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[Leafsnail]

Bolt them on one at a time, checking for contradictions, and when you find contradictions, rework things.

This is not that novel of a concept.  It's like "Do you want the axiom of choice or not?  You get to decide!"

...That doesn't really answer my question.  What I was driving at was where in the near-infinite phase space of possible things do you even start?  You could start with, for instance, "There is a benevolent god watching over me who will reward me if I do good things", but why is that any more valid than "There is an evil god watching over me who will reward me if I do bad things"?  Is there any point in speculating in this way when a) there is inherently never going to be way to test the things you are speculating about (this is why the comparison to maths is not really valid - there is always going to be at least a possibility that you can test a mathematical conjecture at some point) and b) there is an equal chance that you are catastrophically wrong as that you are correct?

Really, I just don't see anything to gain in speculating about things that are almost infinitely unlikely, which cannot be tested and which can never affect my life.  In a way I find the belief in an active deity easier to understand.

I guess I'll also point everyone to the shockingly large number of religious mathematicians.  Does "God created the natural numbers--all else is the work of man" ring a bell for anyone?

...Is this relevant?  The fact that some mathematicians (as far as I can tell a lower proportion than in the general population, though) are religious is surely irrelevant to the merit of religious ideas.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You cannot trust your personal anecdotes as evidence.

Trusting everyone else's personal anecdotes, however, is perfectly alright. I mean, as long as they're peer reviewed.

No you can't. Scientific studies are peer reviewed. Other people's personal anecdotes are also not evidence, and are not peer reviewed or repeatedly tested under laboratory conditions.

[TheBronzePickle]

Meh. Religious debate. Neither side wins because pro-religion is adaptive enough to find away around anything anti-religion provides, or the more zealous or bigoted ones might just call "blasphemy" and irrelevate the whole argument. Anti-religion will never give up since science is founded in the search for truth, and so far our science has given no proof of the existence of a god or gods.

[Syreniac]

Meh. Religious debate. Neither side wins because pro-religion is adaptive enough to find away around anything anti-religion provides, or the more zealous or bigoted ones might just call "blasphemy" and irrelevate the whole argument. Anti-religion will never give up since science is founded in the search for truth, and so far our science has given no proof of the existence of a god or gods.

And both sides complain because the other side tries to force their viewpoints on each other.

[kaijyuu]

I'm not sure what you're confused about, leafsnail. You pretty much reiterated the theory. I'll answer your questions but you pretty much answered them yourself elsewhere in your post.

What I was driving at was where in the near-infinite phase space of possible things do you even start?

Wherever you want.

You could start with, for instance, "There is a benevolent god watching over me who will reward me if I do good things", but why is that any more valid than "There is an evil god watching over me who will reward me if I do bad things"?

It isn't.

Is there any point in speculating in this way when a) there is inherently never going to be way to test the things you are speculating about (this is why the comparison to maths is not really valid - there is always going to be at least a possibility that you can test a mathematical conjecture at some point) and b) there is an equal chance that you are catastrophically wrong as that you are correct?

It won't matter to anything empirical, which has already been established. However, it would matter to anything not; this includes concepts such as the afterlife. It also includes things like mental well being, if you believe there's more to the mind than the brain (such as a soul or whatever).

Really, I just don't see anything to gain in speculating about things that are almost infinitely unlikely, which cannot be tested and which can never affect my life.

This is ultimately why I'm agnostic, as I agree. I abstain from making any assumptions whatsoever, as if there is anything beyond the empirical, it's beyond my control.



The point being made in this thread (I think) is that any religious opinion relies on non-empirical theory, and thus science has no place when discussing them. They rely on two different schools of philosophical thought.

[jc6036]

So what has the debate changed to for now? I phased out of this thread a while back, but there seems to be some pretty good debate going on. I can't really just go back and read stuffs all too easily seeing as how I'm on a phone, so would somebody kindly tell me the gist of this debate? (I really think that it has moved away from the original topic, heh.)

[Bauglir]

Religion was spontaneously introduced to the thread and now we're surprisingly calmly discussing how reasonable the philosophical basis of religion is and whether it competes with science in principle, or just in a few specifics. Currently, "There's no reason not to believe this" versus "There's no reason to believe this", both of which are perfectly sensible as long as you don't start trying to undermine the other with your own choice. They're both adequate defenses for one's own beliefs, though, since each is an acceptable shift of the burden of proof away from the believer to the person attempting to change a belief.

[jc6036]

Ah, thank you. Though it does seem that a debate such as that has a fairly large tendency to go around in circles. Bay 12: Where a talk about premarital sex evolves into a debate over religion, yet manages to stay coherent and calm.

[TheBronzePickle]

Honestly, I didn't sense so much calm. Religion causes the closest thing to flamewars I've personally seen on this server. It stays collected and reasonable, but both sides are fairly adamant and are loath to back down.

[jc6036]

I meant relativitaly calm. As in compared to the rest of the internet.

[TheBronzePickle]

Yeah. Anywhere else on the internet, "STFU noob" is probably the least of the insults flung around a religion flamewar.

[Vector]

*shrug*

We're stuck with deciding what's a priori no matter what.  You can't sweep it under the rug by saying "experimental data."  Say you're schizophrenic... then what?

You choose to believe in your senses.  You choose to believe in a lot of things.  And to demean those choices, as though they were nothing, just because you think the evidence is very strong... now, that's foolish.

