The one you started with this throwaway swipe turned truly hellish. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No more of this please!
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32619634.
May I ask you though why you downvoted a bunch of my comments which I think had nothing to do with a flamewar, for example the ones in the discussion with origin_path? It must have been you because due to the age of the comments normal users are not able to downvote them anymore. I'm not saying I shouldn't be downvoted for the stuff that played into the flamewar but why the other stuff? My guess is that those also are not welcome on HN I'm just not 100% sure why or which rule these comments broke. Clarification on that would be welcome. I've duly reviewed the guidelines.
Anyways, thanks for the slap back to reality :)
There's sort of a fuzzy line between outright flamewar and generic ideological tangents (which religious topics certainly are covered by), both of which are against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I agree that not all those exchanges were equally flamey, but I just don't think generic religious argumentation is on topic here. If you want to argue that I was a bit too indiscriminate, I'd say you may have a point :)
On the other hand, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32619634 was on topic and a really nice historical contribution to the specific topic of the thread—the point at which the discussion went generic-religious (flamewar or not) was the point at which the quality of the discussion plummeted.
I hope this helps explain things a bit!
The Wikipedia link mentions that: “Astronomer Carl Sagan quoted it in discussing India's "tradition of skeptical questioning and unselfconscious humility before the great cosmic mysteries."”
The quoted text just says "We don't know. Hypothetical beings higher than us don't know because they came after the initial origin. A hypothetical creator might or might not know."
I agree with the first sentence but it doesn't give any insight really. The reasoning regarding Gods coming after creation so they wouldn't know doesn't check out. Maybe they are great scientists and found a way to get the answer? By implying even Gods don't know you get defeatism - how could we mere mortals know? Let's not try.
Why is religion held in such contempt when there is so much science that is just as much "babble", but held in high regard?
Background: degree in philosophy, focussing on philosophy of religion. I have read all the books. They are all fantasies, many very well written and fun to read, but no more fact-based than The Silmarillion.
>religion does not and should not, especially with its centuries-long history of malice and suppression towards free and scientific thought
That I was referring to. Show me where Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, and Bahaism are against scientific thought.
Being familiar with a smattering of religious texts you learned in University is hardly enough to make such large claims about every single religion in the entire world.
It's really weird to watch science and science-like ideas grow out of faith and religion, then the faith be blamed for 'persecuting' science after a certain philosophy took over in the late 19th century.
While there are certain events that can be filed under this category, more often than not its the other way around. That is, the ideas come outside the religion, run contradictory until proven unquestionably, and then the religious texts are found to be retroactively always been proving the science that was found later.
Also, a lot of the basis of science comes from members of the Church, occultists, or others living in deeply fundamentalist environments (Newton being a famous father of science who was deeply occult in his thinking; or Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the father of algebra and whose name is the basis of the word algorithm, being a court astronomer and the head of an Abbasid Caliph's library).
It's kind of like saying a person contributed to science because of their hair color while simultaneously conceding that people of all hair colors contribute to science.
The heirarchal ordering of some faiths, the commitment to truth, the belief in the veracity of the written word, the ability to support monastic orders are all functions of a society that believes. The belief that the individual speaks the truth and should be listened to, are the mechanisms that allow science to flourish.
Some scientists act as if you can have that without the faith. They focus only on the parts of history which support the contemporary scientist view that if we could just free ourselves from the whacky religionists we could get on with the /real/ science, which is nearly always an idea that reflects a minor variation on what has already come before.
If only the scientist knew the history ideas (including faith), could we have new things and not retreads of some millenia-dead philosopher.
If you really think science boils down to a "minor variation on what has come before," I'm curious to know what millenia-dead philosophers managed to launch a JWST equivalent.
I said the Scientist operates on a minor variation on old ideas, not all of science. Quite frequently even the top echelon scientists are pushing science forwards based on ideas that started well before them.
These conversations aren't really possible anymore, people aren't interested in the meaning of words or meaning at all. They just want to relate to whatever goofball idea their tribe agrees with.
>I'm curious to know what millenia-dead philosophers managed to launch a JWST equivalent.
Oh so you want me to summarize the history of ideas after all -.-
Science is not believing in the sense of religion. Science is about curiousity and exploring ideas that one thinks might be true. The next step is to try to experimentaly verify the idea or to for example mathematicaly prove it. It's not about believing something is true and then stopping there.
> Quite frequently even the top echelon scientists are pushing science forwards based on ideas that started well before them.
> These conversations aren't really possible anymore, people aren't interested in the meaning of words or meaning at all. They just want to relate to whatever goofball idea their tribe agrees with.
> Oh so you want me to summarize the history of ideas after all -.-
There is a reason you 'think this curious idea might be true' and the chain of ideas that got you to this point goes back a long way. And your thinking is usually influenced by unspoken ideas you take as prima facie true and acceptable, even though you never admit it.
These ideas come from faith and if you understand their starting point, you can understand their likely ending point and become a better scientist for it.
You don't see the connection because I haven't summarized centuries of ideas in three sentences of logical chains so you don't have to think about the history of ideas, and can just accept the answer prima facie like you do every other idea science runs on.
You don't know, what you don't know.
This really feels like pearls before swine. Have a nice day.
> You constantly talk in the terms of faithful ideas and yet reject they exist.
> You don't know, what you don't know.
> This really feels like pearls before swine. Have a nice day.
This is seriously not cool and we ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this again.
I've banned the other user that you got into the longest flamewar with, but this was definitely a multiperson tango.
Some of the other comments in this thread that contribute to the number you quoted were not contributing to a flamewar though so I don't think the number of comments is bad per se. It's just a topic I have interest in and commenting a lot can be also a sign of a lively discussion and not a flamewar - though a lot of it was! I've seen a preference on HN for 'post and drop' style which imho contributes to a more shallow discussion. Sometimes it might be hard to find the balance I guess. If one is passionate about a topic one can quickly get too engaged in it. Anyways, wont happen again. Cheers!
And honestly it isn't even very accurate there. The dark ages were called so not because Christianity persecuted science, it was called that because we have few records from that time. The few records we do have, are from the religious clergy.
The core tenets of science are pretty sound. Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff. They are not 100% bad of course. But we seriously can do much much better than that.
I think there is a reason why the concept of religions evolved. They might have been an important tool in early societies. But they are very very old tools and I don't think we need them anymore. They come with too many dangerous problems.
In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do.
> Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions.
Even if something is difficult, it does not mean that I instead resort to making up some stories and declare that's the right moral code.
> In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do.
Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example.
Still, consider a sample moral problem: revenge. Christianity (to take a familiar example) has a very evolved take on revenge. It teaches that you shouldn't avenge wrongdoing (eye for an eye), instead you should "turn the other cheek". If everyone did this it has obvious advantages for stopping conflicts escalating into long term violence, but it denies people a sense of justice. So Christianity also has a whole lot of evolved stories about how that's OK because sinners will be judged in heaven by God and maybe sent to Hell if they've been bad, so you can turn the other cheek yet rest assured that justice will be done ... in the afterlife. Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society.
If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick? How would you teach it to children? In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard!
"if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism."
Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population.
Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this:
1. Science is a good way to determine what is true.
2. But I am busy and don't have time to do science. Therefore I will delegate it to professional scientists.
3. I don't have time to figure out who is applying the scientific method on a person-by-person basis, so I'll delegate that to scientific institutions (universities, governments, corporations etc).
3. I don't have time to verify that these institutions are actually using the scientific method. Actually I'm not even sure what the scientific method is, beyond the very basics. So I'll assume that if people are being referred to as scientists by other people who are also being called scientists, and the places they work have money, then they are scientific institutions.
4. I don't have time to actually read what these institutions write down in their holy books/journals, because a lot of it is written in Latin, but I am sure that it is Science and that The Word of Science is Truth, so whatever these institutions claim must be true.
5. I don't have time to actually find out what these institutions claim, but there's this noisy town crier in the middle of our village who says that the institutions claim X, and nobody seems to be objecting, so I have Faith that this must be The Word and therefore Truth.
5. I don't understand why these oddball heretics keep popping up who lack Faith in The Word as transcribed by the priests at the Institutions, because why would anyone doubt what is obviously and clearly True? Yes, scientists are merely men and may sometimes be unclear about the universal underlying Truth, which may even be unknowable to us mere mortals, but nonetheless it is important for community cohesion to have Faith and therefore we should banish these heretics as far outside the village as possible.
In other words, although people like to think they're rational, being rational is time consuming and difficult so most people delegate it. But - and this is where it becomes scientism - they don't recognize that this is what they've done. They conflate belief in a hierarchical Church-like system with rationality, and end up believing anything that people working at these institutions say even if it's obviously pseudo-scientific. And, they treat doubt in the sciencey-ness of the priestly class as terrible heresy; such heretics deserve to get their printing presses smashed up (cancelled).
> All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all.
> Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example.
You can use science to debate if Nagasaki should have been nuked. That though would probably be a complex discussion but I can see a possibility that someone scientifically shows that there would have been better ways to solve the conflict.
> Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society.
> If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick?
> In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard!
> Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population.
> Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this:
We alreay agree that scientism (meaning religious corruption of science as you've shown) isn't good. Don't think we need to expand on that further.
"You can use science to debate if Nagasaki should have been nuked"
I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it.
"We have laws that prohibit harming others and they don't need religious justification."
Yes I thought you might go there. It doesn't work. Those laws are derived from religious codes originally. Also, the law is not a moral code, the law is supposed to implement moral codes. If you believe morality flows from law as the original source, you have to believe that lawmakers are inherently more morally capable than the people they rule. Moreover you cannot have such a thing as a tyrant because the moment they achieve power and change the law, whatever they do becomes axiomatically moral and therefore they are not a tyrant. Are you really going to argue that? No way are most people going to go anywhere near a claim like that, quite the opposite, it is often argued that lawmakers are less moral than regular people!
"Harming a member of society is against everyones interest because we are part of society and we optimize for a good quality of life of society as that optimizes our own"
This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle.
Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"?
That's what I mean by it being difficult. All the obvious answers just lead you in circles.
"Your claim that animals kill each other all the time: killing within their own group is rare. Take two random animals from the same species and put them together in a room and see if they will kill each other."
So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own? That's certainly a moral code that has existed in the past, but it's not one that is accepted today.
But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy!
"You serious claim that the majority just blindly believes in science but wouldn't admit it?"
After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age.
> I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need religions anymore, but not where you give concrete worked examples of moral questions and how to resolve them with science.
> This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle.
The same logical fallacy has been shown in this HN discussion about a dozen times.
A general rule can be true even if in a specific case it does not apply. Killing someone in the general case is bad but in specific cases it can be good. Take for example a suicide bomber running into a crowd. That killing is bad in general can be argued for with logic and without resulting to religion. It should be obvious that killing in general will harm your own chances of survival in general. I can deduce that with my own brain and don't need a prophet to tell me. You can ask me to go the full chain of logic back to first principles but you know full well that's a lot to do. Can we see the desire to not get killed as something given not by religion?
For example: if you show that science can not explain a certain thing then that does not mean science can not explain anything at all.
