CRasch
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Actually the same phenomena goes down in science when they say things happen by chance ”
Chance in science is really probility in science. The chance of this may happen or that may happen is really what science is about. We try to find the most likely out come.
so
The major problem with science is it takes faith=truth.
I can see why the feel that the illusion of probability gives people false comfort when dealing with the unknown. When you take a probability and make it the absolute truth, it goes against scientific rational thought. Science uses faith as an imaginary deity as evidence of reality.
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
BUt that aside, the fact that faith can be correctly and incorrectly applied (that is one can have faith in something that is real as well as false, in schools of both science and religion) says nothing about the nature of whether a particular faith in a praticular circumstance is false - its a very difficult argument to present that because person A did mathmatical problem B incorrectly they will do all mathmatical problems incorrectly, particularly if you don't establish the nature of their incorrect applications in light of actual evidence - in other words to get away with your original opening statement you would have to establish exactly what it is that religious practioners are perceiving when they apparently designate something as god - just because they may feel good about it doesn't indicate anything, since if god exists it follows logically that one would also feel satisfied in such knowledge anyway ”
When dealing with blind faith (which is the root of most religions) you get information that is not self correcting.
Therefore you see that blind faith is not advocated as the perfectional platform of existence in religion
You don't search for what cause the phenomena, you accept that a deity did it. There is no search for truth when you believe that this deity is your end result when searching for truth.
The perfectional platform is illustrated as the destination after extensive searching
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Actually most people who are born into such settings (I for one was not) reach a critical period when they enter adult hood which determines the level of theistic performance they operate on - this innvolves chllenging many established values etc - hardly what you are alluding too - at the very least the perfect formula for parents to generate a similar level of religious intention in the lives of their children is a bit ambiguous - i think you give such theistic minded parents more credit than what they are actually capable of ”
Funny, statistically speaking, most children at adulthood take on the religion of their parents.
Now you have to establish in what ways the parent actually contributed to that, which requires more than just cursory examination s of statistics
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
You should understand that the moment you tag some philosophical tangent on evolution you are making steps of the same proportion of the faithful - at the very least there is no microbiological evidence for what you are advocating ”
Funny, I thought that the statical studies between the bond of parents and children for many social animals have shown a correlation to following, teaching, and believing what their parents tell them.
This however says absolutely nothing about evolution, which is determined through reductionist theories of microbiology
You think all animals teach their young on how to survive. But we see it more evolved species. You think this has no effect on our predisposition.
How living entities learn things is a complete mystery to the reductionist model of the evolutionists - such things are dealt with in the philosophical aspect of behavioural science however -
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
lol - I guess you would have to qualify yourself by defining advancement ”
Let's take humanity as a whole.
a whole lot of what? In other words what is advancement? Gross capital output? Ipods? Suicide rates? Divorce?
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
How would it be possible to even do the most rudimentary of scientific proceedures unless you had faith that there was order in the universe? ”
If you took the scientific method at its core, we didn't know at the beginning. We don't deem to know the rules of the universe. We come up with theories that best fit the evidence that is presented and tested.
If you didn't have faith that the universe had order you couldn't even come to the conclusion that striking flint causes sparks because there would be no good reason to think that what happens in one instance will happen in another - in other words the very fact that we look for patterns of order in scientific observation indicates a platform of faith
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Self correcting is a proceedure of instituition - you can find evidence of "Boy's clubbing"in peer reviewing - similarly in religious practice you can find applications of constant re-examination - all this is neither intrinsically dependant on "science"or "religion"- it depends on the sincereity of the practioner, something that position in an institutiion tends to corrupt, which is why institutiions need to be internally very self aware ”
This is why in science we share our information openly.
On the contrary information is shared when there is the ability to make money, which falls back on issues of human nature etc (lust greed etc)
It is a self correcting element. We don't expect just one person to test the theories. We have one person who have a theory that shows promise, then it gets tested by our peers, even when the evidence has shown another result.
Problem is that peer testing can be influenced by lust greed etc
Religion take faith to be truth. No testing, no review, no sharing of evidence but to blindly belive. If you don't have faith, you need to try harder. This is not the advancement to find truth?
Its very difficult to advocate any type of knowledge without faith coming in to play some part along the way - and it is very difficult to advocate any knowledge as perfectional if it doesn't innvolve analysis - if you think religion doesn't innvolve analysis you don't have a proper understanding of religion
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Not sure what you are alluding to here ”
That science even challanges its core fundementals. Unlike religion.
You mean to say that science is always open to reform and religion isn't?
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
Every time? Or do you mean sometimes? And even then it gets back to the topic of sincerity vs institutional prestige etc - in other words it is not apparent how science could leave civilisation out of the predictable pitfalls of existence since we tend to navigate courses in to such destinations by the vehicles of greed, lust, anger, etc ”
When those pitfalls deal with blind faith it has shown in history to cause great atrocities in human society. Especially when religius writing advocate hate and discrimination.
Maybe thats why religious principels properly applied leads outside of such blind hate, which becomes even more dangerous when you have a few weapons of mass destruction wired up to your false ego
“ Originally Posted by lightgigantic
So then it raises the question what premises does one use to determine what is illusion and what is real - other wise trying to instigate some "social "revolution for the betterment of society will just be like leaving one dark chamber to enter another ”
How about empirical evidence. Nothing about observed reality "fits together" unless its by means of science.
If you depart from the empirical method, you must choose from an infinite number of metaphysical explanations with no basis to make the choice...except faith.
Then what do you do with obviously existent metaphysical things - like for instance there is no empirical evidence for the existence of people's minds - in other words empricism (what we can directly perceive by our limited senses) certainly doesn't help us when it comes to an analysis of what we are seeing with
