*Unobservable obviously means having no impact on the observable universe as anything that has an impact on the observable universe is observable through that impact.Also known as 'nonexistant'.
Or just "imaginary."
*Unobservable obviously means having no impact on the observable universe as anything that has an impact on the observable universe is observable through that impact.Also known as 'nonexistant'.
Well there is maybe the crux of the discussion.
If something is unobservable. Does that mean it does not exist?
If something is unobservable. Does that mean it does not exist?
"If a tree falls in the woods..."
If something is itself unobservable, and has no possible influence on anything observable, even indirectly, then it's functionally imaginary.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
*Unobservable obviously means having no impact on the observable universe as anything that has an impact on the observable universe is observable through that impact.Also known as 'nonexistant'.Well there is maybe the crux of the discussion.
If something is unobservable. Does that mean it does not exist?
more things are imagined than actual
The likelyhood of an imagined non observable thing are much higher than an actual unobservable thing.
That likelyhood is high enough and close enough for state work to dismiss the possibility for all intents and porpoises.
"If a tree falls in the woods..."
hey! something in my area of expertise!
I think it gets to what I'm saying though TOZ so thanks for the one liner!
KG: I notice that you're not responding to the question directly.
That likelyhood is high enough and close enough for state work to dismiss the possibility for all intents and porpoises.
I think we should leave that to the porpoises myself.
But again. Nobody's giving me a Yes to my pretty direct question.
KG: I notice that you're not responding to the question directly.
...even indirectly...
:)
But again. Nobody's giving me a Yes to my pretty direct question.
the question is somewhere between bait and misleading. Why don't you just go ahead and either answer the "Yes, but..." or "yes, so?" that are being thrown around.
You find highly unlikely that there's an afterlife, since its existence hasn't been scientifically proven yet.
BTW, the phrase "scientific proof" is an oxymoron. That's not how science actually works.
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'People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe."
-- Hippocrates (5th Century BCE)
Basically you want us to agree to something where you get to make up all the rules.I don't see how I'm doing that.
1. Science is meant to explain the observable universe.
2. Anything that is unobservable* is of no concern to science.I don't see anything in those statements that can be disputed. I also don't see what the positron has to do with the statements. I'm honestly kind of surprised by the pushback.
*Unobservable obviously means having no impact on the observable universe as anything that has an impact on the observable universe is observable through that impact.
You could not be more wrong in your numbered statements. When science is told that a question can not be answered, that's a challenge for it to be disputed.
Conventional wisdom held that since black holes sucked everything with an interior escape velocity greater than light, that meant that nothing would ever come out of them. Until Hawking presented his model as to how black holes can radiate, and subsequent proof was found.
The difference between religion and science is that Religion presents answers as fait accompli, whereas science is always looking for new questions to ask.
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I need to catch up with all the new posts, but it seems that the basic limit of science has not been brought up yet (or I missed it).
The very nature of science makes it limited by our capacity for observation AND imagination. The former limits our ability to test scientific theories and properly assess the results of scientific experiments, while the latter limits our ability to formulate new scientific theories and models that can explain what is observed.
Also, our scientific understanding is inherently limited by the very fact that scientific models come from our human minds and thus are subject to the limitations of human thought, which is by definition encapsulated within the material universe, and thus smaller than it. Unless one supposes that human minds reach beyond the mere material, which I did not even consider before typing this actually :-)
In other words, I believe that any model that tries to completely explain the whole of reality will fail because it is only a part of that whole reality
Not sure I am making much sense here :-)
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Not sure I am making much sense here :-)
your words make sense but the idea behind them does not.
Science is limited to reality. The presupposition of a limit to science presupposes something that is not real, a presupposition that itself is often the goal of saying that there are limits to science.
Also, our scientific understanding is inherently limited by the very fact that scientific models come from our human minds and thus are subject to the limitations of human thought
Absolutely not, and this is why science is inherently different and yes, better than any other mode of human thought.
Science relies, on both ends, on an existing material universe to be observed, to take those ideas and figure out how it's working, and then test those ideas against the same reality that spawned it. It's a dialog with nature, not an attempt at a monologue. No human in the 1500's could have imagined electrons, or bosons, or positrons or anti matter. And yet we still came up with the idea precisely because science is NOT limited by our imaginations it's "limited" by what's there.
