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WSJ Refused To Publish Lawrence Krauss' Response To "Science Proves Religion"
First time accepted submitter Kubla Kahhhn! writes Recently, the WSJ posted a controversial piece "Science Increasingly Makes a Case for God", written by non-scientist Eric Metaxas. Noted astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a simple and clear retort in a letter to the editor, which the WSJ declined to publish, but Richard Dawkins did.
Let me guess, it was written by Oolon Colluphid.
Business folding to the religious as usual. Hope we don't offend anyone by saying their religion and religious leaders are wrong about everything.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
They didn't publish a retort from a respected scientist after publishing a some complete woo by a charlatan.
It's considered good journalistic practice to publish responses or apologies when you fuck up - not that I'm implying that WSJ deserves such high expectations.
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
Note: My philosophy is "when you die, you're dead."
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
"The article [which was printed] was written by the evangelical author Eric Metaxas, and in it, he argued that scientists have determined that life is so improbable it must have been created."
"Krauss concluded [in a letter which was not printed] by writing that '[r]eligious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments do a disservice to both science and religion, and by allowing a Christian apologist to masquerade as a scientist [Wall Street Journal] did a disservice to its readers.'"
They didn't print an opposing and well written view by one of the leading voices in the scientific community on this issue. So the claim here is that the WSJ are biased. But you are right about the yawn. That WSJ article was preaching to the choir and there are plenty of other places to get the counter view.
Thus proving their prejudice. The 'paper of record' should not be prejudiced.
I would now expect nothing less from the WSJ, once it became a sister publication to the Boston Herald or the New York Post or any of the other myriad rag sheets put out by that wonderful, effervescent, owner, Rupert Murdoch.
WSJ = Wall Street Journal(?) for those who don't feel like googling to expand the title.
WSJ, Fox News, CNN, NYT, you name it: they are all about flattering their demographic's preconceived notions about reality.
Alienating your readers/viewers is bad for business. News at 11.
There is no leading voice in the scientific community on the issue. God has nothing to do with science, science only asks questions that have answers.
Athiesm is philosophy, not science.
There is no right of reply or requirement for any journalistic body in the US to print any opposing view point for anything, so why is this newsworthy?
It was bought by Murdoch in 2007 and it's editorial director fired in 2008. Since then, it's just another mouthpiece for conservative Republicans (Murdoch also owns Fox News). The Wall Street Journal purchase was made to make Murdoch's news organizations look respectable.
As is turns out, it was just an expensive suit on a cheap hustler who got lucky enough to get rich with media organizations after inheriting the family business from his father.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
When you publish something controversial (which the original article most certainly was) and take the word of someone who is self-evidently not an expert in the field about which he's writing - you really have to do one of two things:
a) Do careful fact-checking on the article and publish it as 'The Truth'...or...
b) Publish it as an op-ed piece - essentially saying "This is just the opinion of this guy".
This clearly wasn't (a) - so WSJ doesn't have to admit error or look bad in the eyes of the public. However, when accepting op-ed pieces, they need to be acutely aware of bias - and when a well-written response is provided - especially by an expert in the field - it deserves equal coverage...and that's where they failed.
I can actually understand them not wanting to publish this response as a "letter to the editor" kind of thing - but they really *should* commission an author with scientific credentials to write an opposing-view op-ed piece of more substantial weight.
www.sjbaker.org
Talk about stupidity. Major publication editor allows a worthless fluff piece to antagonize and provoke a major religion. Great click-bait, terrible tactical decision making. Now they have controversy on their hands for kicking sand at Atheists for no reason other than... what? A couple of worthless ad-clicks so a loud-mouthed Theist can claim premature victory in a controversial debate over the tangible merits of intangible theorys?
Aren't they owned by News Corp now?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Institutions like the Wall Steet Journal no longer exist to serve meaningful information to people in order to assist in their formation of knowledge, wisdom, or even understanding of the wold around them. Thanks to clenchfist profiteering as a normative model of business in the 21st century we get articles about things that drive advertising revenue and in turn function as a means to consumption, not knowledge. Taking a cursory glance at the WSJ we have 'us stocks drop sharply' 'A Nonprofit Restaurant Falls to the Minimum Wage ' and 'Russian Fund Boss Vanishes '. the wallstreet journal, as does every other news outlet controlled by our modern robberbarons, pedals fear uncertainty and doubt as a model through which products and services are delivered, not practical or even contextual study of matters at hand
actual, useful information about how god is not in fact validated, or even designed to be validated, by science will not be tolerated. There is no product to be consumed or shared in this, and it may in fact be slightly detremental to the seasonal consumption holiday in the united states and other nations to simply tell people there isnt a valid point to be had in adhering to a religeon outside of subjugation. being told that a system of detection, observation and analysis has confirmed a superstition serves to re-enforce a behavior that benefits no one but plutocrats and oligarchs.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It really is tiring to see such incendiary articles posted to slashdot. I mean, whether religious or non, is anyone here hoping to have an intelligent or civil debate on the subject? Aren't you just allowing the editors to prove how well they are doing to their Dice overlords by pointing to a piece such as this and saying "look, 600 comments! think of all the ad-revenue this article must have generated!"
If you want to be religious and non-scientific, do that. Likewise, if you choose to be scientific and non-religious, do that as well. One can also be both or neither, and those are both valid options for how one should live his life, too. However, it serves no purpose but to further degrade the quality of this site when we engage in such a meaningless flame-war, especially when it is generated by such blatant pandering.
Your 'faith' gets restored in Slashdot. Now, off to watching Starship Troopers 3. :-)
ergo unbiased, fair and balanced Op-Ed does not exist there
The reply (with which I agree) is that it's silly to calculate the probability of life out of context when you don't know what context(s) allow life. Take a simpler example. Assume I tell you to pick a random number between 1 and a quadrillion. You pick 709,108,554,989,243. Taken out of context someone can ask, "What are the chances that this exact number would turn up, one in a quadrillion!? They're so slim, this can't be random!" In fact you could have picked any of a much larger set of numbers and the same could be said about all of those. Calculating probabilities on an unknown domain doesn't work.
The absolutely are voices in the scientific community that are quite vocal about keeping the poison of prejudicial religious preconceptions out of scientific pursuits.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Mr Jrauss is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, so whatever his politial leanings, he is in fact qualified to hold an opinion on science; probably more so than Eric Metaxas or a jeering Anonymous Coward.
What prejudice? They have a right to publish whatever they feel like.
I honestly can't tell if you're being ironical, or moronical.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I can agree with that, but do we really want a slashdot summary for every time somebody decides to write a response letter to some op-ed piece? This is just drama, not actual news.
Frankly it's more surprising that a respectable publication, even a right-leaning one like the Wall Street Journal would think it's a good idea to wade into the religion/science "debate" even in its opinion section. Of course it is irresponsible for a newspaper to not publish articulate expert-authored responses to an opinion piece, newspapers have a responsibility to publish responses written by more-famous and more-qualified persons when the response meets the paper's basic standards. But the WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch so I can't say this is a particularly surprising lapse of journalism. (This is hardly first time their editorials have been accused of deliberate bias imposed by the paper, over and above the author's opinion)
In defense of the WSJ, they do seem to keep their bias to the opinions section, which is the appropriate place for it after all.
More interesting will be seeing what the long term effects of Murdoch's influence does to the paper's reputation; in the extreme case it may turn out like Fox News (also owned by Murdoch) and become a punch line to anyone who isn't among their readership. Though I think it's more likely they will successfully navigate the slippery slope, and maintain their position despite having these minor scandals every year or so.
It's a bit depressing, since the editorial in TFA and all their climate nonsense are counterfactual in the fairly literal sense of ignoring and misapplying science and logic in a way that could nominally support any conclusion whatsoever. A newspaper of the WSJ's former caliber should and surely does know better, but such is the state of the american press in 2015.
completely different animals. One of them is reasonably accurate, the other is a partisan shop.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Absent a paywall, it'll probably get read more, but sadly not by as many who would need to read it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And just because you are a minor celebrity does not mean that everyone has to bend over backwards and publish everything you write.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Since Rupert Murdock and his News Corp own the Wall Street Journal now,journalist integrity has been thrown out the window,just like at other News Corp businesses -case in point Fox(FAUX)news.Now the WSJ is just another right wing nut job mouthpiece.
The Geek Hillbilly
That's not what he's saying, and you know it.
Strawman arguments are lies.
And there is no appeal to authority, because when the topic is science, a well-respected (note that I don't use scare quotes to dishonestly imply that this isn't really the case) scientist's opinion IS in fact more valid than a non-scientist's.
God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist.
True but science CAN definitively disprove specific claims about the nature of god. There are innumerable and fairly specific claims made in religious texts detailing the nature and actions of god(s). Many of these are of such a nature that they are falsifiable and thus can be subjected to scientific inquiry. Unsurprisingly most of these claims regarding god turn out to be made up nonsense when looked at objectively or have been so twisted from the actual facts as to be effectively unrecognizable from what actually occurred.
So if someone wants to make a completely vague assertion that there is a god and make no specific claims regarding the nature of said deity then no, science cannot disprove that. (though it doesn't mean we should believe said claim either) But it's hard to make a believable story about god without adding some details to the story and that is usually where the wheels come off. Claims about the physical world we live in can (frequently) be tested and dismissed as the made up poppycock that they so often are.
Of course there isn't. But there is this notion of journalistic ethics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Looks like the WSJ editors are here in force.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Right, philosophy is science by pure reason. It's just been superseded by evidence-based science over the last couple of hundred years.
