The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

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High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 07:36am PT
Dingus, so you think those grinder gears are solar powered? lol

[Click to View YouTube Video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5hWWe-ts2s

I tried to show you just how much I care...
sempervirens

climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 08:10am PT
Why those in science seek with such a passion to diminish humanity and its condition, humans with their incredible potential, is beyond me and I'll say again a product of the romantic sensibility. Science + romanticism = self negation. Sad and silly.

Paul, that is a straw man argument. Are you sure "those in science seek to diminish humanity"? Consider those in science who are fascinated with humanity and wish instead to observe and study it. Wouldn't you agree that there are scientists who study love, war, sex, art, and yes even religion? You can find a crazy scientist just as you can find religious zealots who wish to damn you to hell. But of course not all who claim to be scientists or religious zealots will have those same passions.

Why anyone would diminish humanity is beyond me too. On that I agree. If you think that scientists do so, then wouldn't you have to agree that religious people do as well?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 08:54am PT
Sycorax, what is your purpose here?

This is a science religion belief thread.

Is your purpose just to disrupt?


FYI, some of us just aren't THAT enamored by your posts.

Maybe start a Fine Literature or Critical Theory thread?
Just a suggestion.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:09am PT
Ed and MikeL might think what you do here is productive; for the record, I don't. Imo, you're just another dime a dozen disruptor from the monster side (the malign side) of social media.

Apparently you have nothing better to do.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:21am PT
Paul, that is a straw man argument. Are you sure "those in science seek to diminish humanity"? Consider those in science who are fascinated with humanity and wish instead to observe and study it. Wouldn't you agree that there are scientists who study love, war, sex, art, and yes even religion? You can find a crazy scientist just as you can find religious zealots who wish to damn you to hell. But of course not all who claim to be scientists or religious zealots will have those same passions.

Straw man argument? No, simply an observation of opinions on this and the mind thread. Perhaps I should have qualified with "those here on this thread," since, no doubt there are many in science that don't succumb to the notion we are but dust specks riding around on a dust speck no more valuable than a bacteria, accidents of evolutionary processes in a vast indifferent universe, doomed to end as a species and therefore ultimately irrelevant in our actions and production. A really pathetic way to think of the miraculous structure we call the human mind.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:30am PT
That's rather an awkward focus, Paul, since there are probably more from the religious community than the science community who claim we're "just" (glorified pond scum, etc) if evolution is true.

Even my quote above re "just" "balls of meat" "with a bit of self-awareness attached" is not from a science type but from Ben Shapiro, a widely listened to religious type.

Yeah, we are "a mote of dust" by some measures in the grand scheme of things. But we are NOT "just" a mote of dust either. We are way more than that, too.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:39am PT
Even my quote above re "just" "balls of meat" is not from a science type but from Ben Shapiro, a widely listened to religious type.

Good grief! Mr. Shapiro is simply giving his definition of the materialist view. He's not stating his own view.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:40am PT
But if evolution is true, that is his (Ben Shapiro's) attitude. Is it not?


Good grief!

lol

...

Right Speech, Paul. That is a prescript from somewhere, ain't it?

Let's see how often you and other religious types can speak of evolution and our mechanistic universe without referring to us humans as "just" glorified pond scum or "nothing but" animals, etc...

Words matter, my friend. They shape attitudes.
Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 5, 2018 - 09:41am PT

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

    Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994







Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:11am PT
But if evolution is true, that is his (Ben Shapiro's) attitude. Is it not?


No, it's the attitude of some materialists. Remember: more important than writing skills is reading comprehension.

Some one please tell me what the hell does scale have to do with importance? The human mind is capable of comprehending the infinite. I'd say that trumps notions of scale as an indicator of importance any day. The idea of humbling yourself when you have as a human the remarkable capability to know sounds like the self inflicted slave morality of Christianity. And, know doubt it survives as a vestige of Christianity even in the tempered realism of many of those in science.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:15am PT
Good grief!