As long as you're listening science can show you things you never knew existed.
As long as you're looking science can find anything that exists.
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I hope you're not getting that from me, I really don't want to change your beliefs and wouldn't want to de-convert you, and I'd only ask that you treat me with the same respect.I think that what makes me sad in this kind of thread here is that religious people are debated into submission to admit that there is no such thing as a god, that spirituality is a trick of the brain and that being religious means being irrational and opposed to science
I do not feel that this is in any way a tolerant behavior and as such it brings only strife and no greater understanding :-(
I do not remember your posts being that antagonistic. And I strongly believe that anyone who shows this kind of care for another person's feelings is very unlikely to have crushed those same feelings beforehand :-)
I think it would be awesome if someone could actually change my beliefs and I do not feel that there is such a thing as de-converting someone who thinks like I do.
Because I am a deeply ingrained doubter. I think that I have no ability to be certain of being right about big things and I give the benefits of doubt to others' beliefs or assessment of reality because they just may be right after all. Whether this view of reality is religious or atheistic. I admit very freely that I do not know and have zero certainty if there is an afterlife or if there is nothing at all after this life.
That said, I have a strong dislike for people who fall quickly to extremes and try to impose their views on others without care for any hurt they might inflict while doing so. That includes religious extremists but IMO it is not limited to those who hold religious beliefs
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Not sure I am making much sense here :-)
your words make sense but the idea behind them does not.
Science is limited to reality. The presupposition of a limit to science presupposes something that is not real, a presupposition that itself is often the goal of saying that there are limits to science.
I think the crux of this apparent disagreement we have is whether we are talking abut Science as an absolute or Science as the current scientific understanding. I am not sure that Science as an absolute has a real meaning because I think there is only the current scientific understanding at a given time.
Just because scientists in the 19th century had no way to know about Relativity does not make them lesser scientists. And yet their understanding of reality was less exact than the one we have now. And I think that there are still many things left for science to explore and explain and that the scientific understanding of our descendants will be greater than our own.
And so on through the ages of Humankind's existence.
And I do not believe that we, as a species, will ever have the opportunity to experience all that exists in the Universe and thus many scientific discoveries might evade us just because of this.
Which BTW raises the fascinating question of what a non-human take on science would be like :-)
Also, our scientific understanding is inherently limited by the very fact that scientific models come from our human minds and thus are subject to the limitations of human thoughtAbsolutely not, and this is why science is inherently different and yes, better than any other mode of human thought.
Science relies, on both ends, on an existing material universe to be observed, to take those ideas and figure out how it's working, and then test those ideas against the same reality that spawned it. It's a dialog with nature, not an attempt at a monologue. No human in the 1500's could have imagined electrons, or bosons, or positrons or anti matter. And yet we still came up with the idea precisely because science is NOT limited by our imaginations it's "limited" by what's there.
As long as you're listening science can show you things you never knew existed.
As long as you're looking science can find anything that exists.
Some "scientific" people refuse to accept evidence of real phenomena because it does not fit their understanding of reality. That does not make the phenomena any less real
Other, no less scientific, people accept that the phenomena is real even if they do not yet have a scientific explanation for itMany things that were previously seen as inexistant according to scientific understanding have been proved and integrated in our current scientific understanding. Why should it stop just today ?
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Okay, that's good then, we're coming from a similar place even though we're not on the same side of this debate. An important thing to remember is that debate are never won, at best people can come to an understanding, and even if we can't agree at the end of the day we all need to live together. I might not think there's an afterlife but belittling an opponent that does doesn't do anyone any good. Maybe you're never going to come to my side, but by civilly talking about it, maybe theists won't have negative opinions of atheists in the future. In that way everyone wins in the future.
I do not remember your posts being that antagonistic. And I strongly believe that anyone who shows this kind of care for another person's feelings is very unlikely to have crushed those same feelings beforehand :-)I think it would be awesome if someone could actually change my beliefs and I do not feel that there is such a thing as de-converting someone who thinks like I do.
Because I am a deeply ingrained doubter. I think that I have no ability to be certain of being right about big things and I give the benefits of doubt to others' beliefs or assessment of reality because they just may be right after all. Whether this view of reality is religious or atheistic. I admit very freely that I do not know and have zero certainty if there is an afterlife or if there is nothing at all after this life.
