think we can agree then with one another that this is a multifactorial problem that requires a multidisciplinary solution.

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I'm aware of the theory that suggests there's a correlation between standards of living, (including healthcare outcomes) and family size - but it's not scientific fact.

Well, the demographic literature is very very strong in this regard. But it's not simply family size, it's fertility rates that are the main predictor (number of children per mother for maternal fertility, number of children per father for paternal fertility).

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It also seems reasonable to me that women will choose to have less children if, (A) contraception is available, and (B), if their children are likely to survive the first 5 years of life, rather than unlikely to survive - but if you look at figures for European population growth from the beginning of the industrial revolution - you'll see that fertility takes almost a century to tail off to replacement levels.

I 100% agree with you here.

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I've looked at this quite closely as it bears upon the assumptions made by the UNDP in predicting that population will level off at 9.5 billion around the middle of the century. This mid-level prediction not only depends upon this theory - but also on the assumption that fulfilling the MDG's will rationalize reduced family size. But the MDG's haven't nearly been met.

Nor will they any time soon. These estimates need to be constantly revised and the demographics need to be constantly studied. At the same time, we need to make good use of the resources and knowledge base we have now to move in the right direction, which is difficult when we're trying to implement sustained programs that cost a great deal of money.

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But even if the product of development were not so unevenly distributed, the Earth simply cannot withstand 5 billion people developing such standards of living over the course of the next century

I agree -- but to have everyone live equally is an unrealistic goal. To have at least basic human needs met, however, IS possible and WILL decrease the rate of population growth if health standards and contraception are part of it (but not actually decrease population size as you mention).

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No, the actual threats we face are quite specific - and the result of action in the course of religious, political and capitalist economic ideology... The only context in which this is rational, and seems possible is in the context of a scientific conception of reality.

Iconoclast, it amazes me that I can agree with so much of what you've said, and then get lost in this giant leap of yours to impuning global scale ideologies. You fail to show how it's ideology that's the problem. And you fail to show what the solution REALLY is. If by a scientific conception of reality you simply mean a system in which wealth and resources are distributed more uniformly, that's barely even scientific -- it's just common sense. But what that requires is a level of regulation that is probably impossible without war.

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My arguments are leading in the sense that i wish to demonstrate an epistemological argument - but they're not misleading and therefore not dishonest.

Fair enough. But why wouldn't you start with an open-ended argument first, rather than with your presumptions already in hand? Have you considered that we're as likely to cause massive harm with science? Have you considered that the ideologies are not what really matter but rather a provincial, self-serving, wealth-accumulating instinct in humans at the individual level?

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@Aedes,

Ah, Boagie, No, I have my reasons for stating that all notions of God are rooted in the Creator hypothesis. They are evolution, archeology and reason.
You say: But Gods do not always do the same thing, and notions of god are not always rooted in the belief that because we exist we must have been created by some greater power.
This is simple contradiction - a statement without evidential support. I do accept assertion as truth.
Further, it's clear from this statement: 'And we should always ask those questions of an impartial jury. Science and religion serve two different purposes. If religion demands something of science, the religion has gone too far.' that you don't understand the context of my argument.
The context is human conceptual development - ideas passed on from one generation to the next, built upon, changing, but not evolving as such for lack of a effective culling mechanism.
Rather, cultural mechanisms work to protect fond memes - memes that serve our emotional purposes, ie God, but also memes that serve political and economic ends - irrespective of thier truth value.
In this context, by distinguishing between believers and non-believers, religion divides humankind into groups - in denial of the fact that we're a single species. On the basis of this division, nations states came into existence - in denail of the fact that Earth is a single planetary environment.
These are huge claims about the natuyre of reality that are refuted by scientific understanding. I agree they go too far - but i don't think that was what you had in mind when making that statement.

