MH2
climber
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My tee sez:
Be the Trouble You Want to See in the World
Jan says:
I would love to see an ecumenical gathering where religious leaders talk about values and an atheist like Dennet also presents his view along with theirs.
This comes close
http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/
I feel that religion is a great human invention. Going back in history to when there were no police or hospitals or grocery stores, a powerful unseen magical ally could give people a reason to expect success even when disaster looked inevitable. It is important not to give up hope. Religion has a marvelous synergy with emotions we experience anyway but religion gives the feelings focus, meaning, and greater power. Religion doesn't seem to work as well in modern technological society but give it time.
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2012 - 08:32am PT
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Ed
My point on intelligence,
was that after it evolved to the point of modern man, man used his intelligence to create God to answer the question of man's creation.
The point was, the Creation of God, through evolution.
I just thought it was Ironic.
intelligence does drive many species of higher animals like birds and mammals, many examples can be found.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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However distasteful, my job is to record what exists, not to pass judgement on it.
Awesome. I love that sentence!
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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Thanks for your reply Jan. I suspected as much and I didn't mean to be antagonistic to you so much as just challenging.
I particularly appreciate your observations of eastern cultures, which I know little about. Maybe there's hope for religion yet.
As an Anthropologist how do you see Religion evolving if you were to take a wild guess? Or is that too contradictory? The world may be evolving religion out of relevance whether they like it or not.
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2012 - 08:41am PT
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Politics uses both the blindness of Religion and the prostitutes of science
Politics does not prostitute science
Ignorance and denialism of science by politicians is the problem
I am not an apologist for religion.
Jan
I disagree
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2012 - 02:59pm PT
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Interesting take on science
not that I agree with it, but I know Largo and some others will.
Why Bad Science Is Like Bad Religion
Posted: 12/01/2012 9:59 am React Amazing
Dr Rupert Sheldrake.Biologist and author
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings. My concern here is with the bigger picture.
I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science. But I am more and more convinced that that the spirit of free inquiry is being repressed within the scientific community by fear-based conformity. Institutional science is being crippled by dogmas and taboos. Increasingly expensive research is yielding diminishing returns.
Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth. They believe that science has already solved the fundamental questions. The details still need working out, but in principle the answers are known.
Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system. But the "scientific worldview," based on the materialist philosophy, is enormously prestigious because science has been so successful. Its achievements touch all our lives through technologies like computers, jet planes, cell phones, the Internet and modern medicine. Our intellectual world has been transformed through an immense expansion of scientific knowledge, down into the most microscopic particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe.
Science has been successful because it has been open to new discoveries. By contrast, committed materialists have made science into a kind of religion. They believe that there is no reality but material or physical reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter is unconscious. Nature is mechanical. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in human heads.
These materialist beliefs are often taken for granted by scientists, not because they have thought about them critically, but because they haven't. To deviate from them is heresy, and heresy harms careers.
Since the 19th century, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex machines, nature is purposeless, and minds are nothing but brain activity. Believers are sustained by the implicit faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper called this stance "promissory materialism" because it depends on issuing promissory notes for discoveries not yet made. Many promises have been issued, but few redeemed. Materialism is now facing a credibility crunch unimaginable in the 20th century.
As I show in my new book, "Science Set Free," unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Many scientists prefer to think that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but some, including myself, think that they are symptoms of a deeper malaise. Science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have hardened into dogmas.
Despite the confident claim in the late 20th century that genes and molecular biology would soon explain the nature of life, the problems of biological development remain unsolved. No one knows how plants and animals develop from fertilized eggs. Many details have been discovered, hundreds of genomes have been sequenced, but there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone.
The technical triumph of the Human Genome Project led to big surprises. There are far fewer human genes than anticipated, a mere 23,000 instead of 100,000. Sea urchins have about 26,000 and rice plants 38,000. Attempts to predict characteristics such as height have shown that genes account for only about 5 percent of the variation from person to person, instead of the 80 percent expected. Unbounded confidence has given way to the "missing heritability problem." Meanwhile, investors in genomics and biotechnology have lost many billions of dollars. A recent report by the Harvard Business School on the biotechnology industry revealed that "only a tiny fraction of companies had ever made a profit" and showed how promises of breakthroughs have failed over and over again.
