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Science is at odds with religion anyway. The two things are fundamental opposites. You can set moral standards to not discriminate. But when you judge the situ

Science is at odds with religion anyway. The two things are fundamental opposites. You can set moral standards to not discriminate. But when you judge the situation dispassionately without polluting the logic with "morals" the discrimination makes factual sense. Religion is the opposite of science.

toponaut 4y ago
"the discrimination makes factual sense." I can't figure out what you mean. Examples? You seem to be linking religion with "moral standards" and science with "facts". Neither of those are appropriate. Not all religions teach morality and, if there is such a thing as "fact" on some topic, there is no need to do science on it. Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". They can point in different directions but that happens within each domain too (Islam vs Buddhism / string theory vs standard model) and doesn't make them incompatible tools.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  I never linked religion and morality. Morality wasn't even a topic that was covered. It's just you and your bias. >Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". No. One is a better guess then the other. Science assumes logic and probability and mathematics are axiomatic concepts and builds upon that. It provides the ability to falsify a hypothesis given that you assume those axioms are true. Religion is a mess. No axioms, no logic, no foundational rules are assumed.
timthorn 4y ago
They really aren't. Some religions or sects might be, but it isn't a fundamental dichotomy. If you look at the history of Christianity and Islam, much good science was done by the faiths.
- threefourteen 4y ago
  Much good science was done in spite of the faiths as Galileo would testify. The Church was accepting the science when there was absolutely no other way.
  - ecshafer 4y ago
    Galileo was imprisoned for insulting the Pope in his book. This had nothing to do with religion, but rather good old fashion, people with power don't like having that power abused. There's a reason other astronomers weren't so persecuted for their ideas, it was how they presented them, not the idea itself.
- morelisp 4y ago
  We're discussing specifically mysticism here, which has a much stronger claim to have a fundamental dichotomy with science. (Regardless of which creed it's associated with.)
  - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
    All that's needed is alignment with the cosmos. A model need only be able to commute with reality to provide a useful metaphorical explanation. And then the challenge becomes decoding the metaphor to figure out the literal alignments and misfits. This is why every religious/spiritual perspective needs more investigation and experimentation, not less. Once science is more shaped by applied category theory, this will become a common understanding. Speaking as someone who made a joke design-your-own-religion religion that's a creative packaging of neuroscience, math, computer science, and psychology, I was very surprised to start being able to connect deeper with people carrying deeply-held religious/spiritual beliefs and to start identifying wisdom from their perspectives. This also allowed both parties to at least open up to considering each others' perspectives and sometimes shifting them. And believing a model is literally true or metaphorically commutative isn't a necessary distinction for a model to be useful, though it does seem to impact the depth to which it can be embodied. Turning belief on and off is a skill I see discussed way more in mystic circles than in science circles, where belief denial seems to be the norm.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      Hey, I'm an epistemic anarchist, you don't have to convince me mysticism is a good idea. I'm just saying that "personal subjective spiritual revelation" is about as far as you can get from "objective or intersubjective repeatable results." It's not "this guy is responsible for evaluating our AI work and also goes to church on Sunday", it's "this guy is responsible for evaluating our AI work and also thinks God is speaking to him personally and directly about the quality of that work." If you think your code reviews are bad now, imagine if the reviewer thought they only needed to answer to God.
      - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  It is. Religion is faith based. Science is evidence based. They are opposites. But people can be contradictory. They can believe both are the same without realizing it. You are such a person. The premise of religion is to believe in things without evidence. Science is more complex, but at a simple level you can say the premise of science is to believe things that have strong evidence. Opposites. Everyone knows this on an intuitive level. Let us assume for arguments sake that religions are all true. Let's take Christianity for example. If Christianity was evidence based and very likely to be true... Why isn't Christianity called a science? Why isn't biology called a religion? What is the fundamental difference in categorization if both biology and Christianity (or any other religion you want to put in place of Christianity) are real concepts? What is it in our