[Bauglir]

They're fairly important choices! I mean, rationally speaking, all I can say is that what I sense to be my actions modifies what I sense to be my environment. Now, I believe that I perceive a filtered image that reflects a reality that actually exists (to believe my senses infallible is obviously false, unless I allow contradictions to be considered valid, which I don't), but I can't prove that empirically (it's a prerequisite for empiricism) nor can I prove it rationally. It's a completely arbitrary decision, but it's one I find useful in determining how to manipulate what I perceive to my liking - but I could just as reasonably decide that I live in the Matrix, but that the simulation's rules are identical to those that describe the reality I actually do believe exists. It's unfalsifiable, so that science has no place here. The only objection is Occam's Razor, the acceptance of which is another arbitrary decision (one I, myself, find useful though).

Now, I don't feel spiritual, really. I look at a world composed of waves of something I don't even begin to understand entwining with one another and building into atoms into molecules into every diverse form those take, some of which grow together into neurons, which once again grow together into a mind that can conceptualize things, and all I can think is, "Holy crap, I'm that thing, and everything I recognize as a thing is just like me - a beautiful pattern, made of smaller patterns and making a greater." It's just amazing to think about how everything emerges from lesser levels of emergence, but now I'm just waxing crazy about my own beliefs that are kind of wholly irrelevant here since they don't deal in morality at all.

[SalmonGod]

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

Best quote.  It reminds me of the poem read at my wedding ceremony.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile —her look —her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Have I mentioned I've been in a committed relationship longer than anyone else I know under the age of 40-ish?... with someone who is my opposite in almost every way, even.  I firmly believe it's because we made a decided commitment, rather than declaring "This person is the one, because they have the qualities I'm looking for."  People blame high divorce rates on a lot of things, but I don't hear mention of that mistake as often as I should...

Not that our relationship is ideal.  In some ways we're even harmful to each other... but through each other we've also grown immensely as human beings, and of all the people we know with children, ours are the only ones who enjoy a stable home...

This thread has been pretty great.  Most mature, thoughtful, and diversified discussion of the topic I've ever seen.

For my part, I'll just say that I'm 28 and have only been intimate with one person in my entire life.  I have never even kissed anyone other than my spouse.  I recognize that this may work out great for some people, but I can not personally recommend it.  All the reasons have already been mentioned.  I'm not going to get into any more details, or I'll be tempted to tell embarrassing stories about myself that might get me in trouble.


On the religion vs science thing:

Science gives us information.  It doesn't give that information meaning or use.  That takes subjective interpretation and creativity.  That's where spirituality comes on.  I personally disfavor the term religion, because I equate that with worship of/subservience to a supposedly higher being... which I find to be an overly simplified and psychologically unhealthy approach to spirituality, but that's just my personal belief.

The thing is, everything can be interpreted in so many ways.  Let me just share some of my own musings.

I'm sure many are aware of the concept that a whole is great than the sum of its parts.  For instance, a car is just a bunch of materials shaped and put together in a certain way, but that's what makes it what it more than just those materials.  It has capabilities that a collection of those exact same materials in a random pile would not have.

The idea that we are just a collection of chemical reactions has been mentioned a lot in this thread.  We are the most powerful example of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts.  My question is why do we not apply this concept on a tier higher than ourselves.  Many of the chemical reactions we are made of are living beings unto themselves, after all.  We're full of cells and microscopic organisms that have their own cycles of life and death.  Imagine, just for thought experiment, that all of those cells that make up our body have a sense of individuality the same as we do.  They're just living their lives doing what cells do, aware of their own impending mortality as they go about interacting with other cells.  What could they think of us?  Would it be possible for them to be aware of their participation in a consciousness independent of their own?

So what about us?  Is it possible for us to be one component of another consciousness, that is too abstract for us to conceive?  What about multiples, even?  Think of all the systems in which you could be defined as one particle; all these groupings that have their own dynamics.  Your family/city/county/state/nation/planet.  How about the internet?  Could our activities here be comparable in some way to the synapses of a brain interacting to process information?  That's all we're doing, right?  Interacting with each other to compile and process information.  Our interactions are burned into this non-space like a memory, for other synapses to stumble across and consider as they process their own problems that are interconnected with the problems of every other synapse that differ only in slight shifts of context.  Does this have implications as to the possible nature of something like a higher being?

And what of this whole idea of various things being definable as separate from other things?  My favorite TED talk is on exactly this subject.  This neurochemist had a stroke where the entire logic side of her brain shut down, and she survived to tell of the experience of being suddenly unable to process language or distinguish her own body from its surroundings.  Her description of that was incredibly powerful to me... to imagine looking at my own arm, and then finding not an arm but a continuous field of stuff.  The whole universe is a swirling expanse of particle systems made of particle systems made of particle systems, without any indication that there is an upper or lower limit to the tiers of scale.  It seems to me that the way we perceive objects (including ourselves) as being separate from one another is completely an incidental feature of our perspective from a single tier of scale, and if this were altered somehow we may end up with completely different definitions of where things begin and end, including our own consciousness.

These are questions that I can't imagine science being able to answer, because they're a product of the subjective nature of our being.  I see these as spiritual questions, or religious if you prefer.

And then there's the issue of the origin of the universe.  I personally cannot conceive of infinite, but I also cannot conceive of an original cause or effect.  I think the answer is likely a notion abstract enough that empirical observation can never approach an answer, and it will always be the subject of conjecture between self-contained systems of definitions such as math, which I see as purely logical but also not exactly a science.

And yeah, you can say that this is all naval-gazing rubbish with no purpose, but that's also a subjective value assessment.  To me, it's of fundamental importance to understanding the nature of my own being and its part in the broader scope of existence.

Edit:  And as I was typing this, it looks like Bauglir started heading in roughly the same direction 

[TheBronzePickle]

From premarital sex to religious debate to philosophy.

This is the awesomest forum in the universe.