"Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist"
- Thread starter In Bloom
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The history of what was known as philosophy is pretty instructive. Basically, when people first started to ask themselves the big 'why' questions the only tools at their disposal were introspection and argumentation. As knowledge accumulated over time, more effective methodologies emerged for analysing the world in more and more areas. What is now known as philosophy is the rump of the original philosophy consisting of that strain of thought that refused to adopt any more rigorous methodologies than introspection and argumentation. As each branch of knowledge devised more effective tools, they became disciplines of science.belboid said:
As the realm of philosophy has been progressively whittled away, we find them today with a constantly shrinking patch in which to speculate and an increasing tendency to climb inside their own bottoms in barren contemplation of unknowables. Recent enormous advances in our understanding of brain functions and the relation of the physical body to consciousness has robbed them of their last real connection with the real world. Whenever they venture to conjecture explanations for anything testable or approachable by more sophisticated tools, they find themselves facing a mountain of difficult to refute evidence which they must digest before they can possibly have anything useful to add. This results in them either putting in the hard work to understand the implications of the findings and effectively becoming scientists or else disappearing up their own bottoms in ridiculously arrogant and pompous attacks on the very act of systematically acquiring knowledge. Since the second response is the one that keeps them on the side of philosophy as against science, we find that philosophers are often the half-wit output of elite institutions who are so sure of the correctness of their own speculations that they will happily pontificate on all sorts of things that they haven't bothered to educate themselves about.
In Bloom said:
So I`ve been hallucinating since I was 6? For no particular reason. These hallucinations happen to involve meeting people that know more about the world around me than I do.....I suppose I have to invoke the near mythical human subconcious now?
Maybe you could try listening to what people say, I`m not lying to you, I`m not stupid, I`m simply trying to give you the benefit of my own experiences and urging you to try and have your own. You obviously haven`t AP`ed if you think its anything like a hallucination.
Like, whatever, dude.
Gurrier - I think there's still a place for philosophy although I agree with you that it should stay within its remit. Human issues like freedom, mortality, art etc contain aspects which are predominantly psycho-social and don't necessarilly lend themselves to inductive enquiry. Besides which, how could you know which facts about the world were a priori incompatible without logic, which is after all a branch of philosophy.
Gurrier - I think there's still a place for philosophy although I agree with you that it should stay within its remit. Human issues like freedom, mortality, art etc contain aspects which are predominantly psycho-social and don't necessarilly lend themselves to inductive enquiry. Besides which, how could you know which facts about the world were a priori incompatible without logic, which is after all a branch of philosophy.
I think that there is always a place for _speculation_ and non-inductive enquiry but I don't think that belongs within a specialised field like philosophy. It is the sort of thing that anybody who has any knowledge in a particular domain should be doing alongside the grind of empirical research. The idea of over-arching, cross-disciplinary specialists in philosophical speculation is in my view very very obselete. In most of the areas that philosophers speculate, there is an enormous and ever increasing body of hard evidence, much of which they are often entirely ignorant of, without an appreciation of which, the chances are that your speculations are going to be very silly, no matter how smart you are.Fruitloop said:
Fruitloop said:
Was a branch of philosophy. It is now a part of mathematics and computer science and the old formal philosophical logic is merely of historical interest.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
It's just occured to me that 'intellectiually satisfied atheist' is pretty much the equivalent of being a religious follower - in that you are confident and above all comfortable in your belief.
The only thing an atheist should be moderatly comfortable in is their belief and faith in themselves - and even that should be questioned regularly. Other than that I think accepting the universe as something in a state of permanent flux with no 'truth' uniersal other than those you think are right for you and your outlook on life.
Or something...
The only thing an atheist should be moderatly comfortable in is their belief and faith in themselves - and even that should be questioned regularly. Other than that I think accepting the universe as something in a state of permanent flux with no 'truth' uniersal other than those you think are right for you and your outlook on life.
Or something...
Hmm, from my area of specialisation (musicology) I can say with a degree of certainty that whilst there have been some interesting inputs from a scientific perpective, you are nevertheless dealing with a type of structure that is enculturated in a fairly arbitrary way, and thus still doesn't really lend itself to inductive study. This is not to say that ignorance of the scientific angle is really acceptable any more either, IMO. I'm certainly not going to defend the specialisation of philosophical enquiry, but then I would apply the same logic to any area of study, provided the participants have the minimum of knowledge that permits eligibility to the discourse.
Moving the goddamn goalposts! I still reckon that logic is in some way anterior to mathematics; it's the roots of mathematics rather than just a different branch like topology or whatever. It most certainly is not a branch of the computer sciences!