Aedes,

Mine is essentially an epistemological argument that contrast science and ideology. In epistemology knowledge is defined as true belief - but this definition is insufficient when dealing with ideology. For example, if i were to say that 'Jesus was the Son of God' - 'France borders Germany,' or 'this computer is worth 100 pounds' - the truth value of these statements is based on convention. We might qualify these statements, for instance, 'In Christian religious tradition - Jesus was the Son of God' but if we qualifiy it one way we might qualify it another. 'In Muslim religious tradition - Jesus was the son of God' is not a true statement.
In contrast scientific truths are not conventional, but can be shown to be true or false with reference to an existing reality. If i say 'the earth orbits the sun' - 'the atmosphere is 21% oxygen' or 'e=mc2' - these are not opinion based truths subject to change.
I argue that basing our beahviours on the former - in denial of the latter is the root cause of the energy crisis, climate change, over-population and environmental degradation - threats of extinction that, at the very least we cannot address in these ideological terms, for the ability, and rational tendency of human groups thus defined, to take contrary opinions.
Science on the other hand is the same for you and me. An ideology based on science would allow to agree, cooperate, align our interests that we might address these issues. I know you think this is unlikely, but if we don't accept and act in relation to valid knowledge of reality then we'll become extinct. Because reality has definite characteristics, it's a deterministic equation. Devoid of polemic or rhetoric, stating my position rather than leading you to these conclusions - i hope the giant leap is shown to be, in fact a simple step, outside ideological conceptualisation, into the light of true belief.

1 Reply

@iconoclast,

Quote:

Ah, Boagie, No, I have my reasons for stating that all notions of God are rooted in the Creator hypothesis. They are evolution, archeology and reason.
You say: But Gods do not always do the same thing, and notions of god are not always rooted in the belief that because we exist we must have been created by some greater power.
This is simple contradiction - a statement without evidential support. I do accept assertion as truth.

You quote me, yet say boagie. Whatever.

In any case, there is no contradiction. You may disagree, but that's not a contradiction in my claims. As for lack of support, I assumed you were reasonably well educated about religion. I suppose I was wrong.

You want evidential support? I provided such, despite your claims. Again, do some research. Compare the God of Sufism to the gods of the Greek pantheon.

Quote:

Further, it's clear from this statement: 'And we should always ask those questions of an impartial jury. Science and religion serve two different purposes. If religion demands something of science, the religion has gone too far.' that you don't understand the context of my argument.

You tried to connect religion to mistaken notions of reality, and your justification was that religion tries to influence science. No mistake of context here.

But just for fun, I'll take note of your reaffirmation of context:

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In this context, by distinguishing between believers and non-believers, religion divides humankind into groups - in denial of the fact that we're a single species. On the basis of this division, nations states came into existence - in denail of the fact that Earth is a single planetary environment.

That some humans believe and some do not is a denial of the fact that we are a single species? Try again. Believers and non believers are not assumed to be two different species, they are of the same species, humans, they just happen to disagree. We can disagree over which team is better, Patriots or Packers, and somehow not deny the fact that we are both humans. Similarly, we can disagree about God and not deny that we are both humans.

The notion that states arise because we some believe and others do not is completely divorced from reality. Though I do agree that nation states are misguided institutions.

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These are huge claims about the natuyre of reality that are refuted by scientific understanding. I agree they go too far - but i don't think that was what you had in mind when making that statement.

Again, religion and science serve two different purposes. Any claim of religion that contradicts science has gone too far.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas, I apologize for calling you Boagie - you took up his argument. No offence intended - but as you say, whatever!

You say: That some humans believe and some do not is a denial of the fact that we are a single species? Try again.

I will 'try again' to help you to understand what i'm actually saying. It's the inclusive/exclusive dynamic of religious belief that divides humankind into distinct and isolated groups. Believers are included - non-believers, and believers in other religions are excluded. There's no real or factual basis for this division - it is false to reality, a baseless denial of the fact we're a single species.

Further, religious disagreement is fundamentally different in consequence from a disagreement about which football(?) team is better - Patriots or Packers. Religion not merely excludes, but morally condemns and even demonizes the excluded. Thus, while a patriots fan might marry and have children with a packers fan, religious division is translated into an evolutionary pseudo-reality, again, not premised upon any actual reality, fact, truth or sound reason.

Religious divisions are the basis of nation states - religious identity forming the basis of a distinct ethnicity, language and culture practiced within a disputed geographical area. The machinery of the nation state came into being to defend this identity and geographical area - originally, in Europe, after a century of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. And to this day, France is largely Catholic, and Germany is largely Protestant.

