Science must destroy religion

[tonyrey]

Without having provided a valid reason.
Incorrect, I provided a valid reason back on post #65.

Ok, phew, glad we don’t live in an irrational universe then hey.Evasion.

You are arguing that science provides a rational basis for morality which is absurd because science is concerned with “is” not “ought”- and with “how” not"why".
Science is a process used for gaining understanding of how things are.

Which presupposes belief in the validity of reason and the intelligibility of the universe.

If morality is explained by science it ceases to be morality and becomes expediency.

Nope, if morality is explained by science then it remains morality. Just like when the human heart became understood by science it didn’t suddenly change into something else. It always was a pump, it is just that we came to understand that it is a pump and not the seat of the soul.The functioning of physical organs is not comparable to morality. Otherwise good health is the only criterion of what is right or wrong.

Then what is the rational basis of morality?

As I have already stated empathy is a good basis. The golden rule is a good statement of how you can turn that into a principle.Empathy is an inadequate basis because it does not explain or justify the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

You have implied that people don’t need morality because it is explained by science, therefore determined by physical causes and therefore beyond our control.

I have clearly stated that people DO need morality. For example when i said " Or you could just say “people need morality”.If science explains morality it is inexorable logic that people need only science because science is by its very nature restricted to physical events. Morality becomes a mere product of physical events and and therefore beyond our control.

Science is a human invention which is totally insignificant if no human beings exist to use it. It’s like saying a horse is useful when its master is dead!

Actually that’s a very good example and demonstrates my point well. It is true that once a horses master is dead that the horse is no longer of any use to its master. However, clearly the horse could be used by someone else just fine.There is nobody else in the scenario!

It has been clearly explained by Stanley Jaki that modern science would not even have developed without the Christian belief that both man and the universe have been created by God - and do not exist by chance. Otherwise there is no reason why man should be rational or the universe intelligible.

And I disagree with that point. Perhaps the history of science would have been different, but we cannot say whether it would have been better or worse. It’s dealing in pure guesswork. The principle of observe and test has been around longer than Christianity though, so I don’t think that christianity can take credit.
Limited observation and testing were not on a universal scale.

What is their rational basis for selection?

I don’t know, if you’d like to find out your best bet is probably to survey a statistically significant proportion of catholics.Evasion. It is illogical and unscientific to reject an explanation if you have none to offer.

Indeed. Sceptics, cynics, materialists, hedonists and criminals prefer not to…

Along with plenty of catholics, christians in general, nurses, doctors, charity workers etc.Another evasion.

How?

By providing a set of principles like empathy being good for society and that generally people are more successful by being less selfish etc. Then people could select the morals they think best from those principles instead of selecting the ones they think best from the same principles but provided on a religious basis.Successful in what?

You have provided no rational foundation whatsoever for morality. Empathy alone is hopelessly inadequate and can lead to monstrous injustice like any other emotion divorced from reason…

Ok, go ahead and demonstrate that empathy is inadequate and then we’ll see if we run into any problems that cannot be resolved without recourse to supernatural entities.Empathy is inadequate because it does not explain or justify the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

In an amoral universe there is no rational foundation for morality.

[/QUOTE]

 

[CopticChristian]

**Sure, scientific theories, experiements and results are generally shared around, through publishing in scientific journals etc. Especially at the cutting edge of science (less so in more established areas where people are really talking about application of science). So there is always other people information available to build upon to take a topic further forwards, and very rarely do we take steps backwards (ie lose a year’s worth of scientific research which has already been undertaken) because scientific record keeping is excellent (it’s kinda a key part of the process). So yes, science is a cumulative process, it tends to continuously build on the work of others who have gone before.

And by self correcting I mean that for example if you are trying to build some work on the back of some work that has previously been carried out. And you find that your results do not in fact come out as the theory predicts, you analyse your test and the theory and the assumptions upon which it is made. If you find no errors in the test and the theory you begin to challenge the assumptions, sooner or later you find out that one of the assumptions was incorrect because the scientific work it was based on was incorrect. So science has an inbuilt mechanism for checking and re-checking work, thus identification and correction of errors. Quantum theory actually grew from seeking out a just such a correction. **

It’s not exactly what you were expounding, no. It is however simply a matter of applying logic to what you expounded.

