9 ms·
A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain
- amazingman 10y agoThat Templeton Foundation funding, though.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWhat?
- simo9000 10y agoNautilus, the publisher, is funded by the John Templeton foundation which is a evangelical fundamentalist organization.
- treehau5 10y ago.....Ok? It's still good content.
- simo9000 10y agoI didn't say it wasn't.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 10y agoInteresting, I didn't know that. But they don't seem to be fundamentalist in the same sense as the churches I grew up near as a kid, from reading their website: https://www.templeton.org/who-we-are/about-the-foundation/mission https://www.templeton.org/who-we-are/about-the-foundation/mi... > The John Templeton Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights. > Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring “new spiritual information” and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation's motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.
- pech0rin 10y agoMaybe you should back up this claim. Just because they are a religious organization does not mean they are fundamentalist.
- simo9000 10y agoFirst line of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation. It is just important to understand the possible motivations for the article.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoThat seems to come from a single French article, in which the only reference to fundamentalism comes from the description of the founder. It seems that since the core tenets of fundamentalism seem to be biblical literalism and anti-modernity, it doesn't accurately describe the Templeton foundation or its goals. The founder and his wife did donate something on the order of a million dollars to causes opposing same-sex marriage, which definitely seems like a fundamentalist trait.
- lambdaphagy 10y agoIs Barack Obama a fundamentalist for having opposed gay marriage in 2008, the same year that the Templetons made their donation?
- koenigdavidmj 10y agoIt would help your argument tremendously if you wrote a full sentence, preferably with a verb somewhere.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post drive-by dismissals here. If you have a criticism, make it substantively. The implicit criticism here is pretty tenuous, given how many Nautilus articles have done well on HN.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago"Hume, the probability of people inaccurately claiming that they’d seen Jesus’ resurrection far outweighed the probability that the event had occurred in the first place." Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? What is the point of examining the claims of fictional characters about a fictional event?
- pavel_lishin 10y ago> Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_figures_identified_in_extra-biblical_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_figures_ident...
- jabv 10y agoThat's a great question! There is lots of corroborating evidence regarding many people and events (not all people and all events, but further discussion would branch a bit further off topic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- combatentropy 10y agoOne of the most memorable I have read about is the recently found Tel Dan inscription: some writing on a 9th-century-B.C. stone slab about King David. Archaeologists say it is particularly strong because it was by an enemy. http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/artifacts-and-the-bible/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/ http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/...
- jasonkostempski 10y agoI can't really accept the reference of already famous names as strong evidence they were part of any event or that the event described actually took place. On a daily basis I see completely made up stories about kings, queens, politicians, actors, actresses, socialites, etc.; and people believing those stories without any evidence; and people retelling those stories, adding their own flair. Often the subject of those stories let the inaccuracies continue or even fabricate it themselves. And that's just people and things that happen today, things that could likely be verified but just aren't because most people don't care to. Over thousands of years and various translations and interpretations, it is nearly impossible that any meaningfully accurate information made it this far, i doubt it even made it to the stone.
- zzalpha 10y agoClickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the story.
- weberc2 10y agoIt's not clickbait; this is the angle the article took to present the material. Whether or not it is novel or particularly good may be up for debate, but it's not clickbait.
- todd3834 10y agoI agree. As someone who probably wouldn't normally have read an entire article on bayesian probability, the angle the author took to present the material kept me interested for the entire thing. Maybe you can call it article bait? I found this a great history lesson followed up by very interesting links to how the human brain might work. The title seemed completely relevant to me.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jabv 10y agoThe fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking? I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality. I.e., either Bayes' theory has implications (not argument-ending proof) regarding the claims of the divinity of Jesus, or it is not relevant at all today.
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- danielvf 10y agoIt took me some looking to find Price's writing mentioned in the article. Warning - it's long - will probably take a half hour to read. Good stuff though. https://books.google.com/books?id=g2M3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA361&lpg=PA361 https://books.google.com/books?id=g2M3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA361&lpg=...
- euyyn 10y agoThanks for finding this. Very enjoyable read, even in spite of its flaws of reasoning.