Tell me what you mean by "what reality is," How, for example, is "reality" distinct from "the natural universe" in this context? Or does "reality" include so-called supernatural phenomena, in your estimation? Basically, to me, reality is what does not go away when we cease to believe in it. (Philip K. Dick) Its what's out there beyond ourselves and our brains. Pretty much everything else is just a concept, residing in our brains. For instance, I'm not sure what you would consider natural universe vs. supernatural. If I were to see a ghost, for instance, I would consider it to be quite natural by virtue of the fact that it is happening, though I have no explanation for it. Similarly, I might consider teleportation to be supernatural under newtonian physics, but under quantum mechanics models I would consider it natural for some particles to disappear and pop up somewhere else.
FWIW, science does not seek to propose "models about what reality is" per se; instead, science provides the tools and methods to make observations and predictions about the natural universe.but those tools and methods come from models. Look at chemisty, its a very nice model, based on a concept called 'atoms' acting as discrete units, and how they are structured and interrelate. Then there are schools of thought within physics that look at matter existing both as particles and waves or look at the subatomic particles. Then they try to integrate the models, and build rich bigs ones. but its models: the concept of atoms live in our brains, what they model lives in reality.
No tenet of science is so fundamental that it can't be overturned, given sufficient justification. For this reason it is not dogmatic, and it's certainly not the insane cult of fundy Christians.
Agreed, and that's why I love science so much. If there was a single thing I wish I had made more clear in my last post, its a wish that science would play the role of religion more. To me it is beautiful, it is divine. There's nothing to fear from knowledge.
To say that science is "magic and mental models" is really just a fancy way of saying "I have no idea of what science is about." Well saying what you just said is just a fancy way of saying "I have no idea what magic is about".
I mean think of it man, here's great*1000 grandfathers walking around 20,000 years ago. They empirically discover that eating some berries makes people sick, so they make a mental model that says "bad spirits tend to live in those berries". And they look at herbs in terms of good spirits and bad spirits. Then so many centuries later they call them the "devil berries" the model is changed. Then so many centuries later they say "This berry contains a mild neurotoxin, such and such a chemical".
Do you have the arrogance to say that what we know now is the final truth? Its not. we're cobbling together magic and mental models to explain the world around us just like we have been since we started speaking. 20,000 years from now the way we concieve it all will be radically different than anything you can think of...And maybe some people will be condemning scientific reasoning as a "mental flaw" just as you condemn the reasoning techniques of the shaman grandfather, or modern man with his "superstitions".
Based upon my experience with debates like this, I now expect an assertion of the depth and breadth of your understanding of science, perhaps listing degrees and courses of study. Good for you, if that's the route you choose to follow, but it doesn't change the fact that you're demonstrating gross misconceptions about the nature of science.
And in the next part you accuse ME of building a strawman! Whatever.
Look, let me put what I am saying in the most clear terms I can. a recent poll said that 90% of people don't think atheists are capable of moral action. Kansas has adopted the teaching or religion in science classrooms. Science is failing in a big way on the public relations front, at the time when the world needs scientific reason and clarity the most. A great deal of this comes from exactly the kind of shit you anticipated from me in your statement above...pretentious bullshit and self-righteousness derived from titles and arrogance. A great deal of it comes through science denying all things spiritual as a mental flaw or fantasy, (as if they know) when if you walked out and talked to religious/spiritual people you'd find that 90% of them base their beliefs on *experience* of religious nature, unexplained by science, not blind faith. But the fundamental unifying principle is elitism and intellectual arrogance, and an unwillingness to accept the thoughts of the unwashed masses into the marble halls of scientific thought. They say man is primate then hate the primate for being primitive. They indulge in their status as tortued brilliant minority while self professed born again Christians occupy the halls of power in DC. The time for this indulgence is drawing to a close. And the closing begins with the recognition that science has no right to diagnose humanity as mentally ill, or wrong, or beneath them. Humanity is all we've got. we have to embrace it with its myths and its afterlife and its gods. We have to work from there, even if it means new gods and new angels. It requires taking responsibility and courage enough to stare at the blook soaked abomination in the middle east and say with a clear voice that WE ARE THE RIGHTEOUS ONES, and these shit sucking "christians" are the liars. Our God is the god of evolution and genetics that brings half the food people eat, its the God of quantum mechanics that brings the computers we type on, its the god of physics and the big bang that humiliated the catholic church. You may laugh at all of this, but while you laugh bear in mind
the face of the abomination created by our fundy president in the name of who-knows-why the iraq war was started. Is the sense of being "above religion" worth letting hundreds of thousands die while a fundamentalist fucktard commits mass murder, or is it time that we take control? Control means accepting humanity who through they are, not condemning us for our myths and stories and gods and expressing the real actual truth through this format.
I'm fucking sick of science without balls. That kid in the picture didn't need a better way to synthesize such and such chemical, he didn't care if your genius landed you a job at DARPA where you could finally directly serve fundy president Bush. There is something more fundamental goin on here, sir.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