That old chestnut, "science can't prove x, so must be god" doesn't even deserve a retort. Really, I don't know why my fellow atheists bother. You just lend the fools credibility by responding.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Having the right to publish whatever you feel like does not imply that you don't have prejudice. They choose to publish only the religious interpretation of some somewhat misunderstood facts, and not the scientific interpretation of the corrected facts. That is bias. They have the right to have that bias, but it is still bias.
Right, philosophy is science by pure reason. It's just been superseded by evidence-based science over the last couple of hundred years.
Pure reason is not science and never has been.
And everyone else has a right to judge the publishing decisions by whatever criteria they please.
Do we really have to do this rather bizarre "using First Amendment violates it" dance every time someone is criticized on Slashdot in any way?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Metaxas' entire article seems to hinge on a failure to understand the anthropic principle. It's not even remotely a novel argument, either. Why the WSJ decided it was worth printing in the first place, I'm not sure.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
There is a special place inHell for people who downmod comedy.
Half a dozen responses show many people should keep their hands well away from the controls.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Athiesm is philosophy, not science.
That is indeed true. However atheism is essentially a null hypothesis. It makes FAR more sense, in the absence of credible evidence, to believe that there is no "god(s)" than to by default in a theist position. Believing in a deity as a default position because you can't prove one doesn't exist is completely irrational. By comparison the only irrational position an atheist can take is to say they are unwilling to be convinced by credible evidence that a god of some description exists. But since no such credible objective evidence actually has ever been presented it's only irrational in principle since their conclusion (the null hypothesis) remains the same.
Since scientists tend to be rational thinkers they would logically start with the null hypothesis that there is no god unless evidence shows otherwise. Most would be willing to be convinced that god exists (call that agnosticism if you want) but can find no sane basis to do so without some amount of credible evidence. So they maintain the null hypothesis that there is no god as there is no evidence to move them from the null hypothesis.
"Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them. " - i think that you'll find that its the posters in forums like this that do that, not scientists.
"Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God" - no, they say God is more and more improbable.
"that is says that every religious person is ethically and intellectually inferior to themselves." - you must work for Fox news
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I don't get this from Krauss. Hitchens maybe, did not like his approach. Krauss and Dawkins are not as aggressive, they only say they need proof and they challenge absurd assumptions based on faith alone. They even say it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a supreme being. What we know about the universe today leads us to believe that there isn't but in the end it is impossible to know for sure.
Way to go WSJ...
There's no point in having a useless debate. I question them posting the original article, but there's no reason to make it worse by pretending there's any way to come up with a retort. Science cannot, ever, prove or disprove religion. Period. Religion cannot, ever, prove or disprove Science. They are polar opposites and not related.
At best, Science could claim that Religion is an fascinating form of Philosophy and an interesting topic for study. While Religion could say that Science was an interesting way to study Gods design. Anyone that goes further is just trying to pick a fight and will never concede their point so just avoid it all together.
Guys, calm down. This is the Wall Street Journal, the most schizophrenic company in the world. Read a couple of issues of the newspaper and you'll see what I mean.
Articles - 99% of the paper, well written, fact based pieces on current issues of the day. Not balanced since it's understandably tilted toward the business aspects of those issues but an extremely reliable source of information.
Editorials - 2 pages, far right diatribes with the basic premise that big business & capitalism == good, everything else bad.
I don't know how the feature reporters survive in that environment but I applaud them for living in a harsh environment and doing an excellent job.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
They didn't publish a retort from a respected scientist after publishing a some complete woo by a charlatan.
It's considered good journalistic practice to publish responses or apologies when you fuck up - not that I'm implying that WSJ deserves such high expectations.
Some of the best essays I've read were letters of rebuttal in the WSJ editorial page.
The WSJ is a useful catalog of right-wing stupidity. When they were good, they published both sides of the argument. (Once in a rare while, they were actually right.)
I used to read them religiously every day, back in the days of paper, but I stopped after Murdoch bought them. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... It was the greatest tragedy that journalism has ever suffered.
No it is not. A scientist's argument when dealing with science is more likely to be valid, yes. But it is no more valid based purely on their author's characteristics. To say that one argument is more valid because it was written by a scientist is a classic appeal to authority.
It's a good practice to get both sides of the story. When I read something controversial, I always think, "Sounds pretty convincing. What's the other side?"
The press at large isn't interested in informing the public one whit but in encouraging actions by the public in one direction or another. I'm depressed that so many people rely on bought-and-sold sources of information.
At least rely on the internet for your news. Contrary to popular belief it is better: It's much harder to manipulate the beliefs of the masses when argument can be had right at the source of information.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Before Locke formalized the scientific method it was something else entirely. Philosophical thought about the nature of the world. Including loads of 'scientific' nonsense.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So what you're saying is, every time there's an op-ed piece, someone get's to have a retort published? Really?
So what you are saying is that it is invalid to discuss the editorial policies of major newspapers?
No, that would be just another hyperbolic outburst of the sort that I am replying to here.
Who said anything about the first amendment. It's their business, they put what's in that paper. It's their decision. Got nothing to do with the First Amendment, so I'm not sure what the quotes were for.
Science is self correcting, meaning it is flawed. People who believe and promote that science is perfect (or pretend to be) do a disservice to what Science actually is, knowledge of the world as we can understand it. That understanding is improving, but not perfect.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Everyone is prejudiced. Pretending one is not is itself prejudice of sorts.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Am appeal to an authority that is relevant is called a citation. You're thinking of an appeal to false authority.
Which, in this case, would be quoting Metaxis as accurate due to him getting published in the WSJ.
Yeah well the clickbait mentality has well permeated through both new and old media. "News articles" are just a different color of advertizing, they are designed to attract eyeballs to sell them to the advertisers. We may very well have entered a post journalism era.
#newjournonormal
No you have only proven an entity is capable of that. You have not provided evidence that that entity is a god or similar avatar. Misquoting clark : sufficientely advanced science can look like magic. How do you prove that entity you describe is a god, or in reality is not but a very advanced technologically civilisation with very advanced tech, with an unknown agenda wanting to make us believe they have/are god ? You can't.
God is essentially unknowable, as no matter what feat it does, there could be a technological ET having mastered tech being able to reproduce that. God can neither be proven nor disproven, except maybe if you meet him after death, instead of oblivion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Offend by stating a fact? Religious types are apparently easily offended.
What kind of bias though is it? The assumption I'm seeing is that, the WSJ doesn't want to print the retort for religious or support of religious reasons. But is that the case? Could it just be that they don't feel the need, desire, or inclination to publish every letter to the editor that comes out? Could it be that they might have thought that there were other articles that were deserving to be printed? And let's be honest, from what I saw of the letter, it's short. I can't believe that it really had anything substantial to it, it's basically a long winded comment to the article. (Disclosure: I have not read the letter, because I can not read the original article).
There is no right of reply or requirement for any journalistic body in the US to print any opposing view point for anything, so why is this newsworthy?
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book). The WSJ used to apply that rule religiously, until Murdoch took over. If they had a news story attacking socialism, they would get a response from a socialist.
The reason is, good information is valuable (and sells). A news story that gets both sides is more informative and useful than a news story that gets only one side.
Offended that he specifically choose the wording of his post to offend Christians.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It's not a "story." The original was clearly labeled an opinion piece.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A scientists view of claims that "science proves religion" however, is likely to be *far* more valid. Especially in the typical case where the arguments are as blatantly misleading as "science says this is hard, so god must have done it" while ignoring that science also explains why we should expect it to happen anyway.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What if Zeus is right and the Christian god is wrong? What if Odin is right and Zeus is wrong? Choices, choices...
All this says is that scientifically, one cannot prove the existence of God simply trough appearance of design, because evolution is capable of producing the same appearance. It does not say, however, that such an appearance is necessarily illusory, however, and by Krauss's own admission, that appearance is "overwhelming". I would suggest, therefore, it is not wholly unreasonable to conclude that an appearance of design makes a relatively strong case that it *was* deigned. Not proof, of course, but not an entirely irrational case for it either.
the only refutation to this merely echoes the sentiment hat there are alternative explanations for that appearance, which doesn't refute the point that life could actually have been designed is nonetheless still a perfectly valid conclusion from the observations, without assuming that you first allegedly somehow know that there isn't any designer in the first place. One might very well believe that to be the case, and such a belief might be the only thing that one is capable of believing that is consistent with their world view, but that belief, no matter how certain, is no more proof than even an overwhelming appearance of design constitutes definitive proof of design.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Except, that isn't what he did. A group of people taking offense his tweet, does not mean he sought to offend. There was nothing they should be offended by in the tweet or its timing.
Feel free to discuss it, doesn't make it news or newsworthy.
A Scientists view of GOD is no more valid because he is a Scientist. Neither is a Theologian's view of Science more valid because he is respected in Theology. Mind you, I haven't read either's article, because I think such arguments are silly, on both accounts :-P
Then might I suggest you read the articles in the future before commenting? The response which wasn't published made no claim as to whether or not God exists. It merely falsified the original articles claim that modern science provides evidence that God exists. A scientists view on whether or not God exists may not be persuasive, but a respected scientists view on whether or not science says God exists is quite relevant and appropriate.
There are prejudicial, holier than thou, Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them.
So we shouldn't point out the crazy irrational people in our midst. If I stood in the middle of Times Square and demanded that we all worship hippos you would rightly treat me as a crazy person. But I'm supposed to respect the beliefs of someone who claims that we were all created by some mythical invisible being who is unknowable and for which there is no actual objective evidence of their existence? Sorry no. They get the crazy person treatment too. I'll be courteous and civil (as long as they are) but I'm not going to respect some I think is stone cold nuts.
Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God and that is says that every religious person is ethically and intellectually inferior to themselves.