If B follows A then NOT B does not follow NOT A.
A triangle is a geometric shape. It does not follow that if something is not a triangle then it's not a geometric shape.
> I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it.
Your claim is that something ALWAYS applies (e.g. ONLY religion can bring morals). If I can show a single counter example then I invalidate your claim. If I claim that something is true ON AVERAGE and you show one counter example then that does NOT invalidate my claim.
If you say that ONLY a 6 sided dice can throw a 4 and I have an 8 sided dice and throw a 4 then you lose. If I say on average you will roll at least a 2 with your dice then rolling a 1 does not prove me wrong.
> Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"?
> So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own?
> But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy!
> After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age.
I'd like to clarify what I'm arguing here. I'm not arguing that only religion can provide a moral code. I don't think I've stated that anywhere. To try and clarify, what I'm claiming is:
- Science is not in and of itself a moral code. NB: science is not the same thing as rationality!
- Creating a moral code as comprehensive and useful as those that religions provide, based on nothing more than logic applied to a handful of axioms (first principles), is really hard. Maybe not impossible! But it's definitely harder than it looks, and this can easily lead to bizarre and destructive conclusions, or arguments that sound logical on the surface but which actually contain fallacies.
You are arguing (I think) that the codes provided by religions are totally irrational and should be discarded. I'm not actually religious but find myself in the Nietzschian camp, thinking that is risky and has to be refined a bit. If you accept the axioms (e.g. that the word of God/Jesus is axiomatically moral, that the Bible records the word of God/Jesus), then the reasoning from that point on is pretty straightforward. And in particular it's fairly complete because the Bible covers how to treat a lot of common situations. We know this moral code sorta mostly works, because it's been around a long time and we have a lot of experience with it. We also know what happened to communist societies that deliberately erased religion and replaced it with Marxist morality - hundreds of millions of deaths, which is why a common American insult to the Soviets in the 20th century was to call them "godless". This is what Nietzsche predicted in "The Will To Power".
"It should be obvious that killing in general will harm your own chances of survival in general ... This is simple evolution. If we don't optimize for life in our society then we have a clear disadvantage compared to other societies that do so."
OK, now we're getting somewhere. This is a Darwinian argument: that which leads to successful reproduction is moral.
The problem is that this justification fails in the case where one side is overwhelmingly strong. If my side knows about guns and has them, and all you have is spears, then realistically I can kill as many of you as I want without any real risk. Moreover I can then move in and take all your land and women, so at that point it's an evolutionary fit strategy to do so. Yet this shouldn't be considered morally OK merely because the risk of dying in return is very low. Indeed, it's critical to have a moral code that doesn't involve relative risks here to stop exactly that genocidal situation from occurring.
"Put random animals from different species into a room and most of them will also not kill each other. That does not mean some of them will not kill the other"
Correct but I've never claimed 100% consistent or even majority behaviour; it'd be irrelevant to my argument to do so. My point is that if you build a Darwinian moral code then there's nothing really wrong with me fighting and killing you. After all, animals do it sometimes. Sure not all the time, and I wouldn't go around killing people all the time anyway for the risk related reasons you previously highlighted. But so what? If evolution is all there is to it then how could anyone tell me not to kill you for moral reasons? The fact that most of the time, animals don't do it? Not convincing.
> I'd like to clarify what I'm arguing here. I'm not arguing that only religion can provide a moral code.
> - Science is not in and of itself a moral code. NB: science is not the same thing as rationality!
> - Creating a moral code as comprehensive and useful as those that religions provide, based on nothing more than logic applied to a handful of axioms (first principles), is really hard. Maybe not impossible! But it's definitely harder than it looks, and this can easily lead to bizarre and destructive conclusions, or arguments that sound logical on the surface but which actually contain fallacies.
> You are arguing (I think) that the codes provided by religions are totally irrational and should be discarded
> If you accept the axioms (e.g. that the word of God/Jesus is axiomatically moral, that the Bible records the word of God/Jesus), then the reasoning from that point on is pretty straightforward.
> And in particular it's fairly complete because the Bible covers how to treat a lot of common situations. We know this moral code sorta mostly works, because it's been around a long time and we have a lot of experience with it.
> We also know what happened to communist societies that deliberately erased religion and replaced it with Marxist morality - hundreds of millions of deaths,
> The problem is that this justification fails in the case where one side is overwhelmingly strong. If my side knows about guns and has them, and all you have is spears, then realistically I can kill as many of you as I want without any real risk. Moreover I can then move in and take all your land and women, so at that point it's an evolutionary fit strategy to do so. Yet this shouldn't be considered morally OK merely because the risk of dying in return is very low. Indeed, it's critical to have a moral code that doesn't involve relative risks here to stop exactly that genocidal situation from occurring.
> Correct but I've never claimed 100% consistent or even majority behaviour; it'd be irrelevant to my argument to do so. My point is that if you build a Darwinian moral code then there's nothing really wrong with me fighting and killing you. After all, animals do it sometimes. Sure not all the time, and I wouldn't go around killing people all the time anyway for the risk related reasons you previously highlighted. But so what? If evolution is all there is to it then how could anyone tell me not to kill you for moral reasons? The fact that most of the time, animals don't do it? Not convincing.
Animals don't have the same cognitive capabilities that we have. Nonetheless nature has baked into them traits that are common and result in a lot of behavior that one could reasonably argue that they must have some kind of moral code as well. Human morals are more sophisticated but there are similarities. Now, we are surely not the be-all end-all of evolution which means our cognitive capabilities are also limited. Maybe in a million years our ancestors will look back and pity us for our limited understanding and poor morals :)
At this point I'd like to thank you for a much more intellectually interesting conversation. I was a bit exhausted after the one with al_mandi.
I'm not religious and I also don't accept the axioms that the Bible is the word of God, that anything God says is true, etc. We share the goal / ideal of a moral code that is based on simpler, tighter axioms and sound reasoning. Some years ago I thought it would be easy to develop such a code. Nowadays I fear that it's very difficult, perhaps too difficult right now, and we are perhaps to evolved religion what Da Vinci was when he tried to build a mechanical bird i.e. far further away from being able to match the evolved system than he realized, and for many reasons he couldn't have understood.
"I don't think the soviet era was following the core spirit of science though. It had a lot more in common with religious doctrine."
I think this was one of the core criticisms of communism, made both by philosophers in the 19th century and more everyday folk in the 20th. Marx liked to claim that his ideas were scientific, but actually nothing about Marxism is scientific. His critics contended that to be religious, to want to believe in or even to worship something, is a core part of human nature, and that if you simply abolish evolved religions then new pseudo-religions would immediately emerge (but they'd be worse).
We can see that this happened repeatedly in all communist countries: the population was quickly "converted" to new religions which involved worshipping and deifying both the abstract concepts of man, progress and communist ideology, along with also the less abstract leaders. Hence all the "cults of personality" i.e. religions that viewed Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc as quasi-prophets of the coming utopia.
If this claim of a deep need for religion/belief is true, and as I get older I see more and more evidence that maybe it is, then trying to create a moral code based purely on logic derived from a set of sound core axioms might be naive or backfire - sort of like trying to convert the world to speaking Esperanto would. But of course it's very difficult to disentangle cause and effect. Perhaps the apparent "need" for religion is in reality mostly a need for a comprehensive moral code, and as communism didn't provide one, it instead turned into a stunted and disfigured substitute for one.
One obvious way in which an artificial moral code might be lacking is in the story telling aspects. Religions have the advantage (?) that they're easy to teach to children because children ask "why" a lot but can't understand complicated answers. If you had to explain every rule via reference to a long chain of cause/effect logic, it might be difficult to impart the urgency of morality to children and this could lead to problems later. But arguably we have this issue already.
"If we killed every living being that might be a threat to us no matter how remote then that would actually harm ourselves because it destroys large parts of a working ecosystem and would create all kinds of unforseeable, possibly fatal problems"
Yes, so the code we're patching together here is a kind of mix of Darwinian evolution combined with a kind of Gaia style planet/social ecology philosophy. It can work for some things. A concern that arises is that this would appear to be ultimately a form of New Age collectivism - everyone is linked to everyone else. In such a code, do individual rights have any meaning or is everything subservient to the greater whole and if so, how does that not lead in a great circle back to communism?
I find the COVID vaccine mandates to be a good test case for some of these issues. Putting aside for a moment the widely accepted yet pseudo-scientific justification for them (without stopping transmission there is no possible argument in favor), this is ultimately a question of individual rights and risks vs collective outcomes. A "for the betterment of the species" moral code requires some ability to make collective vs individual moral tradeoffs, but in practice such decisions must always be mediated by the state. As we've seen, modern states seem unable to maintain even the most basic levels of rationality about some topics.
> I'm not religious and I also don't accept the axioms that the Bible is the word of God, that anything God says is true, etc. We share the goal / ideal of a moral code that is based on simpler, tighter axioms and sound reasoning. Some years ago I thought it would be easy to develop such a code. Nowadays I fear that it's very difficult, perhaps too difficult right now, and we are perhaps to evolved religion what Da Vinci was when he tried to build a mechanical bird i.e. far further away from being able to match the evolved system than he realized, and for many reasons he couldn't have understood.
> I think this was one of the core criticisms of communism, made both by philosophers in the 19th century and more everyday folk in the 20th. Marx liked to claim that his ideas were scientific, but actually nothing about Marxism is scientific. His critics contended that to be religious, to want to believe in or even to worship something, is a core part of human nature, and that if you simply abolish evolved religions then new pseudo-religions would immediately emerge (but they'd be worse).
> We can see that this happened repeatedly in all communist countries: the population was quickly "converted" to new religions which involved worshipping and deifying both the abstract concepts of man, progress and communist ideology, along with also the less abstract leaders. Hence all the "cults of personality" i.e. religions that viewed Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc as quasi-prophets of the coming utopia.
> If this claim of a deep need for religion/belief is true, and as I get older I see more and more evidence that maybe it is, then trying to create a moral code based purely on logic derived from a set of sound core axioms might be naive or backfire - sort of like trying to convert the world to speaking Esperanto would. But of course it's very difficult to disentangle cause and effect. Perhaps the apparent "need" for religion is in reality mostly a need for a comprehensive moral code, and as communism didn't provide one, it instead turned into a stunted and disfigured substitute for one.
Religions are undergoing also an evolutionary process in my opinion. They often base themselves upon the previous one and alter it trying to improve it.
> One obvious way in which an artificial moral code might be lacking is in the story telling aspects. Religions have the advantage (?) that they're easy to teach to children because children ask "why" a lot but can't understand complicated answers. If you had to explain every rule via reference to a long chain of cause/effect logic, it might be difficult to impart the urgency of morality to children and this could lead to problems later. But arguably we have this issue already.
> Yes, so the code we're patching together here is a kind of mix of Darwinian evolution combined with a kind of Gaia style planet/social ecology philosophy. It can work for some things. A concern that arises is that this would appear to be ultimately a form of New Age collectivism - everyone is linked to everyone else. In such a code, do individual rights have any meaning or is everything subservient to the greater whole and if so, how does that not lead in a great circle back to communism?