That is a quote. From Ben Shapiro. And he's got others.
Perhaps you should actually listen to the podcast? lol


Of course you could get a lot more from Frank Graham and Rick Warren, two more "religious types" who at every opportunity eagerly diss nature as revealed by science (you know, that "scientific materialistic" view).

Instead of blaming science, maybe blame Nature Herself? As science at base is simply the interrogator (Sagan) of Nature.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:21am PT
Let's take the scientific materialist worldview at its very base:

This is exhausting. Try reading the above quote.

The greatest description of a relationship to nature that I've ever read. Gotta like Wordsworth.

Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!


High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:32am PT
So what's YOUR advice, Paul? Should we just ignore the "scientific materialistic view"? How would that work?

Perhaps we could we just de-emphasize it? Barely if ever speak of it? In today's world, how would that work?
Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:34am PT
The human mind is capable of comprehending the infinite.

Really? You can’t even see both aspects of a necker cube at the same time, and you can comprehend infinity?






Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:49am PT
Some one please tell me what the hell does scale have to do with importance?


As Sagan said, “astronomy is humbling,” because an understanding of scale, and an understanding of the concept of infinity, is important to keep in mind because human grandiosity, often empowered by religious chosen one fervor, is responsible for so much suffering and destruction.

Scale helps to keep what is really important in perspective.

For me, my experience of nature, love, etc., is of supreme importance, but to the tardigrade or the Vega supercluster and all it’s inhabitants not a whit.
sempervirens

climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:51am PT
Straw man argument? No, simply an observation of opinions on this and the mind thread. Perhaps I should have qualified with "those here on this thread," since, no doubt there are many in science that don't succumb to the notion we are but dust specks riding around on a dust speck no more valuable than a bacteria, accidents of evolutionary processes in a vast indifferent universe, doomed to end as a species and therefore ultimately irrelevant in our actions and production. A really pathetic way to think of the miraculous structure we call the human mind.

Hmmm. Are you assuming that if someone believes we are specks of dust, as you say, then they are negating humanity? That logic does not add up. That is why it is a straw man argument. Make an assumption about someone or a group of people and then argue that it is pathetic, sad, silly. In my case your reasoning is obviously nonsense because I am fascinated by humanity and reality and for that reason I engage in science.

Science cannot define the ultimate question of creation and infinity. How far back does time go? None of us know. But religion claims to know. Science makes claim to what is observed. Science is not a negation or diminishment.

I address your arguments directly. But you continue to obfuscate or ignore my points. Why is that?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 5, 2018 - 10:59am PT
It is the "The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread"
even though ionlyski has thrown in with the New Mysterians in the OP.

Given that it sets up a competition, or at least a comparison, one has to expect that posters on the thread will weigh in where they think, and use rhetorical devices to advance their argument.

paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Jan 5, 2018 - 11:08am PT
Science is not a negation or diminishment.

I don't think it is either, however, go back and read this thread from the beginning and you'll see that those taking a materialist stance have repeatedly (as above) emphasized the need to humble our sense of the importance of our own existence. Science is after all is only a method and as a method is wonderfully effective, but when it is laced with a romantic view of nature in which nature does become a kind of god replacement and in which the "humbleness" of humanity as a vestige of christianity is a given, their is a diminishment of what it is to be human.

But you continue to obfuscate or ignore my points. Why is that?

Obfuscate? Really? I'd be happy to answer any of your questions
sempervirens

climber
Jan 5, 2018 - 11:10am PT
Given that it sets up a competition, or at least a comparison, one has to expect that posters on the thread will weigh in where they think, and use rhetorical devices to advance their argument.

Yes, Ed, I understand your point. I'm doing my best to go beyond the rhetoric. I find debate to an interesting past time, similar to a cross word puzzle, I can learn from it. I even think that if we could go beyond rhetoric we wouldn't have the current state of politics and media. So maybe a positive impact on the world is possible.

If you have responses to any of my comments, I'd appreciate them.
Lennox

climber
in the land of the blind
Jan 5, 2018 - 11:17am PT
Maybe we should start a ‘What is “Mind?” vs The New “Religion Vs Science” Thread Thread’ to determine who is closer to concordance.
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