You argued that the people who are allocating resources (powerful people) change the way that they allocate those resources from the method they used which got them to be powerful people (in other words the successful method). In other words to be less competative at being in that position. Clearly this would make them less successful, thus due to the high level of competition that exists at the top, they would not be on the top for very long.

Really you might as well ask why the biggest market capitalisation company on the stock market doesn’t give away half it’s profits to charity. The reason obviously enough is that they would immediately cease to be the biggest market capitalisation company on the stock market.

Come now, the church is anything but discrete in doing charity work. Sure they don’t put adverts on the television, they rely on their extensive network of word of mouth and local communication centres. Go out on the street and ask 10 people if they would tend to connect religion and charity. If you find more than a couple who say “no” i’ll be very surprised.

Ok, but i never said it would. You were complaining about free market economy, I suggested you develop a better system.

Candide,

This is wonderful. What you are saying is what Alfred Korzybski said in “Science and Sanity”, the foundation of General Semantics is built on the notion that humans do what is called “Time Binding”…in other words information from the past is built on and brought forth…this is true for all thought as well. Excellent. I am with you…

 

[cranster]

It would not necessarily cease to exist, but its classification as a tool may no longer apply.

Its irrelevant. Without an observer to classify there is no classification. Whether its there or not if there is no one to use the tool it is effectively non existant.

 

[Candide_West]

You are preaching the same uninformed nonsense I’ve been reading on this forum for years.

Regarding the secular saint Galileo:

catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy

Right, so you know from your own source then Galileo was forbidden from holding or defending heliocentric theory because it contradicted the commonly held theological beliefs of people in the church at the time. Indeed he was eventually placed under house arrest for it.

So… your point is what? That I am correct in providing this as an example of the church inhibiting science?

And the killing of human embryos for scientific purposes? The fact is that everyone reading this began their lives as unique human embryos. Just ask an embryologist

Ok, but that is not under debate. This is scientific research which is inhibited on purely religious grounds. So this is indeed another example of religion inhibiting science.

Science is self-correcting? A common myth. I suggest you get a copy of Secret Science - Federal Control of American Science and Technology by Herbert N. Foerstel.

Thanks, I’ll add that to the vast pile of book recommendations I have already. Nonetheless, science IS self correcting. If you need it there’s a simple example of how this works in post #215.

We are seeing an increasing amount of human slavery, it just goes by different words today:

Increasing? Really? You think it’s more prevalent today than back in 500AD for example? When people were amongst the standard spoils of any war? Or when we were transporting ship after ship of slaves from africa across to plantations in the Americas?

I agree that there are many destitute people out there in the world who live in horrifying conditions. But nobody is arguing that it’s morally ok because they are sub-human. And hopefully in as we continue to advance and spread the benefits our development has afforded our species the benefits will reach everyone on the planet.

 

[tonyrey]

It’s not like the Virgin Birth is some sideshow detail that has no part in Christian belief or doctrine; the Resurrection is not some esoteric claim off to one side. These are the foundations of the faith, the things Christians proclaim, and must, for without them, there is no Christianity, no Gospel.

They are also ridiculous, which I mean in the literal sense: worthy of ridicule. The writers of the NT understood the nature of these claims, and hewed to them proudly, despite.

What is worthy of ridicule is the magical transmutation of irrational, purposeless atomic particles into rational, purposeful beings!

Similarly, the “moral monster” argument attaches to Christianity at the root. Examples from the OT like the genocide of the Midianites etc., horrifying as they are, can be just “thrown out”; the essential claims of Christianity posit a tyrant, anti-human God, who, if he existed (and good for us all that he does not, on all available evidence), would have to be defied, denounced, cursed and vilified by those committed to human interests. In short, if there’s an eternal hell that you believe in, created and administered by God, then you have a moral monster problem, something to be deeply ashamed of in your God.

You have something to be deeply ashamed of in your infantile worship of the blind Goddess - Chance - who is supposed to be the sole explanation of all that we value and cherish, reducing truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love to isomorphisms of atomic particles and thereby spreading propaganda that drives people to despair, suicide and even murder because they are persuaded that there is no reason why they exist and the finality of death makes their lives valueless and meaningless. Abandon hope all ye who fall into the clutches of the materialists. There is nothing more diabolical than wilfully depriving a person of faith, hope and love…

 

[Candide_West]

About life expectancy:

sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120621113421.htm

Moral standards continue to decline decade after decade. But they are beginning to turn around with God’s help.

