Do you actually enjoy life?

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

A gap in any explanation isn't licence to guess whatever you want about the space.
I think it was Gamma Ray going on about 'Why'. You're going to have to work this out more clearly before you continue about it because you're pretty much asking a meaningless question which can be added to anything. I'm thinknig of the childlike scenario wherre you try and give an explanation to an annoying kid who just keeps going 'but why?'. In your own example about certain things coming about due to certain factors. that IS the why.  it's because THOSE factors were present.If you keep continuing you're only highlighting a point about justification. Not about explanation.

Ancient written texts aren't repositories of accurate literal knowledge. Not only are they highly metaphorical and allegorical, they've been written and rewritten and re translated many many times. Not just that but even prior to their being written down they were as you say descended from oral tradition, which was not an accurate and dependable way of conveying information.

While I'll give leeway to people who suggest that there might be some creator at some point in the universe, what I'm not willing to let anyone do is make pretty much any claim about the nature of that force. What I might accuse a theist of doing when suggesting this idea is that they are connotating their modern idea of a judeao christan God onto something that isn't that.

I'm not sure of the reasons given so far for the arisal of religion. I think that what was more important about the creation of religion was a code of behaviour to regulate human coexistence and to pretty much give basis for morality.

Someone else claimed that people in the past weren't any more stupid than we are. While this might partly be true, I'm not sure where to draw the line between being given  more accurate and more (as in just more) information and between being given less information that is less accurate, somewhere in there is the something about stupidity and rigour.
anyway the point is that I don't think that people with enough methodical rigour would genuinely attempt to discuss claims about how many angels you can fit on a pinhead, nor create theories such as "spontaneous mice".

Edit: to add something about the post above. Philosophy isn't really a separate subject from religion, although it ought to be borne in mind that it has ties to science to.
Originally all study was counted as philosophy - it does mean literally love of knowledge. Once something  from philosophy becomes concrete enough and provable rigourously it becomes science. That's why it also encompasses religion since by it's nature religion isn't

Edit again because you people talk too much:
A lot of (commonly held) atheism IS very lazy. SO stop complaining about the general dismissal of it and stick to specifics.

As far as I know there are NO arguments for God that even come close to being conclusive, while not being an expert in the subject I have studied it at length and yes academically. (I presume you're thinking of the classic arguments such as Paley's watch etc etc)
What the majororty of people who ARE experts in arguments for God will tell you however is that it does actually come down to faith and whether you're willing to posit the all loving being.

[Gamma Ray]

It is perfectly possible to find meaning in science, as it is in philosphy and in religion.

They are all perfectly valid world-views (albeit some may seem more likely than others), from which meaning can be gained.
Religion doesn't have a divine right (ahem) to bestow meaning on things.

Amen to that. etc.

Your point is well taken. I'm not saying that religion has a freehold on meaning, and I am aware that science is the most rigorous way of understanding yourself and your environment. I just don't take it that it's the only way/'correct' way.
Maybe I need a little more scientific rigour in my arguments, ¿eh?

This thread is mutating like a hydra head. And so to fucking bed ...

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

bah sounds like you're cheating  on the use of meaning. Where earlier it had a more specific use as explanation now you seem to be using it ina general, "what is life" sort of way. It's under the general use that you're allowed to say there's no correct way.  But in the explanatory specific use there really is only one truth, whether it's possible to reach it is another thing but unfortunately science is the closest thing to that so far. religion hasn't given us that, but has been set up in a position of power which it won't relinquish easily.
When it comes to the truth there is only one correct way. It's absolute like that.

[european son]

Truth doesn't really come into physics, it's just a question of how accurate you want your model of reality to be.

that depends on your philosophy of science and your theory of truth. i'd agree with that, as would someone like Van Fraassen with his constructive empiricism.

thing is, that seems to support Gamma Ray's position of science as a descriptive method there to answer how questions, leaving the problems of the why regress outlined by Smackhead Kangaroo to metaphysics, philosophy and (perhaps, but again, not my field) philosophy of religion.

for me, it's not the role of science to explain, which is why any theory of scientific explanation from Hempel & Oppenheimer to Salmon to Kitcher are simply doomed to faliure. it may sound reactionary, but maybe the pre-analytic types like Duhem had it right. "To explain is to strip the reality of the appearances" - that is clearly the role of metaphysics and not science.*

thing is, causal realists like Locke, and other realists would disagree. more importantly, i'd say that most folk do hold to a view of scientific realism in one form or another, which is why some would hold their belief in the "truth" of science (especially with regards to unobservables like "force" and "electrons") to be as dogmatic as Homer's gods^ or any other faith-based beliefs.


*well, that's what i said in m'exam last week, i'll let you know if i'm talking bollocks when i get my results

^an example nicked off Quine

Quine, in Two Dogmas Of Empiricism:

I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.

[5:09am]

What gaps are there which cannot hope to be filled by scientific discovery? Separately, I don't think it should be considered a logical view to see a small gap in scientific knowledge and then decide that because there is no answer at present, it must be the work of a greater being.