No reasonable scientist is claiming the science disproves god. It's an unfalsifiable claim so there would be no point in even trying. However scientists can, do and should examine specific claims about the nature and "actions" of this alleged god. And there are innumerable claims that can and have been tested and not surprisingly have mostly been shown to be complete nonsense.
Appeal to authority:
A is an authority on a particular topic
A says something about that topic
A is probably correct
I'll admit, it's not cookie cutter exact here.
"Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God" - no, they say God is more and more improbable.
The concept of God is already non-falsifiable. There is no way that the concept gets more or less probable based on science, unless there is such a deity and that deity decides to reveal itself. All-powerful creator deities aren't required to submit to science or even logic.
You can certainly attempt to disprove specific phenomena that are associated with deities, you can also suggest that the universe doesn't "require" a deity. That doesn't say anything about whether there *is* a deity.
Religion and atheism are philosophy class stuff. Science, as an objective method, will be much better off if everyone stops pretending that it answers questions that it cannot answer.
That's how you keep the wingnuts out of good science. You don't try and stomp on the religious with your own "science-y" chatter and suggest that your doctorate in physics or biology means that you can now falsify the un-falsifiable. You simply point out that whether or not the universe was actually created in seven days, our current science works best with a theoretical universe that is 13.8 billion years old, so we should go with that until someone figures out a better calculation.
I disagree. If you analyse his tweet, I believe it is obvious that he chose his wording with care, to specifically try and diminutize Jesus. It would of been easy, and right, to mention that Issac Newton (Right?, I think that was who he was talking about) was born on Christmas day, and that he was a great man who did loads for us. To use wording that imply that he was like unto Jesus, and to replace Jesus in a entrance obviously crafted to talk about him is an obvious attack on Christians.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
There is no valid test for the existence of God. Therefore, Science has no opinion on the matter.
Scientists, on the other hand, seem to have plenty of opinions.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A scientists view of claims that "science proves religion" however, is likely to be *far* more valid. Especially in the typical case where the arguments are as blatantly misleading as "science says this is hard, so god must have done it" while ignoring that science also explains why we should expect it to happen anyway.
A scientist who claims that science proves religion if far more likely to be invalid! Why? Because religion involves that which is outside the natural world while science is about the natural world. Neither the supernatural or natural can be used to prove or disprove the other.
disagreeing with somebody does not make them a douche. Dawkins is not in the same league as Hitchens when it comes to this. I think Dawkins rubs people the wrong way because he does stay so cool under fire. He comes across as an intellectual (an eeeeleeeet). Hitchens just crucified (sorry for the pun) people of faith.
Oh bullshit. He chose December 25 and he constructed his tweet to lead in in almost identical phraseology to a Christmas sermon only to caveat the whole thing with the last section. The hell he didn't realize he was doing that. And then later he feigns amazement at the backlash. It's either on purpose or he's a dumbass.
Feel free to discuss it, doesn't make it news or newsworthy.
The claim that X is not newsworthy is almost always less interesting than X.
a "well respected" scientist's opinion is no more valid than a "charlatan's.
Surely we would prefer the opinion of a scientist on the subject of what science can tell us? Unless you're a child of postmodernism where there are no wrong answers and everyone's opinion is equally valuable because we're all special little snowflakes?
Before Locke formalized the scientific method it was something else entirely. Philosophical thought about the nature of the world. Including loads of 'scientific' nonsense.
What is "it"? You can't study the world without context, there's always an implicit empirical aspect to any such study.
Your dry-cleaner looks at a wart on your face and tells you to just apply some vinegar - you'll be fine.
Your dermatologist looks at the same wart on your face and tells you you should do some tests to ensure that it's not cancer.
Whose "opinion" are you going to take?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
So we can look forward to the Washington Post publishing stuff from Judith Curry or Roy Spencer?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So because it is labeled as "opinion" it has the right to be blatantly false to the point of being an obvious lie and yet never be questionned ?
That reminds me of something... OH WAIT !
Offended that he specifically choose the wording of his post to offend Christians.
Isaac Newton was a Christian, who happened to be born on December 25th. You do realize that Jesus birthday is only observed on December 25th, don't you.
"Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them. " - i think that you'll find that its the posters in forums like this that do that, not scientists.
....so what's Richard Dawkins's /. UID then?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It would also have been "right" to mention that Newton, the man Tyson chose to use as an avatar for science, was a very, very staunch Christian and believed in alchemy.
That's right there isn't. But they are fair game to be called out for their bias.
if someone publicly lied about you, would you ignore it or sue?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Strictly speaking that is true. However many religions don't simply claim "god exists." They make other claims that are testable (age of the Earth, effectiveness of prayer, etc) however. It is exactly in these areas where science *does* have an opinion - and a strong one at that.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
This is spouted off all the time in the hopes that "science" will just leave religion alone. It is a false equivalency. There are many different fields of science that require specialized knowledge where one scientist would have no common knowledge base with another scientist, except for the whole "being able to test and reproduce some idea". A theologian is just an important sounding word for a bullshitter, someone who lies to others and themselves. There is no practical knowledge in the entire "field" of theology, which makes the most far-reaching and outrageous claims such as "knowing the reason for existence" and housing "experts" whose "answers" are not only in direct contradiction to how the world seems to behave, but with other theologians as well.
I do not relish the idea of utter annihilation upon chemical dissolution, but I don't have to lie to myself to get through my day, either.
There is just as much practical knowledge in the field of theology as there is psychology, sociology and many of the other soft sciences. Both science and religion have their systematic, theoretical frameworks. As for theology being in direct contradiction to how the world seems to behave, while not a theist, I would argue just the opposite. theology only has the human experience to study and as such, is probably dead on with how the world behaves. As for disagreements between theologians, well that occurs even with scientists. For instance scientists agree that evolution occurs, but currently there are something like 36 competing theories as to exactly how. Theologians agree a deity exists, but vary on how it interacts.
Science and religion do not have to be opposed to each other. They can coexist quite happily. The only conflict comes is when either goes beyond it's theoretical framework and tries to apply it to the other.
to what Science actually is
One suggestion is to not treat science as a proper noun. We don't capitalize most such words and science doesn't really have that much of an edge up on say, market, to warrant the pedestal.
And yet you are blind to the crashing and burning of the NY times.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Dawkins maybe isn't as aggressive as Hitchens was, but he's certainly more dismissive than Hitchens ever was. The difference between the two is that Hitchens tended to make clear assertions that were rhetorically open to debate, whereas Dawkins constantly puts his claims in as "assumed" knowledge in a grammatical position that is not open to debate.
Let me demonstrate the difference with a rough paraphrase of a Dawkins statement that I have long-since half-forgotten.
Asserted: This idea is preposterous, and leads people to do bad things.
Assumed: This preposterous idea leads people to do bad things.
In the first, I am free to say "no it's not", meaning "it's not preposterous". In the second (which is Dawkins's style) I cannot. He has presented the preposterousness of the idea as a given, and beyond question. He leaves no space in the debate for the other side to present their opinion. This is why people who disagree with him get so riled up by him. It's a tactic that's dishonest and antisocial, but he loves to sit their smugly after winding people up and claim that they're angry because they have no answer, rather than being angry because Dawkins doesn't let them answer.
He's a vile, odious man, and he does no credit or favours to the cause or name of atheism, secularism or science.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Your point?
Aliens.
Esra Erimez
You seem to be confusing "I don't care about it" with "it's not newsworthy." Your strongest argument is "they have the right to do it."
Well damn - nothing ever newsworthy involves somebody doing something they have the right to do? So if they start publishing pro-nazi propaganda that's not "newsworthy?"
The very fact that people are discussing the issue makes it newsworthy - your apathy notwithstanding.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
"They didn't publish a retort from a respected scientist after publishing a some complete woo by a charlatan."
In Brazil this is the norm. And believe me, the "newspapers" here still make a huge effort to make you believe that they are "neutral" and "unbiased".
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
"He's a grade A loon." - careful, you are projecting too much
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
WSJ is known for its "technical" incompetence. In the following article, they credit mostly Xerox with inventing the Internet.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
The grossest error is that the author blatantly dismisses the ARPA invention of packet switching JUST because it was originally (allegedly) used for NON-computers. (For example, terminals.) Packet switching is THE primary feature of the Internet, regardless of the nature of the traffic (content). The fact that the content of the packets can be anything is part of what makes the Internet the Internet.
The cable design itself, which the article over-emphasizes, is fairly arbitrary and had decent alternatives at the time. Plus, the inventor of Ethernet gained a lot of his knowledge from prior gov't funded projects before working for Xerox.
I suspect it's the anti-government slant of the WSJ that creates such bad articles rather than mere incompetence. Look at the record of who it's owned by.
Table-ized A.I.
Quoting someone's comment on the article: "Distilled down, this is your argument for god. God set the fine scale variation so that 13.8 billions years later, we could evolve and Jesus could visit so we could kill him and save the universe. So if someone were to dispose of this error in your thinking, would you dispose of god."
What some people don't quite realize is that we can have Jesus'es without God. A Jesus is just a cultural archetype that arises in times of (societal) turmoil who teaches some (ethical) principles, which are then spread by followers. This sort of thing happens all the time, with Jesus being a particular case. There were lots of messiahs at the time of Jesus, and Jesus is just the one who became the most famous. Buddha is another Jesus. In Science, Einstein is a Jesus of sorts. Also, there are other kinds of cultural architypes besides Jesus'es.