Come on Ed, you surely can’t expect people to buy that one?

• 50 years ago it was a commonly held view that homosexuals should be punished (lynching, tarring and burning, etc).
• 100 years ago women were considered to be second class citizens and weren’t even allowed to vote.
• 200 years ago black people were considered sub-human and as such could be held as property.
• 400 years ago we happily extracted “confessions” under torture and burned “witches” at the stake
  …

Of course as each of those changes occurred many conservatives around at the time decried the outrage that each change represented. And similar people continue to make the same calls today. Still though, the value of human life and the moral stadards people live by has risen generation by generation for centuries and continues to do so. Sure, the public perception of moral behaviour has still got some way to improve yet, but the trend is rising and shows no sign of changing.

 

[wheels10]

Believing that would be childishly credulous. If I could ask you about your beliefs in any number of other similarly childish fantasies (like Mohammed’s midnight journey to meet God, or Lehi and Nephi’s conversion of the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon), and you’d be appropriately skeptical.

The more science develops, the more implausible and untenable these beliefs get. You can’t definitively disprove an account like a miracle that has water being instantly turned into wine, but you can avail yourself of the knowledge and experience from science that grows daily: this is not how the world works, ever, in the view of those methodically researching the world’s behavior.

This is cost of superstition. You get to have your credulity, and believe all manner of things that are fabulous and untenable with any reasonable level of critical skepticism, but if you own it, OWN IT, right? It’s not like the Virgin Birth is some sideshow detail that has no part in Christian belief or doctrine; the Resurrection is not some esoteric claim off to one side. These are the foundations of the faith, the things Christians proclaim, and must, for without them, there is no Christianity, no Gospel.

They are also ridiculous, which I mean in the literal sense: worthy of ridicule. The writers of the NT understood the nature of these claims, and hewed to them proudly, despite.

Similarly, the “moral monster” argument attaches to Christianity at the root. Examples from the OT like the genocide of the Midianites etc., horrifying as they are, can be just “thrown out”; the essential claims of Christianity posit a tyrant, anti-human God, who, if he existed (and good for us all that he does not, on all available evidence), would have to be defied, denounced, cursed and vilified by those committed to human interests. In short, if there’s an eternal hell that you believe in, created and administered by God, then you have a moral monster problem, something to be deeply ashamed of in your God.

-TS

God is anti-evil, not anti-human. Prior to Jesus, God revealed to the world how much He hates evil by the destruction of people that would persist in evil. Do you think it was wrong for God, Who created everything, to request the destruction of evil people? The punishment for sin is death, and this law still remains today, that is why each of us will leave this world through death. God never requested that a Good person be destroyed.

God sent Jesus and Mary into this world to show us through Their Lives what is True Love and how much God Loves us. God wants us to turn away from our evil life and become the person that He created us to be.

You still think God is evil? Name one this that Jesus or Mary did that was evil?

 

[wheels10]

Come on Ed, you surely can’t expect people to buy that one?

• 50 years ago it was a commonly held view that homosexuals should be punished (lynching, tarring and burning, etc).
• 100 years ago women were considered to be second class citizens and weren’t even allowed to vote.
• 200 years ago black people were considered sub-human and as such could be held as property.
• 400 years ago we happily extracted “confessions” under torture and burned “witches” at the stake
  …

Of course as each of those changes occurred many conservatives around at the time decried the outrage that each change represented. And similar people continue to make the same calls today. Still though, the value of human life and the moral stadards people live by has risen generation by generation for centuries and continues to do so. Sure, the public perception of moral behaviour has still got some way to improve yet, but the trend is rising and shows no sign of changing.

While I agree that things were bad in the past, I think there is one thing that is done and accepted in today’s society that trumps all of the things that you have listed: Abortion.

Torturing, mutilating and murdering a helpless, vulnerable, innocent child.

 

[wheels10]

Believing that would be childishly credulous. If I could ask you about your beliefs in any number of other similarly childish fantasies (like Mohammed’s midnight journey to meet God, or Lehi and Nephi’s conversion of the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon), and you’d be appropriately skeptical.