Many times a right or freedom for some part of society is a removal of a right or freedom of another part. It always boils down to a balancing act. And yes, a justice system is required to mediate that. Though we should not assume that it will be perfect, as long as it is based on humans which are imperfect it will be imperfect as well but it should be possible to build a really good one. We have a few that I would describe as "not too bad" but there is a lot of room for improvement.
You mean lower surely?
Did you survey all religions to make such claim? And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. There's a lot of "I think" and assumptions in your post that are not backed up by evidence, and some even contrary to reality.
This is a good starting point to expand your horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3cNUixEBM
> Did you survey all religions to make such claim?
> And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on.
I have started to watch the video you linked to, I have not finished it yet but the beginning was pretty good and the presenter seems well spoken. But by about minute 10 I already noticed a lot of logical fallacies. He is (rightfully maybe) accusing certain famous people in history of wrong logical arguments but then he quickly makes the same plus a lot of ad hominems thrown in for good measure. For example the claim that the "four horsemen" of science think that replacing mosques and synagogues into starbucks would make society all peaceful is frankly just ridicolous. Then he immediately follows it up by claiming if there is no religion then there is no morality. This is completely baseless. I am not a religious person but I do have morals. I'm not running around trying to torture people just because I don't believe in a supernatural being. I'm going to watch it in full because listening to the other side of an argument is the best but I have to say this talk is going south very fast IMHO :(
Towards the end he shows a lack of understanding of statistics. He claims if any infinitesmally small change to the laws of nature would have caused an uninhabitable universe then it must have been specifically designed the way it is. He brings several examples that actually are all the exact same argument.
The mistake here is that he assumes that there was only one random try at creating this universe and that we cannot have been sooo extremely lucky. There is no reason to believe that there was only one try. What if there were a large number of tries? If all the other tries resulted in uninhabitable universes then of course us being in the lucky version must make us think this was not random chance.
Example: ask a large number of people to flip a coin ten times. Eventually you will reach someone that actually flipped ten times heads in succession. What would that guy think? Clearly that's not a normal coin and you designed the whole thing to be like that because what are the odds of him flipping ten times heads? He does not know about the other thousand people you had play this game that didn't get ten times heads.
Exactly what he mentions in his talk, on what are you basing this belief? It's a metaphysical claim that is outside the realm of science. You just proved his point.
He assumes there was only one "flip of the coin". There is zero reason to assume this and so his whole argument falls because when his assumption does not apply then mathematics tells us there is absolutely nothing special about finding ourselves in that "unlikely" universe because actually when taking a step back it isn't unlikely, it is pretty much guaranteed - completely without anyone designing it that way.
I was referring to what you wrote. You said that there's no reason that there weren't multiple tries to get the universe just right to support life. I'm saying that's a metaphysical claim you just made, which is outside the realm of science, which is the point the presenter was making.
What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume and certainly no proof for ANY number of tries so we can't deduce what he claims. But if you follow his reasoning then he actually would need to come to the opposite conclusion that he came to.
I am not making the metaphysical claim, he is making it. I am only showing that his own logic works against him. Anyone who claims god exists is in the realm of metaphysical.
Who made the tries?
I posted that lecture as an intro to broaden people's perspectives. It is then a proof by induction to reach the correct religion that explains our world. Some signs are summarized on www.provingislam.com. There are lots of great scholars who have presented many proofs on the matter.
> And so is any other argument to attempt to explain what was before the universe. Those are outside the realms of science.
> And furthermore, just because something is not falsifiable does not make it untrue.
> I posted that lecture as an intro to broaden people's perspectives.
> It is then a proof by induction to reach the correct religion that explains our world. Some signs are summarized on www.provingislam.com. There are lots of great scholars who have presented many proofs on the matter.
Please don't refer to more outside sources that supposedly contain proof but bring one solid proof here yourself. So far everything has been debunked.
So we continue to live our life as animals?
As I mentioned elsewhere, in Islam, we have logic, observational evidence, and the honest news to get to truth. Disregarding any one of them is nonsensical.
> Neither does it make it true. The point is if there can't be proof then it's pointless to think too much about it.
Honest news is a source of truth.
> You said there were proofs in the video
There were several arguments made, e.g. fine tuning argument and the fact that something cannot come out of nothing. Those are established, and denying them is basically denying logic.
>> That any theory that cannot be proven should not be paid much attention to
> So we continue to live our life as animals?
> As I mentioned elsewhere, in Islam, we have logic, observational evidence, and the honest news to get to truth. Disregarding any one of them is nonsensical.
> Honest news is a source of truth.
> There were several arguments made, e.g. fine tuning argument and the fact that something cannot come out of nothing. Those are established, and denying them is basically denying logic.
I specifically refuted his fine tuning argument. I did so using basic logic and understanding of statistics. Can you tell me where exactly I was wrong? Quick recap: he assumes (unjustified) that there was only one try at making the universe and so the chance to get our universe would be excedingly low. There is no reason to make such an assumption and if you remove that assumption then the most likely scenario is actually that you arrive at our universe because with enough tries you will hit the jackpot a hundred times in a row, guaranteed. From our limited point of view that would look like a rigged system, something designed to be that way. This might be unintuitive at first to many people but is a simple mathematical fact.
That is just one of the possible explanation without resulting to intelligent design. Stephen Hawking's top-down cosmology is another. There are a few more.
Look up the Islamic Isnad system.
Furthermore, if that's how you're going to view the world, then you can't accept any news about history. Obviously that is not wise or rational.
> I did so using basic logic and understanding of statistics. Can you tell me where exactly I was wrong?
By assuming there were many "tries" before the current universe came into existence. Who was behind those tries? When was the first try? Those are all metaphysical claims.
> Look up the Islamic Isnad system.
> Furthermore, if that's how you're going to view the world, then you can't accept any news about history. Obviously that is not wise or rational.
> By assuming there were many "tries" before the current universe came into existence. Who was behind those tries? When was the first try? Those are all metaphysical claims.
Now if I give you my own opinion then I would say there is zero reason to make such assumptions and therefor we cannot deduce anything about how many tries there have been, when the first try was, if there even exists time outside our universe or what other rules apply or don't apply. It's all thought experiments. Thinking that the idea of god was there and just willed the universe into existance is a thought experiment just as valid as me claiming a pink machine prints universes. I cannot prove that and you can't disprove it. It's a stalemate. I admit that fact while you are 100% sure of your point of view. And since you are so keen on relying on history: history tells us people that had your point of view eventually were proven wrong.
Like you said, all those things including your claims are metaphysical theories. They are not facts.
No it's not. Even non Muslims admitted that we Muslims have the right to be proud of it. There's nothing else anywhere like it, secular or non secular texts.
> Historians are usually honest
Our Muslim historians even more so.
> And if some historical text talks about miracles, something which cannot be explained with rational thought and to the best of our current knowledge
Or that God bent the laws of our reality to make a point. Not everything is explainable by logic, especially when we see such events take place thousands of years later in our lifetimes today.
> So if he can do it then I can with equal right assume there were many tries, no?
No, because his claim is that there is a creator, whereas you're just making a claim that has no basis in your secular materialistic world view.
> Now if I give you my own opinion then I would say there is zero reason to make such assumptions
We exist, so there had to be a starting point. We have evidence that people came and claimed to be sent from God, and we proved their claims based on many things (their character, miracles, etc). The Quran to this day stands as a living miracle, and its challenge is up for anyone to take (many centuries after everyone tried and failed).
These things remind me of how new atheists are flimsy with their arguments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7n-gff-0c
That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things.
> I am not a religious person but I do have morals.
He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture.
> That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things.
What does belief in the unseen with evidence mean?
> He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture.
The example with the kid asking why the mother is boiling water and apparently science not being able to explain the "why" ("because I love you") or the reason of why the universe exists: he then turns around and just claims religion can give you the correct answer which clearly it can't because there are different religions that would give you possibly different answers and they can't all be right at the same time.
He claims science cannot "prove" emotions or other workings of our brain. Well I think we're getting closer and closer to understand how the brain works. We already know that emotions are in part controlled by substances like hormones. We don't know 100% of it but we're working on it.
He further goes on to claim that science cannot provide morality. He again gives no evidence of this. Why can't we derive morals from logical scientific arguments?
Another claim is that science could not explain why someone would go and help a drowning kid. Once more no evidence. How about us being evolutionary programmed to keep our offspring alive to increase chance of the survival of our species? Just earlier to that he claimed animals have no morals. But that is the exact same behaviour that animals are showing...
I can't also follow the argument about science needing to find all possible combinations of DNA mutations that show the transition from apes to humans. Why does it need to show every minute step? How does that show religion is correct instead?
The constant flood of strawmans is impressive at least. I'm at minute 30 and not sure if I will comment more on it, it is very tedious because there is just such an enormous amount of illogical argumentation.
His point is that experimental science is not in the domain of answering "why" in that sense. It's a metaphysical problem outside the realm of science. The question of finding which religion is true is a separate issue. You don't want to fall in the genetic fallacy when making such an argument.
> Well I think we're getting closer and closer to understand how the brain works.
No one is saying we shouldn't work on it. But this sounds like the "science of the gaps" argument that atheists make fun of theists for using when the former claim "God of the gaps" fallacy.
> Why can't we derive morals from logical scientific arguments?
Show me how. He talks about how different cultures agree that certain things are acceptable and others aren't. And he gave the example of harming or sacrificing children. If we agreed tomorrow that such practice is ok, in a secular society there is nothing prohibiting such action.
In Islam, we have something called the Fitrah, a natural disposition to certain things, such as acting "good" (we need a benchmark for that obviously, but in a Judeo-Christian Western world, it's quite obvious), or the innate belief in a Creator. This falls under that, and animals also have instincts.
I think you're missing the forest for the trees. He states the argument at the beginning, and then gives examples. You don't have to agree with each and every example, but the point stands.
Experimental science cannot answer things beyond what it is designed to do.
> His point is that experimental science is not in the domain of answering "why" in that sense. It's a metaphysical problem outside the realm of science. The question of finding which religion is true is a separate issue. You don't want to fall in the genetic fallacy when making such an argument.
> No one is saying we shouldn't work on it. But this sounds like the "science of the gaps" argument that atheists make fun of theists for using when the former claim "God of the gaps" fallacy.
> Show me how. He talks about how different cultures agree that certain things are acceptable and others aren't. And he gave the example of harming or sacrificing children.
If different cultures agree on certain acceptable behaviors then that hints at other reasons than religion because different societies have different religions. Which one is the right one?
> If we agreed tomorrow that such practice is ok, in a secular society there is nothing prohibiting such action.
> In Islam, we have something called the Fitrah, a natural disposition to certain things, such as acting "good" (we need a benchmark for that obviously, but in a Judeo-Christian Western world, it's quite obvious), or the innate belief in a Creator. This falls under that, and animals also have instincts.
> I think you're missing the forest for the trees. He states the argument at the beginning, and then gives examples. You don't have to agree with each and every example, but the point stands.
> Experimental science cannot answer things beyond what it is designed to do.
