Dawkins / The Root of All Evil (merged) (1 Viewer)

[billygannon]

God created it!

Surely you mean Chuck Norris!?

 

[nofriendo]

Surely you mean Chuck Norris!?

wasnt that implied when i said god!

 

[1000smurfs]

I say let science be science and not interfere with culture, religion or otherwise

But what about when religion interferes with science? should they be silent then?

Oh for fuck's sake. I didn't say they should be silent.

this thread has been infected with the "stupid" meme

Sorry it seemed like a reasonable question to ask. To interfere you have to not be silent? Maybe if i'd said not interfere instead of silent you wouldn't have got so mad.

Science has been interfering with religion and culture for a long time for good or for ill.

 

[snakybus]

aargh, you'd know you were a scientist.

Look - by not interfering, I mean science should not have anything to say about cultural matters, religious or otherwise. If religious freaks start entering into the world of science, like the so-called intelligent design people, then it's perfectly fine to defend yourself from a scientific standpoint. But by trying to enter into the world of culture, scientists are being equally ridiculous.

Does that make sense?

 

[nofriendo]

aargh, you'd know you were a scientist.

Look - by not interfering, I mean science should not have anything to say about cultural matters, religious or otherwise. If religious freaks start entering into the world of science, like the so-called intelligent design people, then it's perfectly fine to defend yourself from a scientific standpoint. But by trying to enter into the world of culture, scientists are being equally ridiculous.

Does that make sense?

Isnt science a huge part of culture though! Culture is generally defined as any product of human work and thought or intellectual and artistic activety and the works produced by it. There is no way science cannot interfere with religion!!

 

[1000smurfs]

Actually, the likelihood is that there are other parallel universeses with entirely different laws of physics. So there are universes where supernatural beings, or beings we'd consider supernatural, exist and act completely in accordance to the laws of physics of that universe.

yeah why not , i'm sure there are other universes with unicorns out
there, There's not much evidence for them existing in this one though.

And surely Gamma rays have a power that breaks our own laws of physics? Albeit for a couple of seconds.

You mean Gamma Ray bursts, there are many theories as to what causes
them, a better example would be black holes, our current laws of physics
'break down' close to the centre, but this is a frontier of physics,
It's a domain our current laws don't work in, so people are reasearching better theories to cope, it doesn't necessarily imply something supernatural is going on

Now... M Theory offers a solution to the singularity, but it leaves the question as to how did the very first membranes in the 11th dimension?

There is always the question of why is there something and nothing
My favourite asnwer as a physicist is 'because nothing is highly unstable'
but we're into metaphysics now really. In that realm , personally i'm a platonist, I reckon logic and mathmetics have a kind of exisitence independent of physical reality, in fact i beleive physical reality to be a kind of 'software' running on the 'hardware' of mathematics and logic.
My views are very similiar to this physicist Max Tegmark

And something I was thinking about on the train into work is do we exist in some way in other dimensions within our own universe. Is there a conscious self within the 6th, 8th or 9th dimension. And is there a conscious self existing in some way in the 11th dimension?

There are loads of multiverse theories in phyiscs, Max Tegmark also
wrote a great article in scientific american catorgorising the different types, and i'm quite sure if certain ones are true then there are many other concious yous floating around. However your question is to do with extra dimensions in our one universe. It seems possible to me that parts of
brain physics might function in the other dimensions, roger penrose at least belives you need quantum mechanics + gen rel to explain conciousness! If String theory holds sway then that would be a natural extension.

 

[1000smurfs]

aargh, you'd know you were a scientist.

Look - by not interfering, I mean science should not have anything to say about cultural matters, religious or otherwise. If religious freaks start entering into the world of science, like the so-called intelligent design people, then it's perfectly fine to defend yourself from a scientific standpoint. But by trying to enter into the world of culture, scientists are being equally ridiculous.

Does that make sense?

yes i get what you're saying but i don't agree, well at least not in some areas of culture. This analogy has just popped into my head:
Take Fashion, it sounds patently ridiculous for science to prescribe what people wear from a stylisitc point of view, but lets say everyone started wearing clothes made from asbestos, scientists would have to speak up.

Now Dawkins feels morally bound to speak up about religion becuase
it can be damaging to our health also.

i dont think you even need to be a scientitst in this case , philosophers having been doing for a long time, it's just now that religion is attacking science, there is a need to fight back.

 

[snakybus]

Isnt science a huge part of culture though! Culture is generally defined as any product of human work and thought or intellectual and artistic activety and the works produced by it. There is no way science cannot interfere with religion!!