The more science develops, the more implausible and untenable these beliefs get. You can’t definitively disprove an account like a miracle that has water being instantly turned into wine, but you can avail yourself of the knowledge and experience from science that grows daily: this is not how the world works, ever, in the view of those methodically researching the world’s behavior.

This is cost of superstition. You get to have your credulity, and believe all manner of things that are fabulous and untenable with any reasonable level of critical skepticism, but if you own it, OWN IT, right? It’s not like the Virgin Birth is some sideshow detail that has no part in Christian belief or doctrine; the Resurrection is not some esoteric claim off to one side. These are the foundations of the faith, the things Christians proclaim, and must, for without them, there is no Christianity, no Gospel.

They are also ridiculous, which I mean in the literal sense: worthy of ridicule. The writers of the NT understood the nature of these claims, and hewed to them proudly, despite.

Similarly, the “moral monster” argument attaches to Christianity at the root. Examples from the OT like the genocide of the Midianites etc., horrifying as they are, can be just “thrown out”; the essential claims of Christianity posit a tyrant, anti-human God, who, if he existed (and good for us all that he does not, on all available evidence), would have to be defied, denounced, cursed and vilified by those committed to human interests. In short, if there’s an eternal hell that you believe in, created and administered by God, then you have a moral monster problem, something to be deeply ashamed of in your God.

-TS

[Corrected the text in bold]

God is anti-evil, not anti-human. Prior to Jesus, God revealed to the world how much He hates evil by the destruction of people that would persist in evil. Do you think it was wrong for God, Who created everything, to request the destruction of evil people? The punishment for sin is death, and this law still remains today, that is why each of us will leave this world through death. God never requested that a Good person be destroyed.

God sent Jesus and Mary into this world to show us through Their Lives what is True Love and how much God Loves us. God wants us to turn away from our evil life and become the person that He created us to be.

You still think God is evil? Name one thing that you think Jesus or Mary did that was evil?

 

[Candide_West]

I have refuted that invalid reason because observation presupposes belief in the validity of reason and the intelligibility of the universe.

And your attempted refutation fails because the intelligibility of the universe is NOT dependent on the continued existence of christianity. In other words the laws of the universe care not one whit about the religious preferences of humans and will not change if one of those religions ceases.

Evasion.

Not at all, you raised an irrellevant hypothetical about - if we lived in an irrational universe. We don’t, so we don’t need to worry about that.

Which presupposes belief in the validity of reason and the intelligibility of the universe.

It is not presupposed but observed, indeed you could argue that the intelligibility is the best supported scientific theory ever. Since every experiment ever undertaken supports it. It is now so well supported in fact that it is considered to no longer require testing.

The functioning of physical organs is not comparable to morality. Otherwise good health is the only criterion of what is right or wrong.

Non-sequitur again. Your claim was that coming to understand x (in this case morality) would change x into something else. Clearly this is rather silly and I used a demonstration of the study of an organ to demonstrate the point.

Empathy is an inadequate basis because it does not explain or justify the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

This is just a bald assertion, please demonstrate that this is so. Then we’ll see if we run into any problems that cannot be resolved without recourse to supernatural entities.

If science explains morality it is inexorable logic that people need only science because science is by its very nature restricted to physical events. Morality becomes a mere product of physical events and and therefore beyond our control.

I think you need to re-read what you wrote there and have another go at it, because as it stands the first sentence is a wild and very dubious assertion backed by a total non-sequitur. And the second sentence is repeating your previous assetion that understanding what x is will change what x is. Please try again.

There is nobody else in the scenario!

Incorrect, there are plenty of other people around.

Limited observation and testing were not on a universal scale.

Indeed, and they are still not on a universal scale. Well done on yet another non-sequitur. You do like these things don’t you.

Evasion. It is illogical and unscientific to reject an explanation if you have none to offer.

Nope, you asked me on what basis catholics select some of the official morals of the catholic church and reject others. I have stated that i don’t know and suggested a means for you to find out if you wish to do so. I have not rejected any explanation from you, indeed you have not even offered one. Perhaps you were accusing yourself of being illogical and unscientific?

Another evasion.

Nope, you identified some people who fall into a group, I identified some more people who also fall into that group. Did you forget what you were replying to again?

Successful in what?

Successful in general.

Empathy is inadequate because it does not explain or justify the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Ok, please go ahead and demonstrate this to be the case. I’m all ears. Then we’ll see if we run into any problems that cannot be resolved without recourse to supernatural entities.

