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Comment by amrx431 | Hacker News Reader

The author is biased. There are no parallels between Science and religion. Science solely relies on power of experimentation, questioning and hypothesis validation whereas religion relies on eradication of questioning. Fun fact, if tomorrow Science discovers that god mentioned in one particular religion exists, scientists would accept that because of the underlying methods and tools of science used to prove the existence, but you know who wouldn't accept the existence of this discovered god? Religious people of other religions. Religion is nothing but falsehood.

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> Religion is nothing but falsehood.

That's an inaccurate conclusion.

Religions include all sorts of truth. Something being part of a religon is _not_ enough reason to label it as false.

Given that there are a wide variety of religions and belief systems, I'm surprised that you outright decry them as all false. I'd say it's quite likely that some religion approaches "truth".

I personally belong to a religion which encourages experimentation[0]. I also happen to belief it has a very coherent theology - I'd say similar to math.

I'd say the major thing that sets many religions apart from science is that results don't generalize - knowledge is personal.

So to sum up: religion is pretty analogus to anecdotes. Not widely generalized, and can often lead to wrong conclusions. But doeant definitely lead to wrong conclusions.

[0] https://www.lds.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?id=p26-p40...

I don't want to personally attack you for how you believe. I believe you ought have a right to come to your own personal conclusions.

That said the scripture you linked was started by a literal convicted con man who received revelation by looking at golden tablets that never existed in his hat and translating the truths found therein. He also famously found part of the religious text in Egyptian hieroglyphics that he "translated" into English that turns out not to match the actual text that we can now read. Because of the faiths relatively more recent vintage there is a mountain of non subjective evidence that the faith is literally built on a pile of lies by a bad person. I in particular find that your comparison to math completely baffling.

Just because I disagree emphatically with your beliefs and your founder this doesn't mean that you personally are a bad person but I believe your belief system is a huge net negative for the world and allowing you to spread it here unopposed would be net negative for the world. I don't want to shut you up but I really want other people to know the truth of what you are trying to push.

If you want a multi page analysis of everything wrong with the latter day saints we can go there.

I'd say my religion is a net benefit, by the type of people it teaches its members to be. I know I've seen great blessing in my life, and am a better person because because of what I've learned trying to live my religion.

I have various answers to the points you brought up. They probably aren't satisfactory to you. You probably have more points, and I won't have answers to some of them. And that's OK by me. And have mistakes been made? Most definitely. That doesn't take away from the truths I've learned (you might disagree, and that's understandable).

I compare it to math because there are principles taught in the church, and teachings about how the plan of salvation works, and certain principles. And you can approach them in various ways and they fit together nicely. Like being able to complete a mathematical proof in different ways. It's the consistency that drives the comparison. And although I do have unanswered questions, they gradually get answered over time (we're talking years here), and I'll probably go to my grave with unanswered questions. I'm OK with that.

-----------------------

To address your criticisms.

Which conviction are you talking about - is it the one where the "victim" testified that Joseph Smith (the founder) was innocent?[0] He was in the courts a lot of times (as you know), leading to his eventual death. That's the first court case that comes to mind when you say convicted felon.

I'm also not surprised that the text didn't match. You know about the portion of Isaiah quoted in 2 Nephi that doesn't match the Joseph Smith translation of same part of the Bible, right? I don't consider that a mark against him as a fraud, given the nature of his transactions (e.g. the process with the stones, of which there is copious documentation).

(Edited for clarity:) Your statement about the gold plates could be read that there was proof he never had the gold plates (tablets). For the record, he was consistent about his statement about their existence (sorry for the awkward phrasing - he didn't have them all the time, and I'm trying to not be ambiguous...). Interestingly enough, the people he showed them (the plates) to never recanted their testimony about said plates, even though they left the church.

You must know the standards the restored church encourages, so believing that it's a net negative signals to me that you might think it's because of moral issues the church takes a stance on, like pornography, drugs, sex outside of marriage, the divinity of gender and that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of god? I'm guessing? Otherwise, I'm not sure how you could call the church a net negative...

Edit: I do encourage perusing the church's official history stuff[1]. I say this not to convince you that I'm right, but because they've put up a lot of stuff in recent years; you might be pleasantly surprised at the number of contentious history items that had formerly been basically ignored or undocumented that are now up there.

[0] https://www.lds.org/study/history/topics/joseph-smiths-1826-...

[1] https://www.lds.org/study/church-history?lang=eng

If evolution is concerned by culture, which it is, there must be metric of ‘survival of the fittest religion’...