The claims made about the nature of reality are made by the way we live. They are tacit claims, rather than explicit cliams, but we would not behave this way if we honoured a valid understanding of reality. We would not be divided by falsity but united by a common relation to the actual nature of the reality we inhabit, common needs and wants, and a common interest in the continued existence of the species.

1 Reply

@iconoclast,

Quote:

I will 'try again' to help you to understand what i'm actually saying. It's the inclusive/exclusive dynamic of religious belief that divides humankind into distinct and isolated groups. Believers are included - non-believers, and believers in other religions are excluded. There's no real or factual basis for this division - it is false to reality, a baseless denial of the fact we're a single species.

So you are criticizing the divisiveness of religion. I applaud you for this; however, you are not alone. You do not have to look far to find prominent voices within the religious community calling for harmony between the various faith traditions. Universal love is essential to many faith traditions around the world. The fact that some people abuse religion and create division is no evidence against God, nor even against the usefulness of religion as we humans do this in all of our endeavors. The divisiveness is a result of greed and ignorance, not something essential to religion or belief in God.

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Further, religious disagreement is fundamentally different in consequence from a disagreement about which football(?) team is better - Patriots or Packers. Religion not merely excludes, but morally condemns and even demonizes the excluded. Thus, while a patriots fan might marry and have children with a packers fan, religious division is translated into an evolutionary pseudo-reality, again, not premised upon any actual reality, fact, truth or sound reason.

I agree that religious disagreement is sometimes more significant than disagreement about which sports team is better. Often religious disagreement leads to violence, then again, so do sports disagreements.

Religion does not necessarily exclude, demonize or morally condemn. This does happen, but is not an essential trait of religion. Humans hate one another for many reasons. Yes, this sometimes happens under the guise of religion as a result of greed or ignorance, but greed and ignorance corrupt everything, not only religion. Exclusion and hatred is not something essential to religion.

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Religious divisions are the basis of nation states - religious identity forming the basis of a distinct ethnicity, language and culture practiced within a disputed geographical area.

I do not think this statement is accurate. By your logic, culture would be the basis of nation states. Language, ethnicity, and religious identity are components of cultural identity.

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The machinery of the nation state came into being to defend this identity and geographical area - originally, in Europe, after a century of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. And to this day, France is largely Catholic, and Germany is largely Protestant.

Because in France, the Catholics won, and in Germany, the Protestants. The rebellion against Catholic dominion did not divide some single state into France and Germany, the civil war was fought over the future of already existing national identities.

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The claims made about the nature of reality are made by the way we live. They are tacit claims, rather than explicit cliams, but we would not behave this way if we honoured a valid understanding of reality. We would not be divided by falsity but united by a common relation to the actual nature of the reality we inhabit, common needs and wants, and a common interest in the continued existence of the species.

For the most part, I agree with you. But I do not think we need "valid" understanding so much as we need 'useful' understanding. Of course, I think useful understanding is valid, so enough of the semantics on my part.

As the interest being pursued is as you say unity "by a common relation to the actual nature of the reality we inhabit, common needs and wants, and a common interest in the continued existence of the species" we can agree that we should pursue an understanding of reality that achieves these ends. In this context, debates about God are trivial. What is preeminently important is an investigation of how we should interact with one another. So, it isn't a matter of what particular beliefs we have, the important issue is the way we should conduct our lives.

I think part of the sort of understanding we should pursue is the realization that people believe many different things, and that we should be tolerant and appreciative of those beliefs because only tolerance and good will will keep us on course for unity by our common needs and wants, and a common interest in the continued existence of the species.

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@Ruthless Logic,

iconoclast wrote:

nameless, Couldn't disagree more. I'm not a blind man sexually assaulting an elephant and pretending it's a coconut palm.

If you think that I was literally talking of a blind man sexually assaulting an elephant and pretending that it is a coconut palm (your words, not mine) then you are indeed 'blind'.
You are perspective and therefore incomplete/limited (to one extent or another). We are indeed blind men dangling from the elephant.

