They don't really need to persuade you. They have managed to persuade 1/3 of the world's population already. Their strategy is not to convince scientifically minded people that it is scientific to believe in Christianity. Their strategy is to plant the seed of Christianity into non-scientific people who will use Christianity as a starting principle upon which to base the validity of all other claims, in the same way that you might use science to base the validity of claims.
The people that get converted from Christianity are people who become convinced that Christianity just doesn't make sense after seeing some contradictory evidence This mindset of being convinced or unconvinced based on evidence is a scientific principle These kinds of people that become unconvinced by evidence are already primed for scientific reasoning. The kinds of people that think faith is more valuable evidence are the ones that are unshakeable.
So by banning drones, we are artificially making spying more expensive. People who want to spy will then have the following options:
1. Break the law and use drones anyway.
2. Spend more money on pilots and regular airplanes and spy the same amount.
3. Spend the same amount of money on pilots and regular airplanes but spy less.
Why not ban magnification equipment like binoculars and zoom cameras? That would also restrict police's ability to spy, and it would reduce the efficacy of drones as spy planes.
Why not just ban spying? Or make a law saying police can only spy for 20 minutes every day? It seems just as arbitrary.
Some drones are larger than some manned aircraft. A global hawk is much bigger and more expensive than a Cessna with a spy camera. I guess the global hawk can go higher, but honestly would you really even notice if a Cessna was spying on you?
Drones are smaller, harder to see, and can stay up for a lot longer than a manned aircraft.
Even if this were true, wouldn't it make more sense to make laws against high endurance airplanes that are hard to see? That way if someone ever build a manned airplane with the spy features of a drone that we are worried about, it will also be covered under the law.
Yes but drones don't separate pilots that much more from taking a life than regular warplanes. Even in a regular warplane they are looking at a computer screen to hit targets, like a video game. Sure there is greater danger for the pilot, but I would imagine that would make him/her more prone to take the lives of others if he/she feels more threatened. The lack of danger allows pilots to make decisions that don't factor in their own safety. Maybe they can wait a little longer to see if the person they are looking at is an al queda insurgent picking up a stinger missile or a farmer picking up a shovel, while only risking the money to build a new drone.
You can (try to) install spyware on anyone's computer without legal penalty, but people can (try to) pirate anything from your company without legal penalty. Deal?
I get why people are disturbed by assassinations and spying. What I don't get is why there is such a big deal made about the fact that it is being done by drones. What does it matter if the pilot is physically in the airplane or on the ground watching a video feed from a drone? Anything that can be done from a drone could have been done by an airplane with a pilot in it. Drones are just safer for the pilot, and makes it easier to go to the bathroom.
Rather than passing this kind of narrow minded anti-drone legislation, why don't they pass anti assassination or anti-spying legislation, if it's assassinations and spying that you are actually worried about. Anti-drone legislation only makes sense if you want pilots in those airplanes for some reason (e.g. because pilots are better at avoiding midair collisions, etc).
I was not the one who came up with "theory of religion". I was merely replying to that comment.
And in no way did I mean to imply that Noah's Arc was true, or that if it was, would prove that the bible as a whole was true, and therefore that God was real.
All I said was that some specific biblical claims are falsifiable, while the bible as a whole is not.
Furthermore I think you incorrectly inferred that I think falsifiability is a bad thing. It is a good thing. Things that are falsifiable but haven't yet been falsified might be true. Things that are unfalsifiable but haven't yet been falsified are worthless.
Yes but this was not unique to Einstein. I think the importance of the discovery of relativity is really what sets him apart. It was the idea of the variability of space and time itself that was the key insight that allowed humanity to proceed passed this idea that all of humanity took for granted. Once we knew space and time were not constant, then it opened up all these new doors. All the further discoveries were very important as well, but it seemed like so many of them hinged on getting passed the roadblock of discovering relativity.
Even if we leave out the parts that could be construed as things that happened rather than things God endorsed, there are things in the Bible that are pretty abhorrant that God tells people to do, and abhorrent things that God himself does or has his angels do.
Furthermore, there are many abhorrent ideas in the bible. I find the idea that we are born with sin (i.e. even babies) is a pretty abhorrent idea. I find the idea that it was necessary for Jesus to die in order for our sins to be absolved (i.e. glorifying human sacrifice) abhorrent . I find the idea of hell (i.e eternal punishment) abhorrent.
Whether these ideas are true or not has nothing to do with whether they are abhorrent. But I think the Bible does not provide a good moral framework, if we assume it is not true. This is opposed to something like the idea of kharma which I think is a good mroal framework even if it doesn't actually exist.
If we are not to take the Bible literally, then is the following a valid viewpoint under Christianity?
