The question was talking about bombing "intentionally aimed" at civilians. My interpretation of this would be that intending to bomb nazi military target but knowing that civilian targets would also be destroyed would not be be bombing "intentionally aimed at civilians." However, the wording is ambiguous. This is, I think, why it seems to be difficult to interpret the results of polls like this too strongly. We are not just polling the answer to the question- we are also polling the meaning of the question.
Yes, but according to this article, 24% of US citizens believe bombing aimed at civilians are justified "often" or "sometimes" and another 27% think it is justified rarely. So yes, that poll is disturbing, but not necessarily more than such a poll of any other group of people would be.
As an author, he evidently sees himself as not fundamentally different from a factory worker who builds a car- they both build a product, and sell it to make money. Then he is no different from the people who write the Geico caveman commercials. He is using words to try to sell us something- in other words, he is creating propaganda, not art. (Coincidentally, the Geico commercials are now being turned into a sitcom.) This sort of philosophy gives you entertainment, but not art: Britanny spears songs, Star Wars novels, or perhaps more nefariously (I would claim) even Scientology. We should protect the livelihood of the artist to protect the art- not the other way around. If the artist doesn't believe that his work transcends his own life in any sense, if he doesn't believe that the work ultimately belongs to society, well, it must be pretty empty art. After all, we don't think of great works of art as property of any particular artist; we think of them as achievements that humanity as a whole can be proud of.
We have an economy to allow us to pursue art and new ideas; they are part of what make life worth living. Copyright should allow artists to earn a (perhaps nice) living while pursuing their primary purpose- the creation of art. This article turns that on its head by claiming art and ideas are just property. They then become means, with money being the end. I think this article supports sacrificing the soul of art to economics.
You are mixing up a couple of things that are very similar, but also very different. Chaotic systems are very sensitive to their initial conditions. You can imagine a chaotic clock- if the clock were set to 00:00.00 at midnight, it will read 01:00.00 at one-o-clock, but if it is set to 00:00.0001 at midnight, it might read 3:07.03 at one-o-clock. However, if that clock is set to 00:00.0001 multiple times, it will always read 3:07.03 at one-o-clock. So we think of the clock as being completely deterministic. A clocked that showed quantum randomness that was set to 00:00.00 at midnight might read 1:02.53 one morning; the next morning, when set to 00:00.00 again, it might read 00:59.03. It's behavior is truly random (although we can predict on average how off from 01:00.00 it will read.) So its behavior is not deterministic in the sense that knowing what time it reads at midnight does not allow us to know the time it will read at one-o-clock. However, its behavior is still determined in the sense that the clock being set to 00:00.00 at midnight is still necessary for the clock to read 1:02.53 at one-o-clock: the former event still causes the latter. Incidentally, it is not entirely clear that we have a good understanding of how deterministic real, physical chaotic systems because they are very sensitive to their initial conditions which we can imagine depend on quantum mechanics. I would think our brain is a chaotic system that probably does not directly depend on funny quantum effects, but I am not a neuroscientist.
They first use the word "random" in the popular sense, where it means in this context something like "accidental;" after all, will must be purposeful so it cannot be "random". But then they also use the word "random" in a more scientific context. By saying the fruit fly's behavior is not "random", they seem to mean that its behavior at time "t" is somehow correlated with what the fruit fly's behavior was at time "0". These two uses of the word don't really have anything to do with each other. Free will may be incompatible with the former meaning, but it is perfectly compatible with the latter. I can certainly choose to move in a new, uniformly distributed direction every minute, depending on, say, what a random number generator tells me to do, perhaps because I think it will help me to get out of a room. So I don't understand why these biologists are trying to talk about "free will" in the context of this experiment.
>>By the way...Care to explain?
I was comparing the Church founders to the Scientology founders. The Church had not yet, eg, started multiple distracting wars in the middle east to consolidate Papal power. That will tend to darken your mood a bit. It is true that according to the Bible God did allow, and even command, terrible atrocities. However, we don't need the Bible to know this about Him; we only need to read a history of the 20th century. I don't think the pre-Constantine church did much persecuting, though...
Certainly the early Christians were motivated by something they heard or read to die before they acknowledged the divinity of their political ruler. My hope is that many people alive today would be willing to do the same thing. In any case, what convinced them was certainly not our Bible- it was not compiled yet.
Well Christianity has had this problem of contradicting statements within the Bible and with reality
Yes, the Bible says self-contradicting things. It does try to describe a God Who seems to have seen fit to give us the atomic bomb only 3 years after He gave us penicillin. I don't see what this has to do with Scientology, though.
Early Christianity stole the will to live from its early believers.
Being willing to die is of course not the same as losing the will to live. Blame their deaths on a political system that forced the (literal) worship of its ruler. The whole idea that any Earthly ruler was not God panned out OK (even if Rome convinced us for a long time that an Earthly ruler could a least speak for God.) Let's see if thetan-removal is still around in 2000 years.
First of all, Copernicus was not persecuted. His books was published with the Church's approval (as he was on his death bed.) Also, I was talking about the early Church- Copernicus was, of course, much later. Before Constantine made Christianity the church of Rome, the Bible was still being written, and edited. So my guess is those people did not believe that the Bible was the inerrant word of God (whatever that means, exactly.) Finally, Christianity is not simply dogma/faith. It has spent centuries struggling with the relationship between reason and faith, both of which it has historically considered to be important.
Religion is in part a struggle to find what is more important than our own survival, which sometimes does lead to tragic evil. Scientology seems to me to to be instead a struggle to find money, or a whiter-teeth, cleared-sinuses kind of self improvement. The spanish prisoner does not ask me to die for him, either; is that a point in his favor?
You are talking about believing in God's existence, not believing in God. Questioning God's existence without questioning God is rather boring, like believing in Kirk's existence. Belief in God is a much bigger issue than belief in God, and is a much more interesting discussion. This is why I personally find the atheist comments many people make on slashdot sort of boring. The interesting questions are what your beliefs on justice, truth, love, purpose, freedom, etc are. Belief in God's existence might be integral to your belief in those things; then it is an interesting belief. If it is not, then it is not such an interesting belief. For example, I think it is much more interesting, and fruitful, to discuss whether the Hebrew God is a good God; whether he exists then becomes interesting, but only in the context of that discussion.