Fruitloop said:
It's not so much ignorance of the scientific angle that I'm criticising, it's ignorance of the domain specific knowledge. For example, I would think that a basic knowledge of the state of the art in musicology would be a prerequisite for producing interesting speculative philosophising about it. If the speculator lacks an understanding of the state of knowledge in the field they will either make the silliest and obviously wrong assertions about it, or they will retreat into sterile contemplation of the unknowable and unfalsifiable. My argument is that this is what the modern discipline of philosophy has become, not that it is an inevitable consequence of philosophising. For example, I think that anybody who produces speculative work on the origins of the universe needs to have a fairly good knowledge of modern physics or they will produce rubbish and my experience of reading modern philosophers who don't have this knowledge lives up to these expectations.
Not really. Recall that this is in the context of a description of philosophy as an evolving discipline which has given birth to many areas of specialisation.Fruitloop said:
Mathematics might be based upon logic, but that doesn't make the branch of logic that remains within the modern discipline of philosophy any less obselete. Mathematics has built an enormous collection of theorems, tools and techniques for applying logical axioms to the world. Refusing to use these tools in favour of the techniques of the 17th and 18th centuries as the philosophical field of logic largely does is just ridiculous if you want to use the insights in order to understand the world. If you want to create an obscuritanist elite who speak an archaic language which is impenetrable to most people, then it make sense.
I certainly have no argument with the first part. Roger Scruton's analysis-free musings on musical aesthetics make me
- it don't mean shit if you can't relate it to real musical artefacts, Roger.Sure. Personally I wouldn't call someone who studied historical logic without taking into account modern mathematical logic a logician at all - they are either a historian or simply an arse. What I meant is that the axioms of modern logic are epistemelogically prior to other mathematical disciplines (in that mathematical logic is the study of the processes used in mathematical deduction), not that traditional syllogistic logic has some special place because it's historically prior to them.
Azrael23 said:So I`ve been hallucinating since I was 6? For no particular reason. These hallucinations happen to involve meeting people that know more about the world around me than I do.....I suppose I have to invoke the near mythical human subconcious now?
Maybe you could try listening to what people say, I`m not lying to you, I`m not stupid, I`m simply trying to give you the benefit of my own experiences and urging you to try and have your own. You obviously haven`t AP`ed if you think its anything like a hallucination.
yourself, laddy
nosos said:
Blimey, I missed this one. You're absolutely right, I couldn't have put it better myself. Once only has to read the violent rages into which our resident Darwinian fundamentalists fly as soon as their credo is brought into question to realize that a deep, tender nerve has been touched. Not to mention their "up the bottom" fixation.
axon said:
Huh? Christian fundamentalists don't believe revelation stopped with Christ either. But what Darwinian and Christian fundamentalists share is an irrational commitment to their respective creeds, which clearly fulfill an emotional rather than a rational function for them, a furious intolerance of alternative viewpoints, a bigoted insistence that such viewpoints must not be taught in schools, a tendency to curse, rage and storm rather than debate, a blind adherence to the dictates of their prophets, a slavish allegiance to a priestly caste, a taste for violent intimidation of opponents, and an insatiable lust for world domination. Oh, and an "up the bottom" fixation. Do I really have to name names?
Fruitloop said:
Presumably you find similar justification for being anti-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-republican, anti-royalist, etc.
History is full of atrocities commited in the names of ideas or ideals. Doesn't mean that they represent the ideals themselves. Every christian is not responsible for the Inquisition or the crusades (unless they endorse such practises, which is pretty rare these days).
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
phildwyer said:
I think you're mistaking strong opposition to creationism or 'intelligent design' for some sort of crazed fundamentalist darwinianism. The reason for this strong opposition is that these competing theories are really really bad science, if they're even science at all.
I'm all for debate, but intelligent design is barely worth debate, mearly derision, as any scientist will tell you.
Crispy said:
Not that I buy it myself but the theory of intelligent design is not always as cracked as you might think. Nor is it always at odds with evolution. Random and probable and chance are all just words to cover a lack of knowledge (QM aside for a minute). What I mean is that the outcome of a dice role is not probabalistic as such, we just use probability because we can't figure out and account for all the forces involved. So random genetic mutation and survival of the fittest would all be totally predictable if you had a big enough brain/computer. And since science has no clue as to the origin of that first spark of life it's not entirely unreasonable to give it a name: god. And god produced said spark knowing full well that it'd grow/evolve into mankind.