I believe there is truth in the Bible even if the Bible is not factually true. I don't believe the Bible is literally true. I don't believe in the virgin birth, that was just a parable. I don't believe that Jesus was the son of God, that was just a parable. I think Jesus was a human being with great insight worthy of admiration. I don't even believe that God literally exists. I don't think heaven and hell literally exist. I call myself a Christian because I find the Bible inspiring and despite it's near complete lack of factual truth. I choose to live my life guided by the Bible even though I don't believe any of the consequences for such a life promised in the Bible will occur. I don't believe Christ is my personal savior in a literal sense because there is nothing to be saved from. I don;t literally believe in sin because there is no literal God whose standards by which I am sinning. The only think that makes sin a reality is the fact that I choose to treat it as such because I am a Christian.
I wouldn't say every US voter is guilty of voting for the war party. Some people actually vote for pacifists and non-interventionists.
Also, when I said we should just opt out of the geneva convetion, this was in contrast to pretending to uphold it rather than actually upholding it. I don't think it's a perfect document by any stretch, but it is certainly better than nothing. However, I think merely pretending to follow it, with others enabling such behavior, just males a mockery of it.
If we are accept human institutions like governments, laws, treaties, etc, as legitimate, then surely they are at least somewhat delegitimized when they aren't followed for the sake of convenience. The fact that we have been ignoring the constitution in regards to war declarations since WW2 more clearly indicates this erosion. We don't declare war, because we want to do all the things allowed in a war, without the historical, political, and contractual obligations of a formal war. We are undermining our own standards. The fact that everyone knows it's a war, and we even informally call it a war, just shows further disrespect for the rule of law. We don't really care about laws even when we create them. They serve merely as hollow justifications to do what we want when we want, rather than to provide any real justice or fairness.
We can kill people without trials because we are in a war, but we don't have to follow the Geneva convention because we are not in a war. If we had any integrity maybe we could have just publicly retracted our participation in the Geneva convention if we don't want to follow it. We try to be the police of the world, but we are just crooked cops above the law.
The question is whether there is even a point trying to live up to a standard of morality and ethics in foreign relations, or whether the best we can hope for is to be the best at the game of feigned righteousness while exploiting the rest of the world for our own benefit. I would rather live in a country where we had more expensive gasoline than one where we try to be the biggest bully, but maybe I am just naive.
I get and understand how you can derive inspiration and comfort from the Bible. I derive inspiration and comfort from things which don't necessarily convey scientific truth also. Are thinks that give you inspiration a "different kind of truth"? I don;t know that I would call it that. I think this is where we might differ in terms of defining words. I wouldn't use "truth" in that sense, but I also understand that words mean different things to different people. When I refer to truth I am referring to the kind of truth that can be scientifically verified or logically inferred.
I personally think the meaning of life is self evident. At least it is to me. Maybe it isn't to people who commit suicide. I find life immensely enjoyable. I love art, I love music, I love science, I love learning, love love. The thing I hate most about life is that it ends. As an atheist, it's quite a bitter pill that I am pretty sure I am going to cease to exist. If I felt my life had no meaning, I would probably not care that it was going to end. I think many religious people can;t understand how I could possibly provide my own meaning and have it still be meaningful. I don't see how having an external meaning source (e.g. God) really adds anything.
I find love to be wholly different than truth. Many things I don't love turn out to be true, and many things I love turn out to be false. I am fairly convinced that we are biological machines that are capable of feeling things like happiness, love, satisfaction, excitement, etc through chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. These reactions occur when we fulfill biological imperatives like eating, having sex, sleeping, bonding with other humans, and it even some unnatural situations like playing video games and taking drugs. Some people really don't like this view, even if they think it is true. It personally doesn't bother me that we are ultimately physical, except for the fact that we die. If there was some way to attain physical immortality, I wouldn't care that my consciousness is based on physical materialism. I also like the idea of an immortal soul. I would love it if that were true. I just can't convince myself that it is, knowing everything else that I know.
If you can and do believe in Christianity and it gives you comfort and happiness, then that's great. I can think of no more worthy a goal than happiness. I wish I could believe in Christianity, but I just can't. I must settle for the amazing story that comes to an end.
I think we can live without religion as well. I am personally not religious. We can also live without science. All life existed on Earth for billions of years before science and religion. Most of human history existed without science or religion.
I think science is great. If you use the metric of success of predicting the behavior of our physical reality, then science is the best thing we have.
If your measure of success is getting into heaven after you die, then science sucks and religion is your best bet, as bad a bet as it might be.
