Hypothesis: the more educated you are the less likely you are to be religious - by SubJeff
heywood on 2/2/2012 at 11:20
Quote Posted by Nicker
The Aristotelian model being enthusiastically endorsed by the Church. In which case the Church was claiming it's own science to be superior. The "scientists" ranged against Galileo were just papal attack dogs. Galileo only recanted after he was shown the instruments of torture, the inquisition's telescopes into the human soul. He lived under house arrest for the rest of his life. Are you going to tell me that the College of Astronomers enforced that?
Sorry but your objection is just a semantic distraction.
I made two points there that I think are valid:
First point - Aristotelian science, which the church defended during the Roman Inquisition, was not rooted in religion. Neither was the Copernican model contrary to religion.
Second point - The church's attack on Enlightenment leaders (astronomers, philosophers, reformist theologians, and free thinkers in general) had little or nothing to do with defending the Bible or Christian beliefs. It had everything to do with protecting the power and authority of the church which had been seriously under threat since the reformation.
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In other words in might be all an illusion. But if that's true then science still gives us the most reliable description of our shared hallucination because we do have a great deal of commonality in our perception of "reality", as malleable as that reality may be.
Superstitious and arbitrary thinking can only compound the misunderstanding of a dubious reality, denying us even the hope of understanding our delusional state.
Plus science delivers the goods.
So no, it's not just "a preference". Even in uncertainty science is still the superior choice.
No argument really. I was just making the (pedantic) point to faetal that where science meets an end point, technically anything goes.
faetal on 2/2/2012 at 11:21
Quote Posted by heywood
Jay, faetal,
I think I need to make something clear in case it didn't come across in my post. I'm an agnostic and don't believe in God. I was trying to play along and answer the question with the best justification I could think of why someone would.
Moving on...
Already noted. I'm responding to your devil's advocatism, not your agnosticism.
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If the universe did start with a singularity, then anything "before" is undefined. I think you probably know that because of your comment on causality. Our laws of physics may not apply. Anything we know from science may not apply. It's a blank slate. There could be 11-dimensional branes, 25-dimensional bubbles, rainbows and unicorns, heaven, hell, whatever.
Seeing as how our perception of time follows the direction of entropy, and that the ideas around the big bang follow that time also compresses towards the beginning, the idea of anything "before" that point aren't necessarily valid (my theoretical physics is a few years out of date, so someone correct me if I'm off).
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Any preference for one explanation over another is just that - a preference. When there's no basis for claiming our physical laws apply and no ability to observe, any statement for or against any possibility is without merit.
This is one of the attractions and weaknesses of the Big Bang theory - it's infinitely compatible with any ideas of creation.
Including any I decide I make up on the spot right now. They are all equally plausible and all equally ridiculous. Hence why I wouldn't pick one to base my life views around. That said, at least the cosmological ones are based on good science and aren't emotional or anthropomorphic, so I'd say there's more to them than just filling in the gaps in knowledge
per se.
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Got that. But really, from a strictly rational point of view, the universe arising spontaneously from nothing is no more or less valid than any other possibility. I think it's OK to have certain preferences for one explanation over another, but they are just preferences.
The universe arising from nothing is an extrapolation from solid science. Supernatural explanations are just blatant anthropomorphic placeholders devised by ancient scholars in the absence of anything solid. I don't think they have equal merit at all. For a start, there are numerous conditions for falsification of the cosmology hyptheses. God just is or isn't and there's nothing that will ever disprove him, so it's not open to the same conditions.
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You're heading towards the anthropic principle, which I don't care for because it's basically a philosophical wank that gets whipped out as a substitute for seeking scientific explanations for unlikely occurrences.
It's the Goldilocks conundrum. The universe seems to exquisitely crafted because were it not, then we would not be here to see it. It's purely philosophical, but unless you can actually find fault with it, it remains a good general precept (note, not nuclear argument bomb) to base our puddle bias on.
faetal on 2/2/2012 at 11:22
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
There's a hypothesis that altruism is an evolved trait that works well for social species where it would be reciprocated and/or demonstrate suitability as a mate (a sort of social equivalent to a peacocks' economically unsound tail feathers.)
