Starboy

Principia, that is exactly the point! Neither does religion. But if one really wanted a good understanding of motivations and prohibition in a person's personality or even that of a people, a logical, reasoning approach based on verifiable facts seems to me a vastly superior approach to one based on ancient outdated concepts.

An excellent example of this is the current US campaign against "evil". Can you tell me that this approach will make things better? Ca'mon, get real, this is the problem, people are thinking religiously and it is unreal.

Starboy

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

To understand why Creationism is still going strong here in the U.S, we must be cognizant of the the many different factors contributing to its popularity. They are, IMHO,

1. CULTURAL.
Living here in the the Suburbs of Boston, we don't have the multitudes of rabid Fundies that so many on this board deal with in other parts of the country. We do, however, have millions of, on the whole, apathetic, uninvolved, cafeteria Christians.
While these types often view Fundamentalists as semiilliterate backwoods rubes, they are still amazingly susceptible to the creationist arguements.
They hold, deep in their hearts, a "cultural Christianity". They are uninterested in particular dogmas, yet cling to their Church tenaciously.
They often feel guilty that they're somehow "not Christian enough", and, even if they don't agree with the creationist agenda, they are loathe to oppose it for fear of being lumped together with the "intelectuals" and "atheistic scientists", for whom they have such a deep mistrust.
The Creation/Evolution debate is, like all other issues in American life, divided into 3 camps.
A. Those who are on a Gawd endorsed Crusade to bring America "back to Christ", and destroy the evil works of the Satanic Evolutionists".
B. Those, such as many of us, who are equally committed to keeping primitive religious superstitions from warping the minds of our schoolchildren, or at least keeping up the vaunted wall of Church State Seperation.
C. John Q. Public, {the overwhelming majority} whose interest in anything other than the Red Sox scores and who got voted off the island is sketchy at best, nonexistent at worst. These folks also tend to be the "Cultural Christians" I discussed above. Combine their ignorance and apathy with 2 cups of guilt, sprinkle liberally with anti intelectualism, season with just a hint of emotionalism, and you get...voila! "Evolution is just a theory!"
We have to recognize that, because of the abysmal state of science education in the schools, many ordinary folks can actually be swayed by emotional arguements such as "you don't REALLY think you came from a monkey, do you?", or the ever popular "If we came from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys"
2. EDUCATIONAL:
The other posters have done an exemplary job adressing this issue, so I won't add too much.
In my experience, the schools do a terrible job in actually teaching basic scientific concepts.
The intricacies of the Scientific Method are dumbed down to ensure that everyone "gets it".
Experimentation and new ideas are eschewed in favour of rote memorization of basic facts. The result is students who believe in evolution, but much in the same way that many theists believe in God. They can't defend their beliefs,
they often display an almost blind faith that evolution is true, they are utterly clueless about the modern evidence for it, and when some Hovind type comes by and dazzles them with big words and "scientific evidence for creationism" they are truly impressed, even if the "facts" are either distortions or outright lies.
In short, our schools are turning out Agnostic Evolutionists! Speaking from personal experience, even I was made to doubt the fact of evolution just a few years ago, when I allready considered myself atheist!
The difference between myself and my fellow Tewkies, and people in general, I believe, is that I chose to do independent research to discover the facts for myself.
When you consider how mindbogglingly ignorant and self absorbed the average American is, I would actually contend that it's amazing that MORE people aren't ordering Answers in Genesis videos!

Of course, these are by no means the ONLY reasons why Creationism hasn't crawled into a corner and died, but hey, since when is anything so cut and dry that one explanation can accurately describe it?
Just my 1 dollar {Jamaican} worth.
Respect,
HQB

Principia

Right, but the standard argument here is that it becomes a matter of 'faith' on your part that these verifiable facts can reveal personal motivations, inhibitions, or whatever -- and from these facts you can extrapolate criteria for what's good and evil, etc. I am not sure if we agree that science has its inherent limits.
Wait. People think irrationally in these situations. I don't think it's fair to blame religion. After all, can you say any more definitively what the intentions of organized religion are as what the intentions of science are? I got to say it (but I don't like it): but atheists and scientists can be irrational people too...

