I'm interested in lots of things. I don't treat those people who do those things seriously as a bunch of misguided and deluded idiots.
At least, I don't if I want answers to my questions.
Err. Where on earth have I done that?
Throughout this thread. If you're struggling for examples, I suggest you go back and read your comments regarding your distaste for any 'grab' by believers onto what you think is the realm of science, the idea of a personal relationship with God as 'anathema', and that you've even managed to piss off other atheists.
You can think these things. You can even say them, but you're not making friends when you do. And again, I absolutely maintain that while you might write 'about' Christianity, your approach will never allow you to write a Christian (or anyone of faith) convincingly.
I don't believe Christians and other people of faith are another species so I'm reasonably happy that I can depict someone who is a church-going Christian. Nor do I regard Christians as as a bunch of misguided and deluded idiots. I do think that when religion strays from the personal into describing how the universe was created it is in error.
The idea of a personal relationship with God is anathema to me, but I accept others see things differently.
Well, since it's part of my day job to write from the POV of another species, I'm sticking with my original comment. You view us as strange curiosities, and of course you regard us as misguided, if not deluded, because we believe something so fundamentally different and orthogonal to your own mindset. Honesty, please.
Criticising science because it can't answer "Why" makes no sense to me.
That's because it's not a criticism. It's an observation not a criticism.
Just as it's not a criticism of the discipline of history that it doesn't explain supernovas.
If some historian were to come along and say that because history doesn't explain supernovas, therefore there is no explanation of supernovas, it would be a criticism of that historian.
The view that there is no answer to why questions is a perfectly valid philosophical view. But it's not a scientific view.
Criticising science because it can't answer "Why" makes no sense to me.
Who has done so?
This was the comment I was referring to.
No it wasn't. Because I posted it after your post. In fact, I quoted your post in that comment. So either you have a time machine or precognition, or you're confused.
I read this as a criticism because it implies that there are limits to what science can understand about the formation of the universe. I don't agree that there are limits.
If you think it implies that there are limits then I think you're missing my point. There are no questions that science can frame that are beyond the competence of science to answer. But that doesn't mean that there aren't questions that can be framed within philosophy.
It's no criticism of science to point out that it can't frame or answer questions in cultural anthropology.
But you've earlier said you don't think it's a criticism of science that it can't answer why questions, because you think not everything has a why answer. It's one position to say that there are no limits to what science can answer, and another position to say that there are questions science can't answer because they don't have answers. I think you're mixing the two together in your mind. And if you think that science can't answer them because they don't have answers, then you think they don't have answers for some non-scientific reason.
I don't believe Christians and other people of faith are another species so I'm reasonably happy that I can depict someone who is a church-going Christian. Nor do I regard Christians as as a bunch of misguided and deluded idiots. I do think that when religion strays from the personal into describing how the universe was created it is in error.
The idea of a personal relationship with God is anathema to me, but I accept others see things differently.
Well, since it's part of my day job to write from the POV of another species, I'm sticking with my original comment. You view us as strange curiosities, and of course you regard us as misguided, if not deluded, because we believe something so fundamentally different and orthogonal to your own mindset. Honesty, please.
I don't view you as strange curiosities, or at least no more than any human is a strange curiosity. I do regard you as misguided, if not deluded, but I don't think you're idiots.
However, you have taken against me and I don't think anything I say will alter your opinion. So that's that.
I don't believe Christians and other people of faith are another species so I'm reasonably happy that I can depict someone who is a church-going Christian. Nor do I regard Christians as as a bunch of misguided and deluded idiots. I do think that when religion strays from the personal into describing how the universe was created it is in error.
The idea of a personal relationship with God is anathema to me, but I accept others see things differently.
Well, since it's part of my day job to write from the POV of another species, I'm sticking with my original comment. You view us as strange curiosities, and of course you regard us as misguided, if not deluded, because we believe something so fundamentally different and orthogonal to your own mindset. Honesty, please.
I don't view you as strange curiosities, or at least no more than any human is a strange curiosity. I do regard you as misguided, if not deluded, but I don't think you're idiots.
However, you have taken against me and I don't think anything I say will alter your opinion. So that's that.
I don't view you as strange curiosities, or at least no more than any human is a strange curiosity. I do regard you as misguided, if not deluded, but I don't think you're idiots.
