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Jon Miller
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bullshit
it isn't science
but that does not mean that it does exist, and has no basis on being 'truth'
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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well, how about love
people thought (and many still do) that that is not subject to science
and how can you be sure that everything that is, is subject to science..
I have (as a physicist) huge doubts that everything in nature, even everything that we can theorize about, can be probed and experimented on
Jon Miller
(to use all the mechanisms we know of, to show whether string theory is right or not, most physicists thing we would need an appartus the size of the universe)
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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:30
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quote:
well, how about love
people thought (and many still do) that that is not subject to science
and how can you be sure that everything that is, is subject to science..
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Love, as a result of hormones, neurons firing, or even psychological patterns, is within the bounds of science, neuroscience specifically. Sure we know relatively little about the brain now, but there's no barrier to a greater understanding.
The "feeling" of love however, as the "feeling" of faith, or emotion as I used earlier, is a different matter. Can I communicate with you the experience of colour? Of anger? Of course not. There is no shared assumption at work there, the two operate entirely independently, hence cogito ergo sum. Any use of language or mathematics to communicate it would be preclusive because of the very experience of language itself... the best we could do is describe and model. Would you call telepathy that, or a shared consciousness? I don't know, that's an interesting one... but methinks irrelevant to truth and faith.
I think, as a physicist, you would surely agree that if it exists in nature, it could (at least hypothetically) be subject to experiments, of scientific method and analysis. Whether or not it's practical is irrelevant... it wasn't practical to image bones inside living tissue 400 years ago, but scientific method, the remit of science, hasn't changed at all since then... if you like, our knowledge has grown to fill it. Your standard infinite regress of uncertainty principle defines that remit by the way, that which exists subject to objective logic.
The consciousness on the other hand, we would say exists "object" to objective logic.
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Whaleboy
I think, as a physicist, you would surely agree that if it exists in nature, it could (at least hypothetically) be subject to experiments, of scientific method and analysis. |
no, I disagree with that
it takes a lot of faith to think that everything in nature is subject to experiments and the like
JM
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
no, I disagree with that
it takes a lot of faith to think that everything in nature is subject to experiments and the like
JM |
Faith isn't involved in this. It's merely a question of the nessecary techinque is available and is ethical acceptable.
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Provost Harrison
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The farce is strong with this one.
Feb 2000
time: 05:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
well, how about love
people thought (and many still do) that that is not subject to science
and how can you be sure that everything that is, is subject to science..
I have (as a physicist) huge doubts that everything in nature, even everything that we can theorize about, can be probed and experimented on
Jon Miller
(to use all the mechanisms we know of, to show whether string theory is right or not, most physicists thing we would need an appartus the size of the universe) |
Well there is the issue of Heisenberg, but apart from that you can't just make things up, although you can attempt to predict with extrapolation. I don't see theism as a logical extrapolation.
And love, well love is a state of mind, and as Whaleboy has said, is governed by neurology and neurochemistry. That we don't understand the precise mechanisms doesn't mean it is mystical. Once upon a time we didn't know the underlying mechanisms behind fire or evolution - we know those now...
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Provost Harrison
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The farce is strong with this one.
Feb 2000
time: 05:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Miller
well, how about love
people thought (and many still do) that that is not subject to science
and how can you be sure that everything that is, is subject to science..
I have (as a physicist) huge doubts that everything in nature, even everything that we can theorize about, can be probed and experimented on
Jon Miller
(to use all the mechanisms we know of, to show whether string theory is right or not, most physicists thing we would need an appartus the size of the universe) |
Well there is the issue of Heisenberg, but apart from that you can't just make things up, although you can attempt to predict with extrapolation. I don't see theism as a logical extrapolation.
And love, well love is a state of mind, and as Whaleboy has said, is governed by neurology and neurochemistry. That we don't understand the precise mechanisms doesn't mean it is mystical. Once upon a time we didn't know the underlying mechanisms behind fire or evolution - we know those now...
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Seeker
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London Ontario
Jan 1970
time: 00:30
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Well I guess the issue is, do you believe there can be such things as subjective truths?
If I saw, for example, a dragon, or Krishna, or whatever, why should I take the word of a scientific/professional consensus, which is shifting and fluid and is built up in the end of other individuals sense impressions, that it was a hallucination?
I've never seen a convincing arguement why a groups observations are better than any one individual at a basic level.
I mean, if you see the emperor with no clothes, should you believe you are hallucinating even if a crowd of people with degrees assure you that it's all a chemical imbalance in your brain? Even if you look really hard...rgrghhh...still can't see clothes?
Now, that's not a basis for knowledge of course, if we're going by 'a justified true belief' because you can't be certain that it is true, but then you can't be certain it isn't true either.
Do you see what I'm saying? There is a dividing line between beliefs that enter into the empirical arena, that can be cross checked, and fitted into a Great Crossword Puzzle, and between beliefs that are non-empirical by nature, like Fairies that go and hide when adults come.
People should only deal with, use, and interact with ideas from the empirical arena, but that doesn't me that in the personal, subjective, non-communicable sphere that you have to tell yourself "I am hallucinating. There is no X".
We cannot, as humans, enter into another humans subjective experience. It's utterly closed off to us.
Thus we can say, for example, 'the literal God of the Bible is bunk', because the bible makes many empirical claims that are demonstrably false...but we CANNOT say to the believer who claims to 'feel God in his heart' (or equivalent statement) that he is wrong, incorrect, because we cannot enter his subjective experience of reality.
We CAN stop him short from making positive knowledge claims in 'interactive' (non-personal subjective unviverse claims) like, 'An angel of the lord told me to ask you to give me your money', because subjective evidence is inadmissable outside the subjective sphere.
About non-communicateable subjective experiences like God, Nirvana, Tao, etc we cannot make claims like 'True' or 'False', we can only admit to a fundamental lack of knowledge (a-gnosis), compartmentalize such beliefs as interesting but irrelevant to our main human business, which is interacting with other empirical beings and empirical objects out.
So that, in a nutshell, is why all religious debate is ultimately futile. We should all admit a fundamental lack of knowledge and proceed with the empirical process while acknowledging that there are unanswerable questions.
Feel free to join your local agnostics chapter!
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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:30
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quote:
I've never seen a convincing arguement why a groups observations are better than any one individual at a basic level.
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As far as the individual is concerned, an objective argument has the benefit of some kind of verification, the subjective argument cannot be communicated or replicated, only described with varying degrees of vagueness.
quote:
Thus we can say, for example, 'the literal God of the Bible is bunk', because the bible makes many empirical claims that are demonstrably false...but we CANNOT say to the believer who claims to 'feel God in his heart' (or equivalent statement) that he is wrong, incorrect, because we cannot enter his subjective experience of reality.
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 However one gets suspicious of people who have entered into a pre-fabricated biblical faith, whereas I might be more likely to accept that people who have some kind of revalatory experience have better subjective grounds, if still nonetheless bullshit.
We can make objective true/false claims with absolutely no problem, but to someone of faith they are irrelevant. They only become relevant when he attempts to assimilate others. Thus we have religious debate, whenever faith treads on the lawn of science and reason.
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13-03-2005 03:01
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