Nicker on 8/9/2010 at 06:01
Quote Posted by Vasquez
Religion is not even SUPPOSED to be about knowledge...
It shouldn't be but I think the clergy would disagree. They insist it is about ultimate knowledge.
Koki on 8/9/2010 at 06:04
Solving world's problems on the Internet, one post at a time.
Except this one.
Briareos H on 8/9/2010 at 06:26
what would Kierkegaard say
Brian The Dog on 8/9/2010 at 07:35
Interesting post, demagogue.
Quote Posted by demagogue
Plenty of religions don't have deities or any supernatural elements at all ... High-path Buddhism, at least Zen (at most there's samsara, but there's some debate to what extent it has to be "supernatural" and to what extent Zen needs it); Taoism; Confucianism definitely doesn't have supernatural elements; Unitarianism; Some version of deism and naturalism ... The deism of Jefferson and Hobbes (whose God was a physical being obeying physical rules); 19th Century theosophy; a 19th Century brand of scientism; humanism...
I do remember my Religious Studies teacher (this is 20 years ago, so things might have changed) saying that religious studies here in the UK is currently unsure as to whether to teach Buddhism, since bits of it assumed that there was a god, and other bits didn't. A religion without a deity is really a philosophy about life. Which is not to say it is less valid, just different.
Quote Posted by demagogue
All this is also aside from the fact that the "natural" vs "supernatural" distinction isn't actually very clear. People can't see electricity but they impute its existence into wires the same way they might impute a spirit or consciousness in a brain or a non-physical being ... We don't call it "supernatural" because we "know" electricity "really" exists, but our brain experiencing it fills in the gap with an imagined experience all the same. Then there was Russell who said the term "physical" may not have any intrinsic meaning but is just a proxy term for things we've discovered. After we discover it we suddenly call it "physical". So actually it isn't a very helpful term in distinguishing the "real" world from a "supernatural" world. Are the branes in string theory natural or supernatural before we know whether they exist or not? And plenty of "supernatural" doctrines have physically-possible manifestations ... other dimensions, your consciousness being reinstated in another brain after your death, possibly higher-order organizations manifesting consciousness -- so to the extent these are "supernatural", it's not necessarily physical theory limiting them, but the fact that they are wildly improbable or not thought about the way physical theory would say they should be. But now "supernatural" isn't really the hook to make these arguments.
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Interesting idea. Both theories of electricity and string theory are theories of nature, they describe how something exists or works in the universe and the theories can be checked against observations. You cannot see them, but sight is only photons causing electrical signals in our brain. If you took away everyone's eyes, these things would still exist. Supernatural means outside of our universe, i.e. there is no way anything from outside our universe can affect anything in it. It may exist, it may not; it may have laws governing its nature, it may not; we do not know because none of our experiments tell us anything about it.
[String theory is an odd one since, AFAIK, none of its results can be checked by experiments. Which makes some scientists wonder about why they're working on it.] I agree that things can get blurred when philosophers of science talk about multi-verses and so on, since depending on how these universes are configured makes it tricky as to whether observations can tell us anything about them.
Kolya on 8/9/2010 at 12:40
Quote Posted by Nicker
Scientists are not science. Thus "Science is far from being innocent in regard to human conflicts. Very far." is nonsense.
Science, a methodical pursuit of understanding, is only responsible for the accuracy of its results, not their uses. It tends to the constructive over the destructive because reason tends that way.
Science is not a force of nature (like trees growing), it doesn't happen without scientists and funding. These scientists can be held responsible for how their results will presumably be used. That includes who they are working for and get their funding from and the methods they use.
This isn't something I just made up or my wishful thinking. Your view of science as a pure quest for knowledge removed from any earthly strings and responsibilities is naive at best and dangerous at worst.
Pardoner on 8/9/2010 at 20:36
I don't know that Nicker is arguing against appropriate regulatory frameworks, or cognizance on the part of the involved. But his earlier point about theorists taking to each other's laboratories was apt, if only because it highlighted that the overwhelming majority of scientific practice is...sort of dry. Shit doesn't blow up.
Not to say that benchwork can't have its thrills, especially if you are deep into a project. Only that they are small and tedious.
DDL on 8/9/2010 at 22:40
Quote Posted by Kolya
Science is not a force of nature (like trees growing), it doesn't happen without scientists and funding.
This is an incredibly narrow viewpoint: rather than treating the scientific method as a
concept, you're treating science as a whole as "a practice carried out by humans in the 21st century using the current financial infrastructure".
I mean, you could pick out the very very worst aspects of any application of science, and the very very worst aspects of any application of religion, and you're always going to get
"COMMON FACTOR: HUMANS"
you could do the same for the best aspects. When you're comparing the two, the more you can isolate the human element from the comparison, the better. Of course, religion is something implicitly dependent on the human element (as far as we know), whereas science really isn't: it's essentially empirical. Sufficiently advanced robots could perform scientific discovery (and in fact, they do).
Chade on 8/9/2010 at 23:54
Quote Posted by Kolya
Science is not a force of nature (like trees growing) ...
... Your view of science as a pure quest for knowledge removed from any earthly strings and responsibilities is naive at best and dangerous at worst.
I will agree with "dangerous at worst", but the practical applications of a great deal of scientific research cannot be predicted in advance, and hence can only be realistically viewed as a "quest for pure knowledge". Good luck choosing between funding proposals by trying to second guess the practical applications, 20 years in advance!
What's more, a great deal of science builds information about things that exist independently of us. Whether it is person A or person B investigating, they will come to similar conclusions eventually, and once discovered, information can be replicated and passed around with near zero cost. So again, it is reasonably realistic to describe some science as "a force of nature". Unless you can control the scientific output of every country on earth.
Kolya on 9/9/2010 at 00:31
Quote Posted by DDL
This is an incredibly narrow viewpoint: rather than treating the scientific method as a
concept, you're treating science as a whole as "a practice carried out by humans in the 21st century using the current financial infrastructure"
Actually I'm treating it just as "a practice carried out by humans" - and that's it. The demand for science to be aware of how it shapes our world is not attached to current day conditions. This is in line with my first post, where I said I wanted to look at science and religion as social constructs or systems.
The independent force that is ascribed to science here, which transcends us as humans, is very much a religious immunisation strategy. It means you can hand over responsibility to some greater cause, be it God or Progress.