That we then feel the need to extend altruism and empathy to people on the other side of the world when it might not seem likely that reciprocation or mating may result would be yet another example of evolution being cackhanded.
But those are the cards we're dealt.
None. If you want to go live in a ditch in the middle of nowhere and wait for a rapist to steal your apples then help yourself.
I may have misunderstood the point you're trying to make.
This is not how evolution works. The genes don't "know" what is useful to an individual, they are just the result of what has been successful over time. See my lengthy response to Beleg.
(This is a great discussion. Nothing like a good religion debate to take your mind off of writing a thesis.)
jay pettitt on 2/2/2012 at 11:33
Which bit isn't how evolution works?
faetal on 2/2/2012 at 11:36
Quote Posted by heywood
No argument really. I was just making the (pedantic) point to faetal that where science meets an end point, technically anything goes.
This is where something which isn't
proof, but does discredit religion arises. Religion started as an explanation of the workings of the universe, the reason for existence - even the weather, famine, disease etc..
As science has answered more questions, so religion has shrunk back just past the boundaries, all the while stating that "this was always so", but it wasn't. Don't tell me for a second that if science starting retracting its theories one by one in light of divine intervention overturning evidence that this wouldn't be a highly compelling reason to assume that religion is correct to the exclusion of science. Yet the reverse is happening, religion miraculously manages to be the exact same shape as the parts we don't know at all times, fingers go deeper in ears and tunes hummed ever more loudly.
Like I say, it is not *proof* of anything, but it is very suspect, don't you agree?
faetal on 2/2/2012 at 11:41
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Which bit isn't how evolution works?
"That we then feel the need to extend altruism and empathy to people on the other side of the world when it might not seem likely that reciprocation or mating may result would be yet another example of evolution being cackhanded."
Humanity began in Africa. The greatest genetic diversity in humans is still within Africa as the original migratory populations resulted in the far flung humans we've all become. Showing altruism to someone from the other side of the world is just as beneficial in genetic terms as someone from Kenya being altruistic to someone else from Kenya. The genes which conferred altruistic behaviour are universally useful, in fact, because genetic diversity in breeding has positive benefits in disease resistance and genetic vigour, it can be argued that there are direct benefits to gaining reproductive advantages far from home. Evolution is rarely cack-handed due to it having literally all the time in the world to throw mud against the wall and see what sticks.
jay pettitt on 2/2/2012 at 11:56
The point I'm trying to get at is this one:
(
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20011764nRA2J3Sn)
I'm not sure that genes know about game theory.
Also, me suggesting that evolution is cackhanded (witness the human back and the inside out retina) isn't intended as an ethical or moral judgement. I don't think it follows that we shouldn't be altruistic to distant people or puppies just because the instinct to do so is an accident.
Nicker on 2/2/2012 at 12:02
Quote Posted by heywood
First point - Aristotelian science, which the church defended during the Roman Inquisition, was not rooted in religion. Neither was the Copernican model contrary to religion.
If the the geocentric model was not rooted in religion it grew like a weed there. Your objection is a repeated attempt at distraction.
The heliocentric model was not just a competing theory, it was
heresy. Galileo was tried by the inquisition for denying scripture - he wasn't just blind-sided by a hostile peer review panel.
Quote Posted by heywood
Second point - The church's attack on Enlightenment leaders (astronomers, philosophers, reformist theologians, and free thinkers in general) had little or nothing to do with defending the Bible or Christian beliefs. It had everything to do with protecting the power and authority of the church which had been seriously under threat since the reformation.
Is that a
no true Scotsman fallacy I smell?
The Church determined what being a Christian meant and it is not possible to separate their political machinations from the divine justifications that informed them. The trial of Galileo was a shot across the bow of the Enlightenment, in defence of both the temporal and spiritual authority of Rome, which were one in the same.
faetal on 2/2/2012 at 12:09
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
The point I'm trying to get at is this one:
(
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20011764nRA2J3Sn)
I'm not sure that genes know about game theory.
Also, me suggesting that evolution is cackhanded (witness the human back and the inside out retina) isn't intended as an ethical or moral judgement. I don't think it follows that we shouldn't be altruistic to distant people or puppies just because the instinct to do so is an accident.