Ruthless Logic wrote:

There's an actual reality we are able to have valid knowledge of,

Really? I know that you cannot prove a 'one-size-fits-all' 'reality'. Not according to science. Not according to logic. It seems like simple naive realism. Refuted successfully centuries ago. Just because you have a perspective doesn't make it 'universal'. Sounds like a 'belief' to me. And I never argue with a 'belief', as 'beliefs' are not rational or logical, and are always symptomatic.

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and apply that knowledge to create technologies that function.

Because there is consensus, an overlapping of perspective doesn't prove that your perspective is anything other than unique. Because you see blue doesn't mean that my seeing the same object as green is 'wrong' or 'incorrect'. Consensus does not make it more real. And the closer all the 'consensus makers' examine the 'object' (which has its existence in your mind) the more 'unique' their view. The cops question ten witnesses and get ten different stories.

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I'm not trained in formal logic either - but, for reality to have definite characterisitics,

Perhaps you can define 'reality' for me, as you use it. And 'definite characteristics'.

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I agree that actual reality does exist based on our ability to test our empirical environment for axioms that continue to be unequivocally consistent,

Blah, nonsense. The whole empirical nonsense was made obsolete by the double slit experiment. Quantum put the nails in the coffin. The 'consciousness' of the individual experimenter affects, uniquely, the results of the experiment.

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

The whole empirical nonsense was made obsolete by the double slit experiment. Quantum put the nails in the coffin. The 'consciousness' of the individual experimenter affects, uniquely, the results of the experiment.

And the masterful writing by Kuhn put the nail in the coffin of empirical scientific epistemology.

That's not to dismiss the practical importance of empirical science, which is necessary at a certain level of resolution. Put 500 people on a drug and 500 on a placebo, blind the subjects and the experimenters, and then calculate the difference in mean between groups -- that's bread and butter empirical science and it helps you make practical decisions. But when we're talking about truth rather than pragmatism the limits of empirical science become enormous at the quantum level.

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

Blah, nonsense. The whole empirical nonsense was made obsolete by the double slit experiment. Quantum put the nails in the coffin. The 'consciousness' of the individual experimenter affects, uniquely, the results of the experiment.

Well to say that empiricism is obsolete because a human can't comprehend the behaviour of light is absurd.

How could we be having this conversation if the empiricism we use in daily life was "obsolete"; it is not obsolete in any way - I'm sure that biologists/psychologists would prove to you it is not obsolete.

Do you not see the hypocricy in what you've said? "empiricism is obsolete because the consciousness of the experimenter affects the result of the experiment" - you have studied the experiment and your consciousness has affected the outcome of the experiment (to your mind), so you say 'that type of experiment is false', which is false.

What is obsolete is assumption based on empiricism - we cannot assume truth. So in fact it is the truth that is obsolete and not empiricism.

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@Doobah47,

Doobah, read my reply just before yours. As I say empirical science is critical for making decisions and coming up with "truth" at a concensus level.

But it's abundantly clear that an observation, especially at the quantum level (to which all matter is reducible) is inherently biased by being observed -- and this means (as you seem to say) that empirical observation yields NO access to absolute truth.

Fortunately we don't actually need absolute truth for anything other than arguing with one another on philosophy forums.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Doobah, read my reply just before yours. As I say empirical science is critical for making decisions and coming up with "truth" at a concensus level.

But it's abundantly clear that an observation, especially at the quantum level (to which all matter is reducible) is inherently biased by being observed -- and this means (as you seem to say) that empirical observation yields NO access to absolute truth.

Fortunately we don't actually need absolute truth for anything other than arguing with one another on philosophy forums.

Aedes, Doobah, Smile

You fellows need to distinguish between apparent reality and altimate reality. Apparent reality is that which is directly relative to a subject, as such, it is proper that the experiment is effected by the subjects biology. If it is ultimate reality one is considering, it is not relative to the subject on that level, I would suggest, that pehaps it is not the subject that is effecting the matter but the measuring device used which is effecting the subjects biology, in effect altering the experimental matter. If the results are only presentable to the subject through a medium, it is then effecting, affecting the medium. Perhaps in future there will be a way found to observe said matter through many mediums, in which case a probablity factor could be worked out.