Despite the brilliant technical achievements of neuroscience, like brain scanning, there is still no proof that consciousness is merely brain activity. Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the "hard problem." It is hard because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.
In physics, too, the problems are multiplying. Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become apparent that known kinds of matter and energy make up only about 4 percent of the universe. The rest consists of "dark matter" and "dark energy." The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure.
Contemporary theoretical physics is dominated by superstring and M theories, with 10 and 11 dimensions respectively, which remain untestable. The multiverse theory, which asserts that there are trillions of universes besides our own, is popular among cosmologists in the absence of any experimental evidence. These are interesting speculations, but they are not hard science. They are a shaky foundation for the materialist claim that everything can be explained in terms of physics.
Good science, like good religion, is a journey of discovery, a quest. It builds on traditions from the past. But it is most effective when it recognizes how much we do not know, when it is not arrogant but humble.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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re: Rupert Sheldrake (from Wiki)
"Sheldrake's work has little support in the mainstream scientific community. Members of the scientific community consider Sheldrake's claims to be currently unfalsifiable and therefore outside the scope of scientific experiment. The "morphic field" concept is believed by many to fall into the realm of pseudoscience."
The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the "hard problem." It is hard because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms.
Everyone's in agreement: it's a hard problem.
Airplanes "defy" gravity (in a sense) but this doesn't mean the gravity isn't there. Or that someday it won't be explained. Memory "defies explanation" in terms of clear bioengineering mechanisms of action - but it's pretty clear by current understanding it's got a material basis.
.....
Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.
It's deep mystery just like this that actually draws many passionate about the subject to neuroscience. They study it, some for decades.
Then comes the irony. The results of their expertise are not deferred to, instead they are made fun of. Their life experience in the field leads them by all manner of circumstantial evidence to conclude mentality is (part of) what the brain does. But their expert decision making, judgments and claims are ridiculed, satirized by outliers who have little to no life experience in the study, some whose only experience with "science" might've been one high school biology class and occasional science pieces on Fox News.
.....
This Sheldrake piece is reminiscent of the 80's Biology as Ideology. History repeating itself. It's also not unlike a Largo post but without the convolutions, color, brilliant diversions, rhetorical flourish.
"These materialist beliefs are often taken for granted by scientists..." because across the space and time of our human lives the everyday goings on in the real world without exception empirically support them.
Most ridiculous...
Materialism is now facing a credibility crunch unimaginable in the 20th century.
Our American public is steeped in wingnuts - wingnuts from the left as well as wingnuts from the right. Ascent is a project. Progress is hard.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Ed: Kudos on your posts.
You wrote that the turning of the wheel of evolution takes a long time. It's been a while since I read in that vein, but do you (or others) accept Gould's and Eldredge's notion of punctuated equilibriums: that long periods of stability are interrupted by brief moments of rapid (maybe even quantum) change? (I remember controversies.)
Riley and Bruce:
I appreciate your criticisms of myth. You both seemed concerned with truth and morality. But what of civilization / societies / community mores, laws, and cultural practices? I don't see how you can square the morality of truth with any truth of morality. That is, how do you suppose people should determine law or mores truthfully? How should society determine its cultural practices? It seems to me that how ANY community comes up with standards for right or wrong, can be criticized in the same way you criticize religions' approaches.
For example: the climbing community. If there are standards and norms for proper behaviors in the community, who's to say and how are they come by? If you argue for anarchy--no values, no norms, no beliefs--then there can't be a community. Science or art (the other pillars of knowledge along with ethics) cannot help. It's been noted and commented on since Nietzsche, that any of the three pillars cannot provide insights into the others (The True, the Beautiful, the Good.)