In an amoral universe there is no rational foundation for morality.

Nope, because we aren’t an amoral species, we evolved as a social species so we have morality. Rocks on the other hand don’t have morals because they didn’t evolve as social species, neither do stars or galaxies for the same reason.

 

[Qoeleth]

The work was carried out by Maria Engström, a she, and her Ph.D was in Quantum Chemical Calculations of Electron Magnetic Resonance Parameters of Biological Radicals. Her post doc work has been in brain imaging and function.

Sarah x

Thank you for verifying that she unqualified to offer a serious opinion on a philosophical question.

 

[Candide_West]

While I agree that things were bad in the past, I think there is one thing that is done and accepted in today’s society that trumps all of the things that you have listed: Abortion.

Torturing, mutilating and murdering a helpless, vulnerable, innocent child.

Firstly, abortion is far from a modern invention, it’s been around for literally thousands of years, so it can hardly be identified as an indicator of a recent decline in morality.

Also it’s not possible for something which has no senses to be tortured, the foetus has no nervous system so cannot feel anything. Children however do have senses and can suffer, and only a few hundred years ago people generally thought that it was moral to cut a child’s hand off for stealing a loaf of bread (thus condemning the child not only to the agony of the punishment but the even worse suffering of starvation which often followed).

We often tend to reduce the percieved significance of suffering that happened in the past or happens far away. It loses it’s immediacy, but imagine for a moment that there was a place in your town where children, perhaps your own relatives, were caught, tortured and forced to suffer a slow, agonising death.

To me, whatever your views on the moral status of abortion, the deliberate torture and killing of a conscious, self aware person is worse than killing a group of cells with no nervous system which would (probably) if left alone grow to become a conscious, self aware person.

 

[Candide_West]

Candide,

This is wonderful. What you are saying is what Alfred Korzybski said in “Science and Sanity”, the foundation of General Semantics is built on the notion that humans do what is called “Time Binding”…in other words information from the past is built on and brought forth…this is true for all thought as well. Excellent. I am with you…

Thankyou, very kind of you to say so.

I think I’ll have a read around “Time Binding”, I’ve never heard the term before.

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone,

You are a regular member. Candide agrees with you. I can learn from you. Here is what I hear you saying.

You find it aggravating as to the cause of what makes men moral.

If by “what makes men moral”, you mean “the Christian God”, then yes. “Aggravating” is not the adjective I’d use, but close enough. If by “what makes men moral”, you mean “millions of years of biological adaptation”, then no, I have no problem with that.

You believe that there are anti-social and psychopathic individuals in any large group.

Right. Individuals vary. You are going to have some bad apples in every harvest of apples.

You believe that the cause is that these people just lack a basic understanding of themselves.

No, not at all. Some individuals, through some combination of genetic and environmental factors, are socially maladapted. Some are so severely dysfunctional they are threats to themselves and others around them. But having (or lacking) a basic understanding of their predicament is neither the cause of the problem, nor the solution to it, as I understand it.

You believe that people have empathy and a moral conscious wired into them by millions of years of adaption, the product of natural evolution.

Yes, this is well attested to by the evidence we have available to us.

You believe that Nature has developed a moral conscience that governs thoughts and behaviors at a basic level. You stat that if it were not so, humans would not have survived as a species to be here discussing it.

Yes. Empathy is not a “nice to have”. It’s integral to the species’ survival. Without it, we would not have the social cohesion and gregarious cooperative abilities we have that enable us to survive and thrive.

You find that this approach is preferable to bigoted superstitions.

Is this correct?

Well, preferable in that it’s grounded in the evidence, it’s a falsifiable idea, and it’s amenable to the furthering of new knowledge on top of it, yes.

It’s a somewhat bleak picture for the same reasons, if only because evolution is such a unthnkably slow process. We can adapt to many problems that confront us, and the development of language and culture make the prospects of progress brighter than if we were just social animals without those faculties. But even so, human nature is here to stay, for better and worse. It’s not going to change quickly. That’s great when thinking about the more sublime aspects of humanity’s evolved psychology: charity, altruism, creativity, affection, love, etc. The dark side of our nature will also endure, long into our future, as well, though.