The same argument applies to the beginning of the universe (big bang and all). Initial spark, universe expanding/evolving predicatbly according to laws of physics, eventual/predictable creation of the planet earth with the exact condition for life to evolve into people.
revol68
what, fucking what?
why does this cock insist on putting forward a strawman darwinism which no one outside of mad eugenic movements takes seriously? Oh wait it's so he can seem clever by deconstructing Darwins theory as the market superimposed on the natural world. Yawn, yawn and more fucking yawn. Everyone knows that Darwins theory of a dynamic, temporal and conflictual evolution could only really be formed in a human society of similar traits, it's very hard to imagine such a theory being advanced in a closed, static social system like feudalism. What I fail to understand is how these roots automatically discredit it.
Crispy said:
This simply isn't true. I know, personally, several scientists of impeccable academic credentials, employed by leading universities, who are advocates of intelligent design. One acquaintance of mine in particular is world famous in this field (if you don't believe me, PM me and I'll tell you his name.) Indeed, part of the reason for my hostility to Darwinian fundamentalism is that I see far less able scientists mocking and deriding such brilliant people, for no other reason than rabid, bigoted, knee-jerk anti-theism. I really do think fanatical anti-theism is a pathology, and we don't have to look further than our mad friend Gurrier for an example of people who actually seem to have become unhinged, unbalanced, by their determination that there is not--*must* not be--a God.
angry bob said:
It's not exactly true to say that science has 'no clue' as to the origin of life. The gap is getting smaller all the time. From the direction of the simple, we have observed examples of auto-catalytic chemical reactions, from the direction of the complex, we have observed episodes of RNA evolution in the presence of enzymes. The enormous number of small steps between amino acids and the eukaryotic cell are being filled in all the time and the spaces for any type of intervention are rapidly vanishing - much like your god appears to have vanished back to a couple of acts in 14 billion years.
angry bob said:
This god of yours is a funny fish. Apparently you seem to believe that he is a very good mathematician who built the universe as a massive human-creating machine and then just sat back for 14 billion years or so and waited for the sum to play itself out, only intervening once, some 10 billion years into the experiment to fiddle with a tiny bit of the matter in the sum in order to change the outcome.
Why on earth would this weird chap do any of this? Why not just build the humans and have done with it? Who wants to worship such a weirdo anyway? What evidence have you got for any of this bizzare stuff?
Note, the phrase 'mysterious ways' is another way of saying "my story doesn't even have to be self-consistent, I can make up whatever guff I like" - it doesn't wash at all at all.
.
revol68
what, fucking what?
intelligent design theory in it's most sophiscated form is nothing more interesting than determinism but with a sentient being behind it. Of course we always fall back on the problem of what created the creator etc etc.
In light of this problem most sensible and logical scientists/philosophers tend to prefer to not believe in beings we have no proof for, especially since even accepting this does nothing to answer the actual question.
In light of this problem most sensible and logical scientists/philosophers tend to prefer to not believe in beings we have no proof for, especially since even accepting this does nothing to answer the actual question.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
angry bob said:
Ah, but there's quite a difference between saying that an outside force sparked off life, but it has evolved since then (due to things that really are random - a dice roll may not be probabilistic, but is is chaotic and they are pretty much the same when it comes to accurate predictions) and saying that complex life was designed from scratch, eyeballs, brains, livers and all.
And seeing as how evolutionary theory does not concern itself with the origins of life (just its development), it doesn't really care if there's a god or not. See gurrier's post for progress on filling that gap.
axon said:
Let me just expand a bit. The problem with empirical science is that it takes the world as it is immediately given to us--as it appears to experience--for the real world. It ignores what makes it possible for the world to appear to us in a certain way. The structure of our minds (rather than our brains) for example, and our language, and our historical and cultural context. It cannot account for the fact that the way we perceive the world changes, or for the fact that the world appears to different people in different ways.
In this sense, it is a totalitarian mode of knowledge. It is also totalitarian in that it claims to be the only means to objective knowledge. As we've seen on this and other threads, its practitioners are frequently arrogant and dismissive of other methods and approaches to truth. They tend to denigrate the wisdom of previous eras, and of other cultures. They may even react to challenges from outside their own discourse with a kind of frenzied, paranoid, violent aggression. Its ugly to witness.
But above all, science must be judged by its results. In my view, the consequences of empirical science have been utterly horrific. Science has unleashed unprecedented destruction on the human race and on the natural world. It has immiserated the overwhleming majority of people, in both material and spiritual terms. In all likelihood, it will lead to the end of human life within a couple of generations. Under these circumstances, the ferocious self-aggrandisment of its practitioners becomes positively criminal. This is the true fundamentalism, if the term means anything at all.
There remains the more complex issue of science's collusion with capitalism. I've written a lot about this, both on these boards and in print, and I am in dire need of a beer, so I won't go into this at present. I hope to return to this issue in the near future, Insh'allah. For the present, though, its goodnight from me. Thank you for your kind attention.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
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