Except that the founders of Christianity, Jesus and Paul, were crucified. L. Ron Hubbard spent many of his last days cruising the Mediterranean in a yacht, waited on by nubile teen girls. Christianity offered the hope that truth, justice and love were inseparable. Scientology offers a neurotic future of expensive "treatments" to remove bacteria-like thetans that are constantly attaching themselves to your soul. Sure, Christianity was co-opted by Constantine as the state religion of Rome, and the cross has been a symbol of tyranny as often as it has been one of hope. But at least it was never trademarked...
I don't think it is strange at all. The original comment compared Christianity to Scientology. Also, I would shy away from saying anything about either Islam or Hinduism since (unfortunately) I know practically nothing substantive about either of them. I wish I knew what you were trying to imply with your rather cryptic post, though.
Comparing Chistianity to Scientology is like comparing Aristotle (who's science was wrong) to that voice that uses genetic technobabble to narrate the beginning of Heroes (its science is wrong too.) Christianity has had the great geniuses of the Western world contributing to it over last 2000 years, and it based on the Hebrew Bible, a great work as literature. It may or may not be wrong, but it has important, or at least sophisticated, things to say. Scientology has Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and is based on Dianetics. (I haven't read Dianetics, but I have seen the film version of Battlefield Earth, and that is enough for me.)
This is what I don't understand. Naively, I would think the insurance companies should be perfectly happy with this. If they KNOW you will come down with a heart condition, they know how much it will cost, and can just charge everybody a little bit more to make up for it. They charge their commission all the same, and are perfectly happy. I suppose the problem may be that insurance rates tend to be regulated, and they may be worried they won't be allowed to charge what they would like to pay for the added costs of your heart condition.
Or do you belive just ins ome special new radical form of communism where people who make physical goods work as capitalists, and the schmucks who make copyable goods have to uphold the communist side?
This is a very powerful counterpoint to the parent's original post. I think, though, the response could be this- we know how to enforce the right of the farmer to keep people from stealing food off his land. There is a pretty good chance that if I am not skulking around his property at night, I will not be shot at by him for trying to steal his food.
Seemingly, copyright violation law is becoming different from this. The somewhat controversial claim (though not so controversial on slashdot) is that innocent people are being sued by companies for copyright violation, and they do not have the means to defend themself.
The largly ineffective efforts to enforce copyright violation may hurt perfectly innocent people in other ways as well- for example, the now debunked claim that Vista might potentially cause mistakes in medical imaging (there was a story on slashdot about this.)
You may believe the rights of music publishers and artist to be compensated for copies made of their works to be inalienable right. Then it is probably the job of society to bend over backwards, in whatever way is neccessary, to allow them to be compensated. However, if these rights are not inalienable, but instead are simply the result of a contract made between publishers, artists, and the rest of society in the form of copyright laws- well, it may be time to revisit the terms of the contract.
My two cents: I would like to think that most of America finds creationism so compelling because it seems to balance the tendencies of the scientific method towards philosophical naturalism, reductivism, towards ignoring questions about first and final causes, towards secularism, etc. Creationism then becomes a sort of heroic optimism against the perceived nihilism of science, even if it is a bit of an over-reaction. However, I frankly don't think that most of us here in the US understand science well enough to be scared of its tendencies. No, I have to understand creationism as the result of bad theology. Creationism is not compelling. Instead, it is needed for a literal reading of the Bible. Without a literal reading of the Bible, it no longer seems be possible to find moral and religious truths in as straightforward a manner as we find scientific and mathematical ones. The person who is not conscientious now seems able to interpret the Bible in whatever way happens to be the most convenient, and the person who is conscientious must now doubt that his or her actions are the right ones. In any case, the average Biblical literalist is still interpreting the Bible. For example, he reads Genesis very differently than, say, a 3rd century BC reader did. This article says it far more convincingly that I could http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?tit le=1917 . Creationism, then, is not about defending theism. Instead, it is about trying to keep the doubt of modern life sequestered from certain religious principles. Unfortunately, religion has always involved doubt. It is certain aspects of the modern scientific method that do not involve doubt- we do not doubt, for example, that a jet will take off (barring some sort of catastrophe), or that an apple will fall towards the Earth. This kind of certainty is what needs to be kept separate from religion.
If I kill someone, we can discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that society places a moral judgement on my action, whether it was murder, self-defense, execution, warfare, etc, and we can ask about the details of that judgement. It seems like biology is beginning to have a heck of a lot of interesting things to say in this discussion.
We can also discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that we can argue over whether I should have killed that person. This question seems to be inherently unscientific. Biology can certainly motivate this sort of discussion- for example, if killing is a behavior that natural selection has placed in our genes, this might be intensely interesting to discussing whether I should have killed a particular person. But ultimately, whether I should have killed that person is a scientifically boring question (unlike whether I will kill another person, which could be very interesting.)
It seems like this article doesn't make this distinction, but talks almost exclusively about the former type of discussion.
>> implying that the persons are the main source...
Christianity has different methods of pursuing truth. One comes from the Hewbrew tradition of personal revelation. The other comes from the Hellenestic tradition of pure reason. Both are used. The form, I would say, tends to be emphasized more than the latter (after all, the Bible is a product of revelation, not reason), but both are important.
>> Why is it grander? Sure, they consider it grander, for their value of truth is the goal, whereas for science it is merely a tool.
Maybe I should have used the word "broader". In any case, I would say that for science, too, truth is the goal, not the tool. Most (pure research) scientists would agree with this, I think.
>> Yes there is. They are called Laws. Science has many Laws.
Yes, but any Law can be verified by anybody. That is exactly what a Law is. The Bible was inspired, and cannot be verified, at least not in the same sense that a Law can be.
>> That is not true. Assuming, for the purpose of a test, that morals were set in stone and the actions of said deity were known, they could very well be tested.