subconscious that is causing us to categorize some things as science and other things as religion when both are true and real aspects of reality? Why does this categorization exist? If physics is true and biology is true and Christianity is true, how come only Christianity falls into the religion categorization and physics and biology fall into science? The answer is trivial. It is because on some level all humans, including you know that religion is "less true" then science. You can see the difference. You know that mythological beliefs like walking on water or coming back from the dead are on Shakey less evidence based grounds. Everything in science has a high bar for verification. We trust it because it lets our engines run and our planes fly, and every human knows that religious claims have a much lower bar and are less trust worthy. Again my claim is that the fact that you can categorize aspects of the world as either religion or science, it shows that at a subconscious level you are aware of this dichotomy even when you believe both science and religion are real. So what I'm saying is you already know that science and religion are contradictory. But your surface level beliefs and behavior are masking this subconciouse awareness.
  - timthorn 4y ago
    > Religion is faith based. Science is evidence based. No argument with that. >The premise of religion is to believe in things without evidence But this isn't fully accurate - the premise of religion is to believe in /certain/ things without evidence, specifically unknowable things. Science and religion deal in different domains, and it is quite possible to hold a faith-based religion while fully subscribing to evidence based science. A contradiction only arises if the religion makes doctrinal claims about scientific matters - for example, there are those who believe that the Earth is 4000 years old. However, belief in a deity whose primary act of creation wasn't modelling Adam & Eve from clay but instead defining the laws of physics & mathematics means that by definition the pursuit of science is compatible with religion.
tjs8rj 4y ago
Saying religion is the opposite of science is like saying philosophy is the opposite of science. Religion is a philosophy, it’s an incredibly diverse, rarely entirely faith based, etc Deep theoretical physics in some ways has more in common with religion or philosophy than with experimental and verified physics. To the extreme: science itself is faith-based at the deepest levels. Like that experiments are replicable, that the universe behaves predictably, that anything exists in any real sense, that we can trust our own perception and observations at all, etc Science is a useful construct that seems to work, it’s also deeply intertwined with philosophy (including the philosophy of religion)
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  I hate philosophers and I think the entire field is illegitimate. Not to be insulting to you personally. It's just my opinion of the field in general. I have nothing against you. I look at your entire field with very high disdain. To me it one of the most inconsistent, illogical and irrational and useless academic fields in existence. Useless is ok. Irrational is not ok. I once gave a deep, complex and logical argument to a philosopher about why i thought philosophy was complete bullshit. He laughed at me and said my argument included elements of philosophy, and since my argument contained philosophy I was basically proving philosophy to be not bullshit. Seriously, if you cannot comprehend how stupid that argument is, then it's fine. I actually have nothing more to say on the matter. Agree to disagree.
  - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
    https://josephnoelwalker.com/139-david-deutsch/ https://josephnoelwalker.com/139-david-deutsch/ Philosophy is currently reshaping science and math. I'm curious what your take is on the discussion in this link.
    - deltaonefour 4y ago
      My take is it has absolutely nothing to do with why I think philosophy is complete garbage. Think of it this way. If let's say a cultist religious sect believes in science and contributes to science then at the same time this cultist religion also believes that the universe is a bubble sitting on the nose of a cosmic hippo.... Then despite the good science, the entire cultist religion is still utter bullshit. That being said it is still highly questionable how large and how meaningful philosophies contributions are to math and science. Historically they may have been one in the same field, but today there is clearly a category error. I would say philosophy contributed nothing to math and science. It only seems that way. What's actually going on is if a philosopher contributes something to math, he is actually doing mathematics, he is not doing philosophy. Same with science. If a philosopher reshapes science he is doing science, he is not doing philosophy. Because philosophy is a bullshit category that literally encompasses everything under the sun I dismiss it entirely. I didn't read the article or listen to the audio you sent me. I may if I have time later on in the week. But in my opinion, that is an article on math, not philosophy. Nothing is philosophy it's all bullshit to me. Also please don't tell me my argument here is philosophical and therefore contradictory. Absolutely please don't sink that low.