If you restrict yourself to political and social Jesus'es, which has happened many times on Earth, it seems inevitable that Jesus will come to "visit" alien societies. The alien world will experience some very alien concept of societal difficulty. Someone (or lots of someones) will arise in this time and teach some useful lessons. One of those Jesus'es will become the most famous (although many of the others' lessons will be attributed to this individual), and some of those messages will survive in an alien religious way. This all assumes alien worlds that have "individuals," which is surely not always the case.
What is Christianity anyhow? It's just a set of ethical principles (which have been horribly bastardized by most of the followers). Everyone is created equal under the eyes of [Abstract Deity], even women and slaves. Everyone has done some bad things. Forgiveness is available to those who acknowledge that they've done bad things and truly prefer to not do bad things. Most of the rest of it (accepting Jesus as your savior, the virgin birth, his death and resurrection, various Hebrew rules, etc.) is all fluff there to perpetuate the religion, which is only maintained due to cultural natural selection (those religions without properties like this don't survive, so those things are just artifacts).
They've both given factually sparse arguments. Though the second threw in threat of danger. It could be said that the dermatologist is being alarmist because it means they'll get to charge you for a test. That said, most warts are benign in nature, and warts on the face are most likely to be flat warts and they're not associated with the development of cancer. The dermatologist would probably recommend you buy some OTC wart remover or a give you a prescription for said thing. Usually after they treat it. All in all, the SOP isn't that different than the dry-cleaner's advice. Just pricier.
Arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism. - http://www.princeton.edu/~acha...
Saying that an authority is probably correct is not a logical fallacy. In fact, it is probably correct.
Good information doesn't necessarily sell unfortunatley. I'm willing to bet the WSJ editors have a much better understanding of what sells, and are activley using on that information. People looking for good, accurate information will probably get access to it for free.
Prefer yes, but that doesn't make the scientist's argument valid or correct.
You statement doesn't at all address what he questioned, merely spouted liberal talking points.
I believe he chose his wording as a play on the significance of the day, but in no way as a slight to Jesus(person, or idea) or to the religious community. Nothing about the message sounded like it was trying to slight the religious community. Since the content wasn't overtly offensive, and he claims it wasn't intended that way, there is no reason to assume it was supposed to be.
neither of those facts make a conscious attack on Christians any more palatable. In fact, using a christian to make fun of Christians if anything is a worse act than using someone who might of like to offend them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I said no such thing. I said a scientists views on those claims are likely to be far more valid - as compared to the implied-by-context theologian or charlatan. If you find a scientist who is making such claims themselves, based on science within their realm of expertise, then that too would almost certainly be a more valid opinion. At the very least it would probably avoid most of the glaring disregard for logic, causality, and statistical significance that plague most such opinions.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If we were talking subtle, well-reasoned arguments such as a skilled and honest theologian might make, I would agree with you. But mostly we're talking claims based on blatant misrepresentation of physical realities.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So what you're saying is, every time there's an op-ed piece, someone get's to have a retort published?
Aaargh, what kind of a diseased mind sticks an apostrophe in the words "gets"? What's that short for, "get is"?
We can ignore the appeal to authority, a "well respected" scientist's opinion is no more valid than a "charlatan's."
It's not? Let's check the definition of "charlatan":
a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.
In that case, I would say that a well-respected anything has an opinion more valid than a fraud falsely claiming to have special knowledge.
Sarah Palin deserves to have quite a few letter to the editor's published.
Letters to the editor.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
That is one way to explain it. But I would not say that what he says he mean is not evidence either way. I think we can at least be fairly certain that the tweet was not that popular because people love Issac Newton, but because attacks on Christianity are popular. And no matter that he meant, at the time, he took a Jesus phrase, and replace Jesus with Issac Newton. This general idea is a popular way of making fun of people (and he certainly was not trying ot make fun of Issac Newton). I would still say he either mistakenly tweeted something with undercurrents of an attack on christians, or he consciously or subconsciously attacked Christians with that tweet.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Wrong.
Science and religion are separate by definition. Even someone within a system discovers how the entire system works, there's always the possibility of an outside actor. From within the system, you cannot prove or disprove the existence of such an outside actor.
Universe = system, deity / supernatural force / whatever = outside actor.
I believe it is obvious
Oh, well why didn't you just say that you believe that it's obvious? That's all the proof I need.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
While an appeal to authority is a classical logical fallacy, I also think expertise is real and ought to be respected. Formal logic requires premises - givens that are assumed to be true. Generally it is impossible to argue from true first principals as you'll get mired well before you get to the meat of most discussions. (How do you prove you're not a brain in a jar?).
I am willing to start from a certain point, and the problem we have of course is that each persons point is different - one crux of the problem. So we're really arguing on what assumptions are allowed.
Of that, the appeal to authority causes me a problem. I don't claim that experts are always right, but there is a reason experts exist, and people get good paying work as experts in certain fields. I believe it is because you are far more likely to get a possible answer, if not the correct one from an expert vs starting from scratch yourself - within a reasonable timeframe. Sure, if you have 10,000 hrs and are willing to become an expert yourself, the existing expert is "worthless". But if you want a likely solution or answer in, say, 10 hours - you probably will get good value from the expert.
Also, I'm not sure appeal to authority always refers to expertise - I may be an authority to someone on cars, but if the person wants a recommendation on air travel, I'm just spouting opinion. The Authorities are often people who aren't experts - at least in what they're opining about. Then the "Appeal to Authority" is valid in my opinion.
But it's just a hand-wavy way to throw out an argument from an expert *in their field of expertise* to dismiss it with "Appeal from authority".
Then again, re-reading your comment, maybe you agree with me. But then I don't really get the point of your post - you seem to contradict yourself in that case.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Likewise, atheism is not a lack of a value system. Just because I don't believe in some sort of higher power does not mean I don't have values.
Pretending that atheists are amoral is a fool's errand.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Read the article. He's not.
The whole of "intelligent design" arguments come down to this same argument: something is really unlikely; therefore the only possibility left is god. It's not a scientific argument. It's not even a logical argument. It's an emotional one predicated on couching it in emotional terms and then relying on the fallacy that unlikely things never happen, or pseudo-mathematically, "p == 0 for p epsilon, for suitably small values of epsilon".
It's really an argument from ignorance. "Anything I can't understand must have been made by god."
Isn't Krauss being ridiculous here?
1. The OP writer never claimed to be a scientist.
2. Why criticise a person with an agenda? Why is an 'agenda' something bad? Doesn't the article go against Krauss' own agenda anyway?
2. You don't need to be a "scientist" to have the right to analyze scientific knowledge. Journalists do it all the time.
Go cry in a corner, Krauss.
"both sides of the story" doesn't imply that it wasn't an Op Ed. Are you trying to be funny, or just unfamiliar with the phrase?
Just another day in Paradise
A Scientists view of GOD is no more valid because he is a Scientist. Neither is a Theologian's view of Science more valid because he is respected in Theology. Mind you, I haven't read either's article, because I think such arguments are silly, on both accounts :-P
The scientist in this case is making no assertions about God. He is only refuting scientific claims made by the previous author. He is clearly staying within his area of expertise. And regardless of any authority either side of the argument has, Krauss simply has the more well reasoned argument (not hard to have in this case).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
A null hypothesis is generally the commonly held view or answer compared to the alternate hypothesis.
That is not what a null hypothesis is at all. A null hypothesis must be falsifiable. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence is falsifiable by finding evidence. The position that there is a god in spite of the lack of any evidence is not falsifiable and thus cannot be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is NOT merely the more commonly held view.
You could simply say that "I don't know, but I'm sure it wasn't a deity," but that's about as scientific as the missionary's position, and a lot less well developed.
Nobody says that. They simply say that there is no evidence to support the assertion that it was a deity and therefore my current hypothesis that there is no god remains intact. It would also be perfectly reasonable to say "I doubt it was a deity".
Point being, for most people, a creation based on a deity or first mover is the null hypothesis.
It is not and cannot be a null hypothesis because it is not falsifiable. There is no way to ever test or show that the null hypothesis is false for a theist. It is only a hypothesis if you can actually test it. Otherwise it is merely a fantasy.
If you actually read the original article and the response, you'll see that the original was all about how "science proves God", while the response is all about "no, it does not". In fact, the response mentions God and religion exactly once, in the following context: "Religious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments do a disservice to both science and religion".
There is no leading voice in the scientific community on the issue. God has nothing to do with science, science only asks questions that have answers.
The issue at hand is not "is there a God", it's "is there a scientific evidence in favor of God".
There is a special place inHell for people who downmod comedy.
In the current climate, your kind of response is totally within the fundie mainstream discourse, so it's hard to tell whether you're being satirical or serious.
There is just as much practical knowledge in the field of theology as there is psychology, sociology and many of the other soft sciences.
No there isn't. There is almost no knowledge in theology at all, except for knowledge of some arcane scriptures.
theology only has the human experience to study and as such, is probably dead on with how the world behaves.
There is not the slightest evidence for that claim. Moreover, the study of human experience is part of psychology.
Science and religion do not have to be opposed to each other. They can coexist quite happily.
Only in the mind of hypocrites, namely people who apply completely different standards of adequacy, consistency and correctness to religion and science without being able to explain why they would be justified to do so.
The only conflict comes is when either goes beyond it's theoretical framework and tries to apply it to the other.
Religion really has no 'theoretical framework' worth speaking of. It's a bunch of old stories with a lot of bullshit in them, plus some mildly interesting and arcane cultural heritage and rites.
I can also believe that the WSJ editors didn't want to start a flame war in letters to the editor, which discussions of God/creationism inevitably turn into, doing nothing but infuriating the true believers on both side of the issues and providing entertainment to those egging them on.
I haven't read either one, but I think the first error was printing the original piece, and they were correct to leave it at that.