Except that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the source of those stones (quite literally) is the Diety Himself. If the Deity defines morality, then confirming whether he is a moral authority ceases to be an interesting question or to have any meaning, but is still a philosophical statement that isn't based on experience, and cannot be confirmed or refuted. Perhaps my example is too contrversial. Another example is that nobody has every found a way to confirm that Paul actually saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
>> Advertising refers to presenting information for people to perceive if they want to, and then leaves it up to them to make their own decisions.
As you say, we both have different ideas as to what advertisement means, and it is silly to argue over them. But I also think this example of yours is not a good one to use to understand my trying to convince you of a scientific truth. Truth should be compelling. It should not be a choice whether to believe truth or not, at least not in science.
I'm open to the possibility that belief in God could be a choice. As I understand it, eg, the Baptists and Methodists tend to hold the opinion that belief in God is a choice. To me, though, this is unsatisfying. Why would belief in God be a choice, but belief in mathematics would not be? I don't want to get into an argument over that, but this potentially represents another difference between religion and science.
>>...to an objectivist.:) To the subjectivist, however, it is self-confidence.
I just want to reiterate that I don't think you believe in the truth of the scientific method if you are what you refer to as a "subjectivist." This is fine, and an interesting philsophical debate about the overall validity of science, but it is not appropriate for a scientific debate about a particular theory.
>> "No, I am trying to get you to see truth." That is different than "knowing the truth."
For me, they are the same. To see truth is to know truth. It is compelling, and awe-inspiring, like seeing the Grand Canyon. Now if I treat you as if you are worth less than I am worth because I do not believe that you know the truth- that may be a sign of fanaticism. So I do not think that stirring up spoken controversy because you believe political pressures from groups of people who don't believe in or don't understand science is causing a change of language in scientific papers is not fanaticism. It is protecting the quality of scientific research (which I think we all want.)
>> I didn't define religion that way.
Sorry, I didn't understand you. How do you define religion then? Because you seem to think that Science is a religion, but Mathematics is not. Why is science a religion, then? As I mentioned in a previous post, Science does not believe e
>> That perhaps is true about Catholicism. Protestants believe is personal revelation. Judiasm believes is seeking out the truth for oneself, and that revelation cheapens it, the list goes on.
I am saying that all believe in personal revelation (prophets.) Protestants do not neccessarily believe that one also needs a church structure to relate to God, but all believe in personal revelation. Science has no personal revelation. This is a major difference. All three may or may not also stress seeking truth out for oneself. Certain types of Protestants certainly do. This doesn't change the fact that the truth found in testimony about divine revelation has no analogue in science.
>> Not really. Both Xianity and Science prize knowledge...
Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Christianity has a partly Hellenestic heritage, has in general supported the sciences, etc. Christianity and Science both pursue truth. But Christianity pursues what we might call a grander vision of truth, and uses more methods to pursue truth.
As for your claim that Science and Christianity do not justify knowledge in different ways- I think this is wrong. There is nothing like the Bible, for example, or the prophets, in Science. God (literally or metaphorically speaking) does not speak to the Scientist- or if He does, this is not how the scientist ultimately justifies his argument. Christianity also uses pure reason (and devoted centuries of thought to trying to reconcile reason and divine inspiration, with the scholastics) but this doesn't mean that both justify knowledge in the same way. This isn't suprising. For example, the moral authority of a divine being could never be tested with any experiment.
Finally, as to your comment about advertising: when I try to sell you something like hamburgers, my first purpose is not to tell you the truth- it is to get you to buy hamburgers. So I think to refer to religion or science as advertising invites a cynicism that has no place in either. But of course, ultimately the subtler aspects of the meaning of the word "advertising" is not set in stone, and probably isn't all that interesting to our current conversation.
Also, believing that you know the truth is optimism, not fanaticism. Having no doubt that you might be in some way wrong, I would say, is fanaticism. Biologists don't think they understand the process of evolution completely. (If they did, there would be no use publishing papers on it.) They simply know that it is not wrong to the degree creationists seem to think it is.
Finally, I don't it is meaningful to define religion as simply anything that tries to find truth. This would seem to include as religions: mathematics, police work, and games of Mastermind.:-)
>> Other religions, while they make use of seers, witch doctors, prophets, or priests, they do not give any more credence to the revelation than to the deity itself, as the channeler is merely a tool.
If God talks to me, and not you, then I have a fundamentally different access to Truth than you do. Our positions become unequal. Whether the ultimate authority is me, the prophet, or God, is interesting, but not important to the point I was trying to make, I think.
>>In the realms of belief structures,...
While I find what you are saying interesting, I still don't understand what you are saying, and in particular it doesn't seem to address the issues about objectivity that I find interesting- eg, is a quantum wave function objective, or real, or both. Also, I think my original point that regardless of whether knowledge is objective or subjective, science and Christianity justify knowledge in inherently different ways.
>> Actually, i think advertising would be better. It is respectful in that it values my opinion as much as yours.
I disagree. To say that I advertise my beliefs seems, to me, to imply that your and my ideas are equally valid, and therefore equally true. You and I are have equal worth, but our ideas, most likely, are not. If you are a creationist who tries to tell me that my belief in evolution is unjustified, then I think you are wrong. I am not trying to advertise my opinion to you; one advertises hamburgers and lingerie. No, I am trying to get you to see truth. It is the same type of truth that has allowed us to wipe small pox (almost) from the face of the Earth, go to the moon, and harness nuclear power. I suppose I could be wrong, or more wrong than you are (but of course, I know that I am not:-) ).
>>Each has their benefits. But when choosing to believe one, that is subjective.
It is subjective in the sense that one set of beliefs allows you to go to the moon, manufacture vaccines, and create miniature Suns on the Earth, and the others do not. To me this says that Nature prefers one set of beliefs to the other. If you consider this to mean those beliefs are subjective, that is fine. If you disagree with that statement that Nature does prefer one set of beliefs to another, then I don't think you believe in Science, which is also fine, but then it is a little silly for us to have any sort of debate over the validity of evolution as a scientific theory.
