The Understanding Science website at Berkeley is generally a good resource, but unfortunately, they also promote a dishonest approach to religion and the supernatural, presumably out of a desire to avoid offending anyone. Being nice is not a good excuse for compromising on the principles of science, however.
I refer specifically to their section on the limits of science. Science certainly does have limits, but this isn’t one of them.
Science doesn’t draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
Do gods exist? Do supernatural entities intervene in human affairs? These questions may be important, but science won’t help you answer them. Questions that deal with supernatural explanations are, by definition, beyond the realm of nature — and hence, also beyond the realm of what can be studied by science. For many, such questions are matters of personal faith and spirituality.
Baloney. If the question involves only personal faith and spirituality, if it’s just a dialog going on in your head with no material consequences that might affect the world or other people, than sure, science doesn’t deal with that, and can’t deal with that. But the instant you claim that your supernatural beliefs impinge on the natural world, boom, science is on it.
Prayer can heal your cancer…
boom. Cancer is something we study.
God’s love will end war…
boom. The interactions between societies is not simply a matter of personal faith and spirituality.
God told me the earth is only 6,000 years old…
boom. The earth is under our purview, and the rocks say differently.
Worship makes me feel good…
boo…oh, wait. No. That one’s OK. Of course your subjective experiences can have subjective effects, and your mind even has some control over your physical body.
But the principle of that argument at the website is wrong. Supernatural explanations of natural phenomena are no longer outside the realm of nature, and are therefore subject to scientific inquiry. Just saying that your explanation for something is supernatural is not a get-out-of-science-free card.
Of course, your supernatural explanations for supernatural events are not subject to scientific constraints. Go ahead and tell stories about deities zapping other deities with magic bolts of ectoplasm that nobody has seen and that did not affect anyone. No one can argue with you — it’s like debating who would win in a contest between the DC and Marvel comic book universes. Evidence and reason won’t come into it, but also, it’s irrelevant to how the world works.
Yeah, that’s kind of like Stephen J. Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” concept. A totally chickenshit copout, as far as I’m concerned. Just trying to dodge the argument because you feel like it isn’t worth it. I had a lot of regard for Gould, but that was a loser.
And whaddya know. I was inspired to look up NOMA in rational Wiki and they quote some dude. Can you guess who said this?
“Science and religion are incompatible. Simply completely irreconcilably incompatible. And I can give you the bottom line message in case anyone needs to leave, and that is that; science and religion are incompatible in the same sense that the serious pursuit of knowledge about reality is incompatible with bullshit.”
Man, that guy sounds like some crazy radical militant.
Just finished reading a book by SJG about NOMA, Rocks of Ages. Works for me.
I have no use for religion at all, no sense of a “purpose” in life, but if people want to construct such a framework, I am quite content to let them. If they follow the NOMO principle too, then they will never try to use their religion in any discussion about “physics” (broadly construed).
The major point, which it appears that the rational Wiki critics miss, is that when Gould said non-overlapping, he meant non-overlapping. The graphic used in the page linked by Cervantes above – showing two disks with the “here be dragons” overlapping section – is utterly at odds with NOMA; Gould makes it clear that the two majesteria do necessarily “butt up against each other,” but overlapping is RIGHT out.
So, as far as what I read in Rocks of Ages, no disagreement with what PZ writes in the intro.
In addition to science actually studying things about which people have superstitious beliefs, it is also the case that there are scientists who have made a career studying superstitious belief itself, and/or the process of believing more broadly. And it comes as no surprise whatsoever that it is perfectly commonplace for people to believe things with absolute certainty…that are demonstrably not true.
It seems quite clear to me that if you argue there is no overlap between the “magisteria,” you are saying that religion can make no claims whatsoever about observable reality. That is equivalent to saying that all religious claims are completely meaningless. I agree with that.
Also, Marvel would win, just because of the countless different mutants in X-Men alone. Sheer numbers would suffice, even ignoring the many powerful Marvel heroes.
There are at least two separate magisteria worth talking about. The first addresses the question “what is”, we call it science. The second asks “what ought to be”, and while you can inform it from the first, there are many areas the study of what is can’t fill in. This is the area which religions arrogate to themselves with their supernatural explanations., but it’s clear that thay have no right to do so. This discussion takes place in many areas- politics, economics, and literature are only three of the players here. And strangely enough the religions all give this questions their own prepacked answers, all with absolute certainly because their book says it’s so. The fact that the answers are all different, and usually disastrous in practice, eludes them.
There are other magisteria perhaps- what might be? Science fiction doesn’t have to be all musclebound men in skintight suits, as Ursula LeGuin showed. What was? Well that’s history, which doesn’t have to be kings, battles and great men, and you get the religions trying to change the past as well.
And as for science not addressing the supernatural, James Randi. How does a believer know what they think is supernatural is not an illusion? Get them to argue between each other about it, Then look up Marguerite Porete.