Is knowing the way the "earthly" world works through science a better ability than getting into a probably fictional afterlife? I absolutely think so, but why do I think utility is a good thing? I just do. Science itself is descriptive not prescriptive, and therefore has no say on the value of the benefits of science vs. other values. It is merely a system of conveying truth. If you don't value truth (the kind that's testable), then I can see why you wouldn't value science.
The big bang is not even necessarily the beginning of thew universe (i.e. everything) if we live in a multiverse. So yes science absolutely extends beyond the big bang, just like it extended beyond the milky way when that was the edge of our known universe.
And ultimately, why couldn't there have been a prime mover? It seems ridiculous but so do the alternatives. A universe that simply creates itself doesn't really appeal to me. I am personally leaning towards an eternal multiverse, but I have no evidence of that. I would love some concrete evidence, then I wouldn't have to rely so much on intuition, but I just don't see any one way or another. I think we can discount specific Gods from human religions, but I don't think it's fair to completely discount any concept of a prime mover because of the improbability of specific deities fabricated on earth.
Yes I start with the assumption that science is right, just like Christians start with the assumption that the Bible is right.
I am not claiming that there is anything fundamentally different than these 2 approaches. All I am saying is that they are not compatible, not unlike how claims from different religions are often incompatible even though they can be similar in nature.
A key aspect of science is flasifiability, just like a key aspect of Christianity is the Bible. You can't be Christian if you don't believe in the Bible. You can't be scientific if you don't believe in falsifiability.
I *am* being "neutral" because I never claimed to be able to prove science was correct using Christianity.
Scientists have already decided (both the religious and non) that faith is not a valid scientific tool.
Is science a valid tool in Christianity? That's up to Christians. I don;t think they have made up their mind yet.
Laughing at Bible believers is not an argument. It's just a bit of "school rivalry". I think my team is gonna win, but I could be wrong.
1. Except congress never declared war on Afghanistan or Iraq, and certainly not on Yemen or Pakistan. Traditionally the sorts of fights we engaged in in Iraq and Afghanistan have been considered counter-insurgencies by an occupying force. Unlike wars against other sovereign nations, the enemy "soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually also enemies of the local government. This is what makes it seem like a police mission being executed by the military.
2. The enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan are not considered criminals by their government for not fighting us. We are/were working together with the Iraqi and Afghani governments to combat the insurgents. The seem to have choice in the matter of whether to fight for the insurgents, collaborate with us, or simply remain neutral, as evidenced by the fact that different people decide to do all 3 those.
I think the actual US is quite a departure from what it was envisioned to be. However, I don;t think we are slipping farther from this vision. I don't think we were ever *not* a departure from it. In some areas, like the ideal of equality, we are only recently approximately living up to them (with women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, etc).
I don't think we ever had a coherent view of how to properly conduct a civilized war. I don't think such a thing even exists, (unlike for example, a civilized trial), as a means of forcibly exacting justice.
There has always been a constant war between authoritarianism and personal freedom. The pendulum swings both ways throughout American History. On the bigger timeline of human history, it doesn't look so much like a pendulum, but rather a gradual force towards greater equality, less violence, and more freedom.
I am not saying everything is great, far from it, I am saying that I think in general things are slowly going in the right direction with ups and downs that can last many decades. If you haven;t already read Stephen Pinker's "The better angels of our nature", I highly recommend it.
Einstein was famous because his discovered relativity. If he didn't discover it, someone else would have, and they would have been approximately as famous as Einstein.
There are lots of really famous scientists like bohr, heisenberg, feynman, etc. They did amazing groundbreaking work. And that wasn't even too long ago. Some science involves spending billions of dollars on particle accelerators to verify existing hypotheses, but it still takes visionaries (like Peter Higgs) to come up with the ideas worth building an LHC to verify.
To say that no one will ever be as famous as einstein, is to say that there isn't anything else out there that we could learn that would be as mind blowing as relativity. Maybe that's true, but I don't see any reason to believe it is true.
After Newton came up with his laws, I'm sure the scientists of the time felt they'd pretty much figured it out. Sure there was some details that needed filling in, but Newton had hit the nail on the head and it was just a matter of time before everything else fell into place with this new knowledge. Why would anything contradict these laws? They are so perfect!
Well it turns out they weren't so perfect afterall, and observations did contradict Newtons laws that they had to be wrong in some fundamental way. Nothing but a revolutionary theory was going to make sense of it.
We are already in a time when stuff doesn't make sense. Phase 1 complete. All we need is for someone to complete phase 2 and come up with a clean equation (or a crazy dirty one) that explains it all, and phase 3 build a really fucking expensive death ray type device to open a portal into another dimension to verify that it's right. What an exciting time we live in.