That said, I have a strong dislike for people who fall quickly to extremes and try to impose their views on others without care for any hurt they might inflict while doing so. That includes religious extremists but IMO it is not limited to those who hold religious beliefs
I am always delighted and amazed to see that goodwill can be found with people of ANY belief (or absence thereof), political view or other way of thinking.
Which means to me that goodwill comes from something far deeper than all of this.
I actually think that goodwill is one of the fundamental factors ensuring out survival as a species. YMMV :-)
I realized thanks to these boards how much atheists have it rough in many countries in the world. In a way, I am blessed to live in France where Secularism holds sway and matters of religion and belief are mostly seen as private matters. I hope this will hold true for a very long time and I think atheists from other places could benefit from coming and relaxing in my country
Only scientific proof - as you understand science to operate - can prove or disprove to you the existence of the afterlife.
For investigating anything it's as close to science as the subject allows or it's horsefeathers.
Emphasis mine. I could'nt disagree more.
I can and do investigate subjective human experience - because I happen to be interested in many subjects pertaining to spiritual matters. And spiritual matters are materially difficult to trace, by definition.
So, I have knowledge of spiritual matters, and I don't care that they are scientifically investigated or not. I mean, if they are, I can read a science book about them, though it's not my priority.
So, how do I know that they're not entirely the product of my imagination ?
Well, I share my findings and my understanding with others similarly inclined, and from this confrontation I try to make sense of their experience or mine. It helps to build my world view, the way I make sense of the universe.
And there are tons of books in any library which deal with horsefeathers... I mean, spiritual matters (sorry, couldn't resist :-), so I can gain knowledge by perusing them.
Of course, we - meaning spiritual enthusiasts - could be:
- all liars
- delusional
- in a bizarre conspiracy
I trust these people. So they're not liars to me.
How do I know they don't lie to me ? In various ways. How do you know people you trust don't lie to you ?
If I am delusional, it doesn't impair me in my daily life in any way. I have no psychotic episodes. I don't frighten people in the street. I look like the common man, and there's no law against my world view.
So, if I'm delusional, I'm not aware of it, and nobody else is, so it's fine.
So, the last hypothesis, that the people around me are all engaged in some bizarre conspiracy... Well, it's beyond me why that would be the case.
Only scientific proof - as you understand science to operate - can prove or disprove to you the existence of the afterlife.For investigating anything it's as close to science as the subject allows or it's horsefeathers.Emphasis mine. I could'nt disagree more.
I can and do investigate subjective human experience - because I happen to be interested in many subjects pertaining to spiritual matters. And spiritual matters are materially difficult to trace, by definition.
So, I have knowledge of spiritual matters, and I don't care that they are scientifically investigated or not. I mean, if they are, I can read a science book about them, though it's not my priority.
So, how do I know that they're not entirely the product of my imagination ?
Well, I share my findings and my understanding with others similarly inclined, and from this confrontation I try to make sense of their experience or mine. It helps to build my world view, the way I make sense of the universe.
And there are tons of books in any library which deal with horsefeathers... I mean, spiritual matters (sorry, couldn't resist :-), so I can gain knowledge by perusing them.
Of course, we - meaning spiritual enthusiasts - could be:
- all liars
- delusional
- in a bizarre conspiracyI trust these people. So they're not liars to me.
How do I know they don't lie to me ? In various ways. How do you know people you trust don't lie to you ?If I am delusional, it doesn't impair me in my daily life in any way. I have no psychotic episodes. I don't frighten people in the street. I look like the common man, and there's no law against my world view.
So, if I'm delusional, I'm not aware of it, and nobody else is, so it's fine.
So, the last hypothesis, that the people around me are all engaged in some bizarre conspiracy... Well, it's beyond me why that would be the case.
So could you boil all of that down and tell me what you're actually trying to say? I'm trying to parse this with everything else you've said in this thread.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you're limiting yourself to the scientific method to investigate spiritual matters, you will gain neither a rich experience nor a rich understanding.
If think also that postulating a purely materialistic universe - which some science enthusiasts are prone to do - severely limits the richness of the human experience.