I would btw like to ask you: would you agree that some parts of Islam might be wrong or do you believe it is 100% correct?
> Once more: that science cannot explain something is NOT evidence for any other random unprovable explanation like the existance of a god.
Which is why in Islam we have three sources of truth: observations, logic, and the honest news. We have established that Muhammad, Prayers of God be upon him, existed, and the Quran is preserved, and the authentic Hadiths are preserved. He performed miracles, and foretold events, some of which only came true in the past couple of decades (more at www.provingislam.com). As such, we trust what he brought forth to us.
> I would btw like to ask you: would you agree that some parts of Islam might be wrong or do you believe it is 100% correct?
I believe Islam is 100% correct. If I don't, then by definition I am not a Muslim. We don't get to pick and choose what we like and don't like. Of course, you're going to have to mention exactly what you mean by "some parts of Islam", that's quite a vague term.
> I think we keep talking past each other.
> Which is why in Islam we have three sources of truth: observations, logic, and the honest news. We have established that Muhammad, Prayers of God be upon him, existed, and the Quran is preserved, and the authentic Hadiths are preserved. He performed miracles, and foretold events, some of which only came true in the past couple of decades (more at www.provingislam.com). As such, we trust what he brought forth to us.
> I believe Islam is 100% correct. If I don't, then by definition I am not a Muslim. We don't get to pick and choose what we like and don't like. Of course, you're going to have to mention exactly what you mean by "some parts of Islam", that's quite a vague term.
"Some parts of Islam" is intentionally vague because I asked if you believed if it is 100% true. It does not matter what parts of Islam I was refering to because 100% by definition covers it all.
There have been a great number of religions throughout thousands of years. Or iterations and versions of the certain religions. I find it arrogant and shortsighted to believe that your version is the final one and no other that comes after it will be better.
It does make sense. Those three sources of evidence can have some overlap. We cannot for example retest that an ancient battle took place even though we know it did. Not everything is testable over and over again. Same applies here.
> But there is more than one version of Islam, isn't there?
What do you mean by version? Sunni vs Shia I presume? Yes, but we apply the same standards to arrive at truth. Furthermore, all "versions" have the same core: God is one, we all have the same Quran, we all have to pray, fast, etc. We all submit to God. Any other differences we can discuss to arrive at the truth.
> It also means you believe there cannot have been any mistakes in any of the writings.
We have an Isnad system in Islam, something that does not exist anywhere else in either faith systems or even secular systems. It gives us absolute confidence in being able to know if texts are valid or not. If we apply those standards to the Bible for example, it would immediately be rendered as weak (we don't know who the bible authors are).
The Quran is 100% preserved. The authentic Hadiths are 100% preserved. It depends on what you mean by "stories". This is a deep topic that I would not be able to do justice over a post, you'll have to watch an introductory lecture that talks about these things. Furthermore, there is a very specific process in how we go about deducing rules from Quran and Hadith. These are the major schools of thoughts (Hanafi, Shaf'ii, Maliki, and Hanbali).
> If there is no room for errors then there is no room for improvement.
Not true. There are many nascent topics that we have been able to derive rules for based on the approaches I mentioned.
> You don't accept the possibility of errors.
Not true. We know and classified Hadiths according to their authenticity, we have Hadiths that are Mutawater for example, all the way to falsely attributed Hadiths which are fabricated. We've done the work a long long time ago.
> There have been a great number of religions throughout thousands of years. Or iterations and versions of the certain religions. I find it arrogant and shortsighted to believe that your version is the final one and no other that comes after it will be better.
The Islamic view is as follows: God sent prophets and messengers to people throughout history. We accept Moses, Jesus, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Saleh, etc. Prayers of God be upon them all as prophets and messengers. There were many whom we don't have the names of, we're talking hundreds of thousands if I recall correctly. They all came with the same core message of the Oneness of the Creator, and to worship him and submit to him. As such, the followers of those prophets and messengers were called Submitters (Muslims in Arabic). Over time, those messages got corrupted. For example, Jesus Prayers of God be upon him, never claimed to be God or son of God, however, over time some people attributed this false idea to him, and we have the present day incarnation of Christianity.
Islam is the final revelation from God, and is preserved. It supersedes everything before it. Muhammad Prayers of God be upon him was sent to all of mankind until the end of time. He brought with him many miracles, and foretold many events in the future, some of which are happening today before our very eyes.
We have to accept all of those prophets that God sent, otherwise we're not Muslim.
On the other side, there are definitely man made religions (e.g. satanism) and many self proclaimed prophets that were not sent from God. Obviously, we don't give those people any credence, and we were warned about them in our texts.
Also, I've heard the fallacious argument before. Just because there are many religions does not mean that one of them isn't true. This is the genetic fallacy. Something that Dawkins and his ilk do all the time without realizing it.
> It does make sense. Those three sources of evidence can have some overlap. We cannot for example retest that an ancient battle took place even though we know it did. Not everything is testable over and over again. Same applies here.
> What do you mean by version? Sunni vs Shia I presume? Yes, but we apply the same standards to arrive at truth. Furthermore, all "versions" have the same core: God is one, we all have the same Quran, we all have to pray, fast, etc. We all submit to God. Any other differences we can discuss to arrive at the truth.
> We have an Isnad system in Islam, something that does not exist anywhere else in either faith systems or even secular systems. It gives us absolute confidence in being able to know if texts are valid or not. If we apply those standards to the Bible for example, it would immediately be rendered as weak (we don't know who the bible authors are).
> Not true. There are many nascent topics that we have been able to derive rules for based on the approaches I mentioned.
It is one of the core concepts of science. Always be open to challenge our understanding of reality and refine our models when new evidence emerges. Since we honestly admit that we don't know everything yet, we need to be open to change and improve.
> Not true. We know and classified Hadiths according to their authenticity, we have Hadiths that are Mutawater for example, all the way to falsely attributed Hadiths which are fabricated. We've done the work a long long time ago.
> The Islamic view is as follows: God sent prophets and messengers to people throughout history. We accept Moses, Jesus, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Saleh, etc. Prayers of God be upon them all as prophets and messengers. There were many whom we don't have the names of, we're talking hundreds of thousands if I recall correctly. They all came with the same core message of the Oneness of the Creator, and to worship him and submit to him. As such, the followers of those prophets and messengers were called Submitters (Muslims in Arabic). Over time, those messages got corrupted. For example, Jesus Prayers of God be upon him, never claimed to be God or son of God, however, over time some people attributed this false idea to him, and we have the present day incarnation of Christianity.
> Islam is the final revelation from God, and is preserved. It supersedes everything before it. Muhammad Prayers of God be upon him was sent to all of mankind until the end of time. He brought with him many miracles, and foretold many events in the future, some of which are happening today before our very eyes.
You do realize that there have been tons and tons of religions before Islam and many of their followers shared the exact same view as you do? "Our version is the real truth! This time for sure!".
> We have to accept all of those prophets that God sent, otherwise we're not Muslim.
> On the other side, there are definitely man made religions (e.g. satanism) and many self proclaimed prophets that were not sent from God. Obviously, we don't give those people any credence, and we were warned about them in our texts.
> Also, I've heard the fallacious argument before. Just because there are many religions does not mean that one of them isn't true. This is the genetic fallacy. Something that Dawkins and his ilk do all the time without realizing it.
The Islamic Isanad system addresses this issue.
> And why is there still no final resolution which one is the true one?
The differences are mostly political. There is a resolution, it's just that people stick to their desires in the face of evidence.
> It does not leave room for future knowledge to improve our understanding of the past and adjust accordingly.
Islam does leave things open to adjust as we further our knowledge. The foundations do not change. This does not have anything to do with whether it is true.
> And why does god need you to worship him?
Because He said so: https://quran.com/21/23
> Is it bad for god if you don't worship him? If I don't pray, am I somehow hurting him?
Of course not. He doesn't need us.
> Do you know the future?
God told us the future (it's in the Quran).
I'm quite curious, we Muslims believe that Jesus Prayer of God be upon him will return. If you are alive at that time, is that sufficient evidence for you to accept?
> All religions are man made.
Yet you present no evidence. I presented proof (e.g. provingislam.com) about very detailed prophecies made thousands of years ago and came true. Just because you want something doesn't make it so.
Anyone who claims God does not exist does not have proof of such.
Religion claims there is a god. Science says just we don't know.
It is pointless to be on the side of religion because as we agreed one cannot prove or disprove it and therefor it becomes indestinguishable from any other claim that can't be falsified. Christianity says there is a god. I say there's a funny pink machine spitting out universes. You can't prove me wrong so you can't say who is right.
You agreed, not everyone. Just because you want something doesn't make it real. The evidence is overwhelming. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTsEZXx8kRg
The societial problems that once solved by religion is worse than ever. It is true that current religions cannot solve it, because they have been "fact checked" out by the new religion of "science" with scientists as the new holymen, but that is a separate discussion.
The point is, we need a solution to those problems more than ever, but we truly cannot hope to find one.
I agree strongly with you that we need a solution to these problems as currently we don't have one. I disagree though that we cannot hope to find one. Hope dies last :)
BTW science does not claim to know it all or even be able to know it all. In fact it is an important part of science to find the limits of science.
Scientism is not what you defined. From wikipedia (which I take with a big grain of salt)
> Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
Watch this to get a different perspective on the matter: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM
Don’t expect many people to watch this hour long blah blah blah.
Edit: beared with it to 19:18 and stopped, sorry, this guy is full of populistic bullshit he tries to refute. Does god exist or not, we will not know ftom this. But you are literally following a fanatic.
There is evidence backed belief in the unseen, and there is blind faith. So your claim that by definition faith is without evidence is not correct.
Secondly, even science needs to accept certain axioms as a given so that we can build upon them.
Scientism is believing that the only way to arrive at truth is through experimentation, which is a false view. There are many things we accept, even though we cannot prove them through experimentation.
Watch the lecture I posted to broaden your horizons.
Religion chooses a substantial set of axioms derived from a mixture of philosophy and fantasy dreamt up by our pre scientific ancestors who thought bad smells caused disease then makes many forms of revision sinful. A set of beliefs without ability to revise everything from the ground up will forever be limited.
The problem with your set of axioms isn't MERELY the size. It's that you are asked to buy them in a box sealed millennia ago by people who if they were transported to our time frame would be regarded as lunatics because they believe crazy shit. Worse you are offered imaginary immortality and the threat of imaginary perdition in order to obtain actual service in exchange for wholly fictional benefits.
Now we go on to a false rant about Islam being inherently peaceful when it didn't arise in a peaceful time nor promote what we would today think of as peace, atheists being bigots, random comparison of atheism to antisemitism. Some hate for the Beatles. Comparison of Beatles fandom to satanism. I have to admit that this is entertaining. Having someone smart enough to read books and speak well while being absolutely committed to falsehood is like watching someone dress up their dog as a human being. The forms are there but not the substance.
People have been declaring society was going to hell in a hand basket for at least the last several thousand years and were we really going to hell we should have long since arrived in perdition. It is common to mistake change in social norms as decay instead of progression because one who is anchored in a particular set of mores and forms is unable to see the value in change. They perceive only the losses and never the gains.
