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At the risk of being derided as violating another top level comment[0] I'm going to try to evaluate the implied premise of this concept to try to show something

At the risk of being derided as violating another top level comment[0] I'm going to try to evaluate the implied premise of this concept to try to show something I've been trying to put to words over the past couple years. For simplicity and brevity sake, let's say that there are two possible options that someone is weighing, having ruled out all the other competing options. The first option is Christianity. The second option is atheism grounded in scientific inquiry. You can call the second option empiricism or naturalism if you like. According to the first option, it is through faith with all your heart, soul, and mind that one is saved and that truth is found. Testing God, is explicitly forbidden. According to the second option, it is by testing falsifiable premises that the truth is found. The answer to unknowns is to admit that they're unknown, at least for now. Thomas Aquinas and the first mover argument is implicitly denied as an area of inquiry. Many proponents of the second option say "Well look! The distance of the light of the stars proves that the universe is billions of years old!" And proponents of the first option can respond in any number of ways ranging from testing the assumptions of modern scientific understanding of light (that it's speed is symmetrical from A to B and from B to A, despite already being relative in other ways) to pointing out Bible verses about how the Lord stretched out the heavens or cursed all of creation (and hence, possibly even history or time), many even apply the same type reasoning as the atheists when questioned about what caused anything to be and simply say "it's a mystery." Where I'm going with this is that conversations about what is wrong and how wrong it is depend so heavily on the very first thing you put your faith in and I believe this is something too many people shrug at. Basic, foundational theological or philosophical questions like "can a mind know a truth?" shouldn't be swept under the rug. They're more foundational than questions like "what caused the big bang?" [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35421355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35421355

circlefavshape 4y ago
> Basic, foundational theological or philosophical questions like "can a mind know a truth?" shouldn't be swept under the rug. They're more foundational than questions like "what caused the big bang?" I think whether they are foundational or not is irrelevant. What matters is the effect pondering questions like these can have on people. Both kinds can have material consequences - theological/philosopical questioning can affect social behaviours and have wide-ranging societal effects, empirical questioning can result in new technologies which can do the same
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  > I think whether they are foundational or not is irrelevant. The basis of your belief is rooted in what you put your faith in. By the rest of your comment, it seems (apparent) consequentialism is your guiding light, but without giving the grounds as why it should be, I can't properly rebut your argument other than to highlight the missing justification.
  - circlefavshape 4y ago
    My consequentialism tells me that there's no point in arguing with you about this, because neither of us are likely to change our minds :p You're wrong about consequentialism being my "guiding light" though - I'd still argue if I thought arguing would be fun ... but it wouldn't be (at least for me), so I decline
Agraillo 4y ago
> is that conversations about what is wrong and how wrong it is depend so heavily on the very first thing you put your faith in Rationalwiki article [0] about the topic has a nice epigraph ”It’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge. —Stuart Bloom, The Big Bang Theory" though I won't be totaly surprised suddenly learning about a cargo (tomato/bridge) cult ... [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong
- b112 4y ago
  it’s a suspension bridge Yet it is one! Consider, how it defies classification by society, and instead, prefers to be classified as it choses. As it needs to be! Thus, the tomato can be a bridge of understanding, to those who identify differently than their birth. And beyond this, the tomato is a 'new world' plant. Its plucky ability to waltz in, and disrupt local cuisine, to supplant old world recipes, is a perfect bridge to understand the goal of most startups. And religiously, the tomato, when first discovered, was thought by some to be the devil's food. The X markings inside a tomato, were thought to be warnings from god, for they resembled a cross. So the tomato can be an example of rational vs religious thought, a way to bridge an understanding as to how our ancestors thought. A physical bridge only takes you to physical places, but the tomato is a bridge to enlightenment. It is more a bridge, than a bridge!!
  - tristor 4y ago
    What a fantastic example of literary post-modernism.
vehemenz 4y ago
Science is not some abstract thing, disconnected from the rest of the world. The age of the universe is not magically separate from clay pots in Mesopotamia or the fact that one's parents immigrated from Italy. We know where these religions came from, roughly how they formed, and we have good ideas about who wrote their holy books. The mystery is solved unless you care about the fine details. There are thousands of religions throughout history, and there is no reason to think anything special about one over another. You cannot believe in a religious worldview and commonsense facts about the world. They are logically inconsistent. On the epistemic point, you're right, but you have to give up commonsense beliefs or coherence if you go the religion route. Deductive logic should not be swept under the rug.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > You cannot believe in a religious worldview and commonsense facts about the world. They are logically inconsistent. These two statements are logically inconsistent. You're assuming or implying that the only "way" to believe is by deriving your beliefs from facts using logic. In actual fact reasoning and belief are more nuanced and less consistent that that. It's completely possible to simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs or to use incompatible mental models. It may predispose you to certain other reasoning errors, but then so does holding the belief that all of your beliefs are logically derived. The fact that most significant scientific discoveries were made by people with religious beliefs should give you serious pause when proposing this, honestly. How do you reconcile that incompatibility. In fact even still, taken as a demographic, researchers are much less religious than the general population but still much more religious than we would be able to tolerate if the practice of science was completely incompatible with a religious belief.
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    Put epistemology to the side. Logical consequence applies to all of your beliefs, no matter how you came to arrive to them. For example, you wouldn't believe (p & ~p) or (p -> ~p), independent of what your beliefs are. The fact that people can compartmentalize different inconsistent mental models really has no bearing on whether any given proposition is true or not. Humans are complex and prone to believing in superstition.