First of all, I wasn't trying to say that all religions include "givens", although I think that any sort of human activity that includes any sort of communication or debate would have to include assumptions. I was saying that religions, in so far as the Christian tradition goes at least (and perhaps I should have stuck with that) places an empasis on persons as authority for truth. In Christianity, for example, Paul, or at least Paul's writings, knows more about God than I do because he is closer to God. Presumably there are going to be arguments or experiences that convince me of this basic truth, but one I accept it, Paul becomes an authority to me. Science has no such source of authority. If other religions don't have any authority of this sort (with the exception of the ancient Greeks) I would be very interested to know about it.
Second of all, I specifically avoided using the word "objective" because of all the baggage it brings with it. I don't know what the heck "objective" means. I know, for example, that "objective" meant very different things to Heisenberg and Einstein, and that is, I know, just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. So no, I'm not trying to say that science is as objective as possible. I am just saying that it is fundamentally different from religion (or at least, religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition) because regardless of whether it tries to be objective, it definitely tries to be egalitarian in the sense that there are no Paul's in science, or at least, there aren't supposed to be. In practice, of course, if someone very smart tells you something you don't neccessarily understand, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least for a while- see string theory!
There may be "subjective" element to science, or at least to the practical application of science. But regardless, in principle science has an egalitarian nature which means that I cannot command what scientific theories you are to believe- I have to try to convince you instead. I don't think any of this has anything to do with whether everything is explainable or not. In any case, science readily admits that certain things are not explainable, or at least do not have an interesting explanation- we call these things "random."
Finally, I am not sure what you mean by "subjective", but I certainly believe that any individual's reasons for believing a particular scientific theory are ultimately going to be unique from any other individual's. Science doesn't tend to focus on those differences though- it leaves that for art and religion. Instead, science focuses on the reasons that seem common between individuals (which art and religion may or may not focus on as well.)
I don't know about religious fanaticism, but religion tends to include an element of personal revelation, or truth by testimony. For example, there is no way, even in principle, for you and I to verify that Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
All scientific claims, on the other hand, can be verified by you or I personally, if we have the time and skill. That verification, of course, while very difficult to describe in a systematic way, is certainly not arbitrary. One can do a bad job at this verification. This is the case with creationists- they are doing a bad job of verifying the evidence that supports evolution, either because they aren't good enough at this area of biology, or don't subscribe to basic philosophical tenants of science. In any case, it is then perfectly appropriate for their arguments to be attacked. This has nothing to do with fanaticism, religious or otherwise.
I read the other day that in a recent scientific poll, 50% of respondents replied "false" when asked "Does the Earth revolve around the Sun." (Vague, I know, but I'm not going to bother to look it up.) So anyway, maybe one does need to refer to oneself as a "heliocentrist" these days. (*sigh*).
Two things. First, any system of thought has statements that are not debatable, because to even have a debate in the first place, we have to be able to communicate, and to do that, we have to find some common ground that we agree to. For example, the rules of logic are more or less impossible to debate. So in this sense any belief system would seem to be illegitimate under your rules.
I would also argue that the answer Christianity provides is never as simple as "it annoys God." The Bible is at least a great work of literature, and its stories at least provide a "why" as much as any work of art does. As you admit, Christianity tries to grapple with realities much more complex than whether to break a glass. For exanple, the type of reasoning you seem to like can justify why human life has value as a means, but not as an end. (And then you still have to justify why, eg, happiness is an end.) Christianity seems to provide an answer- because we are created in God's image, with God's breath, because He has continued to allow us to live despite our shortcomings (although He flirted with the idea of wiping us out with the flood), Himself became human/had a Son, etc. This answer may not be satisfying to the modern mind, or at least to your mind, but when we turn to religion for answers, we are asking for help and guidence of both modern and ancient people, and if we are going to communicate with ancient people, then we at least have to learn their language a little.
To say that religion is a worthless belief system (and that seems to be what you say in your post) is saying that everything, or most everything, that our ancestors tried to write down about their life experience is also worthless. I think it is safe to say that modern society doesn't have it all figured out yet. It seems rash to me to be so hard on the advice of those who have come before us.
How do you define Religion? For example, you blame religion for causing people to give money as cattle. What about all the people who spend money every year on diet supplements and magnetic bracelets (which, evidently, are scientifically proven to cure you of everything from headaches to arthritis) which presumably don't work at all- do you blame all of this on Science?
Also, you claim that religion is not a "legitimate belief system". How is a belief system legitimate or not legitimate? I suppose we can talk about whether it is justified. But then don't we have to consider history? Isn't belief in creationism much more justified prior to the 19th century than it is today? And how is, eg, a 13th century peasant (or a 13th century scholar, for that matter) supposed to justify a belief in the beginning of the Earth anyway? It seems like you are being pretty hard on them.
You claim that religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves. But as I understand it, many mainstream protestant denominations place great emphasize on personal interpretations of the Bible. In fact, I think what makes it possible for so many protestants to still believe something as unjustified as creationism is such an emphasis on personal reason, combined with what seems to me an inability to think correctly- you don't see the Catholic Church, for example, still believing in creationism because its theology is dictated by a Church structure that is headed by very educated, smart people. It is true that religion places an emphasis on personal revelation. This emphasis may be wrong, but I think its a bit extreme to call it delusional.
Finally, I don't understand what you are trying to say with your last paragraph. It seems like you are mostly just saying that you think religious people are wrong (whatever being religious means, exactly), and that you should not have to respect them more for being religious, and that you should be able to disagree with them. I suppose I agree with that- it seems silly to respect someone for whether or not they subscribe to some particular abstract world view. I don't know why you use the imagery of a virus though- it doesn't seem to add anything. The feeling it gives me is that in some sense belief in religion is not voluntary, and I guess insidious. But isn't truth supposed to be compelling in the sense that you have no choice but to believe it? In this sense aren't those of us who belief in the logical validity of our high school Euclidean geometry text books also infected by a "virus", spread from generation to generation? So it seems like religion having the properties of a virus doesn't really say anything about its truth value.
