6 ms·

I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much better in science than in religion. That being said, there is also a lot of science babble and we should

by eis 4y ago

I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much better in science than in religion. That being said, there is also a lot of science babble and we should call it out and try to keep it at a as low amount as possible. The core tenets of science are pretty sound. Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff. They are not 100% bad of course. But we seriously can do much much better than that. I think there is a reason why the concept of religions evolved. They might have been an important tool in early societies. But they are very very old tools and I don't think we need them anymore. They come with too many dangerous problems.

al_mandi 4y ago
> Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff Did you survey all religions to make such claim? And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. There's a lot of "I think" and assumptions in your post that are not backed up by evidence, and some even contrary to reality. This is a good starting point to expand your horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3cNUixEBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3cNUixEBM
- eis 4y ago
  > Did you survey all religions to make such claim? That is the definition of religion. They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. > And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. Correct, there are axioms - assumptions - which the rest of the logical system is based upon. Same as for example in Mathematics. The assumptions are much more reasonable than for example assuming there is a God because they result in expirically testable predictions. I have started to watch the video you linked to, I have not finished it yet but the beginning was pretty good and the presenter seems well spoken. But by about minute 10 I already noticed a lot of logical fallacies. He is (rightfully maybe) accusing certain famous people in history of wrong logical arguments but then he quickly makes the same plus a lot of ad hominems thrown in for good measure. For example the claim that the "four horsemen" of science think that replacing mosques and synagogues into starbucks would make society all peaceful is frankly just ridicolous. Then he immediately follows it up by claiming if there is no religion then there is no morality. This is completely baseless. I am not a religious person but I do have morals. I'm not running around trying to torture people just because I don't believe in a supernatural being. I'm going to watch it in full because listening to the other side of an argument is the best but I have to say this talk is going south very fast IMHO :(
  - al_mandi 4y ago
    > They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things. > I am not a religious person but I do have morals. He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture.
    - eis 4y ago
      > That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things. Any religion who claims there is a God does not have proof of such. If there was real experimentally testable and unambigous proof than scientists would need to accept that. What does belief in the unseen with evidence mean? > He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture. So he is contradicting himself then. I'm now at minute 30 but there are so many logical fallacies it's really hard to watch. The example with the kid asking why the mother is boiling water and apparently science not being able to explain the "why" ("because I love you") or the reason of why the universe exists: he then turns around and just claims religion can give you the correct answer which clearly it can't because there are different religions that would give you possibly different answers and they can't all be right at the same time. He claims science cannot "prove" emotions or other workings of our brain. Well I think we're getting closer and closer to understand how the brain works. We already know that emotions are in part controlled by substances like hormones. We don't know 100% of it but we're working on it. He further goes on to claim that science cannot provide morality. He again gives no evidence of this. Why can't we derive morals from logical scientific arguments? Another claim is that science could not explain why someone would go and help a drowning kid. Once more no evidence. How about us being evolutionary programmed to keep our offspring alive to increase chance of the survival of our species? Just earlier to that he claimed animals have no morals. But that is the exact same behaviour that animals are showing... I can't also follow the argument about science needing to find all possible combinations of DNA mutations that show the transition from apes to humans. Why does it need to show every minute step? How does that show religion is correct instead? The constant flood of strawmans is impressive at least. I'm at minute 30 and not sure if I will comment more on it, it is very tedious because there is just such an enormous amount of illogical argumentation.
mbg721 4y ago
Depends on the religion. Catholicism has many problems, but you won't get far accusing it of being insufficiently methodical.
tresqotheq 4y ago
>But they are very very old tools and I don't think we need them anymore. The societial problems that once solved by religion is worse than ever. It is true that current religions cannot solve it, because they have been "fact checked" out by the new religion of "science" with scientists as the new holymen, but that is a separate discussion. The point is, we need a solution to those problems more than ever, but we truly cannot hope to find one.
- eis 4y ago
  Science is not a religion. Scientists are not holymen as evidence by the constant questioning of their theories by other scientists. That's the whole thing science is about! Relentless checking of hypothesis through experiments that match reality. I agree strongly with you that we need a solution to these problems as currently we don't have one. I disagree though that we cannot hope to find one. Hope dies last :)
wizofaus 4y ago
> I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much higher in science You mean lower surely?
- eis 4y ago
  Correct, I have edited the comment. Thank you.
origin_path 4y ago
Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do.
- eis 4y ago
  > Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. I have not seen any proof of that. Neither did I see proof that only religion can give you the correct moral code. As I mentioned a few times: given that there a several disagreeing religions they can't be all right. So it's not the fact that something is a religion that gives a correct moral code. Even if something is difficult, it does not mean that I instead resort to making up some stories and declare that's the right moral code. > In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do. Well if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism. That would sound pretty much like the opposite of science and an attempt to subvert and abuse it.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Ah, I didn't argue that religion gives you a correct moral code, or that there is only one possible moral code. Religions are the result of memetic evolution so it's natural that there's some variety. All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all. Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example. Still, consider a sample moral problem: revenge. Christianity (to take a familiar example) has a very evolved take on revenge. It teaches that you shouldn't avenge wrongdoing (eye for an eye), instead you should "turn the other cheek". If everyone did this it has obvious advantages for stopping conflicts escalating into long term violence, but it denies people a sense of justice. So Christianity also has a whole lot of evolved stories about how that's OK because sinners will be judged in heaven by God and maybe sent to Hell if they've been bad, so you can turn the other cheek yet rest assured that justice will be done ... in the afterlife. Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society. If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick? How would you teach it to children? In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard! "if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism." Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population. Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this: 1. Science is a good way to determine what is true. 2. But I am busy and don't have time to do science. Therefore I will delegate it to professional scientists. 3. I don't have time to figure out who is applying the scientific method on a person-by-person basis, so I'll delegate that to scientific institutions (universities, governments, corporations etc). 3. I don't have time to verify that these institutions are actually using the scientific method. Actually I'm not even sure what the scientific method is, beyond the very basics. So I'll assume that if people are being referred to as scientists by other people who are also being called scientists, and the places they work have money, then they are scientific institutions. 4. I don't have time to actually read what these institutions write down in their holy books/journals, because a lot of it is written in Latin, but I am sure that it is Science and that The Word of Science is Truth, so whatever these institutions claim must be true. 5. I don't have time to actually find out what these institutions claim, but there's this noisy town crier in the middle of our village who says that the institutions claim X, and nobody seems to be objecting, so I have Faith that this must be The Word and therefore Truth. 5. I don't understand why these oddball heretics keep popping up who lack Faith in The Word as transcribed by the priests at the Institutions, because why would anyone doubt what is obviously and clearly True? Yes, scientists are merely men and may sometimes be unclear about the universal underlying Truth, which may even be unknowable to us mere mortals, but nonetheless it is important for community cohesion to have Faith and therefore we should banish these heretics as far outside the village as possible. In other words, although people like to think they're rational, being rational is time consuming and difficult so most people delegate it. But - and this is where it becomes scientism - they don't recognize that this is what they've done. They conflate belief in a hierarchical Church-like system with rationality, and end up believing anything that people working at these institutions say even if it's obviously pseudo-scientific. And, they treat doubt in the sciencey-ness of the priestly class as terrible heresy; such heretics deserve to get their printing presses smashed up (cancelled).