So we can look forward to the Washington Post publishing stuff from Judith Curry or Roy Spencer?
Judith Curry and Roy Spencer are real scientists who studied physics and chemistry and all that hard stuff and publish papers in legitimate peer-reviewed journals. Maybe they're wrong but when we have to make decisions as important as this we need to consider every possibility. And at least they know what they're talking about.
Eric Metaxas made a good career for himself telling evangelical Christians what they want to hear. He seems to have gotten in over his head when he writes about science.
His WSJ piece argues the argument for the existence of God that I heard in my History 101-102 class when we studied the 19th century debates between science and religion. There's a name for it -- I think it's called "argument from design" or "argument from coincidence." (Can some philosophy major help me out here?) It's a nice argument because when you think about it, it's easy for anyone who took Physics 101-102 (or anyone who read the chapter on Darwin) to refute.
The argument is that the earth must obviously have been designed for humans, because if it was slightly different, a little closer to or farther away from the sun, humans couldn't survive. The answer to that is that there are billions and billions of galaxies, with trillions and trillions of planets, so even if only one in a million planets has the conditions for life, you'll still have life created all over the universe.
And yet you are blind to the crashing and burning of the NY times.
I never said anything about that.
A) Godwin's Law.
B) Is it newsworthy if they don't publish pro-nazi propaganda?
The outcriers are being overly sensitive about something that frankly doesn't matter. He wasn't actively attacking their faith with the tweet. At worst, it could be considered poor taste. You say his methods are a popular way to make fun of people, but I see it as a playful twist akin to changing a quote to fit a different theme. Things like that are done quite often, for positive reasons. People are getting upset, because they're too self-conscious about their religious beliefs. They think that because he doesn't feel the same way about religion, he must be attacking them. My original quibble was with the statement as fact that he did it deliberately to offend, when there is no evidence to back it up.
Strawmen don't help your arguments.
I don't see much difference in the two statements. I think if someone keeps a cool head they can rebutt either one if that is what one truly believes. I think it is just his style that rubs people the wrong way. The best way to answer this is to confront it directly just as you lined it out and make him answer to it. Problem is, the guy is pretty well spoken and intelligent, so your average person debating with him gets flustered because they feel they cannot defend their view intelligently. I am no huge fan of Dawkins, just my observation. He rarely, if ever that I noticed, spews the same vitriol he gets in return. He says what he believes without much emotion. Hitchens was aggressive as hell.
Or the fucking idiots who were offended are the fucking idiots. Didn't Jesus ever say anything to his followers about not being whiny little thin skinned bitches and making him look bad? No? Maybe he should have.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Yeah, it's basically the print version of Fox News now.
Contemplating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin may be fun but it puts you in no position to comment about science either as a philosophy in general or what actual kind of consensus may exist among actual practitioners.
It seems like the Journal is perfectly willing to be a sounding board for ICR nutters while ignoring rebuttals. That undermines the Journal for no good reason really.
They should leave the nutters to their own publications and not contaminate their business related focus.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Apparently such "attacks" are much more popular among right-wing Christians than other people. A publicity-hungry scientist used a relatively innocent statement touting Newton with the element of surprise. That was in turn successfully used by rabble-rousing right-wing publicity hounds to promote themselves, without whom the tweet would have been more-or-less ignored.
Good information doesn't necessarily sell unfortunatley. I'm willing to bet the WSJ editors have a much better understanding of what sells, and are activley using on that information. People looking for good, accurate information will probably get access to it for free.
At least up to the 1980s, the WSJ used to target the American elite -- every congressional office subscribed, corporate executives and top lawyers read it, and anyone else (like leftist revolutionaries) who wanted a free ride into what was going on in the halls of power and on the street. I could be wrong, but I think their circulation was 100,000, and they could get premium advertising dollar. They were run by the Bankroft (sp?) family, who according to insiders just hired the best editors they could get and told them to publish the best paper they could. The family was wealthy and the paper was very profitable. So they were free to do whatever they wanted. Who cared what sells? They were turning out the best journalism they could. And it was very good. You can read their old stories on the Pulitzer Prize web site.
Good, accurate information did sell. I bought it.
Then the phenomenal profitability tapered off, and the next generation of Bankrofts wanted to increase their profits and didn't have that dedication to great journalism.
First, they increased the circulation to something over 1 million. So instead of hard-hitting stories on coal mine fatalities or welfare, they started filling up additional sections with fluff on how to buy handbags. They weren't writing for that 100,000 elite any more, but for the 1 million broader circulation.
Then, Rupert Murdoch made his offer. He was the most unscrupulous scumbag in journalism, and he wanted the WSJ for its respectability. (Of course nothing could damage the WSJ's credibility more than having Murdoch own it.)
So now you can't trust the WSJ any more, because everything goes through Murdoch's right-wing partisan editors, like the Supreme Court.
One of the WSJ's best stories was a series they did during the Murdoch takeover on Murdoch's sordid history, and about the Bankroft family. I guess the editors and reporters figured they weren't going to be around much longer, so this was their moment to tell it all. For example, they pointed out that Murdoch agreed to have his newspapers ignore human rights abuses in China, in order to get an entry into China for his cable system.
You can't get that kind of stuff free on the Internet. The WSJ used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees to get freedom of information requests from government agencies. They would send a reporter to Peru for an interview. They would spend 100 hours or more on one of those stories. They would interview dozens of people. They would hire people with good salaries who didn't have to worry about anything except doing their job.
Now, the people who write stuff on the rare paying blogs, like Scientific American's, or articles in Slate, get about $200-250 a story. You can't do any significant research for that kind of money.
There's a special place in Hell for people who think they're funny, and when told they're not, whine about others sense of humor.
Just another day in Paradise
Jainism is a religion, but requires no "outside actor". Maybe you should update your definition of 'religion'?
Who would you consider as alternate leading voices on the topic of religion in the scientific community? Or should they all just shut their cakeholes?
It wasn't reporting, and wasn't presented as fact. In journalism, opinion pieces are not referred to as "stories." "Both sides of the issue" would have been a better phrase, but even then letters to the editor are more likely to be published when they correct factual mistakes in reported stories, not present differences of opinion. There are LOTS of WSJ stories with no corresponding letter to the editor published, and you can be sure that just about anything they publish gets some response.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
He's worse than the vitriol -- vitriol is honest. Being condascending, patronising and dismissive is the most effective way to generate hate.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
>retort from a respected scientist
I'm sure he has his faithful followers.
LOL. If it's not outside the natural world, then it has every characteristic of the most dishonest bunkum, and no characteristics of something -- anything -- to do with objective reality. In other words, if you remove the "disjoint magisteria" claim from the assessment of religion, you don't have anything left worth a plugged nickle.
Which is not to say you have much with the "disjoint magisteria" argument; but at least you have something.
The whole argument boils down to "there's no scientific proof of religion because science has no access to religion, and that's the way God wants it." As soon as you assert science does have access to religion... game over, because now you require consensually experiential, repeatable evidence to back your assertion -- and no one's been able to meet that standard since day one. Not that it wouldn't be super if you could do it; but all of human experience lands on the side of the scale that says you won't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's such a thing as good journalistic practice?
I've read both the offending article and the response from Krauss and frankly Krauss is right on the money. The article is so painfully full of woo and so devoid of fact I can only come to the conclusion that the editors at the WSJ are a bunch of biased religious pandering idiots. What's even more enjoyable is how the refused to print his rebuttal because in doing so it would have show how painfully shotty their editorial process is.
Dr. Krauss has done us a service by clearly demonstrating the WSJ is good for nothing more than lining the bottoms of bird cages where it can get treated with the respect it fully deserves.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
So you're saying basically logical fallacies aren't valid in the case of science?
while the smart retort can be read by everyone - seems o.k. to me.
Locke is a fictional character in a work of fiction. Stop pretending he did anything at all.
Forgive me for responding to what could be an obvious troll. But I've seen so much revisionist history repeated as fact I can't help but correct this statement about one of my personal heroes, John Locke.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
He's a pretentious prick. So what? His opponents should respond to his arguments, not his personality. It boils down to hating the guy because he's rude. Is it the message or the messenger?
What argument? Dawkins doesn't have an argument. Anyone who says "no-one kills in the name of atheism" has fallen at the first hurdle, and it doesn't matter how many times you point out that no-one kills in the name of "religion" either, he keeps restating it. And when he continually quotes Stephen Weinberg's statement about good and evil, he keeps citing him as "Nobel Prize Winner Stephen Weinberg", which is classic appeal to authority. Weinberg's work on high energy physics is above question, but what does getting a prize for work on the weak force say about his qualification to make assertions of that nature?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I am not going to say nobody has killed in the name of atheism because, how would we know? But..... ...no-one kills in the name of "religion" Are you sure about that? Not defending Dawkins here, but is that your reply?
A hammer isn't a value system either. That doesn't make carpenters inherently untrustworthy.
A scientist who claims that science proves religion if far more likely to be invalid! Why? Because religion involves that which is outside the natural world while science is about the natural world. Neither the supernatural or natural can be used to prove or disprove the other.
Hah! Tell that to this lady.
You cited them, right after trashing the WSJ. Says a lot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A scientist who claims that science proves religion if far more likely to be invalid! Why? Because religion involves that which is outside the natural world while science is about the natural world. Neither the supernatural or natural can be used to prove or disprove the other.
Hah! Tell that to this lady.
Well, Megan Fox is neither a scientist nor a theologian, so her claims are likely to be invalid on either topic!
The point is, it is very doubtful that the WaPo or any other similar papers, who have vowed to not publish material contrary to Global Warming Consensus, will print opinions that clearly contradict the prevailing AGW narrative despite the author's impeccable credentials.
