The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

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MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Dec 30, 2014 - 09:56am PT
You're dancing on the head of a pin there...(JL)


My point is...(JL)


Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:12am PT
Base:

Thx. I can see that my casual assumption about some of your views was inaccurate. As for publishing, I’m hardly a proponent or much of a contributor these days, but I do read the stuff.


HFCS: “It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch."

An orientation to safety tends to support the status quo. Climbers are here on this site because they appreciate challenge and pushing limits. You can do it on a rock, in the business world, or in your being of who and what you think you are. Everyone can be a hero.

Neumann (2014 [1949]) said that the aim of an extraverted hero is action. He is a founder, leader, liberator whose deeds change the face of the world. The introverted type is the culture bringer, the redeemer and savior who discovers the inner values, exalting them as knowledge and wisdom, as a law and a faith, a work to be accomplished and an example to be followed. The 3rd type of hero does not seek change in the world through struggle with inside or outside, but to transform the personality. Self-transformation is his true aim, and the liberating effects on the world is secondary.

Sometimes it takes force to get change moving forward because our bourgeois communities are very strong (Weber referred to them as an “iron cage.”) This I just got from Harvard’s “Daily Stat” online:

Norwegian Companies Morph to Avoid Gender-Balance Law

One of the consequences of Norway’s law mandating that at least 40% of the directors of public limited companies be female is that numerous firms have switched their organizational form, sometimes at significant cost, so that they are no longer public limited companies, say Øyvind Bøhren and Siv Staubo of Norwegian Business School. Among the companies in that category when the law was passed in 2003, 51% chose to become private limited-liability firms by the time it became binding five years later. However, Norway may further extend the board-representation rule to other corporate forms.

http://www.bi.edu/OsloFiles/ccgr/JP/Gender_Balance_March_20_2013_JCF.pdf
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:26am PT

I prefer living in a country where values count more than a 3% price drop. Has anybody ever estimated the cost of letting women vote?

Though there's countries on earth where 90% of the upper-rich 1 % class seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Business schools think this way all over the globe. In Norway too.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:44am PT

"If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior."

"It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch."

"Share your originality [or unpopular belief?] only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness."

sounds like ur buddy Greene has been reading John 15.

These things I command you, that you Love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have choosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you..
If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also.
Jesus


(of course I've broken these Laws of Power a gazillion times, lol!)

Naw, you've been a fine soldier to ur master
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:05am PT
So this "beta" - from the the same Law (Law 38)...

"Nor is the wise man to be recognized by what he says in the marketplace, for he speaks there not with his own voice, but with that of universal folly, however much his inmost thoughts may gainsay it."

...could have / should have made me think of Blu.

Blu, are you actually a wise man in disguise? ;)
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:20am PT
i am jus a slave of effect to ur cause
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:22am PT
We are all slaves of causality, no one is "above the law."

It's all good though.




(Well, I mean, except for the baby gazelle about to be snagged and eaten by a lion on the savanna.)


"You got this!"

http://www.today.com/video/today/56700201#56700201
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Dec 30, 2014 - 12:11pm PT
I saw this quote about how Herman Hesse managed to write Siddhartha.

A major preoccupation of Hesse in writing Siddhartha was to cure his 'sickness with life' (Lebenskrankheit) by immersing himself in Indian philosophy such as that expounded in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.[4] The reason the second half of the book took so long to write was that Hesse "had not experienced that transcendental state of unity to which Siddhartha aspires. In an attempt to do so, Hesse lived as a virtual semi-recluse and became totally immersed in the sacred teachings of both Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. His intention was to attain to that 'completeness' which, in the novel, is the Buddha's badge of distinction.

I don't know how you Buddhists feel about that book, but it made a great impression on me at a young age.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Dec 30, 2014 - 12:16pm PT

no one is "above the law."

when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter..

We know that the Law is Spiritual; but i am carnal, sold under sin.

For that which i do i allow not: for what i would, that do i not; but what i hate, that do i. If then i do that which i would not, i consent unto the Law that it is good. Now then it is no more i that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. i find then a law, that, when i do good, evil is present within me.

Here is your cause-n-effect. Good news is, Jesus can break the chain!
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Dec 30, 2014 - 12:21pm PT
We are all slaves of causality, no one is "above the law."

Causality and Determinism are two topics that I have thought about quite a bit.

Yes, the initial state of every atom in the Universe can be, in theory, known. It is just a big measuring problem that we can't do..yet. In principle though, you can take almost anything and measure the precise initial conditions of a system.

We know the basic laws of physics, so knowing the initial conditions means that we can determine the outcome of whatever you are studying completely.

This is a big red herring. In most natural systems, there is chaos, for lack of a better word. It can be shown that you cannot predict a complex, non-linear system for very long. Weather forecasting, for example (although with weather we don't come CLOSE to measuring initial conditions).

This tendency for some of the physical sciences to believe in absolute determinism is false, at least most of the time.

The fallacy of determinism really irritates me when people use it to say that we do not have free will.

So I say that absolute determinism is not possible. So stop using it to say that we don't have free will.

Determinism works fine for many short term experiments, but if you throw something like turbulence into the system, it breaks down at some point. You can run the same experiment a zillion times and never get the same answer...down to the position and state of every atom. Or Quark if that is your fancy.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 30, 2014 - 12:35pm PT
"So I say..."

LOL.

With all due respect, you need to go back and (1) study your chaos theory; (2) maybe address it (causality, ie) from a physics and chemistry basis, working up from there; and (3) take into acct the different varieties (definition-wise) of "free" will or "freewill".