Religion has evolved, and servived, and not necessarily because it is weak. There is plenty room for bias here, and I am not a religious person myself, but I most fear the secular religious who speak like you, like an all-knowing, all-seeing eye.

There is no all-seeing-eye. Dimensipns of time, space, and perspective inherently limit any one person from understanding the ways of our world. It is that gapt that myth and religion fills. By way of evolved cultural formations, religion is an instinct among men. All societies will have a religion, whether they adhere to the traditions or not.

>I most fear the secular religious who speak like you, like an all-knowing, all-seeing eye.

I'm an atheist no idea where you got the above. The fact that religion survived says little about its fitness going forward.

As somebody else said, I have nothing against you personally but I believe that the narrative that you are pushing is false so I have to rebut it.

> Religions include all sorts of truth.

How so? By definition, there is only one truth. Either something can be demonstrated or it cannot. If it can't be demonstrated then it is false. There is no room for interpretation in truth.

But I will give you the benefit of the doubt:

If what you were trying to say was: there are some things in religion that cannot yet be explained by science, then you are using the god of the gaps theory. That argument has been debunked many times before.

If what you are trying to say is that there are some things that will always be unknown, therefore God did it, then you are using the argument from ignorance.

Finally, if what you are trying to say(but I doubt it as it would require you to admit that your religion is not entirely correct), is that even though religion and everything that comes with it, the morals, the miracles so on and so forth have been largely debunked, there are still some things that hold up even today(eg: a phenomenon was explained properly and its explanation is not far from the one we actually have today), then what you are doing is the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket, finding out that you guessed a single number correctly but instead of admitting that you were mostly wrong, proclaim that because you guessed that single number, then the rest of them must be correct as well.

That's deceitful.

> Given that there are a wide variety of religions and belief systems, I'm surprised that you outright decry them as all false

Well that's the problem, isn't it? There are many religions out there and not one of them can be deemed as the correct one. Not by scientist but most importantly, not by believers as well.

The result is a collection of different accounts about how the Earth was created, who should be worshiped or not(a cow or a virgin?), which prophet was correct(Jesus?) and when the end of the world will occur.

So if there are not correct then they are not true. Whether some of them have some semblance of truth in them(by luck most likely) does not make them true.

Not one of them has provided evidence that what they preach is true.

> I personally belong to a religion which encourages experimentation

I dont think so. If that was true we would not be having this conversation. To do some experimentation, you need to apply logic. Religion is based on faith. Faith requires you to suspend your own logic and accept the answers provided to you as the truth.

Therefore experimentation in the realm of religion is not possible as you would inevitably come to a point where logic would tell you that something is not true but your religion says it is or vice versa.

In this case, you would either give up on logic and accept your religion as the source of truth or you would start realizing that religion is not the source of truth, but a lie.

> I'd say similar to math.

Math is based on logic, Math does not require faith. Religion is not Math.

> religion is pretty analogus to anecdotes. Not widely generalized, and can often lead to wrong conclusions. But doeant definitely lead to wrong conclusions.

Either you did not proofread yourself or you really have abandoned logic and coherent thoughts completely. If a premise is false, then conclusions based on those same premises can only lead you to the wrong conclusion.

The fact that it could potentially lead you to something akin to truth is based purely on luck not because the premise was correct.

Anecdotes are not a reliable source of truths. Even though witness testimonies have been given a lot of weight in our current judicial system, it does not mean that it is a reliable way of sensing our world.

Our brain constantly applies all kinds of filters to the information that is communicated via our senses so that we can make sense of what is going on in the world.

That is also the reason why scientists do not rely on their eyes(in particular) to validates experiments but on empiric measurements.

I just want to conclude by saying that I have no problem and I even encourage you to practice your religion, but where I do not agree with you is that you present your view of the world through your religion as an alternative to the truth when it is nothing but.

> Either something can be demonstrated or it cannot. If it can't be demonstrated then it is false.

Here's my definition of truth: "Things as they really are, have been and will be.". That sits independent of observation.

> Religions include all sorts of truth

That was about things like mediation, fasting, etc. being real effective principals.

> > I'd say similar to math.

> Math is based on logic, Math does not require faith. Religion is not Math.

It depends on your religion I guess. The religion I practice describes a God with some constraints (if he broke those constraints, then he wouldn't be God). And from these contraints (axioms), various doctrines and results fall out logically. And they're coherent. And you can take the first principals and combine them in various ways to arrive at the same consistent conclusions. So that's why I say it's like math - the internal consistency, and the ability to logically derive more stuff without meeting contradictions.