Your speaker declares that a fiction is the root of all morality and I find myself unimpressed with his insight because people hold all sorts of beliefs including none at all and this seems positively uncorrelated with their observed degree of morality and decency. He has it in fact entirely backwards and the necessary fictions we create to explain our world our rooted in our essential nature as sympathetic and empathetic creatures. We look at our fellow man and see the need to care about them as we do ourselves and thus we elevate that concern to a natural law and produce something better than ourselves to defend it.
If we were inherently so lawless the need for law and justice as each society understands it wouldn't flow so effortlessly from our pens or spring so readily to our minds.
The reasoning is simple we developed a mind too complex for direct meta analysis of all its internal workings and a need to work beside others of our own species as complex as ourselves and the tools to understand and predict their behavior works well turned inward.
We perceive the difference between a desired state and a present state even if its not actually physically painful as suffering and produce a society where at least an in group minimizes suffering because its adaptive surely but also because we live not in the world but in our own heads in a model of the world constantly rewritten full of individuals we imagine with the same tools we use to imagine ourselves. If we destroy them or diminish them we must necessarily live in an internal world wrought in part of the blight we have brought about which we must perceive again with the same internal tools we use to experience ourselves. All evil and harm is self mutilation.
For a being capable of sympathy and meta-cognition morality would seem to come naturally even if the end results differ wildly in thoughts, results, and methods. Assigning it ex post facto to the god you created to enforce it is the tail wagging the dog. It's illogical because empathy came millions of years before your particular species of god.
13 minutes in and his argument seems to be that it would be really bad if God weren't real ergo God then some people who promoted atheism were bad dudes ergo we must reject atheism. This mirrors the exact argument he first falsely put in the mouths of his opponents and then helpfully debunked.
Now we are suggesting that atheism suggests that survival of the fittest be applied as a moral principal rather than a description of the evolution of life on Earth. This is a tired trope. If rabbits are different degrees of brown and the browner guys blend in better and the coyotes each more of the other fellows then more browner rabbits will on average breed over time leading to browner rabbits. Trying to apply this moralistically towards human beings is both a misunderstanding of humanity, ethics, and science. We don't need Jesus or Allah to tell us this is a bad idea.
At 16 we segway into shitty parts of American history with a sideline into why Muslims are better because they don't kill women and children. Notably given the religious make up of American leaders these actions were largely perpetrated by people who also believe in God. This is neither here nor there but keeping score on that point seems pretty important to him.
At this point it looks like its important to him to establish a hierarchy of morality Islam > Christianity > Godless.
Since I don't have all day I'm going to skip from minute 18 to 45. Ok now we are proving the existence of gods we have the same tired arguments about a watch implying a watch maker and various aspects of our solar system being particularly amenable to life. One would expect such a discussion to happen on worlds,solar systems, and universes that themselves are amenable to our kind of life while silence is likely to reign in environments were life is impossible or unlikely.
If he had read more of the books he degrades by the "four horsemen" of atheism he might already have good answers to these arguments. Likely he has but he hopes you will click a youtube video and sit back and passively absorb re-enforcement of your existing beliefs than actually reading a book yourself.
I watched at least half the lecture you posted and I found it deceptive, manipulative, and ill founded. It did a reasonable job of lobbing critiques at America's geopolitical actions which one might say are fairly easy targets but a poor job of addressing any big questions.
May I suggest you read something written by one of the "four horsemen" of atheism?
How is it a lie? It's a summary, sure, he can only go into so much given the time. He shows a book by one of them and the title is a giveaway of that summary.
> false rant about Islam being inherently peaceful
Based on what are you claiming that it is false? If you confusing peaceful with pacifist, then Islam is not pacifist.
> nor promote what we would today think of as peace
Then inform us what we would today think of as peace.
> It is common to mistake change in social norms as decay instead of progression
It's easy to see the social decay over time. Of course each generation is experiencing such a decay when they compare it to the previous generations, but we clearly see how things are speeding up. Just look at the ills that we see in so called "developed first world nations", the mental illnesses, the decline of morals, the normalization and over sexualization of behaviors, all the way to children, the destruction of the extended family, then the nuclear family. It's quite obvious where things are heading. This is not fear mongering. When you have someone like Kraus saying that he cannot find a moral argument against incest, then someone with half a brain should think about what this means.
> Your speaker declares that a fiction is the root of all morality
I'm not sure where he said that.
> Trying to apply this moralistically towards human beings is both a misunderstanding of humanity, ethics, and science.
No it isn't. From a purely secular and atheistic world view, there was nothing wrong or bad about horrific historic events like the Holocaust, the nuclear bombs, rape, Epstein, etc. I think it was one of those "four horsemen" who said that rape is not good or bad, but it's just a phenomenon like the spots on a cheetah. Even this atheist biology professor claims that there is no ultimate foundation for ethics from an atheistic world view: https://youtu.be/EqK_JPts26k?t=182
That is the only logical conclusion to arrive at from an atheistic world view, at least he's being honest with himself. More atheists should be honest with themselves as well and we'll see how things end up.
> We don't need Jesus or Allah to tell us this is a bad idea.
Based on the above, we sure do.
> while silence is likely to reign in environments were life is impossible or unlikely.
Yet, we exist. So our world is clearly viable for hosting life. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
> Likely he has but he hopes you will click a youtube video and sit back and passively absorb re-enforcement of your existing beliefs than actually reading a book yourself.
He's a professor and a scholar of biblical hermeneutics with field specialties in Sacred Languages, Comparative Theology, and Comparative Literature. He doesn't "hope" anything. It seems you're straw manning because you think we in Islam shy away from debates or discussion. That couldn't be further from the truth.
> May I suggest you read something written by one of the "four horsemen" of atheism?
Like the time where Dawkins falsely and cringely claims that Islam teaches that salt water and sweet water don't mix? I've watched lectures for those people, and their arguments are straw men, or just outright lies that shows their ignorance and malice especially when it comes to Islam.
Bear in mind that this lecture was just to have people expand their horizons, especially those that think that science is going to answer everything. It won't. There is so much material out there by good people who have torn down these atheistic arguments. People like Youtube these days, so I recommend Mohammad Hijab and Sami Ameri. I have lots more who speak Arabic, but I think this is not the right audience for them.
People may speak fantasies, but act - they mostly act as they honestly think. “Things” will end up just as they are now. You are dehumanizing atheists and, as I suspect, anyone who doesn’t follow your “ethical” god.
We all have a right to disagree, but thinking that all ethical people who do not agree with you are just not honest with themselves is delusional. You’re basically saying that if your god doesn’t prohibit something that other people may find highly unethical in their culture, you will still do that. That’s the essence of how most people see your religion.
I'm not. We see the evidence of the direction of where the world is heading right before our eyes. The wise people already see it coming.
> thinking that all ethical people who do not agree with you are just not honest with themselves is delusional.
I said that the conclusion that those atheists had reached is the ultimate and only conclusion to reach when one is honest with themselves. I saw many atheists, and they don't think about the implication of their world view. They just live day to day as things around us get worse, then people cry and complain about how bad things are, while being blind to the true causes.
Look at the big mess of the modern day economic system. People are crying about high interest rates, student loans, etc. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all prohibit usury (interest) for a good reason. Today people are trying to address the symptoms but not the cause, and they're failing at it. All these things have repercussions, but few people see it.
> Proper religion and science do not disagree.
> I am a person of faith (which is backed by evidence), and my faith pushed us to seek knowledge. The Islamic Golden age is a testament to that fact.
My problem is that any religion who believes in an all powerful God quickly runs into logical problems. Here is one quick example and I'd love for you to explain to me where my reasoning went wrong:
1. Assume there is an omnipotent being called God
2. If God is omnipotent then he can create two other omnipotent beings that have the following two goals: 1. destroy the other being 2. protect itself from being destroyed.
3. Clearly both of these created beings cannot both achieve their goals because they cannot both destroy the other and at the same time protect themselves.
4. If these beings cannot do what they were created for then clearly they cannot be omnipotent.
5. If God cannot create such beings then clearly he himself is not omnipotentOne that is backed by proofs and evidence. Islam does not disagree with science.
Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic.
> One that is backed by proofs and evidence.
> Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic.
Yes it's the same argument. I can't follow your logic though. You just claim that we cannot comprehend the concept of god. You say that logic cannot be applied. If we cannot comprehend god and have to give up logic then why would we follow the word of certain people who claimed that god spoke to them? How can we tell apart a true prophet who really was contacted by god from a random imposter? To tell those apart would mean we already know what god would or would not say. But if god does not have to follow logic then how can we deduce what is correct or not?
As you see once you leave the realm of logic the whole house of cards falls.
Another thing you could deduce from your argument btw is that god created humans intentionally in a way that they cannot comprehend. Isn't that painting god in a pretty bad light?
You still continue to conflate science with God who exists outside the realms and is not bound by the laws of our world. He created logic, it does not apply to him. When He revealed to us his attributes, we are not ones to question whether they make sense to us or not.
So your argument stems from illogic? Surely you don't admit such do you? When I was religious, religion captured me by thinking 'that makes sense'. It used a minor amount of logic to convert me but ultimately it failed because it didn't stand up against my rigors in the end. Religion wants to ultimately refrain from the rigors of logic but when confronted, how does it defend itself? That's right, it tries to use "logical" arguments just like in the video you linked.
If you want to deny logic then the guy you're arguing with is just as right as you think you are because he has justification to be illogical. That is the problem with making unfalsifiable claims like the gods exist outside of logic, you basically admit to a tie, at the very least.
No. I as mentioned in another post, God exists outside the realms of this reality, and is not bound by our laws. He created our laws, and he created logic, and they do not apply to him.
We don't deny logic. If you study Islam, logic is one of the 3 methods to arrive at truth. The other two are observations (not dissimilar from experimental science) and the final is truthfully relayed news (الخبر الصادق). We take all of those into consideration when studying our reality.
> When I was religious
Were you Muslim though? Not all religions have these rigors.
> No. I as mentioned in another post, God exists outside the realms of this reality, and is not bound by our laws. He created our laws, and he created logic, and they do not apply to him.
> We don't deny logic. If you study Islam, logic is one of the 3 methods to arrive at truth. The other two are observations (not dissimilar from experimental science) and the final is truthfully relayed news (الخبر الصادق). We take all of those into consideration when studying our reality.
> We apply logic where it applies, and we use other sources of evidence for where it doesn't apply
God is outside the realm of logic. Think about it, if you create a game or simulation, are you bound by its laws? You can make a simulation where 1 + 1 = 5
First, in a very real sense, the modern physical sciences came from religion. The great founders of science—Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc.—were, without exception, trained in ecclesially sponsored schools and universities. It was under the aegis of the church that they took in their physics, their astronomy, and their mathematics. More specifically, they learned in those institutions two essentially theological truths necessary for the emergence of the experimental sciences—namely, that the universe is not God and that the universe, in every nook and cranny, is marked by intelligibility. If nature were divine—as indeed it is considered to be in many religions, philosophies, and mysticisms—then it could never be an apt subject for observation, analysis, and experimentation. And if nature were simply chaotic, void of form, it would never yield up the harmonies and patterned intelligibilities that scientists readily seek. When these two truths, which are both a function of the doctrine of creation, obtain, the sciences can get underway.