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The question was talking about bombing "intentionally aimed" at civilians. My interpretation of this would be that intending to bomb nazi military target but knowing that civilian targets would also be destroyed would not be be bombing "intentionally aimed at civilians." However, the wording is ambiguous. This is, I think, why it seems to be difficult to interpret the results of polls like this too strongly. We are not just polling the answer to the question- we are also polling the meaning of the question.
Yes, but according to this article, 24% of US citizens believe bombing aimed at civilians are justified "often" or "sometimes" and another 27% think it is justified rarely. So yes, that poll is disturbing, but not necessarily more than such a poll of any other group of people would be.
As an author, he evidently sees himself as not fundamentally different from a factory worker who builds a car- they both build a product, and sell it to make money. Then he is no different from the people who write the Geico caveman commercials. He is using words to try to sell us something- in other words, he is creating propaganda, not art. (Coincidentally, the Geico commercials are now being turned into a sitcom.) This sort of philosophy gives you entertainment, but not art: Britanny spears songs, Star Wars novels, or perhaps more nefariously (I would claim) even Scientology. We should protect the livelihood of the artist to protect the art- not the other way around. If the artist doesn't believe that his work transcends his own life in any sense, if he doesn't believe that the work ultimately belongs to society, well, it must be pretty empty art. After all, we don't think of great works of art as property of any particular artist; we think of them as achievements that humanity as a whole can be proud of.
We have an economy to allow us to pursue art and new ideas; they are part of what make life worth living. Copyright should allow artists to earn a (perhaps nice) living while pursuing their primary purpose- the creation of art. This article turns that on its head by claiming art and ideas are just property. They then become means, with money being the end. I think this article supports sacrificing the soul of art to economics.
You are mixing up a couple of things that are very similar, but also very different. Chaotic systems are very sensitive to their initial conditions. You can imagine a chaotic clock- if the clock were set to 00:00.00 at midnight, it will read 01:00.00 at one-o-clock, but if it is set to 00:00.0001 at midnight, it might read 3:07.03 at one-o-clock. However, if that clock is set to 00:00.0001 multiple times, it will always read 3:07.03 at one-o-clock. So we think of the clock as being completely deterministic. A clocked that showed quantum randomness that was set to 00:00.00 at midnight might read 1:02.53 one morning; the next morning, when set to 00:00.00 again, it might read 00:59.03. It's behavior is truly random (although we can predict on average how off from 01:00.00 it will read.) So its behavior is not deterministic in the sense that knowing what time it reads at midnight does not allow us to know the time it will read at one-o-clock. However, its behavior is still determined in the sense that the clock being set to 00:00.00 at midnight is still necessary for the clock to read 1:02.53 at one-o-clock: the former event still causes the latter. Incidentally, it is not entirely clear that we have a good understanding of how deterministic real, physical chaotic systems because they are very sensitive to their initial conditions which we can imagine depend on quantum mechanics. I would think our brain is a chaotic system that probably does not directly depend on funny quantum effects, but I am not a neuroscientist.
They first use the word "random" in the popular sense, where it means in this context something like "accidental;" after all, will must be purposeful so it cannot be "random". But then they also use the word "random" in a more scientific context. By saying the fruit fly's behavior is not "random", they seem to mean that its behavior at time "t" is somehow correlated with what the fruit fly's behavior was at time "0". These two uses of the word don't really have anything to do with each other. Free will may be incompatible with the former meaning, but it is perfectly compatible with the latter. I can certainly choose to move in a new, uniformly distributed direction every minute, depending on, say, what a random number generator tells me to do, perhaps because I think it will help me to get out of a room. So I don't understand why these biologists are trying to talk about "free will" in the context of this experiment.
>>By the way...Care to explain?
I was comparing the Church founders to the Scientology founders. The Church had not yet, eg, started multiple distracting wars in the middle east to consolidate Papal power. That will tend to darken your mood a bit. It is true that according to the Bible God did allow, and even command, terrible atrocities. However, we don't need the Bible to know this about Him; we only need to read a history of the 20th century. I don't think the pre-Constantine church did much persecuting, though...
Certainly the early Christians were motivated by something they heard or read to die before they acknowledged the divinity of their political ruler. My hope is that many people alive today would be willing to do the same thing. In any case, what convinced them was certainly not our Bible- it was not compiled yet.
Well Christianity has had this problem of contradicting statements within the Bible and with reality
Yes, the Bible says self-contradicting things. It does try to describe a God Who seems to have seen fit to give us the atomic bomb only 3 years after He gave us penicillin. I don't see what this has to do with Scientology, though.
Early Christianity stole the will to live from its early believers.
Being willing to die is of course not the same as losing the will to live. Blame their deaths on a political system that forced the (literal) worship of its ruler. The whole idea that any Earthly ruler was not God panned out OK (even if Rome convinced us for a long time that an Earthly ruler could a least speak for God.) Let's see if thetan-removal is still around in 2000 years.
First of all, Copernicus was not persecuted. His books was published with the Church's approval (as he was on his death bed.) Also, I was talking about the early Church- Copernicus was, of course, much later. Before Constantine made Christianity the church of Rome, the Bible was still being written, and edited. So my guess is those people did not believe that the Bible was the inerrant word of God (whatever that means, exactly.) Finally, Christianity is not simply dogma/faith. It has spent centuries struggling with the relationship between reason and faith, both of which it has historically considered to be important.
Religion is in part a struggle to find what is more important than our own survival, which sometimes does lead to tragic evil. Scientology seems to me to to be instead a struggle to find money, or a whiter-teeth, cleared-sinuses kind of self improvement. The spanish prisoner does not ask me to die for him, either; is that a point in his favor?
You are talking about believing in God's existence, not believing in God. Questioning God's existence without questioning God is rather boring, like believing in Kirk's existence. Belief in God is a much bigger issue than belief in God, and is a much more interesting discussion. This is why I personally find the atheist comments many people make on slashdot sort of boring. The interesting questions are what your beliefs on justice, truth, love, purpose, freedom, etc are. Belief in God's existence might be integral to your belief in those things; then it is an interesting belief. If it is not, then it is not such an interesting belief. For example, I think it is much more interesting, and fruitful, to discuss whether the Hebrew God is a good God; whether he exists then becomes interesting, but only in the context of that discussion.