I don't believe it's happened yet even though both are rather prolific authors.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Your argument would carry more weight if we didn't have thousands of years of history involving religious people grinding each other into soylent green.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
People have killed in the name of specific religions, that is to say specific ideologies that have the notion of a deity as a central tenet -- that does not equal "in the name of religion". People have killed in the name of specific ideologies that have the notion of the nonexistence of a deity as a central tenet -- which similarly does not equal "in the name of atheism".
I'm not making any value judgement on the relative "good and evil" of atheistic and religious ideologies -- I am simply trying to demonstrate the flaws in his logic.
(And of course, it should be remembered that there are also "secular" ideologies that in traditional terms are agnostic, and don't actually have any dogma on the existence or otherwise of any gods. One of my biggest concerns about "Christian conservatism" is their confusion of the secular separation of church and state as atheism.)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Atheism was communism's official 'religion'.
Care to rethink your claim? Clearly people kill in the name of atheism just as much as they kill in the name of religion. Make fair comparisons, both views are part of larger value systems.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book).
The practice has to do with a specific person (or, maybe, formal organization) that has been criticized or accused of something. Claiming it applies to every opinion or idea printed in the newspaper is moronic.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Religion really has no 'theoretical framework' worth speaking of. It's a bunch of old stories with a lot of bullshit in them, plus some mildly interesting and arcane cultural heritage and rites.
I think Thomas Aquinas would disagree with that. Ignoring the god aspect of religion and just treating it like another world view/philosophy, all such philosophies have a theoretical framework. Religion as a philosophy would be no different.Now, if you want to take the approach that all philosophy is worthless, that is your prerogative, but you probably will find that is not as popular a notion as religion being worthless.
Only in the mind of hypocrites, namely people who apply completely different standards of adequacy, consistency and correctness to religion and science without being able to explain why they would be justified to do so.
Different branches of science apply completely different standards of adequacy, consistency and correctness to each other, why should religion be any different? There is no such thing as "Science" that has a unified framework. Each branch has it's own framework. What works for a biologist probably would be pretty inadequate for a theoretical physicist. Likewise, what works for a theologian probably isn't going to work for a chemist and what a chemist uses won't work for a theologian. Then again, there could be some overlap in methodology between psychology, sociology and theology, but each still uses their own framework.
No there isn't. There is almost no knowledge in theology at all, except for knowledge of some arcane scriptures.
Judea-Christian seems to be your largest hangup, but it isn't the only religious avenue to explore. But even in Judea-Christian sects, the catholics, which are the largest group worldwide, are also the largest private funder of the sciences. Why would they do that?
He's just applying 'replace Jesus' with someone else.
The real problem is it's very unlikely Jesus (as written about in the new testament) ever lived. Christians don't like that fact.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I said no such thing. I said a scientists views on those claims are likely to be far more valid - as compared to the implied-by-context theologian or charlatan. If you find a scientist who is making such claims themselves, based on science within their realm of expertise, then that too would almost certainly be a more valid opinion. At the very least it would probably avoid most of the glaring disregard for logic, causality, and statistical significance that plague most such opinions.
It's still the same thing. Any scientist, who is intellectually honest will have to admit that the existence of a deity is outside the realm of what science could prove or disprove. Science can not and never will be able to show that a supernatural being exists or fails to exist. By definition, science can only deal with physical universe and by definition, a deity is outside that.
Again, I am not a theist, but I have no problem with people accepting a deity and find it no more difficult a concept to grasp than a cat being both dead and alive until you look.
Actually I think scientists have an insight into theology that actual theologians lack. Religious and tribal instincts were shaped by evolution, since they conferred a selective advantage to early humans. Back in the Stone Age, if someone shared your religion, you'd probably have more genes in common with them than with people of other faiths, and you're more likely to befriend and ally with them. But, it's a one way street. Aside from being research subjects, theologians have nothing to offer in return except for denial.
... how, exactly?
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There are serious concerns with many versions of the fine-tuning argument, but Krauss raises none of those concerns. Instead, he raises the sorts of objections that someone unfamiliar with claims about fine-tuning would raise, objections that would be covered in a "first, let's quickly set aside all the bad objections to fine-tuning arguments so we can get onto the interesting parts" section of a lecture. His response is the work of an intelligent person who thinks that just because they're an expert in one area, they must be an expert in all.
Why should the WSJ publish rubbish like that?
He's just applying 'replace Jesus' with someone else.
The real problem is it's very unlikely Jesus (as written about in the new testament) ever lived. Christians don't like that fact.
I thought it had been pretty well established archaeologically and by study of secular writings that such a person actually did exist. Sure seems like it from seeing snipits of show they air on the "History Channel".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Analyse his tweet? He probably chose his wording with care because he's limited to 140 characters including the spaces between words and the punctuation. Also, if you don't like him, try not following him on twitter. If you don't like the news media reporting on what he says, try getting your news from elsewhere or *gasp* doing without it, You'll find life is a lot more golden and happy when everything isn't treated like a crisis.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually I think scientists have an insight into theology that actual theologians lack. Religious and tribal instincts were shaped by evolution, since they conferred a selective advantage to early humans. Back in the Stone Age, if someone shared your religion, you'd probably have more genes in common with them than with people of other faiths, and you're more likely to befriend and ally with them. But, it's a one way street. Aside from being research subjects, theologians have nothing to offer in return except for denial.
I don't disagree with the first part of your statement, but I think that in the area of psychology, there could be quite a bit of overlap between theology. For instance, the catholics have something called an annulment that people must go through if they've been divorced and want to get married again. There is also statistical evidence to show that the divorce rate among catholics who went through it is statistically lower than those who didn't. Now, is it because some magical thing happened or is it because in the process they have to deal with all of the excess baggage they would carry into the next marriage? I'd opt for the second explanation, however, for the past 1000 years, they've figured out it was good.
Or take the ancient Jews. They believe that their God told them not to eat pork. What we know through science is that the primitive cooking styles back then would not adequately kill off the worms and if eaten people would become sick. Regardless of whether one uses ancient theology or modern science, we would come to the same conclusion.
My point being is that so much of theology and science is based on actual experience. Of course, the scientific method is more efficient, but enough people eating undercooked pork and getting sick gets you to the same point. Heck, when I was in college, there was this new fangled thing called Quantum Theory and it was widely disputed. Now, it is pretty much mainstream. Why? Because our experience, this time through repeated experimentation and observation kept showing the same thing.
Don't get me wrong, I am not equating science and theology. They are two distinct things in their own realms. However, both depend on repeated experiences to come to their propositions.
As for theologians having nothing to offer, I'd be careful with that. In many fields, their were Jesuit Priests that were instrumental in them. They were both theologians and scientists.
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Have you actually sat through a Dawkins presentation?
He maintains that on a graduated scale, with one end being an absolute certainty in the existence of god, and the other end an absolute certainty in the lack of existence of god, he falls near the lack of existence end, but not right on the end. In part, per his words, because one can't prove a negative, but also because he as not seen any evidence as to demonstrate the existence of god. His entire point is that science should focus on testable observations and hypotheses and theories that use some form of the Scientific Method, while religion should stop trying to disprove science without using the Scientific Method. When religion tries to disprove science and there's evidence that science is correct, it makes those that refuse to accept it and who actively fight it look silly at-best, and threatening for their possibility of heading toward a violent inquisition or war at-worst.
If the devout don't want their religion questioned, then they need to stop believing in proven falsehoods. Science generally isn't claiming a disexistence of god, people that value the processes of the Scientific Method are fighting against those who refuse to back down even when they're proven wrong, that attempt to justify multiply-translated-and-transcribed parables in their religion as literal fact.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Just because it's from a reputable scientist doesn't make the response brilliant.
The argument that in a universe with different values for constants, life could exist --- just not as we know it --- is weak. Evolution requires heritable traits subject to selection pressure. A serious argument for "life, but not as we know it" needs some thought experiments suggesting how evolution could work in alternative universes, e.g. universes where hydrogen is the only element that can exist. I've read widely in this area but not found such thought experiments. In their absence, it would have been better to leave this argument out.
IMHO by far the biggest problem for the claim that life must be abundant in the universe is Fermi's paradox. Such claim must be accompanied by an explanation for the absence of evidence (not unlike many religious claims!). There are various possible explanations for Fermi's paradox, but the credibility of the life-everywhere hypothesis depends on them so they have to be made. That wouldn't fit into a short letter-to-the-editor rebuttal, which means a short-letter-to-the-editor rebuttal is not a good format for addressing this issue.
Lots of atheists believe in higher powers. Just not supernatural higher powers.
That's only a good practice for stories which have two sides. It's an extremely bad practice otherwise.
No. There is mention of followers of Jesus but nothing written that says anything about what they believed.
Everything else was written down 200 years after the fact. All archaeology has been stomped over by 2000 years of religious nutjobs.
Jesus's story mirrors that of Mithra and an Egyptian god who's name escapes me. All they did was make Mithra a human/god vs a pure god.
Also note: The earliest versions of the Gosples found don't match. They were clearly edited by the council of Niacia.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not the entire Christian community, only the very narrow-minded ones.
Well according to Wikipedia, there are writings by Jewish historians and the Roman Tacitus. They also say that There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically, which has many references. And wouldn't the existence, and even the sometimes contradictory accounts of the Gnostic gospels, provide a more evidence of an actual historic figure whose image was "stomped over", rather than one made up out of whole cloth?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The point is, it is very doubtful that the WaPo or any other similar papers, who have vowed to not publish material contrary to Global Warming Consensus, will print opinions that clearly contradict the prevailing AGW narrative despite the author's impeccable credentials.