When you read about scientific history, it seems like discoveries come so fast because we get to skip all the boring parts. In the present it seems to go so slow because we can't fast forward. But in reality things are going so much faster now. Maybe the next great scientists will be an artificial intelligence that we create.
Another thing to note is that while violence and crime go down, incarceration continues to rise. I suspect there is probably a lack of fairness in the incarceration process, prejudice among cops, juries, judges, etc. I also wouldn't surprised that if this prejudice were factored out that blacks would still have higher incarceration rates simply because black people on average are poorer, but I also wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't true. Studying statistics does a great job of teaching you not to be surprised by things.
Something definitely happened in the 60's. It's hard to say exactly what the causes are, because a lot of different things all happened at once. We still have sexual liberation and widespread drug use, but violent crime has been decreasing since the 90's. We just imprison more non-violent offenders.
I think stopping the drug war would do a lot to reduce black incarceration. There are so many people in jail because of marijuana related offenses, but if you go to a Dave Matthews concert half the crowd is smoking weed, and no one is calling for police raids to arrest everybody there.
To me this is not a condemnation of Obama/Bush policies, but a condemnation of war itself. This is what wars are. Wars include the state sponsored killing of people both guilty and innocent without trials. Keep in mind I am not saying wars are good. Wars are bad. In WW2 we bombed cities killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people. This isn't an erosion of civil liberties and due process. This is the maintenance of the status quo.
Maybe you could argue that defeating Al Queda isn't a war at all, but rather a "cooperative" police effort among sovereign nations to capture known criminal terrorists that deserve trials. But even then this should not afford more privileges to American citizens. It would grant Osama bin Laden equal right to a trial as any American citizen, which I am also fine with.
My argument is not that it is fine to kill American citizens who we deem terrorists. My argument is that it is *just as* fine to kill American citizens as terrorists without trials as it is to kill foreigners as terrorists without trials, however fine or not fine that may be.
Are you arguing that foreign terrorists are less deserving of due process than American citizens?
Fundamentally I agree with you. In practice, I think about a million times more people leave Christianity because of their study of science than vice versa. What could you possibly learn while studying science that would lead you to the conclusion that a guy that lived 2000 years ago was the son of God? On the other hand, studying science does train people to think more analytically and the bible, at least for many aspiring scientists with Christian backgrounds, starts to look like collection of very poor logical reasons to believe in the bible.
Bear in mind I am not talking about belief in God in general, but merely belief in Christianity. I am sure amny scientists, including einstein were inevitably drawn to the idea that there was some kind of higher architect for this amazing universe we live in, whether they ultimately believed it or not.
There are scientists like Francis Collins who claims to have converted to Christianty after seeing 3 frozen waterfalls that he took as a sign from God representing the Holy trinity. But to me this is a doozy of a non-sequitur, and I can't imagine many scientifically minded being persuaded by such an ambiguous experience.
So yes, faith in universal physical laws, and faith in a divine creator, I think are on par with one another.
Faith in physical laws, and faith in the Christian Bible are not.
You can observe the big bang with an analog television. 1% of the static you see on an analog television is background radiation from the big bang. You can do the double slit experiment showing particle-wave duality using mechanical pencil lead and a laser pointer. I grow bacteria cultures in my kitchen all the time (albeit unintentionally).
The opportunity to disprove existing scientific theories is all around us. The fact that we don't even bother trying is a reflection of how sturdy they are. It is not a requirement that every average joe know science. It is only a requirement that is possible for an average joe to know science.
In many (not all) religions, there are divine individuals with special access to information. In science this information is published in journals as hypotheses and the barrier to disprove it is not monumental. They are being disproven all the time.
In many (not all) religions, there are divine individuals with special access to information. In science this information is published in journals as hypotheses and the barrier to disprove it is not monumental. They are being disproven all the time.
Count Rumford disproved the caloric theory of heat based on observing that continually boring canons did not reduce it's ability to produce heat. Any random canon-maker probably already knew that, but didn't know anything about the caloric theory of heat, to be able to disprove it.
The fact that scientists get to have first access to expensive scientific equipment like lasers doesn't mean that average joe's are incapable of disproving scientific theories. It just means that scientists are the first to disprove them, well before lasers become cheap enough for average joe to get one. But hypothetically had scientists completely failed to come up with the double slit experiment for 100 years, an average joe would have surely eventually noticed the strange interference pattern when he shined his $2 laser pointer through 2 slits, and then traditional physics paradigms would have crumbled when they couldn't explain it.
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They don't really need to persuade you. They have managed to persuade 1/3 of the world's population already. Their strategy is not to convince scientifically minded people that it is scientific to believe in Christianity. Their strategy is to plant the seed of Christianity into non-scientific people who will use Christianity as a starting principle upon which to base the validity of all other claims, in the same way that you might use science to base the validity of claims.