Except that the founders of Christianity, Jesus and Paul, were crucified. L. Ron Hubbard spent many of his last days cruising the Mediterranean in a yacht, waited on by nubile teen girls. Christianity offered the hope that truth, justice and love were inseparable. Scientology offers a neurotic future of expensive "treatments" to remove bacteria-like thetans that are constantly attaching themselves to your soul. Sure, Christianity was co-opted by Constantine as the state religion of Rome, and the cross has been a symbol of tyranny as often as it has been one of hope. But at least it was never trademarked...
I don't think it is strange at all. The original comment compared Christianity to Scientology. Also, I would shy away from saying anything about either Islam or Hinduism since (unfortunately) I know practically nothing substantive about either of them. I wish I knew what you were trying to imply with your rather cryptic post, though.
Comparing Chistianity to Scientology is like comparing Aristotle (who's science was wrong) to that voice that uses genetic technobabble to narrate the beginning of Heroes (its science is wrong too.) Christianity has had the great geniuses of the Western world contributing to it over last 2000 years, and it based on the Hebrew Bible, a great work as literature. It may or may not be wrong, but it has important, or at least sophisticated, things to say. Scientology has Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and is based on Dianetics. (I haven't read Dianetics, but I have seen the film version of Battlefield Earth, and that is enough for me.)
This is what I don't understand. Naively, I would think the insurance companies should be perfectly happy with this. If they KNOW you will come down with a heart condition, they know how much it will cost, and can just charge everybody a little bit more to make up for it. They charge their commission all the same, and are perfectly happy. I suppose the problem may be that insurance rates tend to be regulated, and they may be worried they won't be allowed to charge what they would like to pay for the added costs of your heart condition.
Or do you belive just ins ome special new radical form of communism where people who make physical goods work as capitalists, and the schmucks who make copyable goods have to uphold the communist side?
This is a very powerful counterpoint to the parent's original post. I think, though, the response could be this- we know how to enforce the right of the farmer to keep people from stealing food off his land. There is a pretty good chance that if I am not skulking around his property at night, I will not be shot at by him for trying to steal his food.
Seemingly, copyright violation law is becoming different from this. The somewhat controversial claim (though not so controversial on slashdot) is that innocent people are being sued by companies for copyright violation, and they do not have the means to defend themself.
The largly ineffective efforts to enforce copyright violation may hurt perfectly innocent people in other ways as well- for example, the now debunked claim that Vista might potentially cause mistakes in medical imaging (there was a story on slashdot about this.)
You may believe the rights of music publishers and artist to be compensated for copies made of their works to be inalienable right. Then it is probably the job of society to bend over backwards, in whatever way is neccessary, to allow them to be compensated. However, if these rights are not inalienable, but instead are simply the result of a contract made between publishers, artists, and the rest of society in the form of copyright laws- well, it may be time to revisit the terms of the contract.
My two cents: I would like to think that most of America finds creationism so compelling because it seems to balance the tendencies of the scientific method towards philosophical naturalism, reductivism, towards ignoring questions about first and final causes, towards secularism, etc. Creationism then becomes a sort of heroic optimism against the perceived nihilism of science, even if it is a bit of an over-reaction. However, I frankly don't think that most of us here in the US understand science well enough to be scared of its tendencies. No, I have to understand creationism as the result of bad theology. Creationism is not compelling. Instead, it is needed for a literal reading of the Bible. Without a literal reading of the Bible, it no longer seems be possible to find moral and religious truths in as straightforward a manner as we find scientific and mathematical ones. The person who is not conscientious now seems able to interpret the Bible in whatever way happens to be the most convenient, and the person who is conscientious must now doubt that his or her actions are the right ones. In any case, the average Biblical literalist is still interpreting the Bible. For example, he reads Genesis very differently than, say, a 3rd century BC reader did. This article says it far more convincingly that I could http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?tit le=1917 . Creationism, then, is not about defending theism. Instead, it is about trying to keep the doubt of modern life sequestered from certain religious principles. Unfortunately, religion has always involved doubt. It is certain aspects of the modern scientific method that do not involve doubt- we do not doubt, for example, that a jet will take off (barring some sort of catastrophe), or that an apple will fall towards the Earth. This kind of certainty is what needs to be kept separate from religion.
If I kill someone, we can discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that society places a moral judgement on my action, whether it was murder, self-defense, execution, warfare, etc, and we can ask about the details of that judgement. It seems like biology is beginning to have a heck of a lot of interesting things to say in this discussion.
We can also discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that we can argue over whether I should have killed that person. This question seems to be inherently unscientific. Biology can certainly motivate this sort of discussion- for example, if killing is a behavior that natural selection has placed in our genes, this might be intensely interesting to discussing whether I should have killed a particular person. But ultimately, whether I should have killed that person is a scientifically boring question (unlike whether I will kill another person, which could be very interesting.)
It seems like this article doesn't make this distinction, but talks almost exclusively about the former type of discussion.
>> implying that the persons are the main source... Christianity has different methods of pursuing truth. One comes from the Hewbrew tradition of personal revelation. The other comes from the Hellenestic tradition of pure reason. Both are used. The form, I would say, tends to be emphasized more than the latter (after all, the Bible is a product of revelation, not reason), but both are important.
...to an objectivist. :) To the subjectivist, however, it is self-confidence.
>> Why is it grander? Sure, they consider it grander, for their value of truth is the goal, whereas for science it is merely a tool.
Maybe I should have used the word "broader". In any case, I would say that for science, too, truth is the goal, not the tool. Most (pure research) scientists would agree with this, I think.
>> Yes there is. They are called Laws. Science has many Laws.
Yes, but any Law can be verified by anybody. That is exactly what a Law is. The Bible was inspired, and cannot be verified, at least not in the same sense that a Law can be.