toponaut 4y ago

"the discrimination makes factual sense." I can't figure out what you mean. Examples? You seem to be linking religion with "moral standards" and science with "facts". Neither of those are appropriate. Not all religions teach morality and, if there is such a thing as "fact" on some topic, there is no need to do science on it. Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". They can point in different directions but that happens within each domain too (Islam vs Buddhism / string theory vs standard model) and doesn't make them incompatible tools.

deltaonefour 4y ago
I never linked religion and morality. Morality wasn't even a topic that was covered. It's just you and your bias. >Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". No. One is a better guess then the other. Science assumes logic and probability and mathematics are axiomatic concepts and builds upon that. It provides the ability to falsify a hypothesis given that you assume those axioms are true. Religion is a mess. No axioms, no logic, no foundational rules are assumed.

timthorn 4y ago

They really aren't. Some religions or sects might be, but it isn't a fundamental dichotomy. If you look at the history of Christianity and Islam, much good science was done by the faiths.

threefourteen 4y ago
Much good science was done in spite of the faiths as Galileo would testify. The Church was accepting the science when there was absolutely no other way.
- ecshafer 4y ago
  Galileo was imprisoned for insulting the Pope in his book. This had nothing to do with religion, but rather good old fashion, people with power don't like having that power abused. There's a reason other astronomers weren't so persecuted for their ideas, it was how they presented them, not the idea itself.
morelisp 4y ago
We're discussing specifically mysticism here, which has a much stronger claim to have a fundamental dichotomy with science. (Regardless of which creed it's associated with.)
- crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
  All that's needed is alignment with the cosmos. A model need only be able to commute with reality to provide a useful metaphorical explanation. And then the challenge becomes decoding the metaphor to figure out the literal alignments and misfits. This is why every religious/spiritual perspective needs more investigation and experimentation, not less. Once science is more shaped by applied category theory, this will become a common understanding. Speaking as someone who made a joke design-your-own-religion religion that's a creative packaging of neuroscience, math, computer science, and psychology, I was very surprised to start being able to connect deeper with people carrying deeply-held religious/spiritual beliefs and to start identifying wisdom from their perspectives. This also allowed both parties to at least open up to considering each others' perspectives and sometimes shifting them. And believing a model is literally true or metaphorically commutative isn't a necessary distinction for a model to be useful, though it does seem to impact the depth to which it can be embodied. Turning belief on and off is a skill I see discussed way more in mystic circles than in science circles, where belief denial seems to be the norm.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Hey, I'm an epistemic anarchist, you don't have to convince me mysticism is a good idea. I'm just saying that "personal subjective spiritual revelation" is about as far as you can get from "objective or intersubjective repeatable results." It's not "this guy is responsible for evaluating our AI work and also goes to church on Sunday", it's "this guy is responsible for evaluating our AI work and also thinks God is speaking to him personally and directly about the quality of that work." If you think your code reviews are bad now, imagine if the reviewer thought they only needed to answer to God.
    - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
deltaonefour 4y ago
It is. Religion is faith based. Science is evidence based. They are opposites. But people can be contradictory. They can believe both are the same without realizing it. You are such a person. The premise of religion is to believe in things without evidence. Science is more complex, but at a simple level you can say the premise of science is to believe things that have strong evidence. Opposites. Everyone knows this on an intuitive level. Let us assume for arguments sake that religions are all true. Let's take Christianity for example. If Christianity was evidence based and very likely to be true... Why isn't Christianity called a science? Why isn't biology called a religion? What is the fundamental difference in categorization if both biology and Christianity (or any other religion you want to put in place of Christianity) are real concepts? What is it in our subconscious that is causing us to categorize some things as science and other things as religion when both are true and real aspects of reality? Why does this categorization exist? If physics is true and biology is true and Christianity is true, how come only Christianity falls into the religion categorization and physics and biology fall into science? The answer is trivial. It is because on some level all humans, including you know that religion is "less true" then science. You can see the difference. You know that mythological beliefs like walking on water or coming back from the dead are on Shakey less evidence based grounds. Everything in science has a high bar for verification. We trust it because it lets our engines run and our planes fly, and every human knows that religious claims have a much lower bar and are less trust worthy. Again my claim is that the fact that you can categorize aspects of the world as either religion or science, it shows that at a subconscious level you are aware of this dichotomy even when you believe both science and religion are real. So what I'm saying is you already know that science and religion are contradictory. But your surface level beliefs and behavior are masking this subconciouse awareness.
- timthorn 4y ago
  > Religion is faith based. Science is evidence based. No argument with that. >The premise of religion is to believe in things without evidence But this isn't fully accurate - the premise of religion is to believe in /certain/ things without evidence, specifically unknowable things. Science and religion deal in different domains, and it is quite possible to hold a faith-based religion while fully subscribing to evidence based science. A contradiction only arises if the religion makes doctrinal claims about scientific matters - for example, there are those who believe that the Earth is 4000 years old. However, belief in a deity whose primary act of creation wasn't modelling Adam & Eve from clay but instead defining the laws of physics & mathematics means that by definition the pursuit of science is compatible with religion.