circlefavshape 4y ago

> Basic, foundational theological or philosophical questions like "can a mind know a truth?" shouldn't be swept under the rug. They're more foundational than questions like "what caused the big bang?" I think whether they are foundational or not is irrelevant. What matters is the effect pondering questions like these can have on people. Both kinds can have material consequences - theological/philosopical questioning can affect social behaviours and have wide-ranging societal effects, empirical questioning can result in new technologies which can do the same

3pt14159 4y ago
> I think whether they are foundational or not is irrelevant. The basis of your belief is rooted in what you put your faith in. By the rest of your comment, it seems (apparent) consequentialism is your guiding light, but without giving the grounds as why it should be, I can't properly rebut your argument other than to highlight the missing justification.
- circlefavshape 4y ago
  My consequentialism tells me that there's no point in arguing with you about this, because neither of us are likely to change our minds :p You're wrong about consequentialism being my "guiding light" though - I'd still argue if I thought arguing would be fun ... but it wouldn't be (at least for me), so I decline

Agraillo 4y ago

> is that conversations about what is wrong and how wrong it is depend so heavily on the very first thing you put your faith in Rationalwiki article [0] about the topic has a nice epigraph ”It’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge. —Stuart Bloom, The Big Bang Theory" though I won't be totaly surprised suddenly learning about a cargo (tomato/bridge) cult ... [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong

b112 4y ago
it’s a suspension bridge Yet it is one! Consider, how it defies classification by society, and instead, prefers to be classified as it choses. As it needs to be! Thus, the tomato can be a bridge of understanding, to those who identify differently than their birth. And beyond this, the tomato is a 'new world' plant. Its plucky ability to waltz in, and disrupt local cuisine, to supplant old world recipes, is a perfect bridge to understand the goal of most startups. And religiously, the tomato, when first discovered, was thought by some to be the devil's food. The X markings inside a tomato, were thought to be warnings from god, for they resembled a cross. So the tomato can be an example of rational vs religious thought, a way to bridge an understanding as to how our ancestors thought. A physical bridge only takes you to physical places, but the tomato is a bridge to enlightenment. It is more a bridge, than a bridge!!
- tristor 4y ago
  What a fantastic example of literary post-modernism.

vehemenz 4y ago

Science is not some abstract thing, disconnected from the rest of the world. The age of the universe is not magically separate from clay pots in Mesopotamia or the fact that one's parents immigrated from Italy. We know where these religions came from, roughly how they formed, and we have good ideas about who wrote their holy books. The mystery is solved unless you care about the fine details. There are thousands of religions throughout history, and there is no reason to think anything special about one over another. You cannot believe in a religious worldview and commonsense facts about the world. They are logically inconsistent. On the epistemic point, you're right, but you have to give up commonsense beliefs or coherence if you go the religion route. Deductive logic should not be swept under the rug.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
> You cannot believe in a religious worldview and commonsense facts about the world. They are logically inconsistent. These two statements are logically inconsistent. You're assuming or implying that the only "way" to believe is by deriving your beliefs from facts using logic. In actual fact reasoning and belief are more nuanced and less consistent that that. It's completely possible to simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs or to use incompatible mental models. It may predispose you to certain other reasoning errors, but then so does holding the belief that all of your beliefs are logically derived. The fact that most significant scientific discoveries were made by people with religious beliefs should give you serious pause when proposing this, honestly. How do you reconcile that incompatibility. In fact even still, taken as a demographic, researchers are much less religious than the general population but still much more religious than we would be able to tolerate if the practice of science was completely incompatible with a religious belief.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Put epistemology to the side. Logical consequence applies to all of your beliefs, no matter how you came to arrive to them. For example, you wouldn't believe (p & ~p) or (p -> ~p), independent of what your beliefs are. The fact that people can compartmentalize different inconsistent mental models really has no bearing on whether any given proposition is true or not. Humans are complex and prone to believing in superstition.