But perhaps that's another subject.
There's scant evidence there's an afterlife, because the afterlife is non-material, and science - as it is practiced nowadays - is ill equipped to deal with non-material realities.
If you decide all of reality is material, well it's called an axiom.
It doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean it's false. It means it's the foundation of your reasoning.
You can be convinced reality is only material, but it's your conviction. And your conviction depends on your worldview.
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There's scant evidence there's an afterlife, because the afterlife is non-material, and science - as it is practiced nowadays - is ill equipped to deal with non-material realities.
If you decide all of reality is material, well it's called an axiom.
It doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean it's false. It means it's the foundation of your reasoning.
You can be convinced reality is only material, but it's your conviction. And your conviction depends on your worldview.
In order for me to believe in anything specific, I need to have some kind of evidence that the person saying it is both honest and has reason to be right.
I have no reason to think spiritually-inclined folks don't earnestly believe what they're saying (other than some of those selling something), but alternative explanations of serendipity or tricky senses capture the reasons better from my perspective. Besides which, if the thinking is it has no way of interacting with the material world, that includes not being able to drive our actions, so there's no way that thing's existence could have an impact on whether we believe in it. And in that case, the simpler explanation is that it doesn't exist rather than that I happened upon it correctly by chance.
So if the definition of material is that which can interact with the things I can detect, I'll allow that non-material things may very well exist but I'll never believe in any specific one of them. Because my aversion to false beliefs is stronger than my ability to guess which ones are correct.
@thejeff
It seems to me your explanation postulates - axiomatically - that there are no supernatural forces in our universe.If one does think - as I do - that there are supernatural forces around us, the question of why the Occident doesn't believe in those any more is greatly interesting. Fascinating, even.
I don't consider skepticism to be postulation -- axiomatic or otherwise -- just a best practice. Otherwise we'd spend our lives philosophizing about every possibility imaginable -- am I just a warm-body battery jacked into a Matrix? Am I just a brain in a jar, and the entire universe is merely the product of my imagination? Maybe the ancient Summerians were right about gods and the afterlife, how do I align myself with a defunct religion if it is the right one? Etc.. Best to start with what I can observe and trust, expand my understanding as new phenomena materialize, and take the world as it is.
I'd be interested about your thoughts about why non-believers don't believe in the supernatural / the spirit world / religion.
Basically you want us to agree to something where you get to make up all the rules.I don't see how I'm doing that.
1. Science is meant to explain the observable universe.
2. Anything that is unobservable* is of no concern to science.I don't see anything in those statements that can be disputed. I also don't see what the positron has to do with the statements. I'm honestly kind of surprised by the pushback.
*Unobservable obviously means having no impact on the observable universe as anything that has an impact on the observable universe is observable through that impact.
No, we've named things that science has been unable to observe, but yet it was highly concerned with them.
I'll proceed with your discussion if you stop using the word "unobservable" and instead use the word "imaginary".
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you're limiting yourself to the scientific method to investigate spiritual matters, you will gain neither a rich experience nor a rich understanding.
So what methodolgy are you advocating then?
This is off-topic, but this has been percolating in my head for a while and I figure this is a good thread to ask this:
The Argument: There are endless metaphysical possibilities. We're all just warm-body batteries jacked into the Matrix. We're just brains in a jar. The Hellenes had it right, and we should all be sacrificing livestock to Zeus & co.. Yahweh is real, and it's our job to somehow decide between Monotheism v1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and then between the many patches. On and on and on we can go.
But notice how possibilities with the most emotional satisfaction tend to become the biggest and most successful religions, while the possibilities with no or negative emotional satisfaction tend to get few to no adherents, even if the latter provides a much simpler explanation for reality. A clear example that springs to mind is Maltheism vs. Christianity: There are millions (billions?) of people who are totally willing to jump onboard with Jesus and spend their lives grappling with the problem of evil and the problem of the Trinity, because it means having an ultimate father figure who's always on their side, a human deity to put a human face on that father figure, a set of lifestyle expectations to feel good about meeting, etc.. Meanwhile, Maltheism provokes a "mal-what?" from most people despite offering a completely simple and reasonable explanation to both problems, because the idea of a god who doesn't care -- or even actively scorns -- humanity is depressing and structure-less.