It’s been many years since I read Gould’s “Rocks” book (I either lost or second-handed it log ago), but at the time I wrote a point-by-point, chapter-by-chapter rebuttal for a talk to a local Humanist group. As I recall, he had lots of examples showing where his non-overlapping line of demarcation lay, but he couldn’t keep to it — he always contradicted himself. I compared it to the scene in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie where Lois Lane asks Superman to demonstrate his x-ray vision by naming the color of her underwear, and he can’t answer until she moves out from behind a lead-lined planter. So he can’t see through lead, can see through a dress, but can’t see through her underwear?
Or can Superman actually see through Lois Lane’s underwear? Stop the presses! The world wants to know! .. or, no it doesn’t, because the question is a ridiculous nit-pick about a totally fictional world, just like SJG’s NOMA. You don’t even have to mix DC & Marvel (Christianity and Islam?) to see that “non-overlapping magisteria” is not a rock, but a crock of ages.
Jurgen Habermas, an atheist philosopher who admittedly is heavy sledding, discusses this in a non-mystical way. He proposes (not entirely originally, in fact he invokes Plato) three “worlds” of criticizeable validity claims. The first is intersubjective reality, the world “out there,” the domain of science. The second is the world of values, what ought to be. The third is our inner experience, what we want and feel. (In Plato’s terms the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.) We can make assertions about these, we can communicate with each other about them, but where we often go wrong in talking with each other is in making category errors among them.
While Habermas doesn’t have much to say about religion except that metaphysics is dead, it seems to me that one of the fundamental errors of all religions worthy of the name is this sort of category error.
Uhh, how would you know what kind of explanation a question deals with, unless you already think you know what the answer is? It’s also weird to put it that way: they could’ve said something like “questions about supernatural entities….” But if it’s the explanations which are beyond the realm of nature, then nobody anywhere in the natural world has one of those by this standard, since they could not be uttered or written down or even thought about, with a natural voice or a natural pen/paper or a natural brain. It presumably wouldn’t even need to be an explanation about anything remotely unusual, because a “supernatural explanation” of a couple of billiard balls colliding would be something that can’t be found in any form whatsoever in nature either, even if it would say precisely the same thing about the billiard balls as a natural explanation.
Of course, when the entities are supposed to be “beyond the realm of nature,” not the explanations that people give with them, similar problems arise. No matter what definition they thought they should use, the vast majority of people evidently don’t think supernatural entities are utterly “beyond” nature, because they think there are effects in the world or features of it, which hint at (if not demonstrate once and for all) the existence of supernatural entities. Or if they think no such things exist, there is evidence in the world hinting at that as well. Either way, things in the world aren’t beyond the realm of what can be studied by the sciences, last time I checked.
quotetheunquote, #4:
You’re quite content to let them have radically false beliefs about the nature of reality itself, at its most fundamental levels, and to indoctrinate others (particularly children) into having those false beliefs with them? So do you just not give a shit about people or what happens to the world because of crap like this? Or do you not think you should have to offer a decent reason for this, instead of just shrugging and walking away?
That’s a fucking huge “if.” What if they don’t? Then what? Would you still feel quite content? And again, why the fuck would you have felt content anyway?
So he wasn’t describing how religions actually work, when countless religious people cross the line on a daily basis (more like every minute), just how religions should have been, in Stephen J. Gould’s ideal world where there isn’t really a conflict, so that they’ll conform to what Gould “meant” — or rather what you say that he meant, since I’ve never read his book to find out why anybody has a use for it. Well, that helps us out a whole lot….
They didn’t miss it, by the way, on the rational wiki NOMA page (my emphasis):
Perhaps it’s more understandable that it ever happened But when you see it continues to be that way every single day, in the modern world after this has been hashed out for centuries, by educated and literate believers…. then you really need to get your head out of your ass and look the fuck around, if you still give a shit about what Gould might have meant. The “critics” there, you might notice, aren’t so much criticizing Gould (although he deserves it too) as criticizing religious apologists who use that bullshit as an excuse for their total lack of evidence.
Consciousness razor:
I thought i was very clear on this: religious principles cannot have anything to say about the physical world. I know a few Christians, and they seem nothing like those people “crossing the line” as you say. They are not creationists, do not believe in an intervening FSM that listens to prayers, etc. As far as I can tell, they use religion as some sort of way to deal with the problems of existence, although beats me how. But the fact that there are a number of fundamentalists who don’t follow NOMA is as puzzling to them as it is to me…
Another way of looking at it is, your experience and SJG’s experience (again according to examples given in Rocks) are very disparate. He finds that the majority of believers do leave science alone, and the creationists and others are outliers – but outliers who, of course, cause a great deal of grief (Gould spent a significant amount of time fighting them in court, over educational issues).