I feel like I'm pissing against the wind here. Science is objective, not subjective. Culture is subjective. I'll put it this way: I like the band the Magnetic Fields. If a scientist were to say to me: "I can prove this band isn't awesome, through science", there may be some mad way he could do this but when it came right down to it, it would not make any sense, would it? And any scientist with any cop on would spend his time pursuing more important and less pointless things, wouldn't he? So yes, science can, in theory, interfere with religion, but it's a pointless thing to do and anyone who does it can only do it by being obtuse, willfully or otherwise. So maybe some day science will embrace all aspects of culture in a way that it can be a critical, non-objective thing. But then it won't be science anymore. It'll be sciligion or something.

 

[snakybus]

Oh damn,I better get rid of all my asbestos underpants in my drawer at home then. Science told me to. And they were the height of style and all.

 

[1000smurfs]

Oh damn,I better get rid of all my asbestos underpants in my drawer at home then. Science told me to. And they were the height of style and all.

luckily for you science has already told you that asbestos underpants would be a bad idea!

 

[1000smurfs]

I feel like I'm pissing against the wind here. Science is objective, not subjective. Culture is subjective. I'll put it this way: I like the band the Magnetic Fields. If a scientist were to say to me: "I can prove this band isn't awesome, through science", there may be some mad way he could do this but when it came right down to it, it would not make any sense, would it? And any scientist with any cop on would spend his time pursuing more important and less pointless things, wouldn't he? So yes, science can, in theory, interfere with religion, but it's a pointless thing to do and anyone who does it can only do it by being obtuse, willfully or otherwise. So maybe some day science will embrace all aspects of culture in a way that it can be a critical, non-objective thing. But then it won't be science anymore. It'll be sciligion or something.

If you were to say to me , "you must only listen to this band 'magnetic fields' you must burn all your other music, in their song "Promises of Eternity" they say that they created the world in six days and that we will all go to heaven and meet them for tea and scones, and therefore it's ok to lay down your life for the cause of wiping out all other music besides magnetic fields. " i'd speak up scientist or not, if I was a scientist i'd marshal all I could from my knowledge to refute you.

 

[snakybus]

Funnily enough, I was just about to say that.

 

[1000smurfs]

Funnily enough, I was just about to say that.

onward magnetic soldiers

 

[ICUH8N]

Dennett on the origins of Religion

 

[shitepipe]

"Dawkins says religion is the root of all evil. Well, even if that were true, it's also the root of all science."

good interview with steve fuller, who testified for the pro-ID side in the Dover trial.. makes alot of good points.

 

[egg_]

"Dawkins says religion is the root of all evil. Well, even if that were true, it's also the root of all science."

Because God made the world, and therefore invented science, is that right?
Gonna post a link to this interview?

 

[shitepipe]

Because God made the world, and therefore invented science, is that right?
Gonna post a link to this interview?

oops.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/profile/story/0,,1698284,00.html

 

[1000smurfs]

"Dawkins says religion is the root of all evil. Well, even if that were true, it's also the root of all science."

good interview with steve fuller, who testified for the pro-ID side in the Dover trial.. makes alot of good points.

My opinion on him is that he's trading on the 'controversey', He's writing a book on it. Aside from the fact that as a ' scientific theory' it has been convincingly demolished by other scientists, from the outset the whole movement has been disingenuous, it sprang from the failure of creationisim.
Unfortuantely a lot of people seem to get the impression that science is being a bully in this instance, Especially religious sympathisers like Fuller. But enough time has been wasted already on this stuff and
teaching it to kids would be irresponsible.

Religion has inspired great art and great science (Newton)
but it isn't necessary to do so, more often than not it's a hinderance ,especially when it motivates you to look for for evidence when none is there. Einstein said ' God does not play dice' and he turned out to be wrong , arguably he wasted his later years in useless research becuase he believed in a divine plan.

 

[shitepipe]

agreed- he is trading on the contoversy of it, but he sees that as a good thing, a re-questioning of theories. he doesnt necessarily think its true, but he sees it as a useful 'critical foil', against which to test the theory of evolution. by comparing the two approaches then your understanding of the more 'correct' one becomes stronger. unfortunately, whereas he seems to have the best interests of scientific enquiry at heart, he is associating with people who have completely different motives, thereby undermining his credibilty.

 

[snakybus]

Sure he's trading off the controversy. So is Dawkins. So what? They're experts, and their expert opinion has value and that's all that's important.

Fuller's opinion is that acknowledging the value of the unknown has historically always been heuristically important - take germ theory for example. We're well acquainted with that. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates and his gang might have said that germs were devils or whatever, but the important thing was that it served medicine to do this. There is always a certain amount that's unknown out there. And it's not fair to say "but it's not necessary to do so" when talking about religion inspiring science or whatever. So what? It doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

And you may talk about the irresponsibility of teaching ID to kids, but evolutionary theory as it's taught in science class now is considered to be 40 years out of date. The whole thing of random mutations in each generation is not considered a good one in biology, but it's taught in schools all the time. And yes, of course, ID is more than likely a load of hokum - but Fuller knows this and he just feels that kids should be encouraged to think critically. At the very least it's a fresh view and I say why not.