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

And the masterful writing by Kuhn put the nail in the coffin of empirical scientific epistemology.

There are many nails, some quite old...

Quote:

That's not to dismiss the practical importance of empirical science, which is necessary at a certain level of resolution. Put 500 people on a drug and 500 on a placebo, blind the subjects and the experimenters, and then calculate the difference in mean between groups -- that's bread and butter empirical science and it helps you make practical decisions. But when we're talking about truth rather than pragmatism the limits of empirical science become enormous at the quantum level

Thats pretty much the way that I see it. At the deeper levels (quantum's foundation) empiricism is shown to be an invalid 'tool' for discerning 'Reality'. So, at the 'pragmatic' level, it seems to have uses, but is not 'worshippable' but by 'fundamentalist believers'...

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

If you think that I was literally talking of a blind man sexually assaulting an elephant and pretending that it is a coconut palm (your words, not mine) then you are indeed 'blind'.
You are perspective and therefore incomplete/limited (to one extent or another). We are indeed blind men dangling from the elephant.

Really? I know that you cannot prove a 'one-size-fits-all' 'reality'. Not according to science. Not according to logic. It seems like simple naive realism. Refuted successfully centuries ago. Just because you have a perspective doesn't make it 'universal'. Sounds like a 'belief' to me. And I never argue with a 'belief', as 'beliefs' are not rational or logical, and are always symptomatic.

Because there is consensus, an overlapping of perspective doesn't prove that your perspective is anything other than unique. Because you see blue doesn't mean that my seeing the same object as green is 'wrong' or 'incorrect'. Consensus does not make it more real. And the closer all the 'consensus makers' examine the 'object' (which has its existence in your mind) the more 'unique' their view. The cops question ten witnesses and get ten different stories.

Perhaps you can define 'reality' for me, as you use it. And 'definite characteristics'.

Blah, nonsense. The whole empirical nonsense was made obsolete by the double slit experiment. Quantum put the nails in the coffin. The 'consciousness' of the individual experimenter affects, uniquely, the results of the experiment.

The inherent Potentiality of Dynamism suggests that exact repeatability on the Quantum Mechanics level is theoretically impossible. There is no contradiction to the Double Slit Experiment and the empirically predicable realm of macroscopic dimensions. If you have any understanding of Quantum Physics, then your "consciousness" claim, and your ability to explain how it would influence an outcome will become apparent with your furthering detail (prove you understand), but I suspect the only repeatability that is going to occur is your plagiaristic response.