by eis 4y ago

al_mandi 4y ago

> Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff Did you survey all religions to make such claim? And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. There's a lot of "I think" and assumptions in your post that are not backed up by evidence, and some even contrary to reality. This is a good starting point to expand your horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3cNUixEBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3cNUixEBM

eis 4y ago
> Did you survey all religions to make such claim? That is the definition of religion. They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. > And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. Correct, there are axioms - assumptions - which the rest of the logical system is based upon. Same as for example in Mathematics. The assumptions are much more reasonable than for example assuming there is a God because they result in expirically testable predictions. I have started to watch the video you linked to, I have not finished it yet but the beginning was pretty good and the presenter seems well spoken. But by about minute 10 I already noticed a lot of logical fallacies. He is (rightfully maybe) accusing certain famous people in history of wrong logical arguments but then he quickly makes the same plus a lot of ad hominems thrown in for good measure. For example the claim that the "four horsemen" of science think that replacing mosques and synagogues into starbucks would make society all peaceful is frankly just ridicolous. Then he immediately follows it up by claiming if there is no religion then there is no morality. This is completely baseless. I am not a religious person but I do have morals. I'm not running around trying to torture people just because I don't believe in a supernatural being. I'm going to watch it in full because listening to the other side of an argument is the best but I have to say this talk is going south very fast IMHO :(
- al_mandi 4y ago
  > They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things. > I am not a religious person but I do have morals. He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture.
  - eis 4y ago
    > That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things. Any religion who claims there is a God does not have proof of such. If there was real experimentally testable and unambigous proof than scientists would need to accept that. What does belief in the unseen with evidence mean? > He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture. So he is contradicting himself then. I'm now at minute 30 but there are so many logical fallacies it's really hard to watch. The example with the kid asking why the mother is boiling water and apparently science not being able to explain the "why" ("because I love you") or the reason of why the universe exists: he then turns around and just claims religion can give you the correct answer which clearly it can't because there are different religions that would give you possibly different answers and they can't all be right at the same time. He claims science cannot "prove" emotions or other workings of our brain. Well I think we're getting closer and closer to understand how the brain works. We already know that emotions are in part controlled by substances like hormones. We don't know 100% of it but we're working on it. He further goes on to claim that science cannot provide morality. He again gives no evidence of this. Why can't we derive morals from logical scientific arguments? Another claim is that science could not explain why someone would go and help a drowning kid. Once more no evidence. How about us being evolutionary programmed to keep our offspring alive to increase chance of the survival of our species? Just earlier to that he claimed animals have no morals. But that is the exact same behaviour that animals are showing... I can't also follow the argument about science needing to find all possible combinations of DNA mutations that show the transition from apes to humans. Why does it need to show every minute step? How does that show religion is correct instead? The constant flood of strawmans is impressive at least. I'm at minute 30 and not sure if I will comment more on it, it is very tedious because there is just such an enormous amount of illogical argumentation.

