Scientific American Gives Up

neo writes: People worship the state? Do you have any scientific facts to back up this statement? I have a lot of churches in my town that people attend weekly to worship God but I don't know of any buildings where people go to worship the state. Believing in the state is not the same thing as worshipping it since the state is a human construct. I no more worship the state than I do the house I build to live in. I believe they both have a purpose for existence that helps me in some way.


In a perfect world we probably wouldn't need either science or religion since in a perfect world we would be perfect and have all the answers.

Science and Religion are both attempts to find answers to all our questions. Until we have all the answers I think we will always have disagreements about how to find those answers. Science and religion agree on a lot more than one would think based on a lot of the arguments from the extreme. Science in its purest form attempts to find answers to the real world. Religion works best when it sticks to what it does best and tries to find answers in the spiritual world. We can't even get all religions to all agree. Science at least works toward consensus in that new facts eliminate out of date ideas. Religion has no such desire.

Sorry, I can't keep up with the frequency of posts. This has been an exhilarating experience. As Solomon once said, "Steel sharpens steel." I'll come back when I have more time. Meanwhile, if you've ever wondered why women live longer than men: http://web4.ehost-services.com/el2ton1/NYTimes/why_women.JPG

neo wrote:



It doesn't make you ignorant to believe in a creator. I respect religious beliefs. 30 years ago I had a priest tell me that evolution was God's way of creating life. I see nothing wrong with that opinion at all.

What makes one ignorant is to deny facts visible to all. God gave us brains. I would hope you agree with me in my belief that he did so expecting us to use them. When we try to figure out God's creation does it make us ignorant if the way it was done was NOT as described in the bible? Or does that make the people that wrote the bible ignorant?

Let me steal a little from Groucho Marx - "Who are you going to believe, the bible or your lying eyes?" The bible is mostly allegory told to create a moral truth. There is nothing to say it must be literally true other than those priests who as you say have hijacked it.

neo,

I forgot my manners. (some would say I don't have any manners in the first place to forget.)

Welcome to A2K.

I hope it leads to spirited discussions for you that continue to "sharpen your steel."

Parados, If you don't believe people worship the state, try publicly burning your country's flag.

Just a few more comments as I can see my contribution is more appropriate to the religion forum:

The bible was not written as a scientific treatise. It was written to give the most unsophisticated of us an explanation of why we suffer and die and what God intends to do about it. But don't discount it just because it is simple. "Occams razor was not meant for shaving", after all. So here are a few things the power hungry clergy have obfuscated about the bible. I'll stick to the first few pages.

Creationists believe the world was created in seven literal days. Not so if you consider the word day in it's broader sense (as in my grandfather's day). In fact, the length of the creative day is not specified. But here's a hint: The seventh day has not yet ended.

The priest will tell you that man has a soul that survives death. Not true. When God breathed life into Adam, he BECAME a living soul. Note, he did not RECEIVE a soul. The soul is mortal. When you're dead, you're dead.

PM me for chapter and verse so you can amaze your bible thumping friends.

Genesis is the book with the most egregious passages . . . the old Looney Abraham with a knife to his son's throat . . . Lot getting screwed by his daughters in the cave, and knowing nothing, because he was asleep (oh yeah, right, sell me a bridge in New York, 'k?) . . . Abraham and Sarah living for centuries . . . Sodom and Gemmorah being nuked because they were justifiably rude to an angel . . . I won't even go into the creation/Adam & Eve thing . . . talk about yer mother love . . .

There is no evidence for the written existence of "the bible" before the return from the Babylonian captivity. The earlier books of "the bible" clearly acknowledge that the Big Guy was just one of many. It is only long after, in textual terms, that the Hebrews start to mull over the idea of monotheism--and once again, there is no evidence for the existence of that text until long after Akhenaten had forced monotheism on the Egyptians (who ditched it before his corpse got cold). Keeping in mind that Hebrews were only one of many Semitic and Aryan tribes in the region, and at a time when the entire region was in political, military and religious flux, to rely soley and fatuously on biblical text for an understanding of what was going on is just silly. It is very likely that the Hebrew were a illiterate or semi-literate (a few literate priests, reading in someone else's language) tribe which scratched a meager living from the soil, and adorned a rather small and unprepossessing temple, and a definitely small-time and unprepossessing king, by means of a small-scale protection racket with Hiram of Lebanon, for the safety of trade caravans from the head of the Red Sea. The Babylonian captivity is not a far fetched idea in the least, as there are many other records of entire villages, even entire tribes, being press-ganged for large scale building projects. It is further very likely that the Hebrews as a people became literate and developed a sense of culture only after being transported into a land with Akkadians, Medes, Assyrians and many smaller peoples, whose enculturation was of ancient lineage. From Genesis onward, the bible borrows heavily both plot and idea from The Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as the religious traditions of the Chaldeans, the Akkadians, and the Medes and Persians. In particular, the unfolding development of the Hebrew god from one of many, to the greatest of the few, to sole deity exactly mirrors the much older oral and written tradition of the Aryan tribesmen from whom the Medes and Persians descended.

