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>And 'the Force' is fictional and does not apply to Carrie Fisher. Its a metaphor for spirituality, and its pretty obvious that the strict deterministic materi

>And 'the Force' is fictional and does not apply to Carrie Fisher. Its a metaphor for spirituality, and its pretty obvious that the strict deterministic materialist worldview is far from proven and that many people have spiritual beliefs that they feel 100% justified as having. Not everything is horrible because we don't have immortality. If anything, we'll hit our extinction event well before then, assuming its even possible for complex mammals to have. No, we're not flatworms and can't have the aging solutions of flatworms. I think its okay to feel comforted by death. When my dad died, it hurt, but I was happy his suffering has ended. I was happy he had a long life and raised three boys who loved him. You absolutely can accept and even welcome death in some ways. Life isn't all roses and chocolates. Death is currently the only solution we have to terminal suffering, for example.

gonvaled 10y ago
Science (I will use "science" as shortcut for "deterministic materialist worldview") is not "proven": it offers (falsifiable) explanations to observable phenomena, and it does not concern itself with as-of-yet non explainable phenomena. It accepts, and happily adopts, corrections. People have spiritual beliefs when they try to explain things that they can not understand. Other people abuse this by telling them that they have special knowledge and that they can explain those phenomena, or even more subtle, that there is somebody out there who can explain it to them, at some point, in some manner. All this without providing the slightest chance of falsification, meaning basically they can assert whatever they like. So in my eyes, no, people are not really justified in having those beliefs: they could just as well accept that certain things are (now, and possibly forever) unknowable.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Except science doesn't support a basic Newtonian deterministic world. When you factor in relativity and quantum mechanics your worldview can't be purely a deterministic machine anymore.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    You stated that the explanation we have is deterministic, I didn't. The explanation given by science is still falsifiable, though, which is what characterizes it. Other explanations ("beliefs") are completely arbitrary. That said, relativity has nothing intrinsically non-deterministic about it [1], and whether quantum mechanics is deterministic or not is open to debate [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Classical_and_relativistic_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Classical_and_re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Comparison_of_interpretations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...

gonvaled 10y ago

Science (I will use "science" as shortcut for "deterministic materialist worldview") is not "proven": it offers (falsifiable) explanations to observable phenomena, and it does not concern itself with as-of-yet non explainable phenomena. It accepts, and happily adopts, corrections. People have spiritual beliefs when they try to explain things that they can not understand. Other people abuse this by telling them that they have special knowledge and that they can explain those phenomena, or even more subtle, that there is somebody out there who can explain it to them, at some point, in some manner. All this without providing the slightest chance of falsification, meaning basically they can assert whatever they like. So in my eyes, no, people are not really justified in having those beliefs: they could just as well accept that certain things are (now, and possibly forever) unknowable.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Except science doesn't support a basic Newtonian deterministic world. When you factor in relativity and quantum mechanics your worldview can't be purely a deterministic machine anymore.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  You stated that the explanation we have is deterministic, I didn't. The explanation given by science is still falsifiable, though, which is what characterizes it. Other explanations ("beliefs") are completely arbitrary. That said, relativity has nothing intrinsically non-deterministic about it [1], and whether quantum mechanics is deterministic or not is open to debate [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Classical_and_relativistic_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Classical_and_re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Comparison_of_interpretations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...