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@Ruthless Logic,

Didymos Thomas,

It amazes me how blind religious people are to the role of religion in most of the worst episodes in a long history of man's inhumanity to man. Stand on the border between Israel and Palestine and tell me about universal love - or on the border between Northern and Southern Ireland, between the Catholics and Protestants and tell me it's just like football violence. Read up on the partition of India along religious lines after the withdrawal of the British and tell me religion isn't the foundation of nation states. Acknowledge the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers justified a systematic genocide of the Native American people on the basis that they were heathens who knew no Christian God. Read up on century after century of bloody conflict between human groups defined by religious ideology and then tell me 'some people abuse religion and create division.' Bull****. I am certainly not convinced, but furthermore, I don't think you can possibly believe what you're saying either. It's simply not acceptable to deny valid knowledge in favor of ideological convention, or even to hold ideological convention and scientific fact in the same secular, relativistic regard - because you cannot claim, in all seriousness and good conscience to believe these lies.
Tell me, are you really satisfied with your worldview - or are there not a thousand facts and questions you have to close your mind to in order to maintain such blatantly false beliefs? Does it not appeal to your reason - given that evolution can be shown to have occurred, that at some point in time primitive man sought to explain his existence by imagining a creator of the world and himself?
Does it not appeal to your reason - given that it can be shown that Ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome, the Myans, Incas and Aztecs and so on - all these past civilizations had their own concepts of God - that there's no more validity to your concept of God than there was to theirs?
Are you entirely unaware of the theory of evolution, or big bang theory? Do you think these are the just the opinions of primitive people - or are they the hard won discoveries of an intelligent species at last emerging into the light of true belief?
Do you not see that the scientific principles underlying technology enable the technology to function - and must therefore be valid? There are no divine spark plugs, prayer powered hot-air balloons or divine light bulbs are there? Why not? Because it's not valid knowledge. Religion does not describe reality.
You say: 'But I do not think we need "valid" understanding so much as we need 'useful' understanding.'
But didn't you already state that people disagree. Thus, what's useful for you isn't useful for me. Here's where science comes in. It's objective, the same for you as for me. Furthermore, it's valid of reality and can thus be practically applied to address real world problems.
I'm not people asking for unity, or for universal love - that's ridiculous and inhuman. People just aren't like that. But universally, people have a very intimate, if currently twisted relationship with truth. I'm saying we need to straighten out that relationship in order to survive and prosper. That's why arguments about God are important - because it bares upon our whole idea of the nature of the reality we inhabit, and upon our relationship to truth.
On the basis of a scientific understanding we've got one chance to get this right - or we continue as a species divided by these obvious lies, pursuing the political and economic interests of the group thus defined, are unable to address the energy crisis, climate change, overpopulation and environmental degradation, and consequently become extinct. Now it may just be that we all float off up to heaven - but I wouldn't bet the existence of the species on the unproven hypotheses of our distant ancestors. Alternatively it may be that humankind dies absolutely and forever. To borrow an argument called Pascal's Wager - what have we got to lose? In face of threats of extinction now looming like huge dark clouds on the horizon, we might as well accept scientific truth as a basis for common action as deny it in favor of our personal favorite ideas - that are clearly not working out too well for the planet or the vast majority of the people on it.

nameless,

I'm aware of the meaning of the analogy - and agree that all human knowledge is, in various ways and to various degrees inadequate to reality as a whole. That's why I use the term 'valid' a lot more than I use the term 'true.' I still use the term 'false' quite a lot - particularly in relation to religious ideas - but consider 'truths' variously valid statements, where some are more valid than others. Further, I agree that my perspective is incomplete - for instance, I know very little about soap operas, sport or pop music. I know quite a lot about science however, and have considered at length, and in great depth the philosophical nature of knowledge. On this basis I consider your analogy not merely flawed but ridiculous in the sense that it makes no distinction between one 'view of the elephant' and another. It's this absolute relativism that's a ridiculous epistemological approach - as if to say any one assertion is as valid as any other. That's why I asked you 'are all analogies equally flawed?'

I notice you trot out another tired old nag of a relativist argument where you say 'the cops question ten witnesses and get ten different stories.' Hardly laboratory conditions. Consider, the witness sees an event, possibly quite traumatic. Some time elapses. They then have to describe the event verbally to an authority figure, while the officer asks questions and writes it down. Even if it were the same officer who questioned all ten witnesses, rather than 'the cops' - there's a dozen reasons why, under such conditions, witness statements should vary. Even so, ten different stories? Or ten variations of the same story, with few, if any fundamental incompatibilities?
This is a very soft argument - poor proof of such massive claims about the nature of truth, perception, reality and so on. To use another animal analogy, the horse is dead - stop flogging it.

When I use the term 'reality' I refer to the universal environment I inhabit, whilst recognizing that I myself am made from the same stuff. This stuff is essentially time, space, matter and energy. The term definite characteristics refers to the physical, chemical and biological nature of reality - essentially, the way space, time, matter and energy are configured.

Quote: Blah, nonsense. The whole empirical nonsense was made obsolete by the double slit experiment. Quantum put the nails in the coffin. The 'consciousness' of the individual experimenter affects, uniquely, the results of the experiment.

As quantum mechanics and classical physics have not been reconciled one to another - to say that the failure of empiricism on the quantum level refutes empiricism on the classical level is simply false. Working on an atomic and sub-atomic level quantum phenomena are so far removed from the classical level that the failure of empiricism is quite possibly due to an inability to adequately observe. Furthermore, empiricism is more than adequately proven on the classical level.