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

Starboy

Are you trying to say that because science may not be able to provide useful knowledge for a given situation that one should abandon it? Is it your point of view that somehow the holy word works so much better than a scientific approach? Science is more credible not because of faith, but because it has demonstrated on sooooo many occasions that it delivers the goods. I ask you this, does it make more sense to observe, experiment and theorize and test those theories if you wish to understand something or to consult the holy book? But in the religious point of view consulting the holy book over getting the facts is exactly what is advocated. Anything else is not religious. This is exactly the point! We live in an age where that kind of thinking doesn’t make sense.

Principia are you religious?

Of course people make mistakes, but that is not what I am talking about. What I am talking about is what makes sense to use for guiding your life in this day and age. Information based on actual verifiable testable knowledge or something written two thousand years ago using concepts that have no relation what so ever to how we now understand our surroundings. Because the people in the White house use the bible as guidance and have a religious point of view, that is exactly why they view the current situation using such an unproductive concept as evil. Do not get me wrong, I do not doubt that religious people mean well, but if their approach is fundamentally flawed because it is the result of beliefs with no basis in reality, I say so what. This may have been a good excuse in the first century when people didn’t know any better, but in this day and age running your life based on supernatural religion, especially Christianity is just plain stupid.

Starboy

Principia

OK. Here's a good place to start. Notice what you say is that science is more credible because of its deliverables. But what you need is not what science had delivered, but what science will deliver. Neither science nor religion, it seems to me, can promise any knowledge with certainty. And for sure, there is a realm of knowledge that is out of range of scientific analysis. I mean, do we or do we not agree on that? See, people used to say that religion works because it appeared to deliver the goods on so many occasions...
Hold on. I think we are in danger of over-simplifying religion. I am aware of religions that hold no strict adherence to some holy text. I am also aware of religions that have holy texts which no longer advocate strict literal readings. In no cases have I heard of a mainstream religion that advocated irrational thinking. Perhaps you can name a few?
Does it matter?
Somebody call an emergency session of Congress... But seriously. I am of the opinion that what informs our moral sensibilities is diverse and multifactorial. If Bush sits in the Oval Office and uses only the Holy Bible as a play book (as opposed to, say, weighing the advice of many, intelligent advisors working under him), then yes, I would find that troublesome. However, what exactly is the alternative you are advocating as a source for, say, informing moral worldviews? Science? That can't be it... I asked you how science could tell us what is right and wrong, and your answer was that religion couldn't do any better.
OK. I am in no mood to defend religion (*) all day and stray into the metaphysical about what constitutes 'reality.' Suffice it to say that I agree with you -- that if a person relied solely on some outdated dogma to run his life, then there is something wrong. But, I don't believe it is just that simple.

EDIT: For one thing that seems to go unsaid, the role of religion in people's live actually do evolve. I don't see how anyone can argue that all organized religions have the same role as when they were originally founded.

EDIT: (*) My actual goal is to stop people from making science the next dogmatic religion...

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

Butters

This is true, however, it points out the strength of science. If you are following the scientific method in trying to answer questions, you can not be irrational forever. Science is self correcting.
Religion on the other hand is the study of something that has not been shown to exist outside of the human imagination, cannot be tested or falsified, and therefore can never give an answer that all people will agree on.

Starboy

Are you advocating that we keep religion around because even though it is discredited it may be useful in the future? Your point is not clear.

This other realm of knowledge that you speak of that is out of the range of scientific analysis, it sounds very familiar. OHHHH, you mean fantasy! So you are advocating that we base our lives on fantasy. Living life in a fantasy may be fine for you but I would like something with more substance to it. Besides, anyone living in a fantasy world is considered irrational if not downright loony.

And you are right, people used to say that religion works, but that was because they didn’t have anything better. After all, the supernatural is a very powerful concept, not only can it explain everything that has happened, but it is also capable of explaining everything that has not happened, will never happen and could never happen.