However, you have taken against me and I don't think anything I say will alter your opinion. So that's that.
Was that a flounce....??
More of a desperate attempt to end the bloody dialogue.
I do believe, to use your phrase, "For all X, science can (or should be able to) do X." Rook thinks I am elevating science into something it isn't. I think he is imposing an unnecessary limit on science.
Karl Popper would be annoyed with my asking this question: @Colin Smith , what exactly is it that you think science is?
I do believe, to use your phrase, "For all X, science can (or should be able to) do X." Rook thinks I am elevating science into something it isn't. I think he is imposing an unnecessary limit on science.
Karl Popper would be annoyed with my asking this question: @Colin Smith , what exactly is it that you think science is?
For me, it's the means of answering everything there is worth knowing about the universe.
For me, it's the means of answering everything there is worth knowing about the universe.
Got it. From that we can extrapolate a couple things about you.
1. You are probably not a scientist. More than that, you are probably not generally scientifically inclined in terms of knowledge or training. It is even quite possible that you are an idiot.
2. You are probably a zealot. Science is the one true thing to believe in, and anybody who doesn't use science for everything is doing it wrong. Which is funny, considering that you can't do science even a little bit. It is, however, a lot less funny than it is potentially annoying.
My invocation of Karl Popper was a warning to anybody even mildly knowledgeable about science that my question was actually a suggestion to think a little bit more than you appear to about your faith (in science). Instead you just jihad-ed your way straight into my maw.
Fuck off, child. Your suggestion to learn about believers is ridiculous when you don't even know about your own faith. You disgust me.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Yes, that's exactly why I go see my 83-year-old mother every month. ::rolling eyes so hard I think I'm spraining something::
Of course you can't. You have endless energy to blather on about things that you feel might make you look like how you imagine yourself. But you lack the simple scientific resolve to face my observations. QED.
I do believe, to use your phrase, "For all X, science can (or should be able to) do X." Rook thinks I am elevating science into something it isn't. I think he is imposing an unnecessary limit on science.
Karl Popper would be annoyed with my asking this question: @Colin Smith , what exactly is it that you think science is?
For me, it's the means of answering everything there is worth knowing about the universe.
I think I'd expand that a bit. It's a means of making every effort to find an objective answer to everything, whether it's worth knowing or not!
But the disciplines of science should not sayi something is so, unless the answer is objective. In those cases, the answer remains: don't know yet, even if we know three-quarters of it.
And yes that's a bit too long.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Yes, that's exactly why I go see my 83-year-old mother every month. ::rolling eyes so hard I think I'm spraining something::
Subjectively 'love' does feel like that. Objectively it's something different.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Yes, that's exactly why I go see my 83-year-old mother every month. ::rolling eyes so hard I think I'm spraining something::
Subjectively 'love' does feel like that. Objectively it's something different.
Objectively, getting some guy to stick around has nothing to do with my love for my mother.
Total tangent - thanks to Bishop's Finger for the mention of tomato soup which spoke very much to my condition at the moment I came across it. Having partaken, I feel much better than I have been feeling on an unsatisfactory day afflicted with the sort of lurgi that strikes teachers on the day after term ends, when the stress lifts.
In that case our commitment to rationality has to be provisional.
Yes. Rationality is preferred because it has a pretty good track record of providing answers and explanations when compared to irrationality, which has a track record pretty close to random chance. It's not perfect, however, and can fall prey to our own expectations and lack of experience. For example:
There has been eternal infinity of creation to now. There has always been time; tock following tick following tock.
That's rational.
Implicit here is the idea that time happens relatively uniformly, because that's how we typically experience it. This is because we don't have everyday experience with moving at relativistic speeds, otherwise it would seem "rational" to us that time moves differently depending our relative velocity, or that things which happen in sequence in one frame of reference (e.g. "tock following tick") may happen simultaneously (toick) or in reverse order (tick following tock) from a different frame of reference.
Still waiting on an explanation for what "outside time" means, especially for our usual understanding of what it means for something to exist.
FFS - do you, @Colin Smith think science has anything to say about pre-time causation?
Not sure what you mean by "pre-time causality" here. Usually causality means a change over time, so it's unclear to me what it means in the absence of time. Or what "change" would even mean in such a context. Clarification.
This is all the explanation of love I need
[link to an entertainment source]
Yes, this proves my point rather well.