I don't believe it's happened yet even though both are rather prolific authors.
Here's a lesson in scientific method. You form a hypothesis that the Washington Post won't print opinions by Judith Curry or Roy Spencer. You can test that hypothesis by searching for their names in the Washington Post. In fact, they do. Here's the first of a large number:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book).
The practice has to do with a specific person (or, maybe, formal organization) that has been criticized or accused of something. Claiming it applies to every opinion or idea printed in the newspaper is moronic.
There is a stronger right of response to a specific attack, but in the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, before Murdoch took over, whenever they quoted somebody on one side of an argument, they would quote someone on the other side of the argument. If they quoted somebody saying welfare mothers were lazy, they would quote a welfare mother defending herself from the charge. If they quoted somebody saying FDA drug regulations were too strict, they would quote somebody else saying that they weren't too strict.
That's a common practice in journalism. That's the way I tell good journalism from bad. Science magazine, or the New Scientist, for example, do the same thing. DemocracyNow does the same thing.
That's only a good practice for stories which have two sides. It's an extremely bad practice otherwise.
You don't know whether it has two sides until you've talked to the people on the other side.
What if Zeus is right and the Christian god is wrong? What if Odin is right and Zeus is wrong? Choices, choices...
Odin promised to rid the world of ice giant, whereas the Christian god promised to eliminate poverty and hate. I haven't seen any ice giants recently...
WSJ does that, too, even today, in their news stories. But this is about an opinion piece, and no specific person or organization was criticized.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
First Amendment of the US Constitution, acknowledging and protecting both freedom of press and speech (amongst other things), is naturally relevant to every discussion about either an American newspaper or its critics excersizing said freedoms. Specifically, its relevance here is that while WSJ does indeed have the right to do its own editorial judgements, everyone else has a right to call them biased based on them. It's the same law that protects both rights, yet every time we have a story like this on Slashdot people start answering to criticism by restating the newspaper's right - which no one has denied - which only makes sense if other people using their freedom of speech somehow robs the newspaper of its, which it doesn't.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
For the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, the editorial page had a lot of stupid opinion pieces. They regularly printed a good letter in response. I got the impression that they didn't do it as regularly in the last few years, but I can't be sure. I don't know whether they published a letter in response to Metaxas' editorial. I think they should print a response. I don't think you can argue that they should print a specific guy's letter. They get thousands of letters a day. They can't print them all.
Ok now I see the distinction you are making and agree. But I think its reasonable in a discussion such as this to infer religion here to mean a specific religion (mine/yours/someone elses), not technically in the name of religion as a concept.
But, if Zeus was right, we'd be worshipping Zeus and the Christian God would be a tale told in D&D. Same goes for Odin.
This is not saying the Christian God is obviously right because he's worshipped more widely--just that your implied assertion that "because it could be any of them means it's probably not any of them" is wrong.
No it is not. A scientist's argument when dealing with science is more likely to be valid, yes. But it is no more valid based purely on their author's characteristics. To say that one argument is more valid because it was written by a scientist is a classic appeal to authority.
An expert is definitely more likely to be correct in their field than someone that is not an expert. Valuing the opinion of an expert in informal logic is not an appeal to authority, which people have twisted into some sort of post-modernist "all opinions are equal" absurdity. An appeal to authority is to appeal to someone that is not an expert in the field in question, but is in general considered an authority. Quoting Einstein (an authority on relatively) to support your political views is an appeal to authority.
It's true that it's a logical fallacy to consider an expert infallible, and therefore not sufficient for a deductive proof. But it is perfectly valid in informal logic to weigh expert opinion as more likely true than non-expert opinion. And opinion pieces are, at best, attempts at informal logic.
Now the original article was a non-expert making claims about science. Everyone that is quoting THAT article is making an appeal to authority by quoting a theologian's opinion of science.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven.
Well, although I believe some sort of supernatural entity created the universe, the scenario you describe would not "prove" the existence of God to me.
"What does God need with a starship?" James T. Kirk famously asked in Star Trek V.
What does God need with a beard, or a cohort of angels, or an arm or a face, or anything resembling the body of an earthly living being, for that matter?
If I see a 10 km-long arm in the sky, I will think "damn, that's an impressive hoax."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
His personal beliefs are irrelevant. His business belief that siding with the conservative extremists will generate the most profit is all you need to be aware of. Much like Rush Limbaugh has recanted, but not renounced his show. When asked about what *he* believes, he stresses that he's an entertainer that's trying to get an audience, not a reporter trying to report the truth.
Learn to love Alaska
As I've pointed out elsewhere, this stance is only true in formal logic. Opinion pieces are, at best, informal logic. In informal logical, an experts opinion is much more likely true than a non-expert's opinion. A scientist's opinion on science is much more valid than a theologian's opinion on science. Quoting the theologian on matters of science is an appeal to authority. Quoting a scientist's opinion on science they are an expert in is not.
Now Lawrence Krauss is not a biologist, so I guess that could be an appeal to authority. But on matters of cosmology, quantum mechanics, and a host of related topics, Lawrence Krauss is an actual expert and his opinion should be weighted as more likely true than a theologian with no expertise in those fields.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Sorry, I misread your statement and Slashdot does not have an edit function. I guess we basically agree. I just prefer a quasi-baysian approach to navigate the world since there is not a lot we can know with complete certainty and I think a pragmatic approach is more useful than demanding absolutes. People have started using the "appeal to authority" as a sort of post modernist "all opinions are equal" woo.
For all I "know", the laws of physics are constantly changing and my memory and all the universe being recreated at the current point in time to make it seem like they are fairly constant. But other than an escape hatch to allow me to believe whatever the hell I want, I don't find that view useful in figuring stuff out.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Who or what did I compare to Nazis or Hitler?
Hint - nobody.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
It's his retort on the science that's valid, Not the exists of and un-provable concept.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"A scientists view of claims that "science proves religion" however, is likely to be *far* more valid."
Note: It says religion and not god.
Religion is provable. Easy, go to a church, see religion in action.
God is a different matter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It would be reasonable to do so if that didn't set a double standard. Russian Bolshevik Communism is an ideology that was not merely secular, but atheist. And yet that doesn't count. That's not killing in the name of atheism, but in the name of the people. And yet most religious people don't kill in the name of their religion, but in the name of their god. If this logic is swept away, and one side gets to define all the terms whichever way they want, you cannot argue with them. Your argument is declared invalid before you even start. This is why Dawkins draws such vitriol. His argument is impervious to any attempts at logical analysis or rebuttal. It is utterly infuriating to be called irrational by someone who defies logic.
(For the record, I'm an agnostic who used to be a christian. As both believer and non-believer, my views on Dawkins have been the same.)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
There is no leading voice in the scientific community on the issue. God has nothing to do with science, science only asks questions that have answers.
Athiesm is philosophy, not science.
Well, scientist keep finding out there is nothing for God to do. The God of the gaps has been shrinking for hundreds of years. And the first article claimed that science was making it more likely that there must be a God. It's perfectly reasonable for an actual scientist to counter that claim. Notice that Lawrence Krauss does not claim there is no God. Just that science is not finding any reason to claim there is one.
But you're right, atheism is not a science. I wouldn't call it a philosophy because it's really just a single belief. I'm an atheist because I don't believe there is a God. People that believe there is a God(s) are deists or theists. But that's as far as those labels go, they don't "mean" anything else. They don't even mean that you claim to "know" whether or not there is a God. Just what you believe. Many theists and atheists willingly admit they don't know whether there is a God, just as many in both camps claim they do know. My hunch is that more atheists are willing to admit the lack of knowledge, but I have no data to back that up.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Incorrect. See: klachakra
Also there are some follower that have to addition tenants that involve Karma; which also required an outside actor(s) to keep score.
And they have sins. If there is no outside actor then who are they sinning against? Again this seems to e a knowing universe that can portion out forgiveness.
There is no God as in the creation of the universe. but there are other spiritual(unprovabale) actor involved.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
good and evil is just perspective, and yes you can be an atheist abd have good and evil.
""survival of the fittest", or "thou shalt not kill""
why do you think those are mutually exclusive, pal.
good and evil is far older then any religion, pal.
This has been well covered in philosophy and many writings, PAL.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thomas Aquinas? seriously? have you read his works?
Do you also thing he levitated?
The god aspect is unprovable, uuntestable so you have to ignore it. Just like a child learns to ignore the monster in the closet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
. A scientist's argument when dealing within their scientific expertise is more likely to be valid, yes.
It's an an appeal to authority when it's a direct refutation withing ones expertise. It's a appeal to authority if I say, he said it, he is an scientist, therefor I am right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That you don't know what the word 'newsworthy' means.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can stick you fake outrage your your ass.
It was not an attack. He used wording that made people expect one statement, then through an surprise ending.
That is not a fucking attack, and you can take you fucking outrage and shove it back up your ass.
I do note that every mouth breathing stupid ass xtian used it as an excuse to verbally attack atheist.
To be clear, I am not calling Christians mouth breathing stupid ass's. just ones like you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just because a bunch of morons had the expectation meant, doesn't make it an attack, or an insult.
News to Christian: YOU DON'T FUCKING OWN DECEMBER 25th.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Another excuse for people who can't actual base there idea on informed information.
So you attack him personally, because you got noting else except the incorrect idea that anyone gives a crap about you, and that you won't be anything but a whisper in a few decades. SO that leads you to post ad homs in what is a basic debate, that adult do.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nope. In fact it looks like 'Jesus' is an combination of at least three people. Based on dates of events, location, from different letters.
Of course the bible was written by men how said 'These 12 people are honest, wouldn't lie or make things up, and never checked them.