Why can’t they? “Evolution is myth, as God revealed to me.” Is that not saying what I think it is, or are you misusing the word “cannot”?
You know a few? I’ve known… what would it be? … thousands. So I’ll ignore your bullshit anecdotes.
And I’ll ignore what you imagine Gould “finds” is the case about a majority, based on his. Speaking of which, do you notice how quickly this went from “it’s not happening, no problem” to “it’s maybe less than 50% of billions of religious people, according to a non-expert who wrote a book”?
We’re not just talking about fundamentalist Christians, for fuck’s sake. They simply have to believe that a god (or whatever supernatural thing it may be) is responsible for stuff that happens in the world. Any stuff whatsoever. If you can find any actual believers saying they really think “my supernatural thing does nothing, seriously, it’s just helpful somehow to talk as if it did,” then you could first explain to me what makes you think they’re an actual believer of the thing in question. After that, point me at billions of them. Maybe on the other planet, where you apparently live, because they’re sure as shit not on this one.
I always interpreted NOMA as metaphor, not rigid demarcation of boundaries between two fields of studying to physical world. That even though psychology and philosophy are physical-bio-chemical systems, it is also useful to study them symbolically. That Religion, while a result of psychology, can also be studied with referring to biochemistry and focus on the symbols therein as separate objects. It was when religionists would try to make statements about physical reality that he would counter with “NOMA”, also when people would try to throw physics at supposed miracles, etc. I always took NOMA as a version of “okay for you to believe what you want, don’t try to force others to believe the same way”.
Yep, this is something I’ve been saying forever. Science doesn’t assume that phenomena are caused by aliens or gods (which, for many purposes, are equivalent). However, science can figure out that some phenomenon is caused by human interference (which, for this purpose, is equivalent to alien or divine interference). An intelligent agent causing something to happen otherwise than it would have if only natural forces were at work.
Note that it’s also theoretically possible for human, alien, or divine meddlers to conceal their handiwork. The FSM is a valid thought experiment here. If a god wants to answer the prayers of the faithful, sie can make a point of doing it selectively so that answered and unanswered prayers pass the statistical tests for a random binomial experiment where p equals the probability of recovery. The more so if the faithful who merit answered prayer are a small enough subset of the people doing the praying. It’s essentially an application of steganography: fulfill the prayers that really matter, and a random mix of other prayers, while denying the remaining petitions of the unfaithful, and a random mix of lesser petitions from the faithful, to conceal the signal in the noise.
The FSM illustrates the absurdity of beliefs that aren’t falsifiable, but also illustrates that a sufficiently capable agent can successfully avoid detection. The conclusion isn’t that such agents don’t exist, but rather that we’re justified in assuming their nonexistence. If they exist but are hiding so effectively, then they can only expect us to ignore them.
@12 quotetheunquote:
I have never met such a Christian or religious person.
I’m also confused that you could find fundamentalists inability to follow NOMA “puzzling”, as if it was a natural part of religion to separate religion from reality or actionable beliefs.
The Bible (and pastors) rants about failing to convert its words into real actions CONSTANTLY. The entire point of religions is that God cares about or even interacts with things in the real world, and even for the barely religious, the belief that reality is made of a god’s body or actions is common.
Science is “compatible” with people’s Christianity or other religions because wonders of Science are credited to god(s). You can’t separate their concepts of ANY goodness FROM their gods: they are intertwined. This view is incredibly common: praising God for things in reality. I think it’s wrong and sometimes harmful, but it is easy to understand why and how they would end up as intertwined concepts.
To have such little belief that religion is entirely and fundamentally irrelevant to your reality or conception of reality, and STILL call yourself part of any particular religion? That is what is puzzling to me.
You can think Gould is right, but really, he’s part of a tiny minority, and the reasons people believe and act differently aren’t “puzzling”. Wrong, and much more easily refuted with evidence, but not puzzling, not unless you just don’t fundamentally understand how people relate to religion.
IIRC, Gould wants to give all scientific claims to science. Religious people might be a bit upset about that. The claim “There was a person named Jesus, born of a virgin, and died and rose again three days later” is a scientific claim under Gould’s NOMA. In short, Gould’s characterization of religion simply does not match what religion is in the real world.
…
To quotetheunquote
Do they believe that there was a person named Jesus, who died, and rose from the dead 3 days later? If yes, then they’re crossing the line. If no, then they’re misusing the word “Christian”.
Finally, one must know more of the historical context to understand the second amendment. At the time, there was nothing like our modern police forces. The modern police would not be invented for another 50 years. A large majority of criminal investigation, capture of criminals, and prosecution of criminals was a private affair. (The prosecutor was a private person, but the case still happened in the neutral venue of a government court.) In particular, every person had the legal duty to catch criminals in certain situations, and not attempting this legal duty left one legally liable for legal penalties to the victim of the crime. People needed ready personal access to firearms to live in that kind of society. For further information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_%28common_law%29
>ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL?