As I say, it was me who stated 'there's an actual reality we are able to have valid knowledge of - and apply that knowledge to create technologies that function.'
For example, consider a heat difference engine. A heat difference engine is essentially a big tube, filled with liquid or gas, looped through environments of different temperatures. Due to the fact that liquids change into gasses and expand when heated, depending upon how the system is configured, mechanical energy can be generated, or heat dispersed, or collected. The thermodynamic expansion and contraction of liquids and gasses are known and constant quantities, mathematically predictable in relation to the difference in temperature. You've got one in your refrigerator - and there's a refrigerator in just about every household in the western world that works irrespective of whether the occupants are aware of these principles. Therefore, there are two things that require explanation - function and predictability. These are not just conceptual conventions but empirically established facts indicative of a reality with definite characteristics.

Aedes,

As I say above: As quantum mechanics and classical physics have not been reconciled one to another - to say that the failure of empiricism on the quantum level refutes empiricism on the classical level is simply false. If you've read Kuhn, I'm surprised you didn't note this incommensurability. Personally I don't buy Kuhn's thesis in SSR because it fails to acknowledge that science is directed toward the understanding of something that actually exists - as opposed to merely developing concepts. For example, Kuhn contrasts mass as understood in Newton's and Einstein's physics, mass being unrelated to velocity in the former, and variable relative to velocity in the latter. This might constitute a paradigm shift for a classically trained physicist such as Kuhn - but it's better explained as conceptual development, enabling fuller and better understanding of mass, than as an incommensurability ultimately falsifying the whole empirical endeavor.
Conceivably, if these were merely free-floating philosophical concepts it might be argued that invariable mass and mass that varies relative to velocity are paradigmatically distinct, but just because Newton failed to appreciate this quality of mass does not invalidate empiricism. If we follow Kuhn's argument to its logical conclusion here - science would have to present a complete understanding of reality in order to claim any statement were true.

I'd argue that it's yours, and presumably Kuhn's concept of truth that's at fault. I use the term 'valid knowledge' specifically to avoid using the term 'truth' - which for me has absolutist connotations that reflects poorly the real nature of human knowledge. Empiricism is a proven means of establishing valid knowledge - and continued observation, theorization and experimentation will improve the validity of that knowledge. Take Evolutionary Theory as an example. Darwin's ideas have been superceded in many ways. The accepted view is now quite grandly entitled the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. The synthesis is with genetics - the mode of transmission of information from one generation to the next entirely missing from Darwin's ideas.
Crick and Watson were eventually able to photograph DNA in 1952 thanks to advances in other sciences, presumably optical physics because they used an x-ray microscope - enabling observations that were previously not possible to be reconciled in terms of the theory.
Explanation in the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis begins with DNA replication and reproduction, and works toward the ontogenetic and phylogenic phenomena observed, and put into a systematic framework by Darwin - so it's a fairly substantial re-conceptualization, but it doesn't invalidate Darwin's theoretical explanation of the phenomena he observed, only develops his explanation by reconciling a far greater number of observations in these terms. Thus, I'd argue that there are continuities located both in reality, scientific method and understanding thus arrived at that refute incommensurability, even while I'd acknowledge that empiricism doesn't establish truth in the absolute sense. It establishes valid knowledge and improves upon the validity of that knowledge by the continued application of empirical method, and this has far more than a mere pragmatic value.

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@iconoclast,

Forgive me if I misunderstood the gist of your argument here, iconoclast, but I think you're inferring that religion and/or religious values have contributed, and still are contributing, to the eventual extinction of mankind. Cetainly I wouldn't argue. However, if your argument suggests that the only way to avoid that extinction is to remove said religious influence, I think you're basically condemning us, the human race, to an early grave. To be blunt, you debunk God, but without divine intervention, we'll never get rid of religion. As you pointed out, it's part of our evolution even, and in some ways mankind will never evolve beyond that point. Not as a whole anyway, and not even nearly enough to remove the influence of religion and religous beliefs from those who don't evolve.

So, is there a way to avoid that extinction that doesn't involve the race doing the impossible (or at least, the extremely unlikely)? Can we endure the damage that religion has done and still accept the liklihood that religion will, not only continue to exist, but will continue to influence the race in the same harmful manner that it always has? Is there a solution that is even remotely attainable?

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No such thing as God.

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