C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
I am less inclined to fear science than I am inclined to fear scientists.
Like any other tribe, they have some fierce warriors among them.
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Like any other tribe, they have some fierce warriors among them.
I
inocente
Guest
Are you including or excluding the Vatican Observatory and all the other Catholic scientists in that fearsome tribe?
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
I haven’t lately noticed the Vatican or Catholic scientists clamoring to produce human clones or nuclear weapons.
T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
Seems like that would only be a small minority of scientist. I would think that many of them concrete on domains that don’t involve either of these.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Well, that’s true. It was a small band of scientists that produced the first atomic bombs.
But that didn’t end the matter did it. Our nuclear weapons are more fierce and frightful than ever.
T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
If you encounter one of these people on the street I don’t think they will pose more of a threat than a non-scientist that you encounter. There’s no need to be afraid because the person is a scientist or even because that person had participated on the Manhattan (or similar ) project.
Are you sure? It’s been a while since any were reported as detonated. And some of the ones that Russia had were repressed to produce electricity for the USA. What indicators are there that the Luke’s have increased in ferocity (does that mean a higher yield explosion)?
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
I’m not worried about an individual scientists hurling a nuclear weapon at me. But this is what we should all worry about, thanks to nuclear scientists:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_warfare
I
inocente
Guest
Transferring the sins of the many onto a sacrificial few is called scapegoating.
Not sure any court would agree with you that a small group doing R&D should get the blame when they were working under the orders of the American government on a project paid for by American taxpayers, and it was an American president elected by the American people who ordered the American air force to drop the Bomb. And America still spends more on armaments each year than Russia, China and Europe combined. Not as I think any of that is necessarily immoral, but you would need to explain why you think blaming scientists for doing what their country asks is morally different from blaming the air force or the Marines for doing what their country asks.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Talk about scapegoating!
At least Oppenheimer did not blame others for his own sins.
“In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Manhattan Project
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Incidentally, here is the description of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto published in 1955. It was drafter by Bertrand Russell and signed by Einstein, Russell, and others, including Max Born and Linus Pauling, as an attempt to undo the arms race in nuclear weapons. Einstein signed the manifesto days before his death. This is the same Einstein who years earlier had urged FDR in several letters to build the bomb.
In physics, oh so bright … in moral philosophy, a slow learner?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto#Synopsis
In physics, oh so bright … in moral philosophy, a slow learner?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto#Synopsis
H
howirenic
Guest
I don’t blame Sagan for his stance on religion. He dedicated is life to promoting science and debunking anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific claims. Claims which sprang from the fundamentalism so rooted in America.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Not all religion is fundamentalist, and Sagan could comfortably ignore fundamentalism while respecting Christianity. I don’t see that he had the sense to do either.
H
howirenic
Guest
So do you think that Sagan showed disrespect for Christianity out of ignorance, or out of deliberate hostility?
Where would he possibly have interactions with these other forms of Christianity? He was not interested in religion, and so the only way he was exposed to it was when it crossed into his sphere of influence (i.e. science). There, he confronted fundamentalism, which was probably difficult to ignore given his own convictions.
Not saying he was perfect or blameless for his views, but I don’t think Sagan really stood a chance. He was swept up into an ideology (like most of us) and did the best he could to defend it against its detractors.
S
seagal
Guest
This sentence: “Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.”
Because while I agree with it, and I’m sure atheists will say they do, they don’t actually practise it. They hear logical and rational reasoning regarding belief in a First Cause (for example) but refuse to even consider it because it “doesn’t conform to their preconceptions”. But try to point this out to them…forget it! I guess that’s the cringe factor for me.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Yes, the ideology he was swept up into was scientism. Or what used to be called logical positivism.
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.” Carl Sagan
Science, good. Religion, stupid. That is the essential position of scientism.
M
modofac
Guest
Although it was not the best novel ever written, Contact contains a pretty insightful meditation on faith, proof, and human frailty. I enjoyed it, and it sounded like it came from a mind seriously wrestling with the issues. The fact that he never converted is sad, but I never sensed any dishonesty or duplicity in what he wrote, and I was a constant fan.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
That’s true. He never pretended to be anything other than what he was.
One never knows, he may have converted near the end, as so many of them do.
H
howirenic
Guest
I’ve heard much more hostile quotes from Sagan on religion. This one suggests that he was seeking and enjoyed the idea of faith, but could not reconcile it with his rationalism.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Here’s another one from Sagan.
“An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.”
So it was rational confidence he was seeking. Rational confidence is empty without faith.
Sagan was stymied and can best be called an agnostic since he lived in the halfway house between theism and atheism. But that too is a choice, and I see no reason to be confident about agnosticism either, since it will be the wrong choice if there is a God and he expects our faith without our ability to prove His existence in a way acceptable to the skeptic.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Not sure I agree with this. There are two ways to look at it in that there are two ways to be “religious.” One is to have a perfunctory knowledge of one’s religion but never really practice it in the sense of developing a true spirituality. The other is to do just the opposite. My guess (as good as yours) is that most of the atheists come from the first group rather than the second. It is easy to lose something you never really treasured.
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