>Roger Roots*
http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
Note: Some of Roger Roots’s citations are lacking. I have personally researched many of the core claims, and they hold up to scrutiny. Some of them did require getting access to papers behind peer-reviewed academic press paywalls.
What can we do to lessen gun violence?
Well, one option is to repealt the second amendment. That seems difficult.
Another option is to erode the rule of law by perverting the meaning and effect of constitutional protections, and especially the constitutional protections of the bill of rights. I have a special kind of disdain for people who advocate this approach.
Here are some facts about gun violence and gun deaths. The so-called category of semi-auto “assault weapons” is a fiction. Your standard semi-auto hunting rifle is just as dangerous as so-called assault weapons. (I have a longer rant if some fool contests this point.) A vast majority of gun violence is handguns. Even a large portion of mass shootings are with gandguns only.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Magazine limits are largely ineffective. Magazine limits don’t matter except for mass shootings, and several mass shootings happened with just handguns and 10 round magazines. In most mass shootings, the shooter has all of the time in the world to reload, and reloading only takes 1 or 2 seconds. Any effective gun ban approach has to include all semiauto firearms, including all handguns (including revolvers). This is unconstitutional (see United States Supreme Court Decision, DC vs Heller). Thus gun bans by make and model or by accessory (i.e. large capacity magazines) is a doomed effort under the current constitution.
However, there are approaches to lessening handgun violence and limiting access to handguns that does not involve blanket bans by make and model.
As I evidenced at length above, the original intent and understanding, and the plain text meaning, of the second amendment allows the federal congress and the states to provide for the training of the militia. Under this authority, the federal congress could discipline and train the militia, requiring lengthy military training, and civilian gun training, including safety training, training in the law and ethics of self defense, and more. Further, it seems quite clear IMAO that the federal congress could use its authority to make this millitia training optional, but also tie the enjoyment of personal gun rights to this training. In other words, the federal congress could require a gun owner’s license in order to enjoy personal gun rights.
It should go without saying, but under this interpretation, any requirements to obtain a gun owner’s license must be narrowly tailored – in a constitutional sense – to serve compelling government interests and it must not otherwise set up unnecessary hurdles to enjoyment of personal gun rights. I might also argue that the class should be free in order to avoid constitutional issues ala the poll tax, which serves as a delicious irony that gun nuts must partake in government socialism!! (sarcasm) in order to get their gun owner’s license.
It’s like a driver’s lisence. Driving a car on public roads is a right, but it’s also a licensed right. For a citation of that claim, see:
United States Supreme Court Decision, Bell v. Burson, year 1971.
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/402/535/case.html
We could require licenses for gun ownership just like we require licenses for driving a car, and it would be entirely constitutional. Further, we can, and we should, make the training to obtain a gun owner’s license much harder than the training to receive a driver’s license. IMAO, laws requiring training to obtain a gun owner’s license are on much firmer constitutional ground than laws that require training to obtain a driver’s license because at least the constitution explicitly mentions the authority of the federal congress to train and arm the militia.
This then dovetails nicely into universal background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases.
These are real things that we could be doing right now that could easily pass constitutional muster, and most gun nuts should have no legitimate complaints.
Shit wrong thread. Sorry.
EnlightenmentLiberal @17:
Oh dear, all those silly people who don’t take the Nicene Creed literally, but still call themselves Christians. Next you’ll be telling me that some people call themselves Catholics, but use contraception. You should do a lecture tour and straighten ’em all out.
Also, Abdus Salam was an Ahmadi, and drank scotch, so he must have been misusing the word “Muslim”. Problem solved! Whatever the problem was, I guess.
To Rob
The single core Christian doctrine is that there was a historical Jesus who died for everyone’s sins so that followers of Jesus can obtain everlasting life. If someone does not accept the truth of that proposition, then they’re not a Christian.
The comparable analogy would be someone calling themself a Muslim, but not believing that there was a historical person named Mohamed who wrote down the teachings of the Archangel Gabriel.
In Judaism, there is a term for such people: “culturally Jewish”, in order to distinguish such people from “actual Jewish” or “believing Jewish”.
It’s simpler than that.
Science answers questions about the nature of reality. Questions like “does God exist” are questions about the nature of reality.
It certainly has a definitive objective answer that, theoretically at least, can be found objectively.
Therefore, it is a scientific question.
For the record, saying that “does God exist” is NOT a question about the nature of reality is essentially admitting that God isn’t real.
Now, if you want to argue that science does not answer all questions about the nature of reality, I would respond two ways:
1) Understanding the nature of reality is why science exists in the first place
2) I’m not arguing that we will definitely answer the question. The human race may not exist long enough to, for whatever reason. I’m simply arguing that the question is, indeed, scientific, and thus, if we are going to find an answer at all, it will be through the use of the scientific method that we find it.