Conclusion: Given competing unevidenced possibilities, people overwhelmingly choose the most feel-good possibilities, regardless of other considerations. For many believers, reason simply isn't an issue. For religious philosophers, reason is employed only after the premise of their faith is axiomatically accepted. Thus, nobody can be trusted -- in purported experience or claimed knowledge -- when it comes to the metaphysical.
...So, I'm guessing someone somewhere has made this argument before. Anyone run into it, or one like it? Thanks for reading!
I think non-believers do spoil that idea somewhat. I've heard atheists say that they miss that feeling of comfort thinking that they would one day rejoin deceased family & friends. They clearly didn't choose what was the most feel-good answer.
So, how do I know that they're not entirely the product of my imagination ?
Well, I share my findings and my understanding with similarly inclined, and from this confrontation I try to make sense of their experience or mine. It helps to build my world view, the way I make sense of the universe.
So you make observations , from that develop hypothesis , which you check for
So you're doing science, kind of, but then veer off from it on several crucial points where it can't support your hypothesis. You're also finding the people that agree with you and finding that.. they agree with you. That is horrible sampling.
And there are tons of books in any library which deal with horsefeathers... I mean, spiritual matters (sorry, couldn't resist :-), so I can gain knowledge by perusing them.
That is equivocation. knowledge of what people think of spiritual matters is not knowledge of spiritual matters.
If I am delusional, it doesn't impair me in my daily life in any way. I have no psychotic episodes. I don't frighten people in the street. I look like the common man, and there's no law against my world view.
It's keeping people from finding an actual solution to our all too soon visit with an eternity of non existence.
So, if I'm delusional, I'm not aware of it, and nobody else is, so it's fine.
It's not okay if everyone's doing it.
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I think non-believers do spoil that idea somewhat. I've heard atheists say that they miss that feeling of comfort thinking that they would one day rejoin deceased family & friends. They clearly didn't choose what was the most feel-good answer.
At least atheists have the great comfort of knowing what comes after death. And they do rejoin deceased ones in nothingness which also entails an end to suffering
It might not be a perfect all-encompassing feel-good answer but it is clearly the one that fits their view of reality the best and thus helps their serenity
I think the crux of this apparent disagreement we have is whether we are talking abut Science as an absolute or Science as the current scientific understanding. I am not sure that Science as an absolute has a real meaning because I think there is only the current scientific understanding at a given time.
Science is first and foremost a method. It is a method that is so good at returning results about the physical world that the body of knowledge it has turned up about the physical world is synonomous with knowledge of the physical world.
Just because scientists in the 19th century had no way to know about Relativity does not make them lesser scientists.
That isn't my claim.
What you said was that science was limited by imagination and its not. There was no way to imagine relativity. There WERE ways of observing it and concluding it though.
And I think that there are still many things left for science to explore and explain and that the scientific understanding of our descendants will be greater than our own.
But you're trying to translate that uncertainty into a very particular and specific belief and that just doesn't work.
Which BTW raises the fascinating question of what a non-human take on science would be like :-)
i think it will have the same basic parts.
Some "scientific" people refuse to accept evidence of real phenomena because it does not fit their understanding of reality. That does not make the phenomena any less real
Such as?
Many things that were previously seen as inexistant according to scientific understanding have been proved and integrated in our current scientific understanding. Why should it stop just today ?
I'm not expecting it to stop, but saying that it will some day prove a deity is that saying tommorow the take 5 numbers will be 1 2 3 4 . Its not only a random guesse everything we know about the take 5 precludes it.
If one does think - as I do - that there are supernatural forces around us, the question of why the Occident doesn't believe in those any more is greatly interesting. Fascinating, even.
I'd be interested about your thoughts about why non-believers don't believe in the supernatural / the spirit world / religion.
There are multiple reasons, depending upon each non-believer, I'm sure.
One reason is that, in the West, the Church used the idea of God for centuries - heck for more than a millenium and a half - to justify the social order : you are to obey your betters because God said so (I doubt Jesus ever uttered such an idea, but who cares ? ).
So when that social order was revised - culminating in the political and social revolutions of the 18th and 19th century - a good many people were inclined to cut themselves from the religious community. And after that from religious thinking altogether.