tjs8rj 4y ago

Saying religion is the opposite of science is like saying philosophy is the opposite of science. Religion is a philosophy, it’s an incredibly diverse, rarely entirely faith based, etc Deep theoretical physics in some ways has more in common with religion or philosophy than with experimental and verified physics. To the extreme: science itself is faith-based at the deepest levels. Like that experiments are replicable, that the universe behaves predictably, that anything exists in any real sense, that we can trust our own perception and observations at all, etc Science is a useful construct that seems to work, it’s also deeply intertwined with philosophy (including the philosophy of religion)

deltaonefour 4y ago
I hate philosophers and I think the entire field is illegitimate. Not to be insulting to you personally. It's just my opinion of the field in general. I have nothing against you. I look at your entire field with very high disdain. To me it one of the most inconsistent, illogical and irrational and useless academic fields in existence. Useless is ok. Irrational is not ok. I once gave a deep, complex and logical argument to a philosopher about why i thought philosophy was complete bullshit. He laughed at me and said my argument included elements of philosophy, and since my argument contained philosophy I was basically proving philosophy to be not bullshit. Seriously, if you cannot comprehend how stupid that argument is, then it's fine. I actually have nothing more to say on the matter. Agree to disagree.
- crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
  https://josephnoelwalker.com/139-david-deutsch/ https://josephnoelwalker.com/139-david-deutsch/ Philosophy is currently reshaping science and math. I'm curious what your take is on the discussion in this link.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    My take is it has absolutely nothing to do with why I think philosophy is complete garbage. Think of it this way. If let's say a cultist religious sect believes in science and contributes to science then at the same time this cultist religion also believes that the universe is a bubble sitting on the nose of a cosmic hippo.... Then despite the good science, the entire cultist religion is still utter bullshit. That being said it is still highly questionable how large and how meaningful philosophies contributions are to math and science. Historically they may have been one in the same field, but today there is clearly a category error. I would say philosophy contributed nothing to math and science. It only seems that way. What's actually going on is if a philosopher contributes something to math, he is actually doing mathematics, he is not doing philosophy. Same with science. If a philosopher reshapes science he is doing science, he is not doing philosophy. Because philosophy is a bullshit category that literally encompasses everything under the sun I dismiss it entirely. I didn't read the article or listen to the audio you sent me. I may if I have time later on in the week. But in my opinion, that is an article on math, not philosophy. Nothing is philosophy it's all bullshit to me. Also please don't tell me my argument here is philosophical and therefore contradictory. Absolutely please don't sink that low.