NateHevens @22:
Whether there is a discoverable answer to “does God exist” depends on the meaning of God.
“The creator of the Universe”? Yes, we might find evidence for the existence of such a thing. He might even show up and tell us how he did it.
“The infinite, omnipotent, eternal creator of the Universe”? How would we, with any finite series of observations, verify those attributes?
“The ultimate ground of being?” That just gets mired in philosophical argument, unless we say that it must exist by definition. Also it’s not what most people mean by God.
@21: “The single core Christian doctrine is that there was a historical Jesus who died for everyone’s sins so that followers of Jesus can obtain everlasting life.” Wrong. There have been debates in Christian communities from the earliest times about whether Jesus was really a man, or perhaps an apparition. Other Christians have focused on the social message (Sermon on the Mount and so on) rather than on the sacrificial aspects.
aziraphale @ #23
That is exactly why I hedged my bets, actually:
But to your second definition of God, I would argue that just because no one here (myself included, yes) can’t think of how we would test for that doesn’t mean, if our species exists for long enough, someone won’t figure it out. We’re already trying to figure out what caused the Big Bang and whether or not they are multiple universes, and trying to devise how we would test for all that. No, such tests wouldn’t tell us if there’s an omnimax creator out there, but it would put us, I think, on the right path towards that, even if that path would be ridiculously long.
The question is scientific because it is a question about the nature of reality, and those are the questions that science exists to answer in the first place. That doesn’t mean it’s a question that will ever be answered. It simply means that, if we ever do, at some point in the far-flung future, find an answer, it’s be through science that we find it.
Probabilitistically, just like any other scientific conclusion.
To better answer your question, imagine that you are in the god’s place. Imagine that your first memory is existing in an endless void, and where you had the ability to change the void around you by a certain kind of force of will. Imagine that you also had the ability to know anything just by thinking about it. Are you all-powerful? Are you all all-knowing? Are you eternal? In that position, even the god could not be 100% certain that it is, but it could reasonably make a tenative conclusion that it is all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal, but like any other scientific conclusion, it would be subject to change. Even a god would be subject to the same epistemological problems that bind us.
…
And all of those sects died out in the first or second century AD. Further, for several of those sects that believe that Jesus was not a man on Earth, and that Paul et al just had visions of Jesus, they still believed that Jesus was a real person, who was born with a human’s body, who just happened to die in outer space, just below the moon. Ok, so Jesus wasn’t on Earth, but Jesus was still a human, still died, and his death still allowed for everlasting life for their followers, and those are all scientific claims.
And I say again, if they don’t actually believe the core Christian doctrine, then they’re not Christians.
Words do not have intrinsic meaning. Words have meaning by consensus. The consensus for the whole history of Christianity is, and has always been, that Jesus was a human with human flesh, died, and that death allowed their followers everlasting life, and that believing that is what makes one a Christian. (Some Christians sometimes require additional qualifications, but that’s the bare minimum that everyone agrees to.)
EnlightenmentLiberal, wow, your thinking is so very incoherent!
<snicker>
PS EnlightenmentLiberal:
The actual consensus is that Jesus was an avatar; both god and man.
(Yes, it’s contradictory on its own terms, much as is Trinitarianism)
NateHevens:
Explain how that’s supposed to follow. “What is two plus two?” That’s a simple question about the nature of reality, isn’t it? I couldn’t tell you how reality might be different if it had a different answer (if it could have a different answer). But in any case, scientific methods aren’t the ones we use to answer it.
Maybe you’d disagree with that. So how about this one: Is ‘what is two plus two?’ a question about the nature of reality? Is the question I just asked about the nature of reality? What about this one? Whatever those particular answers may be, what methods do we use (or which should we use) to determine what is or isn’t a question about the nature of reality — sciencey ones? How would that work? When and where and how could you observe/test/experiment on something in the physical world, in order to give a coherent (and possibly correct) answer to questions like that?
To John Morales
I think very coherent. Of course, you give me nothing to work with. Please continue to snicker. It’s very productive.
…
To consciousness razor
I would generally argue that it’s not. There is no test in reality that you can do to answer that question. In a more formal sense, the answer is not falsifiable. In other terms, it’s an analytic question, not a synthetic question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction
“2 +2 = 4” is true by definition. That’s what we have defined the terms to mean.
Consider this: How many apples would I have if I take 2 apples and put them next to 2 other apples? I would have 4 apples. I contend that this is a scientific fact about reality, a synthetic statement. It is a statement that is open to falsification.
Let me give a better example.