The people that get converted from Christianity are people who become convinced that Christianity just doesn't make sense after seeing some contradictory evidence This mindset of being convinced or unconvinced based on evidence is a scientific principle These kinds of people that become unconvinced by evidence are already primed for scientific reasoning. The kinds of people that think faith is more valuable evidence are the ones that are unshakeable.
So by banning drones, we are artificially making spying more expensive. People who want to spy will then have the following options:
1. Break the law and use drones anyway.
2. Spend more money on pilots and regular airplanes and spy the same amount.
3. Spend the same amount of money on pilots and regular airplanes but spy less.
Why not ban magnification equipment like binoculars and zoom cameras? That would also restrict police's ability to spy, and it would reduce the efficacy of drones as spy planes.
Why not just ban spying? Or make a law saying police can only spy for 20 minutes every day? It seems just as arbitrary.
Some drones are larger than some manned aircraft. A global hawk is much bigger and more expensive than a Cessna with a spy camera. I guess the global hawk can go higher, but honestly would you really even notice if a Cessna was spying on you?
Drones are smaller, harder to see, and can stay up for a lot longer than a manned aircraft.
Even if this were true, wouldn't it make more sense to make laws against high endurance airplanes that are hard to see? That way if someone ever build a manned airplane with the spy features of a drone that we are worried about, it will also be covered under the law.
Yes but drones don't separate pilots that much more from taking a life than regular warplanes. Even in a regular warplane they are looking at a computer screen to hit targets, like a video game. Sure there is greater danger for the pilot, but I would imagine that would make him/her more prone to take the lives of others if he/she feels more threatened. The lack of danger allows pilots to make decisions that don't factor in their own safety. Maybe they can wait a little longer to see if the person they are looking at is an al queda insurgent picking up a stinger missile or a farmer picking up a shovel, while only risking the money to build a new drone.
You can (try to) install spyware on anyone's computer without legal penalty, but people can (try to) pirate anything from your company without legal penalty. Deal?
Double points if you hit one of those big airbus drones.
I get why people are disturbed by assassinations and spying. What I don't get is why there is such a big deal made about the fact that it is being done by drones. What does it matter if the pilot is physically in the airplane or on the ground watching a video feed from a drone? Anything that can be done from a drone could have been done by an airplane with a pilot in it. Drones are just safer for the pilot, and makes it easier to go to the bathroom.
Rather than passing this kind of narrow minded anti-drone legislation, why don't they pass anti assassination or anti-spying legislation, if it's assassinations and spying that you are actually worried about. Anti-drone legislation only makes sense if you want pilots in those airplanes for some reason (e.g. because pilots are better at avoiding midair collisions, etc).
I was not the one who came up with "theory of religion". I was merely replying to that comment.
And in no way did I mean to imply that Noah's Arc was true, or that if it was, would prove that the bible as a whole was true, and therefore that God was real.
All I said was that some specific biblical claims are falsifiable, while the bible as a whole is not.
Furthermore I think you incorrectly inferred that I think falsifiability is a bad thing. It is a good thing. Things that are falsifiable but haven't yet been falsified might be true. Things that are unfalsifiable but haven't yet been falsified are worthless.
Yes but this was not unique to Einstein. I think the importance of the discovery of relativity is really what sets him apart. It was the idea of the variability of space and time itself that was the key insight that allowed humanity to proceed passed this idea that all of humanity took for granted. Once we knew space and time were not constant, then it opened up all these new doors. All the further discoveries were very important as well, but it seemed like so many of them hinged on getting passed the roadblock of discovering relativity.
Even if we leave out the parts that could be construed as things that happened rather than things God endorsed, there are things in the Bible that are pretty abhorrant that God tells people to do, and abhorrent things that God himself does or has his angels do.
Furthermore, there are many abhorrent ideas in the bible. I find the idea that we are born with sin (i.e. even babies) is a pretty abhorrent idea. I find the idea that it was necessary for Jesus to die in order for our sins to be absolved (i.e. glorifying human sacrifice) abhorrent . I find the idea of hell (i.e eternal punishment) abhorrent.
Whether these ideas are true or not has nothing to do with whether they are abhorrent. But I think the Bible does not provide a good moral framework, if we assume it is not true. This is opposed to something like the idea of kharma which I think is a good mroal framework even if it doesn't actually exist.
If we are not to take the Bible literally, then is the following a valid viewpoint under Christianity?