> > religion is pretty analogus to anecdotes. Not widely generalized, and can often lead to wrong conclusions. But doeant definitely lead to wrong conclusions.

> Either you did not proofread yourself or you really have abandoned logic and coherent thoughts completely. If a premise is false, then conclusions based on those same premises can only lead you to the wrong conclusion.

I think this goes back to my interpretation of truth, so a small example to illustrate what I mean. A buddhist can practice meditation because of their religion. If Buddhism is wrong, that doesn't logically mean practicing meditation is silly, wrong or ineffective.

> > I personally belong to a religion which encourages experimentation

> I dont think so. If that was true we would not be having this conversation.

> Therefore experimentation in the realm of religion is not possible as you would inevitably come to a point where logic would tell you that something is not true but your religion says it is or vice versa.

You're using some bad logic here. You're starting with "All religion is false" as a the starting point to arrive at the conclusion of "your religion is false".

I'm here because I have applied logic. I have experimented with my religion, and my experimentation has brought me to where I am. I have found it to bless my life as and not contradict other sources of knowledge. I have found my religion to be a better, more reliable source of truth than "science" though.

Science gets us iteratively closer to truths, not doubt, but the result of a scientific experiment never gives us absolute truth. The scientific method is about disproving things. It ultimately moves us from one imperfect model to a better but still imperfect model.

> If a premise is false, then conclusions based on those same premises can only lead you to the wrong conclusion.

Wrong - that's actually a false premise, an innocuous one at that, but at least easily disprovable.

Proof by contradiction:

1) Suppose that x = -1 (i.e. true premise)

2) Then a false premise is x = 1 (i.e. contradicts the true premise)

3) From the false premise, conclude x^2 = 1

4) That's correct though, contradicting your statement of "false premises can only lead to wrong conclusions".

...

That's pretty much the entire point of my post - false premises don't always lead to false conclusions, and if you think false premises preclude any conclusions built upon them from being true through other logical means, then you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.

>Fun fact, if tomorrow Science discovers that god mentioned in one particular religion exists, scientists would accept that because of the underlying methods and tools of science used to prove the existence, but you know who wouldn't accept the existence of this discovered god? Religious people of other religions.

You are comparing the abstract ideal of science with the concrete adherents of religion. Every scientist has beliefs that aren't supported by or are contradicted by evidence, so I'm sure there would be many science followers, both atheist and religious who would refuse to believe in the deity discovered in your scenario.

You conveniently ignore things like yoga and meditation. (Your comment is, unintentionally, a prime example of the kind of attitude mentioned in the article.) Many forms of meditation are nothing but sustained observation and investigation of internal states of mind from a first-person perspective.

> Many forms of meditation are nothing but sustained observation and investigation of internal states of mind from a first-person perspective.

It is not that fact, that is usually argued. It is the claim, that this investigation actually gives any benefits over sleep/brainstorming/you name it.

There are tons of research that meditation is beneficial. An easy Google search will reveal that.

The problem is that religions have a reputation of tricking people into believing in stories, with a motive that might or might not be a good one.

Meditation, yoga are examples of the good one's. Sacrificing babies, worshipping cows are the bad one's.

Religions don't provide us with the tools to actually determine whether something is real or just a story.

The scientific method is to my knowledge the only feasible way to figure out the ground truth.

Religions do promote exploration of ideas, but they are mostly a waste of time and energy that might be better spent elsewhere.

>The scientific method is to my knowledge the only feasible way to figure out the ground truth.

The scientific method can't be used to figure out truth. It can't be used to prove anything. It is an extremely useful method for describing how the world likely works, and for building tools.

It tells us nothing about what the goals of society should be even though it can help us learn how to accomplish those goals.

Should we try to build a society that optimizes for per capita happiness today, or should our goal be to maximize total happiness by ensuring as many people can exist as is physically possible in the future.

This is the realm of philosophy and religion.

>Religions do promote exploration of ideas, but they are mostly a waste of time and energy that might be better spent elsewhere

Our modern concept of egalitarianism is mostly a product of religious thinking. I'd say that idea wasn't a waste of time.

> Should we try to build a society that optimizes for per capita happiness

Are you aware of the hedonic treadmill?

> Our modern concept of egalitarianism is mostly a product of religious thinking

You must be kidding. Religions promote the most brutal form of inequality ever. Study up on "dalits" in India.

And other religions promote the idea that all people are equal before god or the universe or whatever greater power they believe in.

Whilst some deeply anti-religious ideological systems promote highly anti-equality ideas like eugenics, racial supremacy, "social Darwinism".