What is 10 miles per hour plus 10 miles per hour? In other words, imagine I am in outer space. I deposit a rock outside my space ship as a reference point. I accelerate for a brief moment, so that I am now at 10 mph relative to my rock. I drop a second rock. I accelerate for a brief moment, so that I am now at 10 mph relative to the my second rock. What is my relative velocity compared to the first rock? Naively, just like the apple example, one might answer “20 mph”. Technically speaking, in a very precise manner, that is not correct. It’s actually just a fraction less than 20 mph. That’s because speeds do not add linearly in reality. The fact “10 mph + 10 mph = 20 mph” is a synthetic statement, and a false one (albeit a very good approximation in most circumstances). However, 10 + 10 = 20 is still true; it’s an analytic statement.
Statements of pure math are analytic and have nothing to do with reality. Statements concerning scientific models of reality are falsifiable and synthetic, even if they are couched in the language of math.
Also:
I fail to see how that contradicts anything I said. I might not be sufficiently well versed in the esoterics of imaginary cloth. However, it’s besides the important point, which is that someone is misusing the word “Christian” if they mean something other than (loosely): a person who believes that Jesus died, rose from the dead, and that death allows the followers of Jesus to have everlasting life.
Never heard of Unitarians, EL?
To jacksprokect
Not really, no.
Which group are we talking about? There’s a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian
Are we talking about this group?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism
Presumably no. However, I will explicitly agree that there are some Christians who assert that Jesus is not god. There are some Christians that assert that Jesus was a pre-existing being, and some assert that Jesus did not have existence before being born in human flesh.
I assume we’re talking about this group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism
There are churches which welcome Christians, agnostics, atheists, etc. What’s your point? I don’t understand what it might be.
EnlightenmentLiberal:
If you read my comment for comprehension, you’d know I questioned that very point. But so what? How would the lack of a “test” imply it’s not about reality?
I’ll say it again: so what?
Once again, why does this matter? Get to the fucking point.
Because apples exist? The existence of apples is an empirical fact. The mathematical fact that that is a consistent (but silly) method of doing addition isn’t one.
Mathematical expressions can represent such features of reality, like your groups of apples (or the procedures you went through to arrange them), along with various other quantities or relations, and that means they can be about reality. Because we can make those statements about stuff, since we’re the ones responsible for making statements and making them about stuff. If they couldn’t be about it, then you wouldn’t have been able to apply the concept to (or have it correspond to or represent) a concrete physical situation in reality, like you just fucking did with two separate examples. If you have something else, which doesn’t amount to refuting yourself, then you should probably mention it.
For me, that’s kind of foundational. I’m a sort of positivist (or post-positivist). If it’s not observable, then it doesn’t matter. In other words, there’s no practical difference between a non-existent god and an undetectable god. In other words, there’s nothing relevant to discuss between a non-existent god and an undetectable god. I would go so far as to use the strong language of logical positivism in this particular situation and say that it’s not meaningful in a certain sense to discuss the idea of an existing but undetectable god. The answer is just as well-defined, just as meaningful, and just as useful as the question “what is the square root of a pork chop?”. (I am not a logical positivist.)
At the very least, I would say that it’s not a subject that has any interest to me, and it should not be interesting to anyone else, because by definition the truth or falseness of the claim can have absolutely no impact on my life, and because it’s flatly impossible to discover whether it is true or false.
And I don’t understand your response to the rest of my post. Do you accept or reject the utility / correctness of the analytic-synthetic divide? Do you accept or reject my claim that “2 + 2 = 4” is analytic and “When you place 2 apples in an otherwise empty basket, and then place another 2 apples in the same basket, then there are 4 apples in the basket, e.g. the quantity of apples placed in a basket adds linearly” is synthetic?
PS: I should mention, in practice, there is strong overlap between synthetic and analytic statements.
You have a foundation? Buildings have those, and you might speak of reality having those if you like the metaphor. But do you or I get our own personal ones too?
The question here is “what is the square root of four?” And you’re saying that’s the same kind of ill-defined meaningless gibberish, or somehow similar to it, or just as useless, or otherwise in the same sad circumstances given your dogma which I have no reason to believe. If that’s not what you meant — putting math into the same boat as superstitions about gods, among other things I guess, as if they had anything to do with one another — then I honestly don’t get how I’m supposed to interpret your bullshit comments.
Do you understand what the word “about” means? It doesn’t mean test. So your jump from aboutness to testability is a large and fallacious one. The fact that you have a favorite dogma isn’t going to be convincing to me. You also plainly refuted yourself (positivists really excel at that). What else is there to understand?
I’ll reiterate: you interpreted it with no problem, not by warning us that what you were preparing to say was meaningless or useless or whatever bad word you come up with. Instead, it seems you did understand, with probably no trouble at all, that “2+2=4” could represent a situation like the pairs of apples you imagined being put into a group. Presumably, that’s because you were taught simple ideas like this, because some people think it’s genuinely useful and reliable knowledge for a real person in the real world to have.