>> That is not true. Assuming, for the purpose of a test, that morals were set in stone and the actions of said deity were known, they could very well be tested.
Except that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the source of those stones (quite literally) is the Diety Himself. If the Deity defines morality, then confirming whether he is a moral authority ceases to be an interesting question or to have any meaning, but is still a philosophical statement that isn't based on experience, and cannot be confirmed or refuted. Perhaps my example is too contrversial. Another example is that nobody has every found a way to confirm that Paul actually saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
>> Advertising refers to presenting information for people to perceive if they want to, and then leaves it up to them to make their own decisions.
As you say, we both have different ideas as to what advertisement means, and it is silly to argue over them. But I also think this example of yours is not a good one to use to understand my trying to convince you of a scientific truth. Truth should be compelling. It should not be a choice whether to believe truth or not, at least not in science.
I'm open to the possibility that belief in God could be a choice. As I understand it, eg, the Baptists and Methodists tend to hold the opinion that belief in God is a choice. To me, though, this is unsatisfying. Why would belief in God be a choice, but belief in mathematics would not be? I don't want to get into an argument over that, but this potentially represents another difference between religion and science.
>>
I just want to reiterate that I don't think you believe in the truth of the scientific method if you are what you refer to as a "subjectivist." This is fine, and an interesting philsophical debate about the overall validity of science, but it is not appropriate for a scientific debate about a particular theory.
>> "No, I am trying to get you to see truth." That is different than "knowing the truth."
For me, they are the same. To see truth is to know truth. It is compelling, and awe-inspiring, like seeing the Grand Canyon. Now if I treat you as if you are worth less than I am worth because I do not believe that you know the truth- that may be a sign of fanaticism. So I do not think that stirring up spoken controversy because you believe political pressures from groups of people who don't believe in or don't understand science is causing a change of language in scientific papers is not fanaticism. It is protecting the quality of scientific research (which I think we all want.)
>> I didn't define religion that way.
Sorry, I didn't understand you. How do you define religion then? Because you seem to think that Science is a religion, but Mathematics is not. Why is science a religion, then? As I mentioned in a previous post, Science does not believe e
>> That perhaps is true about Catholicism. Protestants believe is personal revelation. Judiasm believes is seeking out the truth for oneself, and that revelation cheapens it, the list goes on.
:-)
I am saying that all believe in personal revelation (prophets.) Protestants do not neccessarily believe that one also needs a church structure to relate to God, but all believe in personal revelation. Science has no personal revelation. This is a major difference. All three may or may not also stress seeking truth out for oneself. Certain types of Protestants certainly do. This doesn't change the fact that the truth found in testimony about divine revelation has no analogue in science.
>> Not really. Both Xianity and Science prize knowledge...
Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Christianity has a partly Hellenestic heritage, has in general supported the sciences, etc. Christianity and Science both pursue truth. But Christianity pursues what we might call a grander vision of truth, and uses more methods to pursue truth.
As for your claim that Science and Christianity do not justify knowledge in different ways- I think this is wrong. There is nothing like the Bible, for example, or the prophets, in Science. God (literally or metaphorically speaking) does not speak to the Scientist- or if He does, this is not how the scientist ultimately justifies his argument. Christianity also uses pure reason (and devoted centuries of thought to trying to reconcile reason and divine inspiration, with the scholastics) but this doesn't mean that both justify knowledge in the same way. This isn't suprising. For example, the moral authority of a divine being could never be tested with any experiment.
Finally, as to your comment about advertising: when I try to sell you something like hamburgers, my first purpose is not to tell you the truth- it is to get you to buy hamburgers. So I think to refer to religion or science as advertising invites a cynicism that has no place in either. But of course, ultimately the subtler aspects of the meaning of the word "advertising" is not set in stone, and probably isn't all that interesting to our current conversation.
Also, believing that you know the truth is optimism, not fanaticism. Having no doubt that you might be in some way wrong, I would say, is fanaticism. Biologists don't think they understand the process of evolution completely. (If they did, there would be no use publishing papers on it.) They simply know that it is not wrong to the degree creationists seem to think it is.
Finally, I don't it is meaningful to define religion as simply anything that tries to find truth. This would seem to include as religions: mathematics, police work, and games of Mastermind.
>> Other religions, while they make use of seers, witch doctors, prophets, or priests, they do not give any more credence to the revelation than to the deity itself, as the channeler is merely a tool.
...
:-) ).
If God talks to me, and not you, then I have a fundamentally different access to Truth than you do. Our positions become unequal. Whether the ultimate authority is me, the prophet, or God, is interesting, but not important to the point I was trying to make, I think.
>>In the realms of belief structures,
While I find what you are saying interesting, I still don't understand what you are saying, and in particular it doesn't seem to address the issues about objectivity that I find interesting- eg, is a quantum wave function objective, or real, or both. Also, I think my original point that regardless of whether knowledge is objective or subjective, science and Christianity justify knowledge in inherently different ways.
>> Actually, i think advertising would be better. It is respectful in that it values my opinion as much as yours.
I disagree. To say that I advertise my beliefs seems, to me, to imply that your and my ideas are equally valid, and therefore equally true. You and I are have equal worth, but our ideas, most likely, are not. If you are a creationist who tries to tell me that my belief in evolution is unjustified, then I think you are wrong. I am not trying to advertise my opinion to you; one advertises hamburgers and lingerie. No, I am trying to get you to see truth. It is the same type of truth that has allowed us to wipe small pox (almost) from the face of the Earth, go to the moon, and harness nuclear power. I suppose I could be wrong, or more wrong than you are (but of course, I know that I am not
>>Each has their benefits. But when choosing to believe one, that is subjective.
It is subjective in the sense that one set of beliefs allows you to go to the moon, manufacture vaccines, and create miniature Suns on the Earth, and the others do not. To me this says that Nature prefers one set of beliefs to the other. If you consider this to mean those beliefs are subjective, that is fine. If you disagree with that statement that Nature does prefer one set of beliefs to another, then I don't think you believe in Science, which is also fine, but then it is a little silly for us to have any sort of debate over the validity of evolution as a scientific theory.