If you look at cults* and their behavior, you see striking similarity with the apostles, and other religion older the Christianity.
Then it gain political power and the rest is bloody history
Which is why it's alarming that the religious right is gaining so much power.
*for brevity, cult will be short hand for small start up religion
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha. no, read the references. They are pretty much excuse making and cheery picking to confirm their belief.
" And wouldn't the existence, and even the sometimes contradictory accounts of the Gnostic gospels, provide a more evidence of an actual historic figure whose image was "stomped over", rather than one made up out of whole cloth?"
No, why would you think that?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Science is self correcting, meaning it is flawed. "
no. that's why it isn't flawed. Science is self correcting based on new data. A scientific field isn't complete, but science as a field and method isn't flawed. It would be flawed if it didn't change based on new information.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, no, karma requires no outside actors. A literal translation of karma might be something like "cause and effect as a single indivisible concept". If something happens to you "because of your karma" that means it happened as a consequence of your actions. It's worth noting though that Eastern thought can be far more subtle with the connection of cause and effect - they're big on the "move a single pebble to alter the course of a stream" type of consequence, what we might regard as applied chaos theory.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And I would think that right there would make their opinion far more valid than the man claiming that misrepresented science proves his religion is true. Wouldn't you?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why would we be worshipping Zeus if he was right? After all, he was worshipped at one time. And could well be worshipped again for all we know. Gods keep rising and falling...
You might very well be worse off than if you had believed in no god.
Just curious but how do you actually choose whether or not to believe in something? Generally I find it is a process of listening to the evidence and then making up my mind whether or not something is true. That 'belief' can be changed by evidence, thoughts or ideas - either ones I come up with or ones others share in a discussion - but it never seems to me to be a conscious decision about whether or not I want to believe something: either something seems correct or it doesn't.
This is what I find fascinating about an argument like this. You can certainly act like you believe in $deity but can you really make yourself actually believe in something (or not believe) by making a conscious decision to do so? I'm not sure that I could in which case such arguments become utterly invalid since your belief, or lack of it, is not something you really control.
Of course it was ad hominem - we were discussing the homin, were we not? Look back at Hodet's post and notice that it talked about people's personal styles. People's favoured rhetorical styles are part of that, and a valid part of the discussion. So calm down.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm a bit loath to respond to this, because I'm aware of your hatred of Christians as the motivation to re-write history.
" And wouldn't the existence, and even the sometimes contradictory accounts of the Gnostic gospels, provide a more evidence of an actual historic figure whose image was "stomped over", rather than one made up out of whole cloth?" No, why would you think that?
Because, as with other events throughout history, people have differing viewpoints. The fact that an event happened, some people viewed it one way, and others another, lends credence to it having been an actual event, not something some group or person just made up.
As for the Wikipedia reference - the science on this is settled. It's fact. 97% of expert history scholars agree that it was real. You can be a denier if you want to, but you're on the wrong side of history.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The information you're referring to comes from a small group of people, who are not historians or scholars, with a specific agenda. They cherry-pick certain information to come to a bogus conclusion. They are simply deniers.
For reference, there remains a nearly universal consensus agreement in historical-critical biblical scholarship that Jesus lived.
In addition, history has shown that it takes at least two generations to pass before myth can enter a historical account. That’s because, as long as there are eyewitnesses to an event, errors can be refuted and mythical embellishments can be exposed. All the Gospels of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, with some of Paul’s Epistles being written as early as A.D. 50.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
Incorrect. The existence of a god could (in theory) be proven. A god could simply choose to reveal itself if it were real. What cannot be proven conclusively is the NON-existence of a god.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
If we don't know what the universe is then we cannot presume that any deity is "outside of it", whatever that means.
I said, atheism (lack in belief in something) is NOT a value system. It has not values per se. Your arguement is null, because if I claimed atheism believes in ______ (doesn't matter what) you'd claim it does no such thing. To claim Atheism as a value system, there must be some value (other than "no god") in common. There is none. A proper Atheist could be a decent moral human, or a complete psychopath and still be a proper atheist.
I didn't say Atheists are amoral, I said Atheism has no values in and of itself. And yet, here you are, trying to act like it does. Name one value, other than "no belief in a god" that all atheists have in common. I won't hold my breath.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Atheists have killed a lot more than you think. Just because they are cloaked behind "government" doesn't make it any less so. Just look at China and North Korea, who kill people for no other reason other than carrying a bible.
Pretending they aren't atheists killing religious people is delusional.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I simply said Atheism isn't a value system. It isn't. There is no one value in Atheism other than "I do not believe in a god". Not one value. I could be a serial killer and an atheist and it wouldn't be in conflict with each other.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Congratulations, you know the First Amendment. I did not invoke it, the rest of your comment is moot.
Did you read what you wrote?
So if they start publishing pro-nazi propaganda that's not "newsworthy?"
So "what" did you compare it to? Hint - the main point of issue here.
You have an odd grasp of the English language.
I would suggest that a non-scientist claiming that science proves anything is operating well outside his area of expertise. A scientist correcting the non-scientist on what science does or does not prove is entirely rational.
Actually science 'kind' of can prove that God exists . . only it just isn't the God of religion. The anthropic question hits a massive insurmountable barrier in the nature of the creation of the universe in the fine tuning of physics. The simple rule of chance alone is staggeringly improbable (off memory 1 : 10^10^128 against), finite multiverses cant reduce this improbability significantly, infinite multiverses .. fail for other reasons. Basically even though its a terrible solution God is currently a front runner by a mile..
But it isn't much like the God in the Bible. - A mindless force that creates increasing order. As such it no longer even exists - its energy actually was / is the Big Bang and its 'death' was the birth of our universe.. It creates and destroys billions of suns every day - we and the Earth are beyond utterly insignificant to it.. Given that its primary rule for doing anything seems to be / is evolution it doesn't fit well with the traditional image of a 'good' God that serves human-kind.. (As such humanity being a peak of 'natural' evolution also represents an apex of billions of years of suffering and death. )
Of course the real truth is that the scientific analysis of God is the last thing religion wants. Once you penetrate and solve Gods 'mystery' there is a cold hard reality waiting on the other side, and a reality where there is no place to hide..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Actually, from what I've seen it's mostly the priesthood that engages in such things.. Theologians tend to be hidden away where their observations won't interfere with the business. The good ones are kind of like Mathematicians in a way - the basic axioms must be taken on faith, but they tend to insist that everything else be consistent with those axioms, which would really interfere with church profits. True Believers tend to be frowned on in a well-established priesthood.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You are correct about things like pork, and there are several interesting religious conventions that are based on things that science tends to agree with them on. (Many of these seem to be dietary in nature.) However, I find it a useful contrast to look at how religion and sicence change as time passes. For instance, pork then and now...
Then:
Jews: Don't eat pork.
Scientific hindsight: Don't eat pork, because it is infested with parasites and likely undercooked.
Now:
(Orthodox) Jews: Don't eat pork.
Science: Cook your pork properly.
The difference seems to me to be that religion has only maintained the action that should be taken, while science looks at the reasons behind it. When cooking methods and parasite populations change, science tells you to take another look at whether pork is safe to eat. Since most religious teachings seem to have lost the rationale behind them (if there ever was one), it is much harder to figure out when or if things should be reconsidered. Science has been much better about keeping the reasoning attached to the actions, to let future generations guide their own actions knowingly instead of blindly.
That isn't to say that this holds true for everything when comparing religion vs science, but I find it an interesting comparison.
I agree with what you are saying, however, "science" has led to similar situations. How many people think you shouldn't go swimming after eating? Are we supposed to eat eggs or not? Should babies be placed face down or on their backs to sleep? Should we take vitamins or not?
Actually, that isn't science's fault, it is people's interpretation of science -- the same as their interpretation of religion. For instance, yes for some Jews, they still observe the prohibition against pork, but many more Jews, do not. Are the ones who don't bad Jews? It depends on who you ask.
The problem with science for most of the public is they accept things blindly on faith, not on reason (such as the questions above). There has been a strong push in the last century to diminish the value of philosophy and that has led to all sorts of problems. Science in and off itself is knowledge, it is amoral. What we do with it, how we use it is shaped by philosophy. Is splitting the atom good or bad? It's neither. Using the science of splitting the atom can be used for energy (good) or bombs (bad).
It seems that science, for science sake, has been elevated to the equivalent of a religion, albeit without a deity. Science can say how to do something, but not should we do something. Religion, when viewed as a philosophical base, provides an answer for answering that question. It doesn't have to be a religion to provide that framework, just about any philosophical system (capitalism vs socialism, for instance).
The real problem is not religion. It is ideology (there are many more ideologies than religions). Nobody really minds the Amish. They don't force their views on anybody. Evangelicals, that's a different story. However, there are as many agnostics and atheists who do the same thing in reverse (and many who don't). We all get frustrated when a person of faith tries to force their ideology on us. Yet, we often fail to see that we frustrate them by pushing our ideology on them. Are they ignorant, maybe. On the other hand, so are we.
Science, in and of itself, is not an ideology. It is neutral. However, what we do it, how we perceive its importance, etc, that is an ideology. People have all sorts of different ideologies they cling to. It seems, however, that these two particular ones, for some people, anyway, are incompatible and those with opposing ideologies must convert the other. That will never work.
If somebody wants to believe in a deity controlling everything, that's fine, let them. If somebody wants to believe that the universe spontaneously came into existence on its own, fine let them. Neither can be proved, nor disproved. Science tries to explain how things happen. Religion/philosophy tries to explain why they happen. Both are very useful in their individual spheres. Conflict arises when they are used outside those spheres.