In any case, your apple situation can happen in reality (no problems there at least), and a statement like that can be about situations like that. You don’t “test” it with those situations, to determine whether or not it’s correct (people make mathematical proofs to do that, not empirical observations or tests), but those kinds of situations are nevertheless what it can be “about.” I don’t know what you think you’d accomplish by claiming otherwise, or what else you might think it’s about. If that’s actually puzzling to you and you’re not just shitting us, maybe you could explain what you think the actual problem is supposed to be.
I don’t know how to respond. I still do not understand what you are trying to do, except be malicious and purposefully difficult. I don’t even think it would be productive to respond.
Still, let me try. I do think that it would be productive if you answered my earlier questions explicitly. Specifically:
Do you understand the analytic-synthetic divide? Do you think that this is a useful, accurate, etc., way to view and describe formal statements in any way?
Can we agree that “2 + 2 = 4” is an analytic statement, and it’s not falsifiable? Can we agree that “If I put 2 apples into an empty basket, and then I put 2 more apples into that basket, then the basket has 4 apples” is a synthetic statement, and it is falsifiable?
Actually, let me use some better examples.
Consider the following true claims:
1- A bachelor is a man who is not married.
2- My friend Steve is a bachelor.
I assert that #1 is an analytic claim. We do not look at reality to determine the truthiness of this kind of claim. This claim would be true for all epistemically possible realities. In particular, it would be true if there was no humans. In a world without humans, there is no bachelors; you cannot determine the truthiness of the #1 claim by looking at reality.
I assert that #2 is a synthetic claim. In some epistemically possible realities, the claim is true. In some realities, the claim is false. (In other realities, it may be ill-defined.) How we determine the truthiness of this claim is by looking at reality.
So, if I have agreement thus far, then it’s just a question about semantics. Is a question about reality if: 1- it is true by fiat, aka analytic and not synthetic, and 2- it’s true in all epistemically possible realities, and 3- one cannot determine if it’s true or false by observing reality? The answer is purely semantics. I could go either way. The answer depends on the particular meanings chosen for the words in question, particularly “about” and “reality”. Are synthetic statements descriptions of contingent reality, aka the part of reality that still is no matter what you think about it? No. Are synthetic statements about reality, in the sense that reality includes literally everything, including all synthetic statements? Obviously yes.
So, I see that not only are you being purposefully and needlessly difficult with me on an issue of pure semantics, you were also purposefully and needlessly difficult with NateHevens on the same topic. You’re such a swell person.
Ya @consciousness razor it seems pretty obvious that Nate’s statement should be interpreted something like: “science can investigate synthetic propositions”. Which shouldn’t be controversial.
Yes, Brian Pansky. Thank you for that. It’s exactly what I mean (I could never remember the correct term, so I always said “”questions about the nature of reality”). “Does God exist” is, IMO, a synthetic proposition (depending on the definition, of course).
Also, I had some typos.
Fix.
And let me make that easier to read:
Do
syntheticanalytic statements describe contingent reality, aka the part of reality that still is no matter what you think about it? No. Aresyntheticanalytic statements about reality, in the sense that reality includes literally everything, including allsyntheticanalytic statements? Obviously yes.To Brian Pansky
Thanks for saying what I was trying to say, and much shorter and much more clearly than I could have. Well done.
That isn’t controversial. But I think EL, and many others like him, really want to say that anything about the nature of reality must therefore be scientific or empirical. Nothing else counts. It’s all just mystical/nonsensical/meaningless bullshit like the square root of pork chops. I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m supposed to take away from EL about that (maybe not NateHevens though). So evidently I wasn’t just preaching to the choir, nor did I figure I would be, because this is a fairly common sentiment in atheist/skeptic circles.
If other things did count, then the claim wouldn’t follow, like I said, that simply being about reality would make a question scientific. And when you look at some of EL’s other claims, like “Statements of pure math are analytic and have nothing to do with reality,” we are obviously not dealing with merely the claim that sciences can study whatever’s empirical (or synthetic, if you like Kant), but with exactly the kind of mistaken impression I wanted to address, that you’d get from a literal reading of NateHeven’s claim (which apparently Nate didn’t mean — no harm done).
I obviously agreed, up at #11 and countless other times on pharyngula, with the claim that the sciences can study anything empirical. So it’s pretty silly of EL to have thought that point was being disputed by me somehow, after I just made it myself. Or that what I was talking about had any relation to whether science can study supernatural entities that intervene in the world (not abstractions, like the number 4).
I still don’t understand what’s going on. It does seem to be entirely a matter of semantics regarding the words “about” and “reality”.
I should hope that it’s obvious that we do not resolve questions of math by appealing to evidence. I should hope that it’s obvious that science is the only acceptable way to answer questions of “does it in exist in the real world in any way that can have direct or indirect impact on my sensory experience?”. That was the primary thrust of my original point.
And finally, my last point succinctly is that existence claims that are entirely untestable are irrelevant, and borderline incoherent. Maybe consciousness razor takes issue with that, but like many other philosophical discussions we’ve had, he’s playing purposefully obtuse, and dishonestly pretending as though I have some weird fringe position when it’s a common – not necessarily universal or majority, just common – position in modern philosophy.