But I also think unbelieving may be - in many cases - a by-product of the way rationality was asserted in the West.
One important step for the triumph of reason was the formulation by Descartes of "Cogito ergo sum". A forceful logical proposition, as Descartes intended it to be. By knowing this one thing with certainty, one can elaborate a coherent explanation of the world.
But, as it has been elaborated since by various thinkers, this pearl of wisdom can easily lead to solipsism.
Descartes was himself a believer, and he argued for the existence of God. But the "Cogito ergo sum" doesn't need God. In fact, the strictly logical and reasoning subject needs nothing outside him/herself to make sense of the world.
The danger is that this strictly logical subject might not even - in his judgment - need the world.
It seems to me a rationalistic (as opposed to a reasonable) worldview has emerged of that Cogito, which is prone to doubt everything, and believe in nothing - except the scientific method which historically co-exist with it.
There's something paranoid about the way some, not all, non-believers see believers :
Believers are dishonest
Believers are trying to sell me something, they lie to me
Believers are insane.
There's something paranoid about the way some unbelievers doubt themselves : if something out of the ordinary happens to me, something which could be viewed as supernatural, something unfamiliar to me, then I will doubt my senses, I will doubt my experience... And I'll decide nothing happened. It was just an elaborate illusion, my brain misfiring and playing tricks on me.
[A tad hyperbolic, but fun --->] If God appeared to an occidental unbeliever, there's a good chance he would run to the nearest psychiatric hospital, before even asking It to prove Itself.
To sum it up :
Short-sighted rationalism is not sound rationality.
The occidental mind is prone to solipsism, and to using the materialistic science card to discard phenomena and ideas which challenge the common (doxographic) world view.
Dry reason cut off from the world is a scary kind of intellectual-flavored insanity.
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The repetitive use of "occidental" in those posts is particularly amusing given that the US and most of Europe are less effective at science education than Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, China, and Korea.
Going by those numbers, I have a feeling that the average "occidental" is probably worse at spotting pseudoscience than the average Asian.
The repetitive use of "occidental" in those posts is particularly amusing given that the US and most of Europe are less effective at science education than Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, China, and Korea.
Emphasis mine.
And:Going by those numbers, I have a feeling that the average "occidental" is probably worse at spotting pseudoscience than the average Asian.
Perhaps.
If this is the case, that isn't in contradiction with what I'm saying.
I'll rephrase the last sentence of my previous post in the following excerpt, this time using your own term above to substitute some of mine, to wit :"the materialistic science card"
"The occidental mind is prone to using pseudoscience to discard phenomena and ideas which challenge the common (doxographic) world view."
So, you see, your commentary was amusing to me too. There's no reason debating should be a dry, humourless, practice :-).
BTW what do people think of scientists who do believe in God ?
That their existence strongly suggests that some scientists do not subscribe to the materialistic axiom "Reality=materiality".
I'll wager some of those people even believe in the afterlife.
I wonder how they handle the snickering of some of their atheist colleagues ?
If I am delusional, it doesn't impair me in my daily life in any way. I have no psychotic episodes. I don't frighten people in the street. I look like the common man, and there's no law against my world view.
It's keeping people from finding an actual solution to our all too soon visit with an eternity of non existence.
So you think it's our survival as individuals which is at stake. I can understand your concern.
Though I disagree with you re:it's keeping people to prevent/cure death.
The first written (that we know of) epic of humankind, which tells of the adventures of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is a quest for immortality.
People haven't waited for modern science to begin searching for immortality. There's no reason to suppose they will cease to search now that modern science can help the search.
*Thoughtfully*
I think one of the things that's made some people hesitant to trust the conclusions of science is the way it's currently being funded and, well, manipulated. True science generally places value on being able to repeat and confirm an experiment - otherwise, it's hard to know if your results were genuine.
Right now, however, there are actually many cases where experiments aren't being verified - they're just being assumed and promoted as fact by whoever was funding the study (who, surprise surprise, tend to get a lot of results that agree with what they want to hear). There's no glory - or money - for being second to publish.
In other words, not everyone is practicing science the way it's meant to be practiced... rather similarly to the way not everyone who calls themselves a believer is actually following the teachings of their faith.