For that reason, it's best you keep sneers like "you must be kidding" out of comments on this topic; it's a profoundly complex issue that requires nuance and care, not ridicule.

1) Not true, especially not in Hinduism or Shintoism.

2) Religious too, see above. What's karma? Who will be condemned to hell in Abrahamic religions?

3) Please educate yourself before trying to correct others and being plain wrong.

What claim of the OP's are you disagreeing with exactly?

That there exists some religions that promote the idea of equality?

> Please educate yourself

Sure. Over about 6 years I read multiple books and watched countless videos by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris etc, and was fully bought into their “all-religion-is-evil” worldview.

Then I kept educating myself further.

Is there something I’m missing that you can suggest?

As another commenter pointed out, you didn’t say anything to refute my argument.

But you’ve implied that nuanced arguments are less preferable than dogmatic ones, which is surprising for someone critiquing religion.

> The scientific method can't be used to figure out truth. It can't be used to prove anything. It is an extremely useful method for describing how the world likely works, and for building tools.

How the world works is the truth which science seeks to figure out. And scientific method is the best tool we have for that task. Certainly much better than religion, which starts with "the truth" and then walks backward to prove it.

However I get a feeling you use different meaning of the truth, than I do. If by it you mean some profound reason for our lives, then I agree that is not the truth that science seeks.

When i say prove, I don't mean colloquial definition of very likely true. I mean in the mathematical/logical sense.

Of course, and I'm not arguing with that.

I'm arguing with the notion that science can't be used to figure out the truth. Even if it can't reach the truth in the mathematical/logical sense, it is still the best tool we have to move in the direction of truth.

In which case it's a pointless diversion, as you are just saying "there is no absolute certainty on anything". Well, yeah, true, but also irrelevant, as science still is by far the most reliable method for obtaining a working model of the world, while religion is completely worthless for the purpose.

>as science still is by far the most reliable method for obtaining a working model of the world

Where did I say otherwise?

Science doesn't allow us to make value judgements. The closest ethical framework we have to allowing us to use science to make value judgements is utilitarianism. But it still relies on axiomatic assumptions about what is intrinsically good. The decision as to what axioms to choose is philosophy, not science.

> Where did I say otherwise?

You didn't explicitly say otherwise, but the way you put your objection doesn't make too much sense if you were just nit-picking the fact that proof and evidence are distinct concepts and that what was called "truth" would more precisely be called "rationally justified belief" or something.

> Science doesn't allow us to make value judgements.

Yeah, actually, it does, for all intents and purposes.

> The closest ethical framework we have to allowing us to use science to make value judgements is utilitarianism.

Well, somewhat depending on details, but sure, overall I think that's a defensible statement.

> But it still relies on axiomatic assumptions about what is intrinsically good.

No, it doesn't. All it requires is consensus about what people consider good. Luckily so, as "intrinsic good" is obviously an instance of "intrinsic value" and thus nonsense for the same reason.

> The decision as to what axioms to choose is philosophy, not science.

No, it's primarily science, because (a) those axioms are decided by consensus (just as in mathematics), and consensus is oviously a thing you can only study empirically, and (b) if the choice of axioms is supposed to make any sense, it is based on observations of consequences, which are also a matter of empiricism. Of course, philosophy also deals with the question, but philosophy without the empirical observations won't get anywhere on that question.

The choice of axioms is in an ethical system isn't "primarily science."

You just moved it down a layer. What choice of axioms would lead to desired outcome x? Once you've decided on desired outcome x, science can help, but now the philosophical question is: "How should we determine what the desired outcome should be?" Consensus? Why is consensus better than just going with what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC believes?

> You just moved it down a layer.

Nope.

> What choice of axioms would lead to desired outcome x?

Yes, that is the part about figuring out consequences.

> Once you've decided on desired outcome x, science can help, but now the philosophical question is: "How should we determine what the desired outcome should be?"

No, that's really a bad question. Or rather, it's first of all an ambiguous question. One can interpret that question as "What method should we use to determine the desired outcome, given a desired meta-outcome" or something of that sort, which is obviously just another question about consequences in disguise, and thus is obviously one that is accessible to empiricism. I'm guessing that's maybe not what you mean, but I just want to make sure we don't chase another equivocation. So, if we ignore that interpretation, what remains is a bad question, for two reasons:

1. It's similar to "intrinsic value", in that "should" without a goal it is directed towards is ill-defined, so you are essentially asking "What do you have to do to reach a goal, absent the goal?", which is a similar nonsensical structure to "What's the judgement of a valuer, absent the valuer?"