But it is what it is. I do prefer to see as clearly as I can, better for or worse, where I can, over clinging to anodyne superstition.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

What is worthy of ridicule is the magical transmutation of irrational, purposeless atomic particles into rational, purposeful beings!

I feel like we’ve had this conversation before, but to review:

It’s not magic, Tony. The materialist belief is anti-magical. It’s mechanical, law-and-chance machinery. No cosmic mid, no supernatural powers, no sorcery, no intervention in the natural process and mechanisms. This view is literally as anti-magical as a view can be.

You have something to be deeply ashamed of in your infantile worship of the blind Goddess - Chance - who is supposed to be the sole explanation of all that we value and cherish, reducing truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love to isomorphisms of atomic particles and thereby spreading propaganda that drives people to despair, suicide and even murder because they are persuaded that there is no reason why they exist and the finality of death makes their lives valueless and meaningless. Abandon hope all ye who fall into the clutches of the materialists. There is nothing more diabolical than wilfully depriving a person of faith, hope and love…

Worship is a bug, not a feature. There is no one to worship, Tony. It’s just impersonal nature. None of this deprives, or even diminishes the human basis for aspiration: hope, love, beauty, art, humor, joy, and all the rest.

It’s just living a life with these ideals and values without childish superstitions blocking a view of the world around us as it really is, in all its wonderful, terrible glory.

In any case, the point I was making to cranster is that the whining about atheist “agression” is a manifestation of Christian conceit, a legacy of the cultural hegemony it has enjoyed for many centuries, where it’s moral framework went uncriticized, unexamined, untested. Once you’re get off the Christian bandwagon, the picture is disturbing to put it charitably when you look back at Christianity.

Christians have staked out a fabulous, and extreme, moral scaffold. They might be right, but even if so, it’s extreme, dystopian and, on humanist terms, deeply anti-human. The kind of stuff, in other words, that elicits strong condemnation from people who aren’t interested in being “aggressive”, but simply recoil from nightmarish constructs.

-TS

 

[CopticChristian]

If by “what makes men moral”, you mean “the Christian God”, then yes. “Aggravating” is not the adjective I’d use, but close enough. If by “what makes men moral”, you mean “millions of years of biological adaptation”, then no, I have no problem with that.

Right. Individuals vary. You are going to have some bad apples in every harvest of apples.

No, not at all. Some individuals, through some combination of genetic and environmental factors, are socially maladapted. Some are so severely dysfunctional they are threats to themselves and others around them. But having (or lacking) a basic understanding of their predicament is neither the cause of the problem, nor the solution to it, as I understand it.

Yes, this is well attested to by the evidence we have available to us.

Yes. Empathy is not a “nice to have”. It’s integral to the species’ survival. Without it, we would not have the social cohesion and gregarious cooperative abilities we have that enable us to survive and thrive.

Well, preferable in that it’s grounded in the evidence, it’s a falsifiable idea, and it’s amenable to the furthering of new knowledge on top of it, yes.

It’s a somewhat bleak picture for the same reasons, if only because evolution is such a unthnkably slow process. We can adapt to many problems that confront us, and the development of language and culture make the prospects of progress brighter than if we were just social animals without those faculties. But even so, human nature is here to stay, for better and worse. It’s not going to change quickly. That’s great when thinking about the more sublime aspects of humanity’s evolved psychology: charity, altruism, creativity, affection, love, etc. The dark side of our nature will also endure, long into our future, as well, though.

But it is what it is. I do prefer to see as clearly as I can, better for or worse, where I can, over clinging to anodyne superstition.

-TS

Touch,

You say that you would not use aggravating…I just summarized your thoughts seen here.

It’s aggravating to see the denialism of this dynamic come up here

So, help me understand you do you see it as aggravating or not aggravating?

 

[CopticChristian]

Thankyou, very kind of you to say so.

I think I’ll have a read around “Time Binding”, I’ve never heard the term before.

Candide,

What you stated is called “time binding”…a simple book about that is by Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity…

evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/korzybski_timebind01.htm

You actually formulated the principle by saying that information from the past is additive. This is true for all thought.

 

[Touchstone]

God is anti-evil, not anti-human. Prior to Jesus, God revealed to the world how much He hates evil by the destruction of people that would persist in evil. Do you think it was wrong for God, Who created everything, to request the destruction of evil people?