I don't ask anyone to accept my beliefs without questioning them, and similarly, I hope you'll understand why I'm hesitant to accept something "because science says so". Mind you, lots of older stuff that's been repeatedly verified seems trustworthy enough. It's not like I'm saying everything science has concluded is suspicious - that would be silly. But many recent tests and explanations actually are a little suspect because of the human element, and I'm not sure that's going to get better until society as a whole agrees that duplication and verification is worth doing more often.
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People haven't waited for modern science to begin searching for immortality. There's no reason to suppose they will cease to search now that modern science can help the search.
Compare how much investment you've made in science based immortality/extended mortality vs how much you've made in spiritual immortality.
Then look at how everyone else is investing.
Your post modern narrative disparaging science is also incredibly harmful to the ability of science to lead to action, such as vaccines and global warming to name two. You may have good intentions with it, but many people touting the "Crisis of reproducability" or "limits of science" are just trying to push their own religion or undermine science because science says something they don't like.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: When you have scientific inquiry, and you make a discovery and publish that discovery, it’s not yet the truth. He’s gotta do research, and get the same result as you. She’s gotta do the research and [the results] don’t have to be exactly the same, they have to be approximately the same. Then someone is going to invent a new apparatus that you haven’t dreamt of yet that’s going to test the same thing. If she gets the same answer, we have a new emergent truth. Then that goes into the textbook]
I don't ask anyone to accept my beliefs without questioning them, and similarly, I hope you'll understand why I'm hesitant to accept something "because science says so".
Stuff generally does get verified, even if it's when new work tries to build on it. Scientists are of course human - prone to error and bias.
An interesting read is to be found here.
One of the things I personally find insufferable with the attitude of many people with science is that propensity to bludgeon you with science-laced arguments,
which they typically haven't fully reflected upon nor mastered,
which they haven't thought through because thinking by oneself is difficult for many people,
and to meet your opposing arguments with a snickering "I'm true, you're wrong ; if you think differently it's because you're a moron".
As Kirth said, there's no scientific proof of something - there's scientific evidence supporting or not a current theory, as I understand it.
But for the vast majority of people in our science-worshipping times, that distinction, and the entire conceptual framework propping it up, means nothing.
You're right, or you're wrong, and if you happen to think differently from somebody's interpretation of what some newspapers authors think the scientific community thinks, you're a moron because "SCIENCE says so !".
It's not the scientific method per se which is problematic, it's the relationship people have with truth, and the utter inability for many people to realize that our conceptual constructions are, for the most part, axiomatic. And inherited from our society.
Meaning we're convinced of many things, not because we've applied the scientific method and have examined them, but because people around us think those things are true.
To me, our worldview conditions our access to truth, and to the real, and if we mistake our worldview for the reality (whatever that is), we are walking in a maze of mirrors without realizing it.
If we accept that our worldview conditions everything we perceive, we know we're living in a world of mirrors. Where we get from there is our personal odyssey.
"Nothing is true" is one of my pet philosophic building blocks.
And 3 little excerpts to finish, by the same author:
"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."
"Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."
"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..."
Niels Bohr
I think non-believers do spoil that idea somewhat. I've heard atheists say that they miss that feeling of comfort thinking that they would one day rejoin deceased family & friends. They clearly didn't choose what was the most feel-good answer.I think I mentioned this earlier but thoughts of death are strong triggers to religious centers in the brain. People who are religious get stronger feelings of faith when they're thinking about death.
I'm not in the least convinced by neuroscience as it stands now (it's the same article I posted in my previous post).
For those interested in the reproducibility crisis (I didn't coin that term ; scientists did, I think), there are many articles tackling it.
I think non-believers do spoil that idea somewhat. I've heard atheists say that they miss that feeling of comfort thinking that they would one day rejoin deceased family & friends. They clearly didn't choose what was the most feel-good answer.
Oh agreed, I've prayed to a God of my own creation, and I can attest that it feels good. And yet I don't actually believe, so I know from personal experience that individuals are definitely not bound to take the feel-good possibilities.
Maybe a better conclusion would be "People overwhelmingly choose the emotionally satisfying possibilities, regardless of other considerations, therefore the metaphysical / the spiritual / religion is a matter of emotion rather than reason."
In any case, I guess nobody here has seen a similar argument.