Second, when science and theology are properly understood, they are not in conflict, since they are not competing for primacy on the same playing field, like opposing football teams. Utilizing the scientific method, the physical sciences deal with events, objects, dynamics, and relationships within the empirically verifiable order. Theology, employing an entirely different method, deals with God and the things of God—and God is not an object in the world, not a reality circumscribed within the context of nature. As Thomas Aquinas put it, God is not ens summum (highest being), but rather ipsum esse (the act of being as such)—which is to say, God is not a being among beings, but instead the reason why there is an empirically observable universe at all. In this way, he is like the author of a richly complex novel. Charles Dickens never appears as a character in any of his sprawling narratives, yet he is the reason why any of those characters exist at all. Accordingly, the sciences, as such, can never adjudicate the question of God’s existence nor speak of his activity or attributes. Another type of rationality—not in competition with scientific rationality—is required for the determination of those matters.
And this brings me to my third point: as parent said, _scientism_ is not science. Sadly rampant today, especially among the young, scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. The undeniable success of the physical sciences and the extraordinary usefulness of the technologies to which they have given rise have produced in the minds of many this conviction, but it represents a tragic impoverishment. A chemist might be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the paints that Michelangelo used on the Sistine Ceiling, but he couldn’t, qua scientist, tell us a thing about what makes that work of art so beautiful. A geologist might be able to tell us the stratification of the earth below the city of Chicago, but he could never, again qua scientist, tell us whether that city is being justly or unjustly governed. There isn’t a trace of the scientific method in Romeo and Juliet, but who would be so stupid as to assert that that play tells us nothing true about the nature of love. In a similar way, the great texts of the Bible and the theological tradition are not “scientific,” but they nevertheless speak the profoundest truths about God, creation, sin, redemption, grace, etc. Both the cause and effect of scientism, sadly, is the attenuation of the liberal arts in our institutions of higher education. Rather than appreciating literature, history, philosophy, and religion as conduits of objective truth, many today relegate these to the arena of subjective feeling or subject them to withering ideological criticism.
My fourth and final point is this: Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. The great astronomer is often invoked as the patron saint of heroic scientists struggling to free themselves from the obscurantism and irrationality of religion. The censorship of his books by the Church, and the great scientist’s virtual imprisonment at the behest of the pope, is taken as the dark paradigm of the Church/science relationship. Obviously, the Galileo episode was hardly the Church’s finest moment, and in point of fact, John Paul II, expressing real contrition, explicitly apologized for it. But to use it as the lens for viewing the play between faith and science is crucially inadequate. There have been, from the earliest days of the modern sciences, thousands of deeply religious people involved in scientific research and investigation. To name just a handful: Copernicus, revolutionary cosmologist and a third order Dominican; Nicholas Steno, the father of geology and a bishop of the Church; Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology and a devout Catholic layman; Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics and an Augustinian friar; Georges Lemaître, formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest; Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and a Catholic religious sister. I believe it is fair to say that all of these figures understood the fundamental points that I have laid out in this article and therefore saw that they could be utterly devoted to both their science and their faith.
> The “war” between religion and science as you are attempting to draw here, is in fact a fantasy, an illusion, the fruit of a tragic misunderstanding.
> First, in a very real sense, the modern physical sciences came from religion. The great founders of science—Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc.—were, without exception, trained in ecclesially sponsored schools and universities. It was under the aegis of the church that they took in their physics, their astronomy, and their mathematics. More specifically, they learned in those institutions two essentially theological truths necessary for the emergence of the experimental sciences—namely, that the universe is not God and that the universe, in every nook and cranny, is marked by intelligibility. If nature were divine—as indeed it is considered to be in many religions, philosophies, and mysticisms—then it could never be an apt subject for observation, analysis, and experimentation. And if nature were simply chaotic, void of form, it would never yield up the harmonies and patterned intelligibilities that scientists readily seek. When these two truths, which are both a function of the doctrine of creation, obtain, the sciences can get underway.
Science does not need the doctrine of creation which is a fairly recent concept. Do you think that nobody performed science before these religions existed? The first people who figured out how to make a fire were scientists and not preachers. Do you think people who are not theists are not able to do science? These claims are mindboggling.
Here is a list of famous atheist scientists some which are at on equally high levels as names you quoted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_science_an...
From Bell to Zuse, they seem to have done just fine without believing in creationism or religion at all.
> Second, when science and theology are properly understood, they are not in conflict, since they are not competing for primacy on the same playing field, like opposing football teams. Utilizing the scientific method, the physical sciences deal with events, objects, dynamics, and relationships within the empirically verifiable order. Theology, employing an entirely different method, deals with God and the things of God—and God is not an object in the world, not a reality circumscribed within the context of nature. As Thomas Aquinas put it, God is not ens summum (highest being), but rather ipsum esse (the act of being as such)—which is to say, God is not a being among beings, but instead the reason why there is an empirically observable universe at all. In this way, he is like the author of a richly complex novel. Charles Dickens never appears as a character in any of his sprawling narratives, yet he is the reason why any of those characters exist at all. Accordingly, the sciences, as such, can never adjudicate the question of God’s existence nor speak of his activity or attributes. Another type of rationality—not in competition with scientific rationality—is required for the determination of those matters.
> And this brings me to my third point: as parent said, _scientism_ is not science. Sadly rampant today, especially among the young, scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. The undeniable success of the physical sciences and the extraordinary usefulness of the technologies to which they have given rise have produced in the minds of many this conviction, but it represents a tragic impoverishment. A chemist might be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the paints that Michelangelo used on the Sistine Ceiling, but he couldn’t, qua scientist, tell us a thing about what makes that work of art so beautiful. A geologist might be able to tell us the stratification of the earth below the city of Chicago, but he could never, again qua scientist, tell us whether that city is being justly or unjustly governed. There isn’t a trace of the scientific method in Romeo and Juliet, but who would be so stupid as to assert that that play tells us nothing true about the nature of love. In a similar way, the great texts of the Bible and the theological tradition are not “scientific,” but they nevertheless speak the profoundest truths about God, creation, sin, redemption, grace, etc. Both the cause and effect of scientism, sadly, is the attenuation of the liberal arts in our institutions of higher education. Rather than appreciating literature, history, philosophy, and religion as conduits of objective truth, many today relegate these to the arena of subjective feeling or subject them to withering ideological criticism.
> My fourth and final point is this: Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. The great astronomer is often invoked as the patron saint of heroic scientists struggling to free themselves from the obscurantism and irrationality of religion. The censorship of his books by the Church, and the great scientist’s virtual imprisonment at the behest of the pope, is taken as the dark paradigm of the Church/science relationship. Obviously, the Galileo episode was hardly the Church’s finest moment, and in point of fact, John Paul II, expressing real contrition, explicitly apologized for it. But to use it as the lens for viewing the play between faith and science is crucially inadequate. There have been, from the earliest days of the modern sciences, thousands of deeply religious people involved in scientific research and investigation. To name just a handful: Copernicus, revolutionary cosmologist and a third order Dominican; Nicholas Steno, the father of geology and a bishop of the Church; Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology and a devout Catholic layman; Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics and an Augustinian friar; Georges Lemaître, formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest; Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and a Catholic religious sister. I believe it is fair to say that all of these figures understood the fundamental points that I have laid out in this article and therefore saw that they could be utterly devoted to both their science and their faith.
What is the difference between a holy man who claims to have the word of god, and a scientist who claims to have followed the "scientifc method"?
Modern human believes the latter. That is the difference.
The claim of someone who says they have the word of god is hearsay and there’s no way to figure out whether they do or not. The claims of someone who says they’ve followed the scientific method are verifiable by others. If they claim that their experiments show tiny blue tetrahedrons make up all matter, other people can check. Nobody can check if god talks to the first person.
> which are produced from them actually seem to work.
Oh yea, religeious things also seem to work. For example, prayers and other religeous offerings. That is how these things survive so long.
Well, the same can be applied to your "western science" as well..
Have you heard about the replication crisis in your "western science"?
Why are you and a few other people on the side of religion argueing so much against the west? Science vs religion does not care what the longitude you find yourself in. Or is "eastern science" somehow different?
Science is not perfect, how could it as it is made up of humans and we clearly are not perfect. It's still waaaaaay better than religious doctrines.
Since no one is willing to do that, people used to accept their word for a fact. The same is the case with science claim that cannot be verified by common men who depend on them.
That they are also "believing", might be hard to get through the thick skull of these modern "science" gushers. They fail to see that "science" can be just a label, strapped to anything businesses wants to sell.
> It is, because you can verify the claims of a holy man if you go meditate in a cave for a couple of decades.
You can readily go and verify a lot of claims of science and I gave you an example in another comment. What claims about god can I go and verify? I'm eager to try.
How many have I verified? I’m not sure of the #, but I’ve verified much of classical physics, chemistry, astronomical observations, and lots of things in electronics (some of which rely on quantum mechanics) and electromagnetism.
But as I said, they question is not whether you or I have personally verified everything, but whether they are verifiable in principle, by anyone. The claims of chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc, are verifiable. The claims of a holy man are not.
How come? The claims of holy men are verified by other holy men.
Religion wants the best of both worlds, saying it is endowed with logic and verification yet when pushed you get the same tired argument about faith and 'gods exist outside logic'. At the same time it wants to say that it doesn't have to participate. Why should your side be special? Why can't I ultimately resort to illogic? Who knows, maybe my atheistic views are derived from a system so abstracted from my intellectual senses that I can validly resort to claiming they may ultimately stem from a time/place far removed from logic also, I just don't claim that it's an anthropomorphic entity like a god.
Yes
>The scientific method is a process that verifies...
And this process is done by imperfect men...who you end up trusting...
This happens in your "western science" also (despite all the ability to "test" things), he he he...excuse me. Couldn't help it.
Or How many such claims can be verified with a single average person's limited resource?
Because it is with my own perception that I sense the rest of the world with it. So that is all that one should care. Let me know if you don't get this. I ll elaborate..
My second reply is that it’s important whether things derived from two different claims actually work.
Make two hospitals: one which follows standard Western medical practice, and the other which does not and instead performs prayers over its patients. I can predict which hospital will have better patient outcomes.
That is quite besided the point. The point being every patient who goes there believes the hospital us doing western blah blah blah...
Let me simplyfy it even more. The common mans dependence of "science" is based on beliefs. Just as it was on religion at an older time.
That scientific method is more trust worthy, does not make that dependence not based on belief. That is the weakest link in the chain, and that link is common to both science and religion.
Let’s say this common man is religious (pick one) and is going about his day and is injured in some accident. He is taken to a hospital, and one which he knows is aligned with his religious beliefs. Upon arriving the doctors triage him and tell him he’s bleeding internally. But then they tell him that they have assembled a team of highly respected members of the religion to which he adheres and these persons are revered among its followers. They are about to lay hands on him and pray for his internal bleeding to stop. He asks if they will also be performing surgery, to which they reply that no, their god is loving, caring, and will hear the prayers of the faithful and heal him.