All cultures / communities rely upon a number of myths. The first is a myth of concern. Here truth and reality are not directly connected with reasoning or evidence, but are socially established. What is true for concern is what a society or community believes in, in its values, and in its norms of behavior.
Over time, a myth of concern become secularized and begins to confront the objective world. Truth then becomes truth in correspondence, where words and numbers align to external phenomena. Scientists and other masters of specialized crafts appeal not to concern but impersonal evidence and verification--and, in turn . . . objectivity, suspension of judgement, tolerance, and respect for the individual become important and elevated. This we can call the myth of freedom, which is part of the myth of concern, but which stress the non-mythical elements in the culture, . . . of truths that are studied rather than created, provided by nature rather than human desire.
It should be clear that conservatives (and humanities) emphasize the myth of concern, while liberals (and science) honor the myth of freedom.
But there are other myths of note: the myth of democracy, the myth of capitalism, the myth of socialism, the myth of marxism, the myth of entrepreneurship, the myth of health care, the myth of imperialism, the myth of education, the myth of revolution, etc. Of course, all myths create traditions, rules--and give rise to various complaints about them, just like you're making.
So it seems to me that there cannot be a choice in the world of getting rid of myths, . . . but rather of which ones one is willing to sacrifice and which one is willing to live with.
Are contemporary myths any better than more primitive ones?
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Gotta love the delerious slope of postmodern oneupsmanship. Is the narrative of these myths itself not yet another myth? ;-)
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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Right now atheists are a discriminated against group and they have lashed out in reaction. That reaction won't convert their religious enemies and it is off putting to a lot of other people, many of whom still go to church but are not fanatics. The religious moderates are the very people who should be their allies against fanaticism. So why attack them too? (This is a rhetorical question not directed at you personally).
first of all I think the religiously moderate generally are philisophicaly allied along moral lines with secularists, more so than with the religiously fanatic. Yet many of the religiously moderate will align politically with the fanatics, or at least remain neutral in the face of their aberrant demands and behavior. Why is this? You should have insight into this. I think it is pure pragmatic tribalism. In other words, moral considerations are cast aside for the purpose of maintaining political power. The allegiance to God the authority supercedes moral considerations. When push comes to shove, religion for all its moral posturing, proves to be nothing more than just another power structure that serves itself before ideal.
Case in point is attitudes toward man made global warming. Many many moderate christians side or at least go along in silence with the fundamentalist denial of the science and defense of the corporate status quo, against overwhelming science as well as the moral imperative to take action. The only plausible reason is a meek deference to authority against all reason. Exactly the same can be said for attitudes toward homosexuality. Admittedly there is some bias here written in the good book but our best "Real world" understandings of this issue prove it to be missplaced. Regardless, loyalty to unassailable dogma supercedes all other observation to the contrary. Creationism ditto. This all results in the moderates taking on or at least permitting the attitudes of the fanatics.
This tribal devotion works great if all you have is a monoculture, but we don't. Even egypt dosn't. And it certainly dosn't bode well for advancement in science, which undeniably is related to advancement of humanity.
I dunno Jan. I'd say the moderate faithful need to do an about face and rebel against thier political overlords (the fanatics) if they are a truly moral people.
The aetheists / secularists are not "attacking" the moderates. We are challenging the morality of their choice of allegiance with the fanatics and thier irrational devotion to the authority of various books written in the stone age. I think you'll find that the majority of us think Jesus was a perfectly good guy and its a crying shame his lessons have been co-opted by various political power structures to dubious effect.
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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Mike - my opinion is that morality, or more accurately how it applies as ethics, is often in flux but it evolves in a progressive direction not regressive or static. Religion is largely responsible for getting us this far, but due to its inability to respond to a world that constantly changes around it it is becoming irrelevant as a guiding force. Thanks for the lift to here but I think its got a flat tire.
I don't know if we can go on without it , but its getting obvious that it is lacking the tools for a modern world. Afganistan maybe, but not here.
I'm not sure what your getting at with the play on "myth". Healthcare for instance is hardly a myth to those on the operating table. Maybe you are suggesting that the myth of noahs arch is just as real to some so by that comparison both are myths?