Absolutely. Never mind the equivocation on “evil” that is problematic here. Might doesn’t make right, and even “evil creatures”, if they are creatures – that is to say, creatures created by God and according to his design – are not deserving of the treatment you imagine God would have visited on his enemies, or the enemies of “his chosen people” (which is another problematic aspect of the Abrahamic God imagination).

The punishment for sin is death, and this law still remains today, that is why each of us will leave this world through death. God never requested that a Good person be destroyed.

Never mind the major problem of the total absence of this God you speak of: why should anyone pay heed to what YHWH says is “good”? He’s not human, if he “is”, at all. His interests are his own, not human interests. I fully understand the coercive aspects of power; humans must confront the “terrible tyrant” aspect of a being they imagine to be all powerful. If God can smite me with a snap of his non-existent fingers, I’d better obey out of fear and capitulation to coercive power. My desire to live is stronger than my urge to resist this tyrant, so I have to consider cowering in fear of this monster who makes demands of me, just because he can kill me, or do with me as he wishes.

But this isn’t a human sense of “god”. This is just totalitarian despotism.

Maybe I’ve missed something, though. Why do you accept God’s definition of “good”, apart from his (perceived) control over your life and your death?

God sent Jesus and Mary into this world to show us through Their Lives what is True Love and how much God Loves us.

If he loved us, and had our interests in mind, he wouldn’t behave the way he does. Not nearly. A small child, and having six kids I can tell you a small child can be a cruel being, is a more noble and loving god than YHWH. YHWH is grotesquely barbaric compared to humans, and humans ain’t all that great in many respects.

God wants us to turn away from our evil life and become the person that He created us to be.

He’s got a funny way of showing it. I’m struck by how Orwellian that kind of appeal is, how apropos that would be in talking about other despots, like Stalin, or “Dear Leader” Kim from North Korea. They too wanted their subjects to turn away from evil and embrace what they proclaimed as “the good”, and under pain of death and all manner of suffering.

Can’t you just feel the love. Turn or burn, man! Love ya, though. wink

You still think God is evil? Name one this that Jesus or Mary did that was evil?

Well, Jesus said the greatest command was to love YHWH with all your heart mind and strength. That’s positively nightmarish right there, as execrable a recommendation for the “highest priority” as I could think of. You know, if you think like that, it’s possible you and your “Joshua’s army” might feel entitled to go engage in mass genocide, right down to running infants through with the sword, and even killing all the cattle, just to make an “exclamation point” of fidelity to this cruel God.

It’s great that Jesus had the sense to embrace an idea that transcended his Judaism in the Golden Rule. But it’s a signal moral failure, a kind of “flagrant display of evil”, that he would place fealty to YHWH above this. Imagine examine a sycophant of Stalin, who proclaimed that the Most Important Thing of All™, no matter what, is to love, revere, and obey Josef Stalin. Would that be a credit to that man, in your view?

-TS

 

[DeepBlueSea]

Sure, scientific theories, experiements and results are generally shared around, through publishing in scientific journals etc. Especially at the cutting edge of science (less so in more established areas where people are really talking about application of science). So there is always other people information available to build upon to take a topic further forwards, and very rarely do we take steps backwards (ie lose a year’s worth of scientific research which has already been undertaken) because scientific record keeping is excellent (it’s kinda a key part of the process). So yes, science is a cumulative process, it tends to continuously build on the work of others who have gone before.

Thanks for the explanation and yes, pure science, is a reiterative process that becomes perfected as time goes on. But it is applied science (or engineering) that directly impact our way of life, from housing, transportation, communication, to food and medicines. For example, I know from pure science that people carrying BRCA mutation is susceptible to developing breast cancer. However, this information is irrelevant to me unless applied science comes up with a way to screen whether I carry this mutation and a therapeutic treatment is made available to me to manage this risk. However, all the know-hows in making pure science into forms that enhance our standard of living, all these know-hows are proprietary and is not in the public domain. Not anyone can capitalize on these proprietary knowledge without getting patent infringement lawsuit and pay a hefty. My point is, there is a tendency to romanticize science as if it is free-for-all panacea to our problems. It is not and, if not, it creates more new problems that it solves.

 

[atheistgirl]

Thank you for verifying that she unqualified to offer a serious opinion on a philosophical question.

She’s also not 12 nor does she write like a 12 year old.

Sarah x