I believe there is truth in the Bible even if the Bible is not factually true. I don't believe the Bible is literally true. I don't believe in the virgin birth, that was just a parable. I don't believe that Jesus was the son of God, that was just a parable. I think Jesus was a human being with great insight worthy of admiration. I don't even believe that God literally exists. I don't think heaven and hell literally exist. I call myself a Christian because I find the Bible inspiring and despite it's near complete lack of factual truth. I choose to live my life guided by the Bible even though I don't believe any of the consequences for such a life promised in the Bible will occur. I don't believe Christ is my personal savior in a literal sense because there is nothing to be saved from. I don;t literally believe in sin because there is no literal God whose standards by which I am sinning. The only think that makes sin a reality is the fact that I choose to treat it as such because I am a Christian.
What do you mean by "actual standards"?
I wouldn't say every US voter is guilty of voting for the war party. Some people actually vote for pacifists and non-interventionists. Also, when I said we should just opt out of the geneva convetion, this was in contrast to pretending to uphold it rather than actually upholding it. I don't think it's a perfect document by any stretch, but it is certainly better than nothing. However, I think merely pretending to follow it, with others enabling such behavior, just males a mockery of it.
If we are accept human institutions like governments, laws, treaties, etc, as legitimate, then surely they are at least somewhat delegitimized when they aren't followed for the sake of convenience. The fact that we have been ignoring the constitution in regards to war declarations since WW2 more clearly indicates this erosion. We don't declare war, because we want to do all the things allowed in a war, without the historical, political, and contractual obligations of a formal war. We are undermining our own standards. The fact that everyone knows it's a war, and we even informally call it a war, just shows further disrespect for the rule of law. We don't really care about laws even when we create them. They serve merely as hollow justifications to do what we want when we want, rather than to provide any real justice or fairness.
We can kill people without trials because we are in a war, but we don't have to follow the Geneva convention because we are not in a war. If we had any integrity maybe we could have just publicly retracted our participation in the Geneva convention if we don't want to follow it. We try to be the police of the world, but we are just crooked cops above the law.
The question is whether there is even a point trying to live up to a standard of morality and ethics in foreign relations, or whether the best we can hope for is to be the best at the game of feigned righteousness while exploiting the rest of the world for our own benefit. I would rather live in a country where we had more expensive gasoline than one where we try to be the biggest bully, but maybe I am just naive.
I get and understand how you can derive inspiration and comfort from the Bible. I derive inspiration and comfort from things which don't necessarily convey scientific truth also. Are thinks that give you inspiration a "different kind of truth"? I don;t know that I would call it that. I think this is where we might differ in terms of defining words. I wouldn't use "truth" in that sense, but I also understand that words mean different things to different people. When I refer to truth I am referring to the kind of truth that can be scientifically verified or logically inferred.
I personally think the meaning of life is self evident. At least it is to me. Maybe it isn't to people who commit suicide. I find life immensely enjoyable. I love art, I love music, I love science, I love learning, love love. The thing I hate most about life is that it ends. As an atheist, it's quite a bitter pill that I am pretty sure I am going to cease to exist. If I felt my life had no meaning, I would probably not care that it was going to end. I think many religious people can;t understand how I could possibly provide my own meaning and have it still be meaningful. I don't see how having an external meaning source (e.g. God) really adds anything.
I find love to be wholly different than truth. Many things I don't love turn out to be true, and many things I love turn out to be false. I am fairly convinced that we are biological machines that are capable of feeling things like happiness, love, satisfaction, excitement, etc through chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. These reactions occur when we fulfill biological imperatives like eating, having sex, sleeping, bonding with other humans, and it even some unnatural situations like playing video games and taking drugs. Some people really don't like this view, even if they think it is true. It personally doesn't bother me that we are ultimately physical, except for the fact that we die. If there was some way to attain physical immortality, I wouldn't care that my consciousness is based on physical materialism. I also like the idea of an immortal soul. I would love it if that were true. I just can't convince myself that it is, knowing everything else that I know.
If you can and do believe in Christianity and it gives you comfort and happiness, then that's great. I can think of no more worthy a goal than happiness. I wish I could believe in Christianity, but I just can't. I must settle for the amazing story that comes to an end.
I think we can live without religion as well. I am personally not religious. We can also live without science. All life existed on Earth for billions of years before science and religion. Most of human history existed without science or religion.
I think science is great. If you use the metric of success of predicting the behavior of our physical reality, then science is the best thing we have.
If your measure of success is getting into heaven after you die, then science sucks and religion is your best bet, as bad a bet as it might be.
Is knowing the way the "earthly" world works through science a better ability than getting into a probably fictional afterlife? I absolutely think so, but why do I think utility is a good thing? I just do. Science itself is descriptive not prescriptive, and therefore has no say on the value of the benefits of science vs. other values. It is merely a system of conveying truth. If you don't value truth (the kind that's testable), then I can see why you wouldn't value science.