First of all, I wasn't trying to say that all religions include "givens", although I think that any sort of human activity that includes any sort of communication or debate would have to include assumptions. I was saying that religions, in so far as the Christian tradition goes at least (and perhaps I should have stuck with that) places an empasis on persons as authority for truth. In Christianity, for example, Paul, or at least Paul's writings, knows more about God than I do because he is closer to God. Presumably there are going to be arguments or experiences that convince me of this basic truth, but one I accept it, Paul becomes an authority to me. Science has no such source of authority. If other religions don't have any authority of this sort (with the exception of the ancient Greeks) I would be very interested to know about it.
Second of all, I specifically avoided using the word "objective" because of all the baggage it brings with it. I don't know what the heck "objective" means. I know, for example, that "objective" meant very different things to Heisenberg and Einstein, and that is, I know, just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. So no, I'm not trying to say that science is as objective as possible. I am just saying that it is fundamentally different from religion (or at least, religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition) because regardless of whether it tries to be objective, it definitely tries to be egalitarian in the sense that there are no Paul's in science, or at least, there aren't supposed to be. In practice, of course, if someone very smart tells you something you don't neccessarily understand, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least for a while- see string theory!
There may be "subjective" element to science, or at least to the practical application of science. But regardless, in principle science has an egalitarian nature which means that I cannot command what scientific theories you are to believe- I have to try to convince you instead. I don't think any of this has anything to do with whether everything is explainable or not. In any case, science readily admits that certain things are not explainable, or at least do not have an interesting explanation- we call these things "random."
Finally, I am not sure what you mean by "subjective", but I certainly believe that any individual's reasons for believing a particular scientific theory are ultimately going to be unique from any other individual's. Science doesn't tend to focus on those differences though- it leaves that for art and religion. Instead, science focuses on the reasons that seem common between individuals (which art and religion may or may not focus on as well.)
I don't know about religious fanaticism, but religion tends to include an element of personal revelation, or truth by testimony. For example, there is no way, even in principle, for you and I to verify that Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
All scientific claims, on the other hand, can be verified by you or I personally, if we have the time and skill. That verification, of course, while very difficult to describe in a systematic way, is certainly not arbitrary. One can do a bad job at this verification. This is the case with creationists- they are doing a bad job of verifying the evidence that supports evolution, either because they aren't good enough at this area of biology, or don't subscribe to basic philosophical tenants of science. In any case, it is then perfectly appropriate for their arguments to be attacked. This has nothing to do with fanaticism, religious or otherwise.
I read the other day that in a recent scientific poll, 50% of respondents replied "false" when asked "Does the Earth revolve around the Sun." (Vague, I know, but I'm not going to bother to look it up.) So anyway, maybe one does need to refer to oneself as a "heliocentrist" these days. (*sigh*).
Two things. First, any system of thought has statements that are not debatable, because to even have a debate in the first place, we have to be able to communicate, and to do that, we have to find some common ground that we agree to. For example, the rules of logic are more or less impossible to debate. So in this sense any belief system would seem to be illegitimate under your rules.
I would also argue that the answer Christianity provides is never as simple as "it annoys God." The Bible is at least a great work of literature, and its stories at least provide a "why" as much as any work of art does. As you admit, Christianity tries to grapple with realities much more complex than whether to break a glass. For exanple, the type of reasoning you seem to like can justify why human life has value as a means, but not as an end. (And then you still have to justify why, eg, happiness is an end.) Christianity seems to provide an answer- because we are created in God's image, with God's breath, because He has continued to allow us to live despite our shortcomings (although He flirted with the idea of wiping us out with the flood), Himself became human/had a Son, etc. This answer may not be satisfying to the modern mind, or at least to your mind, but when we turn to religion for answers, we are asking for help and guidence of both modern and ancient people, and if we are going to communicate with ancient people, then we at least have to learn their language a little.
To say that religion is a worthless belief system (and that seems to be what you say in your post) is saying that everything, or most everything, that our ancestors tried to write down about their life experience is also worthless. I think it is safe to say that modern society doesn't have it all figured out yet. It seems rash to me to be so hard on the advice of those who have come before us.
How do you define Religion? For example, you blame religion for causing people to give money as cattle. What about all the people who spend money every year on diet supplements and magnetic bracelets (which, evidently, are scientifically proven to cure you of everything from headaches to arthritis) which presumably don't work at all- do you blame all of this on Science?
Also, you claim that religion is not a "legitimate belief system". How is a belief system legitimate or not legitimate? I suppose we can talk about whether it is justified. But then don't we have to consider history? Isn't belief in creationism much more justified prior to the 19th century than it is today? And how is, eg, a 13th century peasant (or a 13th century scholar, for that matter) supposed to justify a belief in the beginning of the Earth anyway? It seems like you are being pretty hard on them.
You claim that religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves. But as I understand it, many mainstream protestant denominations place great emphasize on personal interpretations of the Bible. In fact, I think what makes it possible for so many protestants to still believe something as unjustified as creationism is such an emphasis on personal reason, combined with what seems to me an inability to think correctly- you don't see the Catholic Church, for example, still believing in creationism because its theology is dictated by a Church structure that is headed by very educated, smart people. It is true that religion places an emphasis on personal revelation. This emphasis may be wrong, but I think its a bit extreme to call it delusional.
Finally, I don't understand what you are trying to say with your last paragraph. It seems like you are mostly just saying that you think religious people are wrong (whatever being religious means, exactly), and that you should not have to respect them more for being religious, and that you should be able to disagree with them. I suppose I agree with that- it seems silly to respect someone for whether or not they subscribe to some particular abstract world view. I don't know why you use the imagery of a virus though- it doesn't seem to add anything. The feeling it gives me is that in some sense belief in religion is not voluntary, and I guess insidious. But isn't truth supposed to be compelling in the sense that you have no choice but to believe it? In this sense aren't those of us who belief in the logical validity of our high school Euclidean geometry text books also infected by a "virus", spread from generation to generation? So it seems like religion having the properties of a virus doesn't really say anything about its truth value.