2. Even if we suppose that you had an answer that X is what you should do, regardless what your goal is, that answer would be useless. If you are talking to someone who already agrees with you that X is the thing they should do, it's pointless to say to them "you should do X!", because they are already doing X. And if you are talking to someone who does not agree with you, it's equally pointless, because simply stating "you should do X!" has zero potential to convince them of anything, even if that statement happens to be true somehow.

If you want to convince someone that they should do something, you have to show them how it helps them achieve their goals. Just saying that they should do something regardless what their goals are won't get you anywhere. If someone's goal is to kill as many people as possible, telling them "you should not kill other people, and that is the truth" won't have any effect whatsoever. You have to either show them a conflict with some other goal of theirs that they might consider more important, or you have to create that conflict (such as, if their goal is to live in freedom, by threatening to put them in prison while being credible that you can actually make that happen).

> Consensus? Why is consensus better than just going with what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC believes?

That question doesn't make sense. It's not a matter of whether consensus is better than something else, it's just that consensus is what is, whether it is good or not. Either you get some significant proportion/the majority/everyone to do adopt a certain view, or you don't. Going with what I believe is not an alternative to consensus, it's just one of the many options as to what could potentially become the consensus, and if there is no consensus that you should go with what I believe, it is of no consequence that what I believe is better than what the current consensus happens to be.

You might as well be asking why digestion is better than eating apples. It's just a confused question.

And just to make sure we are not equivocating: This is by definition not about the question whether we should adopt consensus based governance structures, say. Because that is a question about consequences, and thus a question that is accessible to scientific inquiry.

All these questions as to "what is the ultimate goal/value/intention/taste" are simply the wrong question, in that they make an unfalsifiable assumption that makes any answers to those questions useless, while at the same time leading you to ignore the interesting questions that actually have some solid answers, which also largely obviate the need to ask those pointless questions.

Questions such as "How did it happen that humans have a social structure that uses consensus between individuals as a survival strategy?", or "How did it happen that humans have a tendency to help other humans even when there is no immediate benefit to them?", or "How did it happen that humans generally prefer happiness to suffering?", but also "Is it actually true that helping other humans without an obvious immediate benefit indeed does not have any benefit to the person helping?".

Those and many other similar "how" questions have quite a body of knowledge to answer them, with loads of evidence to back up those answers, and some very interesting and often highly unintuitive insights, and understanding both the questions and the answers is way more intellectually satisfying than making up some "ultimate invisible valuer" in order to prop up nonsensical concepts like "intrinsic value" or "ultimate should".

I'm going to respond only in the other thread because I'm tired of following 2 threads.

Religions don't always have "doctrine" or "beliefs" -- so they don't always rely on failing to question them.

This was one of the earliest difficulties that students of comparative religion had to grapple with when the field was getting started -- around 1800 -- and they began to look into classical cults like the Eleusinian Mysteries in a serious manner. The substance of many religions is just ritual. There is a mythic story to back the ritual, for sure; but the elaboration of this story into a vast body of doctrine with an attempt at logic holding it together is rare in the history of religion.

Most religious behaviour is a little like the conceit of NORAD tracking Santa Clause. It's pursued in a serious way, and there is a serious ethic behind it -- the promise of just rewards will be kept -- but the function of it is more in the practice and sincerity of the people working together on the religious performance than it is in any particular ideas that they have. If you asked the people at NORAD, if they believed in Santa Clause, and if they were really tracking him, they would say no, but it would not change their behaviour one iota, because the show they are putting on is not about the "fact" of Santa Clause's existence.

Religion is, for the most part, a dramatisation of sincerely held community values. It is rare in history for religion to have the kind of gate keeping power over scientific matters, or even over ideas, that the Catholic Church famously exercised over Galileo, and it is rare for religion to care that much or to try to exercise that kind of power. In many parts of the world, religions coexist and share believers, without any drive to bring their ideas in line with one another. In historical China, the "Three Sages" -- Laozi, Buddha and Confucious -- were often worshipped together, although it was accepted that they were the founders of different religions. One can easily find similar examples of syncretism throughout East Asia today.

Religion is how people connect their lives to one another and to story. It is present whenever people gather in remembrance or humble themselves before some great symbol -- the Starship Enterprise, the great cube at Mecca, the old corn cob pipe of a famous movie star -- which embodies shared values or hope for the future. Religion is something fundamental to human behaviour, universal when you can recognise it -- and subtly powerful and controlling when you can not.

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