The big bang is not even necessarily the beginning of thew universe (i.e. everything) if we live in a multiverse. So yes science absolutely extends beyond the big bang, just like it extended beyond the milky way when that was the edge of our known universe.
And ultimately, why couldn't there have been a prime mover? It seems ridiculous but so do the alternatives. A universe that simply creates itself doesn't really appeal to me. I am personally leaning towards an eternal multiverse, but I have no evidence of that. I would love some concrete evidence, then I wouldn't have to rely so much on intuition, but I just don't see any one way or another. I think we can discount specific Gods from human religions, but I don't think it's fair to completely discount any concept of a prime mover because of the improbability of specific deities fabricated on earth.
Yes I start with the assumption that science is right, just like Christians start with the assumption that the Bible is right.
I am not claiming that there is anything fundamentally different than these 2 approaches. All I am saying is that they are not compatible, not unlike how claims from different religions are often incompatible even though they can be similar in nature.
A key aspect of science is flasifiability, just like a key aspect of Christianity is the Bible. You can't be Christian if you don't believe in the Bible. You can't be scientific if you don't believe in falsifiability.
I *am* being "neutral" because I never claimed to be able to prove science was correct using Christianity.
Scientists have already decided (both the religious and non) that faith is not a valid scientific tool.
Is science a valid tool in Christianity? That's up to Christians. I don;t think they have made up their mind yet.
Laughing at Bible believers is not an argument. It's just a bit of "school rivalry". I think my team is gonna win, but I could be wrong.
1. Except congress never declared war on Afghanistan or Iraq, and certainly not on Yemen or Pakistan. Traditionally the sorts of fights we engaged in in Iraq and Afghanistan have been considered counter-insurgencies by an occupying force. Unlike wars against other sovereign nations, the enemy "soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually also enemies of the local government. This is what makes it seem like a police mission being executed by the military.
2. The enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan are not considered criminals by their government for not fighting us. We are/were working together with the Iraqi and Afghani governments to combat the insurgents. The seem to have choice in the matter of whether to fight for the insurgents, collaborate with us, or simply remain neutral, as evidenced by the fact that different people decide to do all 3 those.
I agree with you there
I think the actual US is quite a departure from what it was envisioned to be. However, I don;t think we are slipping farther from this vision. I don't think we were ever *not* a departure from it. In some areas, like the ideal of equality, we are only recently approximately living up to them (with women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, etc).
I don't think we ever had a coherent view of how to properly conduct a civilized war. I don't think such a thing even exists, (unlike for example, a civilized trial), as a means of forcibly exacting justice.
There has always been a constant war between authoritarianism and personal freedom. The pendulum swings both ways throughout American History. On the bigger timeline of human history, it doesn't look so much like a pendulum, but rather a gradual force towards greater equality, less violence, and more freedom.
I am not saying everything is great, far from it, I am saying that I think in general things are slowly going in the right direction with ups and downs that can last many decades. If you haven;t already read Stephen Pinker's "The better angels of our nature", I highly recommend it.
Einstein was famous because his discovered relativity. If he didn't discover it, someone else would have, and they would have been approximately as famous as Einstein.
There are lots of really famous scientists like bohr, heisenberg, feynman, etc. They did amazing groundbreaking work. And that wasn't even too long ago. Some science involves spending billions of dollars on particle accelerators to verify existing hypotheses, but it still takes visionaries (like Peter Higgs) to come up with the ideas worth building an LHC to verify.
To say that no one will ever be as famous as einstein, is to say that there isn't anything else out there that we could learn that would be as mind blowing as relativity. Maybe that's true, but I don't see any reason to believe it is true.
After Newton came up with his laws, I'm sure the scientists of the time felt they'd pretty much figured it out. Sure there was some details that needed filling in, but Newton had hit the nail on the head and it was just a matter of time before everything else fell into place with this new knowledge. Why would anything contradict these laws? They are so perfect!
Well it turns out they weren't so perfect afterall, and observations did contradict Newtons laws that they had to be wrong in some fundamental way. Nothing but a revolutionary theory was going to make sense of it.
We are already in a time when stuff doesn't make sense. Phase 1 complete. All we need is for someone to complete phase 2 and come up with a clean equation (or a crazy dirty one) that explains it all, and phase 3 build a really fucking expensive death ray type device to open a portal into another dimension to verify that it's right. What an exciting time we live in.
When you read about scientific history, it seems like discoveries come so fast because we get to skip all the boring parts. In the present it seems to go so slow because we can't fast forward. But in reality things are going so much faster now. Maybe the next great scientists will be an artificial intelligence that we create.