The hypotheses included in that puff piece have some very believable aspects. There are even small parts that are indeed systematically validated. However, I bet you a trillion dollars that if you asked any of the scientists cited in the source material, the overall construct is what they might call "interesting" and "quite possibly descriptive" but they would not ever assert that it was "all the explanation needed". Because they know what they are talking about, and you are a poster child for Dunning-Kruger Effect. And you're annoying as fuck about it.
If you think it implies that there are limits then I think you're missing my point. There are no questions that science can frame that are beyond the competence of science to answer. But that doesn't mean that there aren't questions that can be framed within philosophy.
It's no criticism of science to point out that it can't frame or answer questions in cultural anthropology.
But you've earlier said you don't think it's a criticism of science that it can't answer why questions, because you think not everything has a why answer. It's one position to say that there are no limits to what science can answer, and another position to say that there are questions science can't answer because they don't have answers. I think you're mixing the two together in your mind. And if you think that science can't answer them because they don't have answers, then you think they don't have answers for some non-scientific reason.
Apologies for misattributing the quote. Can't find it now.
Re the bit in bold. You're right, my reasons are not scientific. I actually prefer existence to be objectively meaningless. I can still apply any meaning I like to my own existence but a meaningless universe does not require anything of me.
The hypotheses included in that puff piece have some very believable aspects. There are even small parts that are indeed systematically validated. However, I bet you a trillion dollars that if you asked any of the scientists cited in the source material, the overall construct is what they might call "interesting" and "quite possibly descriptive" but they would not ever assert that it was "all the explanation needed". Because they know what they are talking about, and you are a poster child for Dunning-Kruger Effect. And you're annoying as fuck about it.
I didn't say it was all the explanation there could possibly be. I said it was all I needed. By inclination I am a reductionist.
Rationality is preferred because it has a pretty good track record of providing answers and explanations when compared to irrationality, which has a track record pretty close to random chance.
A proponent of irrationality could no doubt point out that any justification of rationality that includes the word 'because' is begging the question. The project of giving reasons to prefer rationality is circular.
Aristotle's observation was that irrationality is functionally identical to just saying nothing. As soon as you start saying things that you want people to believe you're committed to a presumption of rationality.
Which is really just a way of saying that you prefer to stupid everything down to your level. This is fine - we all do it more than we should.
The most helpful thing I could ask of you is for you to stop suggesting that "science" validates the reductionist wishes you assert about reality. Nobody is asking you to agree with the unprovable sky-daddy assertions of others, but please stop ramming your unreasonable hard-on for science into everything.
The arts can not be successfully explained in a scientific way. They are emotional reactions to situations that are in some way unpredictable. I saw a show called Beyond the Fence for instance. The show is a musical about the Greenham Common women. There was another side it. They fed the plots of all the most successful and the highly regarded shows into a computer which came back with a progression that should in theory be perfect. Not a full plot but at certain points certain things should happen. A comedy moment here, a resolution there. To me following the system did not allow the show to breathe and to grow how it wanted. It became a bit stale and predictable.
I do believe, to use your phrase, "For all X, science can (or should be able to) do X." Rook thinks I am elevating science into something it isn't. I think he is imposing an unnecessary limit on science.
So, non-omniscience is an unnecessary limit? Your faith in science is touching. But unfounded. But you are equivocating on the word "criticism". It can mean either censure, or appraisal. RooK was doing appraisal; you take it as a censure. You are misreading him.
Which is really just a way of saying that you prefer to stupid everything down to your level. This is fine - we all do it more than we should.
The most helpful thing I could ask of you is for you to stop suggesting that "science" validates the reductionist wishes you assert about reality. Nobody is asking you to agree with the unprovable sky-daddy assertions of others, but please stop ramming your unreasonable hard-on for science into everything.
He doesn't even have a hard-on for science. He has a hard-on for the word science which he defines in a way no true scientist or philosopher of science would recognize.
The show is a musical about the Greenham Common women. There was another side it. They fed the plots of all the most successful and the highly regarded shows into a computer which came back with a progression that should in theory be perfect. Not a full plot but at certain points certain things should happen. A comedy moment here, a resolution there. To me following the system did not allow the show to breathe and to grow how it wanted. It became a bit stale and predictable.
Sorry. I don't wish to believe in the Christian God or in any god.