But there is hope for you. You seem to understand that explaining things using the supernatural is not how it is done anymore. If you could just take one more step in the natural direction maybe you would figure out that we live in the natural world, that the natural is all that anyone can know about and that explaining natural phenomena using mechanisms based on other natural phenomena has got a great future ahead of it. You may also come to figure out that trying to know the unknowable is a fools errand, and definitely irrational.

Just in case, I do make and understand the distinction between the unknown and the unknowable.

Aux contraire, the vast majority of religions do advocate irrational thinking. They just don’t come right out and say it openly. Convincing followers to accept supernatural explanations for events that can be explained naturally is advocating irrational thinking. What other way is there to see it? In this day and age, it IS irrational to accept a supernatural explanation when there are natural explanations that account for the facts. What is going on with these religions? There are several possibilities: The advocates of these religions are 1) frauds, 2) deluded, 3) ignorant, 4) stupid, or 5) just practicing a quaint but superfluous social tradition like yodeling. **Tweak**

Perhaps you may respond with; but there are religions that do not advocate supernatural explanations over natural ones. I will agree with that, but they do not concern me, and are very much in the minority. The religions that concern me (which accounts for most of them) are the irrational ones, such as the religion that has a death grip on the US (Christianity).

Maybe, maybe not, it depends on how irrational you are.

Principia, consider the possibility that we are not children of god. That thinking of human behavior in terms of good and evil is a useless idea. That the idea that the plight of mankind is being caused by a long-standing battle between god and the devil is well, JUST STUPID!

Now picture this, we are animals just like all the other animals on the planet. We have complex social behavior that is the product of millions of years of evolution. And that by studying human and animal evolution and behavior, as well as our physical makeup, how we work and so forth, we could actually gain useful knowledge to help us deal with depression, sexual predation, infidelity, aggression, hate, marriage, divorce, teenagers (some things may be beyond our understanding), child rearing, grief and so forth. A good many of these are classified by the superstitious using useless terms such as good and evil. In my opinion, science can do way, way, way, way and even more way better than religion.

I am having some trouble trying to get at what you are trying to do. It appears that you wish to keep the moral structure of religion (Christianity?) and perhaps its traditions and writings, but you want to treat them completely metaphorically. That you want to use this as the base of knowledge on how humanity should live life, is that the idea?

Sorry, but I just don’t see how taking historical babblings and interpreting them metaphorically is the way to go. Call me silly, but basing an ethos on tested and consistent information seems much more sensible. Maybe not perfect, but I can’t help but think that its chances of success are infinitely better than the first course of action. Also by using objective reality such as nature to provide the information instead of relying on some group of “holy” people to provide the metaphorical interpretations, it might be less prone to the abuses of power that litter the history of religion.

Do not get me wrong. I do not advocate a centralized ethos created and controlled by some body or government. That is the last thing I want. What I would like to see is for people to shake off the superstitions of religion and come to realize that there is another way to gain understanding and knowledge about the human condition.

Starboy

Principia

I agree. Supernatural religions may be giving up explanatory power, but I highly doubt that they will or should just go away. But that does not mean that we should replace supernatural concepts with another more 'natural' one that also explains everything that has happened, that has not happened, will never happen and could never happen.
Be careful here. My point was that no religion outright advocates irrational thinking. I highly doubt you can say for sure that there is some conspiracy to hide an advocacy of irrational thinking. I mean if you they don't outright say it, how do you know their intent? Earlier, I pointed out to you that religions do in fact evolve over time to accomodate changing social dynamics, scientific knowledge, etc. Now, it may be true that religious beliefs tend to resist acceptance of new concepts that are against dogma. But the same could also be said of science, for instance. Conservatism does not imply irrationality. Nor is it endemic to certain cultures.
OK. This is a new concept for me. How else should we think about deviant behavior? Or are you advocating that there is no good or evil? So, in other words, we ought to make no subjective, value judgments about events in the world that affect us ...
See, here is the element of faith. Science could explain all these things ... But you don't know this for certain, here and now. My point is that we are currently living in a state of partial ignorance -- perhaps the human race will always be in a state of ignorance. In the absence of knowledge about such things as what makes us tick, what makes the universe tick, etc... what can a person do to fill in the void? Let us return to the example I asked you about: how does science tell you what is right and wrong? Suppose that evolution explains, say, predatory sexual behavior. What then? Do we forgive rapes and plead insanity? What if evolution can't explain aberrant sexual behavior. What then? In particular, what happens in the meantime?
No. I am not sure where you are getting this notion that I am defending religiion for the sake of religion. I am defending the right of a person to exercise his best judgment in answering these unknown (and possibly unknowable) questions in any rational manner that suits him. And, in certain realms of knowledge-seeking, I firmly believe science has its inherent limits. You seem to want to declare science as an overall superior epistemology...
Unless your convictions can be demonstrated convincingly, it seems to me that there will always be a reason to apply other ways of understanding the world rather than through some positivistic approach. The problem here is that militant people tend to be so certain of their own approaches that they often fail to recognize their limitations.