Now if you really are talking about the truly common man, this common man will, with whatever strength that remains, object quite strenuously! He will insist that a doctor perform surgery on him immediately and stop the bleeding.
And why does this common man do this? Because what he really believes is that while his religious beliefs may provide some type of assurance and comfort, when the rubber meets the road, he’d like some science, please.
Aren't you guys truly not getting this simple thing? I should probably get out of this thread..
I'd recommend a read through Plato's Socratic dialog Theaetetus. Then think through whether the progression of sensation, true belief, and justified true belief does or does not form a sequence of increasingly better ways to think about the world.
As for your last sentence, although I could say the same, I think you will agree that it would serve no purpose.
> Tell me, how many scientific "claims" that you rely on a day to day basis, have you verified personally?
You fell into the trap of thinking that each person needs to verify each claim in order to put general trust in science. That's not how it works. If I can pick a random claim and given enough time and effort can verify it with a high chance then I can reasonably be sure the other claims are most likely correct. Not all of them! There are scientific claims that are incorrect. We know because they have been shown to be incorrect. But that doesn't invalidate the rest of the claims. And yes there will be claims that I personally can't verify so I'll have to use my own judgement to trust them or not. Over time someone will emerge to prove them wrong if they are indeed wrong. Unless of course they impossible to falsify like the existance of god. But then I just can ignore that claim if it can't be proven either way - no matter if it's a claim in science or religion.
With religion I can't verify much at all. Can I verify the existance of god? Nope. Can I verify earth was created X thousand years ago? Nope. Can I prove that my prayer will get some result? Nope. So logically my trust in the other religous claims is very low.
We had science classes in school. Physics and Chemistry for example. I remember doing experiments all the time to check if something was really working the way it was claimed. It checked out every single time. We also had Religion classes. I don't remember a single time that we tried to verify a claim. Not even an attempt! How do you build faith in a system full of claims with no evidence? As we kids grew older and developed a stronger independent way of thinking instead of blindly believing what the teacher told us, more and more of us started questioning those claims and were left utterly unsatisfied and ultimately left the religion class and switched to ethics instead.
I am not falling into any trap. Science and religion has its legit original purpose (religion was never meant to explain nature, though it does it as part of its own way of accomplishing its goals). But both are prone to exploitation by selfish entities, because of the need or requirement of laymans belief in the ir claims.
So ultimately, a religious claim and a scientific claim that cannot be realistically verified by 99.9 % of people are both similar, and both can end up casuing similar evils.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like you addressed any of my points.
Some omnipotent being did it and he cares about the sexual life of humans?!
That's bizarre as well, better to just say that at this point we don't know.
The Big Bang, first theorized by theoretical physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lamaitre, states the universe sprang into existence 13.7b years ago; it was not eternal as previously thought.
And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.
This suggests that the universe was caused. Since the universe can't cause itself, its cause must be outside of the universe. It must be immaterial; not made up of the stuff of the universe. It must be timeless and not governed by the laws of the universe. And it must be exceedingly powerful to create all the energy that kicked off the expanding universe with its billions of spinning galaxies, stars, and planets.
A powerful, immaterial, timeless force outside of the universet that caused the universe to exist. This points to God.
You follow the extremely common logical fallacy that because you want there to be a reason for the universe and you wanting there to be something before the universe then that means there has to be a god?
A big leap based on unproven assumptions.
Who says time does not extend outside the universe? Where's the proof that a universe can't cause itself? Why can't it be governed by the same laws?
Science does not claim to have all the answers but just then jumping to the conclusion that there has to be a god? Nah.
What if there indeed was a God but is now gone? What makes you assume that he cares about us and our morals? What would he think of people that claim he has spoken to them? Why would he create all the sickness and pain in the world? Would it mean there's some extremely sick and perverted being out there that just likes to watch innocent women being raped? Clearly he could prevent that. But then again why do religions assume that their god is good willing? Clearly he can't be that with all the shit going on because if he willed it into existance then all that is on him.
What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)
The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.
While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.
> "Clearly he could prevent that...clearly he can't be [good] with all the shit going on"
You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia. I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.
On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil.
> What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)
> The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.
Einstein explained that nothing can move faster than light but the universe seems to be expanding faster than light so clearly the universe itself can follow different rules and of course anything theoretically outside of it could do pretty much anything for all we know (since we don't know anything about it).
> While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.
> You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia.
> I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.
You called people doing evil an abuse of free will. But why is it abuse if god wanted it to be like that? Doesn't it mean that god wanted evil to exist? Otherwise he'd create a system with free will but with evil excluded. We would never know about evil being missing since he completely removed it from our reality. In the same line of thinking how would we know if we have true free will? What if there was a third thing next to good and evil? How can we know we have free will? And how can we say it is better to have free will than not? If I gave you the choice of living a life in which 100% of days you are happy or a life in which on random days you will be unhappy, which life would you choose?
> On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil.
Good and bad are actually subjective. Muslims will find me eating pork as bad. For christians it wouldn't be bad. For christians it would be really bad if I had multiple wifes while muslims would be OK with it. Who is right and who is wrong? If you pick either one then you claim that some religions are correct and others wrong. How did you decide which ones are the correct ones? It also means there can only be one final true religion because if there are two religions then they must differ in something and both can't be right at the same time.
You say god legislates what is good and bad. Ignoring that different religions as outlined above disagree about what is good or bad, how exactly do we know for sure that the claimed laws have been handed by god? That someone pronounces so is not good enough.
Do animals who seem to also have a system of good and bad have religous believes? My dog feels really guilty when he makes a mess. Who told him about god and that he shall not make a mess?
Which is why we rely on the honest news. Prophets like Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses Prayers of God be upon them all proved that they came with a message. They performed miracles, and their character is well known. It's basically an inductive proof.
If one man claims that god said to him “such and such”, he may think that god has spoken to him, but I’m not obliged to. All I can say with certainty is that he is a person who thinks god spoke to him and subsequently told me about it.
Of course it's evidence. We have prophecies made thousands of years ago and they're coming true in our very lifetimes. E.g. http://www.provingislam.com
Holy leap of faith, batman, such a non-sequitur. The former I'd agree is plausible but then you just go headlong into a big assumption or in your case, ironically and paradoxically, you state it as a certainty in a thread about our uncertain universal beginnings. I could run with the former in that perhaps some kind of force outside it caused it but what caused that force? Also there is nothing pointing to this force being some intelligent anthropomorphic entity aware of our existence (as generally believed) other than a few religious texts that, some argue, spawned from other polytheistic religious texts that had entirely different views of the gods.
>There is a great deal of evidence, philosophically and rationally, for the existence of God.
And evidence against if you really want to learn about philosophy in a more well-rounded way. And "rationally"? Many views can be rational which can be pretty subjective, just not logical or true.
We actually never observed everything, cause there is a great shadow far in the past. We just launched yet another space telescope to look a little farther, btw.
This suggests that the universe was caused. ... A powerful, immaterial, timeless force outside of the universet that caused the universe to exist. This points to God.
Or to a multi-dimensional coffee machine which farts universes as a side product every multi-morning and its owner doesn't even know that. It doesn't point to anything and even less so to a conscious creator who decides where "you" go after your brain runs low on oxygen for a while.
There is every reason to believe our present theories are presently insufficient because this is a very hard topic and no reason to believe that the universe is caused by something immaterial or timeless much less something with volition and purpose. There are multiple theories that you could read about if you wish that require neither cause nor volition.
And it's not a straw man argument. God in Islam cares about foreskins and sex and if you disbelieve in him he sends you to hell for eternity.
Don't send videos tell me your arguments, you can speak for yourself.
You expect a detailed and nuanced response in 1 paragraph on HN?
If you are so sure then let's discuss it.
I think you're just scared, if not email me. : )
We have proof. We know about the state of the world back then. We have history, archeology, the knowledge of that era, and much much more. Even English author and historian Tom Holland had to admit that the Quran had too much nuanced knowledge about Jewish and Christian texts that, instead of submitting, he had to come up with a completely illogical and provably wrong story that Makkah was not in present day Saudi Arabia, but on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Even the non Muslims admit and are in awe of what happened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/hxn276/here_are_some...
> That does not prove that what is written in Qran is correct
He proved that what's written in the Quran correct, discoveries made just a couple of hundred years ago.
> We know about the state of the world back then. We have history, archeology, the knowledge of that era, and much much more.
> Even the non Muslims admit and are in awe of what happened.
> He proved that what's written in the Quran correct, discoveries made just a couple of hundred years ago.
The problem I have with religious texts is they are very vague and evidently open to a lot of interpretation. And by talking about things like God and building a logical system out of wrong axioms that is then applied to daily life choices they actually can create real issues - we've had enough of them in history.
> The existance of these monsters does not prove religions don't create issues. Or what's your claim?
My claim is that without religion, we'd be in a far off worse place.
> What does having texts with some degree of interpretation have to do with whether those texts are true or not? Sounds like a genetic fallacy.
> My claim is that without religion, we'd be in a far off worse place.
> so when making choices about others
By living in society, someone is making choices on the behalf of another regardless of whether that society is religious or secular.
> Please provide evidence for this
We're seeing it today. Look at the rates of depression, suicide, etc. in so called "developed first world" countries and compare them to war torn "third world" countries that are generally religious. Society is in moral and ethical decline, and it worries me how much longer this can go on before some chaotic event will take place.
Without an authority, the very question of what "good" and "bad" mean becomes meaningless. I recall one atheistic head (might have been Dawkins) who claimed that rape is not good or bad, it just is a phenomenon like the spots on a cheetah. Or Kraus (and others) who said that he could not find a moral justification against incest if there is consent from both sides.
Wow, I'm surprised you went there. To this day many denominations of Islam are still killing each other over the "correct" interpretation.
You call out developed worlds as if they're immoral yet the most religious countries [0] also have a big overlap in having the most militant conflict [1]. Oh but they're happy, right? I wouldn't think so. Many of the least religious countries, such as the Scandinavian countries, often rank higher on happiness as well. Also in the developed world we can criticize our own countries more, generally, and so we have lots of free press that loves to prop up the negatives. Are Islamic countries generally free to criticize themselves so easily? Sorry to speak negatively of those countries but you invite such generalizations when you make such generalizations.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#/media/File:Import...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...
Yet, those denominations you speak of are minorities, and some are even supported by factions like the CIA to continue civil unrest, because it's in the interest of the West.
> also have a big overlap in having the most militant conflict
I'm who's surprised you went there. It's as if the last 100 years of history didn't mean much? The vast majority of those countries have been occupied and colonized by the West, and I'd argue that they continue to be to this day.
> Are Islamic countries generally free to criticize themselves so easily?
You can look up Islamic history to see to what high degree of responsibility those in charge were held. Read up on Omar ibn AlKhattab for example.