Let me put it this way: an ornithologist studies birds; he does not wish to be a bird. ...
No, you came here to use Christians as research subjects for your books, not for a sense of community, nor to explore ideas with which you disagree. I must say that it feels mildly insulting and exploitative, but at least you were open about your purpose on the Ship.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Wow. If anyone was unconvinced by RooK's summation, it really is clear now. You are an idiot.
Probably pleasant for @SusanDoris not to be the dumbest person on this thread anymore.
Apart from @MPaul who was too much of a scaredy-cat to stick around.
"...What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh..."
Well, that's certainly profound. I don't think it really addresses the question, but it has a nice beat.
FFS - do you, @Colin Smith think science has anything to say about pre-time causation?
Not sure what you mean by "pre-time causality" here. Usually causality means a change over time, so it's unclear to me what it means in the absence of time. Or what "change" would even mean in such a context. Clarification.
What do you mean "usually causality means change over time"?
If you mean causality is usually understood as causing something to occur, which implies the existence of time (because otherwise how could we understand it to happen after the cause began it?), then I agree with you.
My question our own little scientismist is an attempt to figure out what he thinks science has to say about that which is not empirically-verifiable, or that which exists outside the boundaries of science.
"...What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh..."
Well, that's certainly profound. I don't think it really addresses the question, but it has a nice beat.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Wow. If anyone was unconvinced by RooK's summation, it really is clear now. You are an idiot.
Probably pleasant for @SusanDoris not to be the dumbest person on this thread anymore.
Apart from @MPaul who was too much of a scaredy-cat to stick around.
Wella bigthank you for that laugh out loud this morning! There was one yesterday too! (LOL smiley required here)
Comments
I don't believe that "pre-time causation" is a thing.
I doubt if he thinks....
YMMV. I'm off to boil up some nice Tomato SOUP.
uncalled for.
Well, since it's part of my day job to write from the POV of another species, I'm sticking with my original comment. You view us as strange curiosities, and of course you regard us as misguided, if not deluded, because we believe something so fundamentally different and orthogonal to your own mindset. Honesty, please.
If you think it implies that there are limits then I think you're missing my point. There are no questions that science can frame that are beyond the competence of science to answer. But that doesn't mean that there aren't questions that can be framed within philosophy.
It's no criticism of science to point out that it can't frame or answer questions in cultural anthropology.
But you've earlier said you don't think it's a criticism of science that it can't answer why questions, because you think not everything has a why answer. It's one position to say that there are no limits to what science can answer, and another position to say that there are questions science can't answer because they don't have answers. I think you're mixing the two together in your mind. And if you think that science can't answer them because they don't have answers, then you think they don't have answers for some non-scientific reason.
I don't view you as strange curiosities, or at least no more than any human is a strange curiosity. I do regard you as misguided, if not deluded, but I don't think you're idiots.
However, you have taken against me and I don't think anything I say will alter your opinion. So that's that.
Well, I did say YMMV.
The SOUP was tasty, BTW.
Was that a flounce....??
More of a desperate attempt to end the bloody dialogue.
....but...but...this is Hell - so, peanuts, anyone? Popcorn? It's nice and hot.....Rat inna Bun? Or onna Stick?
(Let the Disciple of Pratchett understand).
Me neither. Or the b(ol)lock(s) universe.
I am reminded of "the argument" sketch in Monty Python.
Karl Popper would be annoyed with my asking this question:
@Colin Smith , what exactly is it that you think science is?
For me, it's the means of answering everything there is worth knowing about the universe.
Got it. From that we can extrapolate a couple things about you.
1. You are probably not a scientist. More than that, you are probably not generally scientifically inclined in terms of knowledge or training. It is even quite possible that you are an idiot.
2. You are probably a zealot. Science is the one true thing to believe in, and anybody who doesn't use science for everything is doing it wrong. Which is funny, considering that you can't do science even a little bit. It is, however, a lot less funny than it is potentially annoying.
My invocation of Karl Popper was a warning to anybody even mildly knowledgeable about science that my question was actually a suggestion to think a little bit more than you appear to about your faith (in science). Instead you just jihad-ed your way straight into my maw.
Fuck off, child. Your suggestion to learn about believers is ridiculous when you don't even know about your own faith. You disgust me.
A word given by humans to the emotional reward programmed into us by evolution intended to get the male to stick around and help in the raising of progeny.
