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As I see it, the basic flaw in the materialist worldview is this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perce

by benched 13y ago

As I see it, the basic flaw in the materialist worldview is this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ It is also what leaves the door open for more transcendent views. Eastern religions, in particular, are founded on the basic idea that your everyday experience is illusory. You dismiss religious beliefs as based on "essentially nothing". In fact, the basis of religious belief in the most general sense is conscious experience. The kinds of conscious experience that you would probably call hallucinations. But, referring again to the link above, you are probably disposed to call shared perceptions "real", and non-shared perceptions hallucinatory. Religiously, metaphysically, or even philosophically minded people might call that arbitrary. Chauvinistic even. We act like consensual reality is real because it's convenient, intuitive, and seems to get us good results in consensual reality. You say "zero credible evidence of an afterlife." That's true, if you restrict yourself to what's usually considered "evidence" in science. Evidence that more than one person can perceive at the same time. But individuals can go further if they really want to see whether there's anything to see. Are you willing to dedicate yourself to a meditation practice for a long time? Psychedelic drugs? Flatliners (the 1990 movie)? I'm not recommending that anyone do anything dangerous. Just pointing out that there are things you can observe first-hand, that aren't likely to be replicated in a study.

Udo 13y ago
> That's true, if you restrict yourself to what's usually considered "evidence" in science. It's true that if you don't restrict yourself to the world of facts, you can do pretty much anything. And there are lots of contexts where I'm doing things decidedly not rooted in facts, such as enjoying and producing works of fiction for entertainment. However, if we're going to talk about the nature of the world, adhering to facts becomes mandatory. Otherwise, there is not a lot of meaningful exchange to have at all. Of course it's fun to kick hypotheses around - but a supernatural world view is usually not a mere hypothesis, it's a postulate made in conscious and willful contradiction to evidence. For instance, I like Lord of the Rings, but the moment I insist people should take seriously my belief that orcs are under my bed, I have crossed the river into the land of delusion. Of course I'm free to entertain that belief, but people publicly calling it out as bullshit is not Chauvinism, it's an honest and rational response.
- eeperson 13y ago
  You seem to imply the religious belief is inherently contradicted by evidence. What evidence do you feel contradicts all religions? For example, if a have a religion that only contains a single belief, that the universe is created by a conscious being. How do you produce evidence that contradicts that? I would argue that you can't because science can't address that. It is a purely philosophical question.
  - Udo 13y ago
    Most religious statements set themselves up to be unfalsifiable, and that's really the main trick behind most of these ideas, but to work they have to make certain claims about the nature of the universe that are exceedingly unlikely, or in other words: just completely made up. The kind of evidence we gather through scientific observation points to a world that works completely without supernatural intervention, and with advancing scientific knowledge the kind of acrobatics you have to perform just in order to keep escaping the light radius of discovery become more and more elaborate, outright denial of evidence becomes necessary. For example, to claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, you have to discard a lot of paleontological evidence. To deny evolution, or any other established scientific model, you pretty much have to make the conscious decision to ignore data. The way this works is usually by some invocation of all-powerfulness: my deity is all-powerful, so due to that it not only faked all the evidence, it also made itself invisible and undetectable. I agree though that it's not possible to disprove arbitrary fantasies on their own terms. All we can do is measure and model things within reasonable limits. Far, far outside these reasonable limits, everything is theoretically possible, it's just not compatible with reality in any meaningful way. From the perspective of a person on the outside looking into this religiously contaminated world, the most upsetting and depressing thing is that people know their beliefs are completely made up on a whim, and in full knowledge of how that process works, they still believe all this crap without an ounce of skepticism.
    - eeperson 13y ago
      I feel like you are conflating two thing, religious belief and disbelief of scientific results. There is no reason that these need to be tied together. Of course science conflicts with the latter, but it says nothing about the former. Things that are not provable one way or the other are philosophy not science.
b_emery 13y ago
Late to the party, but I wanted to say, thanks for the interesting comment.

by benched 13y ago

Udo 13y ago

> That's true, if you restrict yourself to what's usually considered "evidence" in science. It's true that if you don't restrict yourself to the world of facts, you can do pretty much anything. And there are lots of contexts where I'm doing things decidedly not rooted in facts, such as enjoying and producing works of fiction for entertainment. However, if we're going to talk about the nature of the world, adhering to facts becomes mandatory. Otherwise, there is not a lot of meaningful exchange to have at all. Of course it's fun to kick hypotheses around - but a supernatural world view is usually not a mere hypothesis, it's a postulate made in conscious and willful contradiction to evidence. For instance, I like Lord of the Rings, but the moment I insist people should take seriously my belief that orcs are under my bed, I have crossed the river into the land of delusion. Of course I'm free to entertain that belief, but people publicly calling it out as bullshit is not Chauvinism, it's an honest and rational response.

eeperson 13y ago
You seem to imply the religious belief is inherently contradicted by evidence. What evidence do you feel contradicts all religions? For example, if a have a religion that only contains a single belief, that the universe is created by a conscious being. How do you produce evidence that contradicts that? I would argue that you can't because science can't address that. It is a purely philosophical question.
- Udo 13y ago
  Most religious statements set themselves up to be unfalsifiable, and that's really the main trick behind most of these ideas, but to work they have to make certain claims about the nature of the universe that are exceedingly unlikely, or in other words: just completely made up. The kind of evidence we gather through scientific observation points to a world that works completely without supernatural intervention, and with advancing scientific knowledge the kind of acrobatics you have to perform just in order to keep escaping the light radius of discovery become more and more elaborate, outright denial of evidence becomes necessary. For example, to claim that the Earth is 6000 years old, you have to discard a lot of paleontological evidence. To deny evolution, or any other established scientific model, you pretty much have to make the conscious decision to ignore data. The way this works is usually by some invocation of all-powerfulness: my deity is all-powerful, so due to that it not only faked all the evidence, it also made itself invisible and undetectable. I agree though that it's not possible to disprove arbitrary fantasies on their own terms. All we can do is measure and model things within reasonable limits. Far, far outside these reasonable limits, everything is theoretically possible, it's just not compatible with reality in any meaningful way. From the perspective of a person on the outside looking into this religiously contaminated world, the most upsetting and depressing thing is that people know their beliefs are completely made up on a whim, and in full knowledge of how that process works, they still believe all this crap without an ounce of skepticism.
  - eeperson 13y ago
    I feel like you are conflating two thing, religious belief and disbelief of scientific results. There is no reason that these need to be tied together. Of course science conflicts with the latter, but it says nothing about the former. Things that are not provable one way or the other are philosophy not science.

b_emery 13y ago

Late to the party, but I wanted to say, thanks for the interesting comment.