Genes don't know about game theory, but game theory can be used to describe how behavioural evolution can arise from a purely genetic basis. This was also something strongly supported by Dawkins btw. Tribality and kin preference works for protecting your own genes on the basis that a relative will also contain similar genes (~50% per child or sibling, ~25% per grandchild/cousin etc..), but this hardly helps with reproductive success, since breeding with those who are genetically similar increases the risk of homozygous genetic defects and lowers overall disease and parasite resistance to boot. A lot of misinterpretation of science comes from homing in on one part of the picture with the mistaken notion that it precludes others.
Beleg Cúthalion on 2/2/2012 at 12:15
@jay, Nicker, faetal: I don't know why I emphasize the fact of a reference community when you guys try to override it with altruism being inherent to "social species" and everything. That's why I spelled it out: Altruism inside a community is a mere trade and thus IMHO not altruism in a relevant philosophiocal/ethical way of thinking. At least it's not the "real deal" if you get my point.
Quote Posted by faetal
In any animal society, there is an equilibrium between doves and hawks which naturally favours doves because if everyone is fucking everyone else over, no one benefits. This is decades old evolutionary psychology. It's not really contested by anything other than religious indignation that they own morality.
Left aside that I strongly doubt that this equilibrium in behaviour belongs to the realm of psychology... (Why should anything inside the doves
promote letting themselves be killed? At least that's why the word implies to me, an equilibrium without active participation in its manipulating is of course more or less self-evident.) If religion actively refers to this difference between altruism in exchange for other things (--> reference community) and free-will altruism if we'd use that term for now, how can you claim that religion unjustly felt responsible for the free-will ethics part? Especially if you confirm my assumption by saying:
Quote Posted by faetal
It is a trade system, but not on the scale you're predisposed to think. The trade off for altruism is better reproductive prospects and success. At least, that's what it *was* when our species came about.
Better reproductive prospects? That
is the effing refercence community I was talking about. All you said refered to the environment of the individual, except for the issue of a brain being (genetically) biased in moral decisions, as it were. But this bias isn't there in the first place, and even if we assume for a moment that the "reference community morality" (i.e. "I don't kill you idiot because you might still be of value to the community") became physical in any way (e.g. genetical), it would still be different from the free-will morality that religions and philosophy deal with. And why would that same brain not object to e.g. violence against farm animals which is part of self-preservation just like violent punishment?
The "immediate danger" was merely an illustrive description of a conflict of interests, but I'll try to articulate myself in a more precise way.
Quote Posted by faetal
The science is all there - it's really not a mystery which is up for debate. Religious people just have a hard time accepting this if they view their belief as being the foundation of why they are a good person. It's called cognitive dissonance, which again, is very well studied.
And here we go again with the killer phrases. The thing is, the "supernatural" legitimation for ethical rules transcending the reference community doesn't have to be supernatural (and thus religious), it just has to overlap the natural systems of justification (like reproduction, preserving a great gene pool, preserving knowledge necessary for survival in the broadest sense etc.).
Quote Posted by Nicker
I'd say history proves the opposite. On balance, our altruistic and communal instincts outstrip our selfish impulses. If they didn't we would still be solitary carnivores and all the benefits of society (preserving knowledge, sharing risks and benefits, collective action etc.) would have been denied to us.
I'd just say that the solitary carnivore thing quickly runs out of an economic basis. If a tribe could annex another one and profit from its knowledge, hunting grounds etc. with a snip of the fingers, what could stop it? But waging a war just isn't economically reasonable. That still isn't altruistic in the ethical sense. The altruistic elements inside the reference community of are of course dominant because they're here to guarantee survival. But it do they actually extend beyond it?
Quote Posted by Nicker
Is that a
no true Scotsman fallacy I smell?
No, this is one:
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The Church determined what being a Christian meant and
it is not possible to separate their political machinations from the divine justifications that informed them. The trial of Galileo was a shot across the bow of the Enlightenment, in defence of both the temporal and spiritual authority of Rome, which were one in the same.
Heck, Martin Luther argued against certain churchly practise and still lots of peasants started raiding churches and burning things down because they had the opinion that "something was proven to be unjust, so let's have revenge". How hard is it to imagine that Galileo for instance wasn't told to shut down only because there was some disagreement with a line in the Bible?