Can't be arsed to reply.
Yes, that's exactly why I go see my 83-year-old mother every month. ::rolling eyes so hard I think I'm spraining something::
"No, it's not. It's just contradiction...."
But the disciplines of science should not sayi something is so, unless the answer is objective. In those cases, the answer remains: don't know yet, even if we know three-quarters of it.
And yes that's a bit too long.
Subjectively 'love' does feel like that. Objectively it's something different.
Objectively, getting some guy to stick around has nothing to do with my love for my mother.
This is all the explanation of love I need
http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20160212-the-unexpected-origin-of-love
How love might feel for me is completely different but that's not the question.
Ah, but you did reply!
Rat inna Bun? Sossidge onna Stick? Popcorn inna Bag?
O come on - us Dibblers have to eat as well, you know.....
If "What is love" is the question, then this gives the answer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfO2gKE_sAg
Yes. Rationality is preferred because it has a pretty good track record of providing answers and explanations when compared to irrationality, which has a track record pretty close to random chance. It's not perfect, however, and can fall prey to our own expectations and lack of experience. For example:
Implicit here is the idea that time happens relatively uniformly, because that's how we typically experience it. This is because we don't have everyday experience with moving at relativistic speeds, otherwise it would seem "rational" to us that time moves differently depending our relative velocity, or that things which happen in sequence in one frame of reference (e.g. "tock following tick") may happen simultaneously (toick) or in reverse order (tick following tock) from a different frame of reference.
Still waiting on an explanation for what "outside time" means, especially for our usual understanding of what it means for something to exist.
Not sure what you mean by "pre-time causality" here. Usually causality means a change over time, so it's unclear to me what it means in the absence of time. Or what "change" would even mean in such a context. Clarification.
It's the answer to Doc Tor's question, "what is love?" - Link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEXWRTEbj1I
And now I have an ear worm.
Yes, this proves my point rather well.
The hypotheses included in that puff piece have some very believable aspects. There are even small parts that are indeed systematically validated. However, I bet you a trillion dollars that if you asked any of the scientists cited in the source material, the overall construct is what they might call "interesting" and "quite possibly descriptive" but they would not ever assert that it was "all the explanation needed". Because they know what they are talking about, and you are a poster child for Dunning-Kruger Effect. And you're annoying as fuck about it.
Apologies for misattributing the quote. Can't find it now.
Re the bit in bold. You're right, my reasons are not scientific. I actually prefer existence to be objectively meaningless. I can still apply any meaning I like to my own existence but a meaningless universe does not require anything of me.
I didn't say it was all the explanation there could possibly be. I said it was all I needed. By inclination I am a reductionist.
Aristotle's observation was that irrationality is functionally identical to just saying nothing. As soon as you start saying things that you want people to believe you're committed to a presumption of rationality.
Which is really just a way of saying that you prefer to stupid everything down to your level. This is fine - we all do it more than we should.
The most helpful thing I could ask of you is for you to stop suggesting that "science" validates the reductionist wishes you assert about reality. Nobody is asking you to agree with the unprovable sky-daddy assertions of others, but please stop ramming your unreasonable hard-on for science into everything.
So, non-omniscience is an unnecessary limit? Your faith in science is touching. But unfounded. But you are equivocating on the word "criticism". It can mean either censure, or appraisal. RooK was doing appraisal; you take it as a censure. You are misreading him.
He doesn't even have a hard-on for science. He has a hard-on for the word science which he defines in a way no true scientist or philosopher of science would recognize.
Not just predictable, but predicted.
For a man of your education, it was masterful.
Wow. If anyone was unconvinced by RooK's summation, it really is clear now. You are an idiot.
Probably pleasant for @SusanDoris not to be the dumbest person on this thread anymore.
Apart from @MPaul who was too much of a scaredy-cat to stick around.
"...What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more What is love Oh baby, don't hurt me Don't hurt me no more Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh..."
Well, that's certainly profound. I don't think it really addresses the question, but it has a nice beat.
What do you mean "usually causality means change over time"?
If you mean causality is usually understood as causing something to occur, which implies the existence of time (because otherwise how could we understand it to happen after the cause began it?), then I agree with you.
My question our own little scientismist is an attempt to figure out what he thinks science has to say about that which is not empirically-verifiable, or that which exists outside the boundaries of science.
But can you dance to it?