In short, it's a many-layered story, very eclectic, and thoroughly unreliable as to origin and intent.

As for William of Occam's razor--entia non sunt multiplicanda--it's injunction not to multiply causes strongly suggests to me that the formation of stars, and our star Sol in particular, and of planets, and of the Earth in particular, and the rise of life thereupon, are facts the evidentiary basis for which is not to be doubted. It is therefore, using Occam's dictum, entirely unnecessary to invent a god to be a "multiplied cause" in the matter . . .

Damn I love your posts...good stuff

I could deal with your objections one by one, but I've clearly brought this thread off topic. It is true, however, that the book of Genesis was not written until after the EGYPTIAN captivity, more than 2000 years after creation. Who told Moses what to write? Good question.

As far as the laws of simplicity are concerned, remember once again the intended audience of the bible. The fact that you are light years ahead in brains over Joe Sixpack doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve a message from God. It's the clergy who have multiplied that simple message. All I'm trying to do is clear away their charade.

Read my signature. We agree on more than you might think.

Ite. Missa est.

No, there is no physical evidence for written copies of what people are now pleased to call the bible that are much older than 2,000 years. That talmudic tradition ascribes an older origin to them is not evidence that this is so.

Indeed, the condensed Essene teachings ascribed to a Rabbi Yeshuah (and Palestine must have been littered with Joshuahs two thousand years ago, many of whom might or might not have claimed to have been teachers), call for people to realize that " . . . heaven is in your mind . . . " The overlaying of a priesthood on what was essentially a call to search within one's soul, without benefit of clergy, has proven to be yet another religiously inspired disaster.

Sorry, I didn't quite realize you were talking manuscripts. True, none of the original writings exist. Another leap of faith is required to believe that what has been transmitted is truly God's word. I can assure you my faith is not based on credulity. But I do believe that if God does exist, he would not allow us to be TOTALLY misled. If we were willing to dig, we should be able to find the truth. Even Joe Sixpack.

BTW. (and speaking of sixpacks) shall we pause for a cold one?

We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition
plus scientism--a Mongoloid metaphysic. I get by on fortune cookies.

And, I do like this forum.

Thanks, Boss . . . but i don't take strong drink . . .


Dys, there's nothin' worse than some bum who makes science his religion . . . in my experience, they aren't very clear about precisely what it is that they worship . . .

Me, my god is my belly, and being a benign deity, he wants everyone else to be full and contented as well . . .

Really good posts, guys.
Two points:
(1)The Bible (as well as the Quran and Torah) were written by scientifically naive people for equallly naive people. I do not think that such an effort today would look anything like it (them).

(2) A more shakey notion from the top of my head: it's my understanding that Occam's Razor refers more to a criterion for the critical comparison of highly abstract (nomological) principles. Such law-like statements are not to be confused with the empirical hypotheses about specific classes of phenomena. I may be wrong here, but the comparison of empirical hypotheses are not necessarily made in terms of the minimalistic criteria of "simplicity" or "elegance", because most phenomena are, in fact, over-determined (the product of multiple determinants). But general theories are best compared in terms of Occam's Razor.
We might note that sometimes hypotheses are deduced from general theories.

To which i reply that the general theory that there can't have been a universe without a deity suffers from the fault of causal multiplicity--and therefore, superfluity.

Setanta, you may be right, or, more likely, I may be wrong. But it does seem that the fundamentalist theistic Cosmology calls for a single Prime Mover as the ultimate cause of everything

Which gets back to my original post: The creator, if he exists, is not subject to the same rules of cause and effect as we are.

Now, since strong drink is out, how about we break for and

I don't dispute that, i'm just pointing out that in the grand scheme of things, the arena in which you have suggested William of Occam's dictum applies, this is an unnecessary multiplying of causes.

*bookmark*