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MH2
climber
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Here on the Arayu, one of the lonely places of the earth with all the winds of Asia droning over it, where the mountains seemed like the bones of the world breaking through, I had the sensation of emerging from a country that would continue to exist more or less unchanged whatever disasters overtook the rest of mankind.
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Eric Newby
1958
(about a trip in 1956)
And don't forget the disasters that have since not overtaken Afghanistan.
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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MH2 - I admit my knowledge of afganistan is squat, so really i was just referring to the myth of an authoritarian monoculture steeped in ancient religous dogma, which could equally be applied in south Carolina or Georgia
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2012 - 07:17pm PT
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Too many flowers today
so I will just knock it out
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2012 - 07:24pm PT
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Problem?
How can you just pass up a plant in full bloom without taking the time to take a F-ing photo of it.
It's just too hard, it's like a sentence from above,
you must not let that plant go without taking a f-ing picture of it, you lazy ass bastard, now pick it up, bring it into the garage, put it on the background stand, turn the lights on, and take a f-ing picture! ok, your wish is my command; oh wise one.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Healthcare for instance is hardly a myth to those on the operating table.
(An Almighty Supreme Being is hardly a myth to Go-B, Splitter, and others.)
Hey, Bruce:
I certainly agree that religion is a dominant, pervasive, and fundamental myth (no pun intended) that spawns many other powerful myths, while yet others are just minor myths or even just little falsehoods.
What I was trying to get at are the differences between what's promised, what's understood by what's promised, and what's realized over time as myth founders' revelations become codified, administered by yeomen, and pragmatically practiced by regular folk.
I can't think of any important concept / program that really worked out as advertised.
BTW, are you so sure that our ethics are as historically progressive as you make out? I'm sure that there are many differences of opinion, but here's the first paragraph from the World Happiness Report:
We live in an age of stark contradictions. The world enjoys technologies of unimaginable sophistication; yet has at least one billion people without enough to eat each day. The world economy is propelled to soaring new heights of productivity through ongoing technological and organizational advance; yet is relentlessly destroying the natural environment in the process. Countries achieve great progress in economic development as conventionally measured; yet along the way succumb to new crises of obesity, smoking, diabetes, depression, and other ills of modern life.
(http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf)
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MH2
climber
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Bruce,
The Nuristan economy described by Eric Newby seemed to consist of goats, mulberries, and walking to a town several days away to trade cheese for hats to look chic in. I'm only guessing that they are still loca-vores, except for the caps. In the USA maybe folk like the Amish will get by but I bet most of the South is too globalized to weather any disaster that, for example, denies them the use of pick-up trucks.
edit:
From what I recall, it's the mountains of Nuristan that make regular roads impractical so that people must depend on what they can make and grow locally, for the most part.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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One of those odd little historical links having nothing to do with this thread: Eric Newby learned to climb on Eckenstein's Boulder in Wales. Eckenstein was the British father of bouldering (1890s). His eponymous boulder was also the site at which Eckenstein introduced the modern version of balance climbing to prominent alpinists like Geoffrey Winthrop Young.
;>)
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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ok Mike I think Ifollow. and no i'm not sure they are progressive or have turned out progresive or that the progresiveness is more myth than fact, but I hope that at least the effort and motive is progressive.
Also I don't doubt that in the end the Nuristani's with whatever myths they hold may have been more successful than all others in attaining gross domestic happiness across the board, even if some of their social mores seem a little off to us whitey tighties. The real test however would be if a spaceship of gay martians suddenly crash landed and upset the happy balance. Could they handle it with grace and dignity? Would gay martian pride parades be allowed? What if their daughters suddenly took a fancy to lesbianism? Would same or mixed gender marriages of martians and Nuristani's destroy the social order and fabric of thier society requiring a pogrom which should have happened a while ago.... or would thier society grow as a result?
I don't know what goes on there but thats what happens here, and the only real problem are the uptight religious nuts.
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