Another thing to note is that while violence and crime go down, incarceration continues to rise. I suspect there is probably a lack of fairness in the incarceration process, prejudice among cops, juries, judges, etc. I also wouldn't surprised that if this prejudice were factored out that blacks would still have higher incarceration rates simply because black people on average are poorer, but I also wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't true. Studying statistics does a great job of teaching you not to be surprised by things.
Something definitely happened in the 60's. It's hard to say exactly what the causes are, because a lot of different things all happened at once. We still have sexual liberation and widespread drug use, but violent crime has been decreasing since the 90's. We just imprison more non-violent offenders.
I think stopping the drug war would do a lot to reduce black incarceration. There are so many people in jail because of marijuana related offenses, but if you go to a Dave Matthews concert half the crowd is smoking weed, and no one is calling for police raids to arrest everybody there.
I agree the the "terrorists" we are killing certainly aren't getting due process. In my opinion, the pertinent questions are:
1. Is what we are doing warfare? why? or why not?
2. Should warfare even be exempt from due process? why? or why not?
3. Should US citizens be given a level of due process better than non-US citizens?
I really don't have good answers for 1 or 2, but I feel like the answer to 3 is no.
To me this is not a condemnation of Obama/Bush policies, but a condemnation of war itself. This is what wars are. Wars include the state sponsored killing of people both guilty and innocent without trials. Keep in mind I am not saying wars are good. Wars are bad. In WW2 we bombed cities killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people. This isn't an erosion of civil liberties and due process. This is the maintenance of the status quo.
Maybe you could argue that defeating Al Queda isn't a war at all, but rather a "cooperative" police effort among sovereign nations to capture known criminal terrorists that deserve trials. But even then this should not afford more privileges to American citizens. It would grant Osama bin Laden equal right to a trial as any American citizen, which I am also fine with.
My argument is not that it is fine to kill American citizens who we deem terrorists. My argument is that it is *just as* fine to kill American citizens as terrorists without trials as it is to kill foreigners as terrorists without trials, however fine or not fine that may be.
Are you arguing that foreign terrorists are less deserving of due process than American citizens?
Fundamentally I agree with you. In practice, I think about a million times more people leave Christianity because of their study of science than vice versa. What could you possibly learn while studying science that would lead you to the conclusion that a guy that lived 2000 years ago was the son of God? On the other hand, studying science does train people to think more analytically and the bible, at least for many aspiring scientists with Christian backgrounds, starts to look like collection of very poor logical reasons to believe in the bible.
Bear in mind I am not talking about belief in God in general, but merely belief in Christianity. I am sure amny scientists, including einstein were inevitably drawn to the idea that there was some kind of higher architect for this amazing universe we live in, whether they ultimately believed it or not.
There are scientists like Francis Collins who claims to have converted to Christianty after seeing 3 frozen waterfalls that he took as a sign from God representing the Holy trinity. But to me this is a doozy of a non-sequitur, and I can't imagine many scientifically minded being persuaded by such an ambiguous experience.
So yes, faith in universal physical laws, and faith in a divine creator, I think are on par with one another.
Faith in physical laws, and faith in the Christian Bible are not.
You can observe the big bang with an analog television. 1% of the static you see on an analog television is background radiation from the big bang. You can do the double slit experiment showing particle-wave duality using mechanical pencil lead and a laser pointer. I grow bacteria cultures in my kitchen all the time (albeit unintentionally).
The opportunity to disprove existing scientific theories is all around us. The fact that we don't even bother trying is a reflection of how sturdy they are. It is not a requirement that every average joe know science. It is only a requirement that is possible for an average joe to know science.
In many (not all) religions, there are divine individuals with special access to information. In science this information is published in journals as hypotheses and the barrier to disprove it is not monumental. They are being disproven all the time.
In many (not all) religions, there are divine individuals with special access to information. In science this information is published in journals as hypotheses and the barrier to disprove it is not monumental. They are being disproven all the time.
Count Rumford disproved the caloric theory of heat based on observing that continually boring canons did not reduce it's ability to produce heat. Any random canon-maker probably already knew that, but didn't know anything about the caloric theory of heat, to be able to disprove it.
The fact that scientists get to have first access to expensive scientific equipment like lasers doesn't mean that average joe's are incapable of disproving scientific theories. It just means that scientists are the first to disprove them, well before lasers become cheap enough for average joe to get one. But hypothetically had scientists completely failed to come up with the double slit experiment for 100 years, an average joe would have surely eventually noticed the strange interference pattern when he shined his $2 laser pointer through 2 slits, and then traditional physics paradigms would have crumbled when they couldn't explain it.