> Not all texts are vague and open to interpretation. A proper religion with strong scholarly underpinnings like Islam has this issue figured out. The Quran itself calls out the issue, and Muslim scholars from the very beginning have a foundation on which to base rulings.
> By living in society, someone is making choices on the behalf of another regardless of whether that society is religious or secular.
> We're seeing it today. Look at the rates of depression, suicide, etc. in so called "developed first world" countries and compare them to war torn "third world" countries that are generally religious. Society is in moral and ethical decline, and it worries me how much longer this can go on before some chaotic event will take place.
> Without an authority, the very question of what "good" and "bad" mean becomes meaningless. I recall one atheistic head (might have been Dawkins) who claimed that rape is not good or bad, it just is a phenomenon like the spots on a cheetah. Or Kraus (and others) who said that he could not find a moral justification against incest if there is consent from both sides.
The fact that some atheists said or did something that most people will agree is wrong does not mean all of atheists are wrong in the same way. That's the same mistake the presenter in that video made. There are good atheists and bad atheists. There are good theists and bad theists. You cannot claim from any of these that either secularism or theism is good or bad.
Which is why you evaluate those claims and see what evidence they bring forth. We have a lot of proof and evidence in Islam. Some are listed on www.provingislam.com
> Life expectancy and quality of life has improved drastically in (not only) western countries over time while at the same time turning more secular.
Correlation vs causation.
> Thanks science
False dichotomy. No one is saying science isn't useful. As a matter of fact, many of today's foundational sciences and discoveries go back to the Islamic Golden Age. Great Muslim scholars like Al-Khararizmy (the word "algorithm" is a direct derivative of his name), Algebra (the science of Al-Jabr, an Arabic word), and many many more were because Islam pushed those people to seek knowledge and learn about the world around them. Many of those scholars saw studying and exploring the world around them as signs of God. This is something established in the Quran and Hadith.
> What's up with all the fighting between religious groups there?
Maybe the colonizing West that engaged in dirty divide and conquer tactics has something to do with it? Or maybe the fact that the US lied about WMD's to invade Iraq and they got away with it with no consequences, while leaving millions of Iraqis between dead and maimed and homeless. Same with Afghanistan. The amount of destruction caused to Muslim lands by the West is orders of magnitude more than any internal conflicts. And it's not like the West is some bastion of peace either, today Russia and Ukraine are fighting aren't they?
> The fact that some atheists said or did something that most people will agree is wrong does not mean all of atheists are wrong in the same way.
So tell me why are they wrong to say that rape is just a phenomenon or that incest is ok. On what basis, from a strictly atheistic materialistic world view are you going to make an opposite claim?
> Which is why you evaluate those claims and see what evidence they bring forth. We have a lot of proof and evidence in Islam. Some are listed on www.provingislam.com
> Correlation vs causation.
> False dichotomy. No one is saying science isn't useful. As a matter of fact, many of today's foundational sciences and discoveries go back to the Islamic Golden Age. Great Muslim scholars like Al-Khararizmy (the word "algorithm" is a direct derivative of his name), Algebra (the science of Al-Jabr, an Arabic word), and many many more were because Islam pushed those people to seek knowledge and learn about the world around them. Many of those scholars saw studying and exploring the world around them as signs of God. This is something established in the Quran and Hadith.
> Maybe the colonizing West that engaged in dirty divide and conquer tactics has something to do with it?
> So tell me why are they wrong to say that rape is just a phenomenon or that incest is ok. On what basis, from a strictly atheistic materialistic world view are you going to make an opposite claim?
That video was a good start, the fine tuning argument, the fact that something cannot come out of nothing, etc.
The next step is that when someone claims to have been sent by God, we look at the evidence he brings forth. Prophet Muhammad Prayers of God be upon brought with him signs and performed miracles. The Quran itself is a living miracle, no one had been able to bring anything like it, and the Arabs at the time tried. Some even admitted but would not believe due to pride, this is quite well documented. Furthermore, the Quran and Hadiths talk about events that happen tens or even thousands of years later. The website I linked mentions over 100 of them. Some like the desolate bedouins competing to build tall towers or the fact that the deserts of Arabia were not only green, but would return to be rivers and meadows have only been discovered very recently.
> You might want to try apply that to your original claim that the western civilizations are declining because they are so secular.
The behavior of secular people is quite obvious as to what is causing these issues. Many of them get rich, have everything at their disposal and think, this is it? This has happened time and time again. I'd be interested to hear your explanation. The Quran already alluded to this over 1400 years ago, even when atheism was not common (another miracle):
> But whoever turns away from My Reminder will certainly have a miserable life
> Any many go back to christians, jews or even predate our mainstream religions
The difference is that with Islam, those scholars admit that it was Islam is what played a role in pushing them to pursue knowledge. It's in our religion.
> Pretty sure it also persecuted people who seeked knowledge that Islam didn't like.
Bold and false claim. Show me your proof. Islam is not Europe in the dark ages that you are talking about.
> Or maybe that happened already before all the western influence?
The Islamic world had the Caliphate established until WWI. Not saying that we did not make mistakes (one of the biggest was getting involved in WWI to begin with), but since then, it's been quite clear what's going on.
> I'd argue rape being just a phenomenon is wrong
But it's not wrong according to those atheist figures, who are heavily pushing atheism. You cannot force your view on him. Once such practices get adopted and popular, you have no retort.
> Rape leaves the victim traumatized and less productive in society
Maybe, maybe not. Rape used to be common back in the day, and people were not as traumatized. Secondly, who cares about society, we're all "chemical scum" anyway. Why does it matter?
> anyone with a bit of knowledge how reproduction and genetics work can see that inbreeding increases the chance of genetic defects.
So? Also, there's birth control and abortion to solve that problem.
> That video was a good start, the fine tuning argument, the fact that something cannot come out of nothing, etc.
> The next step is that when someone claims to have been sent by God, we look at the evidence he brings forth. Prophet Muhammad Prayers of God be upon brought with him signs and performed miracles. The Quran itself is a living miracle, no one had been able to bring anything like it, and the Arabs at the time tried. Some even admitted but would not believe due to pride, this is quite well documented. Furthermore, the Quran and Hadiths talk about events that happen tens or even thousands of years later. The website I linked mentions over 100 of them. Some like the desolate bedouins competing to build tall towers or the fact that the deserts of Arabia were not only green, but would return to be rivers and meadows have only been discovered very recently.
> The behavior of secular people is quite obvious as to what is causing these issues. Many of them get rich, have everything at their disposal and think, this is it? This has happened time and time again. I'd be interested to hear your explanation. The Quran already alluded to this over 1400 years ago, even when atheism was not common (another miracle):
> Bold and false claim. Show me your proof. Islam is not Europe in the dark ages that you are talking about.
Rhazes (865-925)
Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī or Rhazes was a medical pioneer from Baghdad who lived between 860 and 932 AD. He was responsible for introducing western teachings, rational thought and the works of Hippocrates and Galen to the Arabic world. One of his books, Continens Liber, was a compendium of everything known about medicine. The book made him famous, but offended a Muslim priest who ordered the doctor to be beaten over the head with his own manuscript, which caused him to go blind, preventing him from future practice.
> The Islamic world had the Caliphate established until WWI. Not saying that we did not make mistakes (one of the biggest was getting involved in WWI to begin with), but since then, it's been quite clear what's going on.
> But it's not wrong according to those atheist figures, who are heavily pushing atheism. You cannot force your view on him. Once such practices get adopted and popular, you have no retort.
> Maybe, maybe not. Rape used to be common back in the day, and people were not as traumatized. Secondly, who cares about society, we're all "chemical scum" anyway. Why does it matter?
Not sure where the "chemical scum" comes from? I presented rational argument that can justify morals. Of course we care about society because we are part of society and when optimizing life in society we optimize also our own. That's why we don't eat our children and why we care for the elderly. One day we will be old and hopefully our children will care for us when we can't anymore.
The Quran challenges anyone to bring something like it. The challenge is open. Seeminly easy right? It's gone unchallenged all these millenia.
> Horoscopes also "predict" the future
No they don't. The prophecies of Muhammad Prayers of God be upon him are extremely nuanced, from things like the emergence of a green Arabia, to the desolate bedouins competing to build tall towers, to naming individuals and their exact spot where they will die on the battle field, to the intricate and nuanced knowledge he had about other traditions while living in Makkah (https://youtu.be/nTsEZXx8kRg). More at provingislam.com
> You are confusing secular people with materialistic people
Materialism as in explaining reality with only a purely materalistic tangible point of view, not monetary materialism.
> The book made him famous, but offended a Muslim priest who ordered the doctor to be beaten over the head with his own manuscript,
Who was that "Muslim priest"? (we don't have priests in Islam by the way). According to wikipedia (to be taken with a grain of salt):
> He spent the last years of his life in his native Rey suffering from glaucoma. His eye affliction started with cataracts and ended in total blindness.[19] The cause of his blindness is uncertain. One account mentioned by Ibn Juljul attributed the cause to a blow to his head by his patron, Mansur ibn Ishaq, for failing to provide proof for his alchemy theories;[20] while Abulfaraj and Casiri claimed that the cause was a diet of beans only
If this indeed happened, he would have had the right to seek retribution from a judge. You failed to show that this is a systemic problem as Europe was in the darsk ages.
> Even police does not dare to confront when there is open illegal behavior unless it is really serious.
What you're describing is not different from what happens in poor ghettos in America. Nothing to do with religion. I'm willing to bet that neighborhood is poor and uneducated.
> This is in Asia btw and the US is not meddling here.
The West has been meddling for a long long time, if not directly, then indirectly.
> That some atheist makes some claims
That's not any atheist. Those are the people claiming "enlightenement" and spearheading the atheist movement like Dawkins and his ilk. The difference is that with atheists, there is no moral compass or ultimate reference or authority to confirm or debate their thoughts. Whereas with a religion, we can go back to their scriptures.
> Not sure where the "chemical scum" comes from?
Stephen Hawking
> The Quran challenges anyone to bring something like it. The challenge is open. Seeminly easy right? It's gone unchallenged all these millenia.
> No they don't. The prophecies of Muhammad Prayers of God be upon him are extremely nuanced, from things like the emergence of a green Arabia, to the desolate bedouins competing to build tall towers, to naming individuals and their exact spot where they will die on the battle field, to the intricate and nuanced knowledge he had about other traditions while living in Makkah (https://youtu.be/nTsEZXx8kRg). More at provingislam.com
> Materialism as in explaining reality with only a purely materalistic tangible point of view, not monetary materialism.
> Who was that "Muslim priest"? (we don't have priests in Islam by the way). According to wikipedia (to be taken with a grain of salt):
> What you're describing is not different from what happens in poor ghettos in America. Nothing to do with religion. I'm willing to bet that neighborhood is poor and uneducated.
> The West has been meddling for a long long time, if not directly, then indirectly.
> That's not any atheist. Those are the people claiming "enlightenement" and spearheading the atheist movement like Dawkins and his ilk. The difference is that with atheists, there is no moral compass or ultimate reference or authority to confirm or debate their thoughts. Whereas with a religion, we can go back to their scriptures.
> Stephen Hawking