And by “existence claims”, I meant synthetic claims. But that’s definitionally circular. What I really mean is that there is a class of claims that purport to make predictions about my future sensory experience, or the sensory experience of some hypothetical human-like observer. Those are empirical claims, scientific claims, synthetic claims, whatever you want to say. However, there are some claims that are carefully crafted to look like empirical claims, but which are carefully crafted to give no predictions by definition for any hypothetical human-like observer. I say that those claims are bullshit and borderline incoherent. Example: An undetectable god claim. “It’s there. I know it’s there. But no one can ever see it, and therefore no one can ever have any basis whatsoever for believing that it’s there.”
EL:
I don’t. We weren’t dealing with existence claims, what there is physically, when I brought up the equation “2+2=4” and you objected to it. Do you still have an objection to it? I’d be happy to drop it, if you realize there was some kind of misunderstanding, whether on your part or mine. But I think that’s what we might disagree about, because I’ve definitely said, multiple times in this thread, that sciences can study anything that’s empirical (whatever’s made of physical stuff or has any effect on physical stuff like your brain, which gives you a sensory experience that is thus “empirical”). So it definitely isn’t that, and continuing to push that view on me, for no reason at all, isn’t getting us anywhere. If you don’t want to be obtuse or dishonest or play pretend, then please just recognize that.
I don’t know what you think I’m purposefully or dishonestly doing, but I can tell you I’m not lying or bullshitting. I actually think (no shit, not pretending) that it is a weird position (maybe mine is too), and that has nothing to do with how common it is. Believing in gods is much more common, if that’s a standard you think is even worth mentioning.
You know, come to think of it, I even said it was “common.” I used that particular word, in reference to the kind of position EL takes. But that, I guess, is pretending as if it isn’t. I don’t get it, EL. Where do you come up with this stuff?
consciousness razor @ #43
There was a time when I thought like this:
There are two kinds of questions: questions about the nature of reality (Does God Exist?) and questions about the nature of our experiences (Who is the greatest guitarist in the world?). Science covers the former, but not the latter, because the former questions are objective and have objective answers, while the latter questions are subjective and have subjective answers. I even wrote a few blog posts about it.
I realize now, of course, that it’s rather more complicated than that, but was never able to put the words to it until, honestly, this discussion. As a result, Brian Pansky explained my meaning better than I could.
(Also, the greatest guitarist in the world is Jimmy Page… :p :D)
To consciousness razor
Seriously. You’re just being an asshat. I know that I’m on your shit list, and that’s why you treat me like shit (whether consciously or unconsiously), but because of your vendetta against me, and because of the way that you handle yourself in your vendetta, it’s exceedingly difficult to have a constructive conversation with you. I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s worth it to continue to try to constructively and honestly engage with you. If you’re not going to apply some principle of charity, then I don’t think it’s worth it, and nothing of value is lost in these exceedingly frustrating, and dare I say disingenous, conversations that we have. You still haven’t clearly described your own position. What you posted consisted mainly of obscure attacks on my position, obscure enough that I cannot divine your actual positions and your clear opinions on where I went wrong.
Without further context, I do not think that it’s objectionable if I used the word “reality” to refer to all of our shared physical reality, shared natural reality, shared supernatural reality, shared reality of ghosts and goblins, etc. I still do not know if you consider this a problem, because your posts directed at me consist more of potshots and snark than of actual serious straightforward conversation.
Then, there might still be a legitimate disagremeent on the following point. It’s so hard to tell if there is any because of your lack of charity with me, and because of your style of non-constructive, obtuse and obscure conversation.
For want of a better term, I will use the term “physical reality” to refer to the set of things that we both experience with our senses, including physical objects, material objects, space, time, supernatural things (if they exist), ghosts (if they exist), magic (to the extent that it exists, however it’s defined), etc.
I think that it’s rather obvious that there is no object in physical reality that is “2”, “+”, nor “=”. Of course, we frequently create predictive models using the language of math. I say that the predictive models are about reality, just like the synthetic statement “my friend steve is a bachelor” is about reality. I also say that pure math statements do not describe objects in reality. Analytic statements do not describe objects in reality. It was in that sense that analytic statements are not about reality. Several other commenters thought that this was rather obvious, but it seems that you decided to take a shit on me on the flimsiest of excuses with absolutely no charity, so fuck you and fuck your shit. When you get into that attitude of taking a shit on someone, you’re one of the most miserable, most disingenuous, and least productive-in-conversation people on pharyngula.
PS: And no, that’s not tone trolling. I don’t care that much if you cuss me out, call me names, etc., but I care if you’re being disingenuous and not-constructive. Attacking you for being disingenuous and not-constructive – that is not tone trolling.