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

Starboy

Principia, you play with words. Tobacco companies don’t advocate cancer, and fast food companies don’t advocate obesity. So what if they do not state it explicitly. Tobacco companies do promote cancer and fast food companies do promote obesity. There was a time when they were unaware of it, but they know of it now. How can the current actions of these companies be dismissed as just some honest mistake? They do not advocate it directly but they knowingly promote it through advertisements and inducements. A morally operated company would have shutdown production as soon as they were convinced of its dangers, but instead they ignore it. Blatant disregard is tacit approval. This type of behavior is so typically Christian it makes me sick.

Accepting supernatural over natural explanations is irrational. If you claimed that an angel formed the characters on your monitor screen and it stopped working, and based on this supernatural explanation of how your monitor worked your next step was to atone for your sins so the angel would come back and start forming characters. I would say you were out of touch with reality. If the guy in the office next to you had the same problem, but he resorted to using natural explanations for how the monitor worked as a guide to concocting a remedy and his monitor started working again and you still persisted in your atonement and your monitor still didn’t work and you continued to hold with your supernatural explanation then you would not only be irrational but certifiable. This is what I mean when I speak of accepting supernatural over natural explanations. This is what supernatural religion does every day and twice on Sunday. They may have not known any better in the past, but they know better now. It is a deceit. It is the promotion of irrationality. Principia, surely you are aware of the history between science and religion. Religion cannot claim ignorance. They know science is here. They know that accepting supernatural over natural explanations is irrational, but just like the tobacco companies, it is too late. The only moral thing for supernatural religion to do is close shop and blow away in the wind.

I can’t help but think that you have a very different concept of the natural than I do. What do you mean when you use the words natural and supernatural?

Starboy

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Principia

And I do not disagree that in certain areas accepting natural explanations over supernatural ones is reasonable. But to extrapolate this to using 'natural' or even 'scientific' explanations to everthing? Starboy, I honestly don't care how you wish to portray religion. I mean, this is what, the umpteenth strawman you have erected in the name of some anti-religious campaign? If you honestly believe that religious people are intentionally promoting irrationality, then the burden is on you. Tobacco companies were caught red-handed with actual documents that intended to hide the addictive effects of nicotine and carcinogens in tobacco smoke from the public. Where is the equivalent evidence from organized mainstream religions? There is your interpretation of religious intents, and then there is what is actually demonstrable. What happened to the application of the scientific method?
And the tobacco companies adapt -- they succumb to court orders; they change their marketing strategies; they change their PR. In a similar manner organized religions also adapt. Here is where I find the important message in your analogy. The supernaturalists may happily give ground to the naturalists because they can always cling on to the unknown or unknowable.
That's an interesting sentiment. What informed you of the 'moral thing' to do here?
Ok, Starboy. It is possible that we are talking past each other here. I rather thought that my points were clear regardless of definitional matters. We can go into the demarcation of 'natural' vs. 'supernatural' if you want, but my original goals were to discuss more mundane matters concerning the role of science in social dynamics.

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>