Because they are all probably factors in this mix of confusion.

Key point: Your chaos theory only addresses determinism from the predictability concern, not the causality concern. (Maybe read that sentence two or three times since you're always bringing up chaos in error in regard to volition, mechanistic v or supercausal v); it simply does not apply.

But yes, you do have freedom of the will with respect to evil spirits (a big concern in early and medieval times), also freedom of the will with respect to someone pointing a gun at your head (assuming someone is not right now pointing a gun to your head for the purpose of coercing you). ;)

Bottom line: you are as mechanistic as a honey badger or honey bee - lacking so-called "libertarian free will". Any "variety" of freedom of the will you have will be complementary or supplemental to this.

Sorry if this makes you uncomfortable.

.....

"Determinism works fine for many short term experiments, but if you throw something like turbulence into the system, it breaks down at some point. You can run the same experiment a zillion times and never get the same answer...down to the position and state of every atom. Or Quark if that is your fancy."

With all due respect, this betrays your inexperience (okay, lack of full understanding) with the subject. I say again, the subject of a mechanistic will has nothing - zero, nada - to do with (a) predictability, ability or inability to know or predict; (b) turbulence; (c) chaos.

I would suggest you take a couple "control engineering" courses maybe in addition to cellular biology, biochem and mol bio. These should disabuse you of the idea that there is a little lever in there somewhere that flaps in the ether so to speak that is under thought control (?) or ghost control (?) that begets a meaningful "libertarian" freedom of the will.

Also, maybe watch the S Harris lecture on free will again?

I wish people who COULD know better would stop posting irrelevant material if not nonsense about chaos, turbulence, etc. having to do with providing supercausal freedom (aka contracausal freedom) for the will (volition) and instead just go double down or triple down and study the pertinent subjects.

"The fallacy of determinism really irritates me when people use it to say that we do not have free will."

Sorry. But the subject of the will (re its constraints, powers and freedoms) is one the public is profoundly confused about and now that we've entered the info age 2.0, we should engage it in conversation. So some think. Of course others may disagree.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 30, 2014 - 01:01pm PT
re: the fallacy of libertarian free will

Motion: We're essentially meat roombas...


http://verybadwizards.com/episodes/59

http://danielmiessler.com/blog/sam-harris-vs-bad-wizards-free-will/

If you're truly really interested in the will... mechanistic vs. non-mechanistic... you'll check out those links.

.....

For the hundredth time...

"It can be shown that you cannot predict a complex, non-linear system for very long..." -BASE

The fact that I (let alone Laplace's Omniscient) cannot predict the output of a complex system (yes, because of chaos, nonlinearities, qm, etc.) has nothing - nada - zero - to do with the fact that it is (nonetheless) fully-caused, fully-mechanistic.

"Fully-caused, fully-mechanistic" means... NO freedom of the will in the contracausal or supercausal libertarian sense. Welcome to 21st science. :)

.....

Now if your claim is...

yes, our wills are "fully caused, fully mechanistic" but even so they have so-called libertarian freedom of the will (in other words some piece of them is "free" of cause n effect, unconstrained by underlying physics, physical chemistry, neurocircuitry, etc.) then I'd be REALLY interested in hearing this argument. Any takers? lol

re: the dark side of free will
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/the-dark-side-of-free-will/
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Dec 30, 2014 - 02:03pm PT
Here I went and broke several of Greene's Laws of Power.


Schucks, looks like I'll never blend in. :(
jgill

Boulder climber
Colorado
Dec 30, 2014 - 02:41pm PT
And round and round goeth the thread, now back to free will. In fact, the previous lengthy discussion was educational for me, provocative enough to make me think about a subject I had never really considered. In the end I came to appreciate a nuanced understanding of free will.

But I am still in the dark about a relationship between free will and the emptiness underlying all (which I now accept as gospel).
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Dec 30, 2014 - 02:57pm PT
Praise the no-thing and pass the emptiness.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Dec 30, 2014 - 03:12pm PT

We could just as well praise the flesh. What some call spirit, could just as well be called flesh. Praise the flesh of stone... ^^^
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Dec 30, 2014 - 04:21pm PT
Base: His intention was to attain to that 'completeness' which, in the novel, is the Buddha's badge of distinction.

Badge? You don’t need no stinking badge.

Hesse was using his imagination. Novels are stories, and they communicate some things that can’t be said, but they do not offer the heightened awareness of a rational-mental consciousness (which is, too, incomplete). Stories are a little bit submerged into the unconscious (which is really great).

A person who goes looking for enlightenment is most likely to find a trance-like experience and succumb to a kind of spiritual materialism, if you know what I mean.


EDIT: Maybe you don't know what I mean. I mean spiritualism becomes a thing.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Dec 30, 2014 - 04:33pm PT
If it's 'no-thing-ness" you're after...

Scientists discover consciousness on-off switch
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Dec 30, 2014 - 04:43pm PT
^^^^^^^^^^

Seriously?
Bushman

Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
Dec 30, 2014 - 04:47pm PT
I've set in motion a deciphering program to interpret the roundabout conjecturing of science versus religion and the philosophizing contained within this thread.
It is analyzing the links from free will to morality to religion to tyranny to democracy to socialism to scientism to medical and military experimentation to communism to humanitarianism to buddhism to animism to animal experimentation to shamanism to space exploration to emptiness to Christianity to Judaism to no thingism to Islam to science to free will @$&>£{%^\~>=%((&5%{&•¥!{^!@!
Hence my computer is in flames from working the algorithm.
Thanks.
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