mbg721 4y ago

Depends on the religion. Catholicism has many problems, but you won't get far accusing it of being insufficiently methodical.

tresqotheq 4y ago

>But they are very very old tools and I don't think we need them anymore. The societial problems that once solved by religion is worse than ever. It is true that current religions cannot solve it, because they have been "fact checked" out by the new religion of "science" with scientists as the new holymen, but that is a separate discussion. The point is, we need a solution to those problems more than ever, but we truly cannot hope to find one.

eis 4y ago
Science is not a religion. Scientists are not holymen as evidence by the constant questioning of their theories by other scientists. That's the whole thing science is about! Relentless checking of hypothesis through experiments that match reality. I agree strongly with you that we need a solution to these problems as currently we don't have one. I disagree though that we cannot hope to find one. Hope dies last :)

wizofaus 4y ago

> I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much higher in science You mean lower surely?

eis 4y ago
Correct, I have edited the comment. Thank you.

origin_path 4y ago

Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do.

eis 4y ago
> Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. I have not seen any proof of that. Neither did I see proof that only religion can give you the correct moral code. As I mentioned a few times: given that there a several disagreeing religions they can't be all right. So it's not the fact that something is a religion that gives a correct moral code. Even if something is difficult, it does not mean that I instead resort to making up some stories and declare that's the right moral code. > In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religion. It retains the surface look and feel of science, but isn't science. HN has a lot of people who follow scientism - you can find them getting frustrated on any story about science asking why other people can't just Believe The Scientists like they do. Well if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism. That would sound pretty much like the opposite of science and an attempt to subvert and abuse it.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Ah, I didn't argue that religion gives you a correct moral code, or that there is only one possible moral code. Religions are the result of memetic evolution so it's natural that there's some variety. All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all. Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example. Still, consider a sample moral problem: revenge. Christianity (to take a familiar example) has a very evolved take on revenge. It teaches that you shouldn't avenge wrongdoing (eye for an eye), instead you should "turn the other cheek". If everyone did this it has obvious advantages for stopping conflicts escalating into long term violence, but it denies people a sense of justice. So Christianity also has a whole lot of evolved stories about how that's OK because sinners will be judged in heaven by God and maybe sent to Hell if they've been bad, so you can turn the other cheek yet rest assured that justice will be done ... in the afterlife. Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society. If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick? How would you teach it to children? In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard! "if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism." Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population. Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this: 1. Science is a good way to determine what is true. 2. But I am busy and don't have time to do science. Therefore I will delegate it to professional scientists. 3. I don't have time to figure out who is applying the scientific method on a person-by-person basis, so I'll delegate that to scientific institutions (universities, governments, corporations etc). 3. I don't have time to verify that these institutions are actually using the scientific method. Actually I'm not even sure what the scientific method is, beyond the very basics. So I'll assume that if people are being referred to as scientists by other people who are also being called scientists, and the places they work have money, then they are scientific institutions. 4. I don't have time to actually read what these institutions write down in their holy books/journals, because a lot of it is written in Latin, but I am sure that it is Science and that The Word of Science is Truth, so whatever these institutions claim must be true. 5. I don't have time to actually find out what these institutions claim, but there's this noisy town crier in the middle of our village who says that the institutions claim X, and nobody seems to be objecting, so I have Faith that this must be The Word and therefore Truth. 5. I don't understand why these oddball heretics keep popping up who lack Faith in The Word as transcribed by the priests at the Institutions, because why would anyone doubt what is obviously and clearly True? Yes, scientists are merely men and may sometimes be unclear about the universal underlying Truth, which may even be unknowable to us mere mortals, but nonetheless it is important for community cohesion to have Faith and therefore we should banish these heretics as far outside the village as possible. In other words, although people like to think they're rational, being rational is time consuming and difficult so most people delegate it. But - and this is where it becomes scientism - they don't recognize that this is what they've done. They conflate belief in a hierarchical Church-like system with rationality, and end up believing anything that people working at these institutions say even if it's obviously pseudo-scientific. And, they treat doubt in the sciencey-ness of the priestly class as terrible heresy; such heretics deserve to get their printing presses smashed up (cancelled).