I didn't particularly want to be drawn on specifics, but seeing as you asked directly. I'll give you a couple. Perhaps the most obvious question is the 'what caused the universe to exist?' If you believe that the universe was not always there ie. if you want to avoid an infinite regress of causes, this question surely screams out. Of course the type of cause that brought the universe into being will be very different to any other type of cause since causation is fundamentally a temporal notion and time doesn't exist outside the universe. The typicsl response of the scientist is to deny that the universe requires a cause because causation outside time is incoherent. But this response has always seemed to me to be a sidestep of the question rather than an answer. Perhaps you might be persuaded but it's always failed to scratch me where I itch.

Even if you see nothing incoherent in the idea of a universe that always existed, then surely even this requires explanation. Why a universe rather than nothing?

Another problem seems to be that the fundamental constants of physics are so finely tuned within such a narrow band of values that if any of them were slighty different, not only would intelligent beings not exist, but neither could stable matter. The question is why are these constants so beautifully complementary? If you posit an initial situation of randomly generated values over an infinity of time then it is perhaps possible that our stable universe could have been born accidently (I'm not sure of the theories of probabilty when applied to infinity here). However, you will have to explain how this fundamental number crunching mechanism came into being in the first place.

These are not new or original arguments and are merely the tip of a significant iceberg. I'm not merely positing a God of the gaps here. I believe these questions cannot be answered by science because there answers are, by there very nature, beyond nature. Once you have concluded that a supernatural creator exists, then you have by definition concluded that God exists. You can't really do these arguments justice in a paragraph and that is why I didn't particularly want to be drawn into an argument about particular theistic proofs. I would recommend anyone to read around the subject of philosophy of religion. It really is fucking rewarding stuff.

Oh, and gazzyk1ns, you make a good observation about struggling Catholics, and I don't really know if I agree with your condemnation of them or not. I certainly think that the whole 'absolution of sins' thing is easily exploited by the randy Catholic, but equally I think many people genuinely struggle in squaring an old religion with a modern world. As I've said before, I'm not arguing for the existence of a God defined by any particular faith, I'm not even aguing for the existence of Jesus or Heaven. I simply think that God can be plausibly argued for without resorting to blind faith.

[Brigadier Pompous]

thing is, that seems to support Gamma Ray's position of science as a descriptive method there to answer how questions, leaving the problems of the why regress outlined by Smackhead Kangaroo to metaphysics, philosophy and (perhaps, but again, not my field) philosophy of religion.

Well yeah, any questions of ultimate meaning are pretty much metaphysical by definition, but you can approach the question from various angles, two very broad examples being a scientific world view and a religious one.

i'd say that most folk do hold to a view of scientific realism in one form or another, which is why some would hold their belief in the "truth" of science (especially with regards to unobservables like "force" and "electrons") to be as dogmatic as Homer's gods^ or any other faith-based beliefs.

Electrons aren't unobservable, indeed they are almost too accomodating, happy to look like waves one minute and particles the next!

Science (physics) doesn't (or shouldn't) make claims to Truth, merely claims to a sufficiently accurate description of reality.
Reality doesn't need to solve a load of equations to work out what happens (unless we are living inside some matrix style computer).  No matter how accurate the description, it is still only a description.  Even if we had the perfect equation to solve numerically, we would still have to write the answer with finite number of significant figures.

Quine, in Two Dogmas Of Empiricism:

I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.[/size]

Well exactly, one gives you results that allow you to accurately model reality (objects), and one doesn't (Homeric gods).

[Gazeuse]

Interesting stuff

I tend to believe in the simplest explanation. ie. That all this came about by some natural (But extraordinary) process, rather than by some sort of divine intervention.

Surely though, both stances require blind faith to be accepted??? The only person without blind faith is the agnostic???

[Brigadier Pompous]

I didn't particularly want to be drawn on specifics, but seeing as you asked directly. I'll give you a couple. Perhaps the most obvious question is the 'what caused the universe to exist?' If you believe that the universe was not always there ie. if you want to avoid an infinite regress of causes, this question surely screams out. Of course the type of cause that brought the universe into being will be very different to any other type of cause since causation is fundamentally a temporal notion and time doesn't exist outside the universe. The typicsl response of the scientist is to deny that the universe requires a cause because causation outside time is incoherent. But this response has always seemed to me to be a sidestep of the question rather than an answer. Perhaps you might be persuaded but it's always failed to scratch me where I itch.

There are other possibilities, but none are really any more convincing.

However, one uncaused cause is as good as another.  Who created God?  Then who created gods creator. Etc.
Positing a supernatural being doesn't answer this question, it just renames the uncaused cause.

[Brigadier Pompous]

I tend to believe in the simplest explanation. ie. That all this came about by some natural (But extraordinary) process, rather than by some sort of divine intervention.

Surely though, both stances require blind faith to be accepted??? The only person without blind faith is the agnostic???

Agnosticism isn't merely not knowing whether God exists, it is an active statement of a belief that it is impossible to know whether or not God exists.

[5:09am]

However, one uncaused cause is as good as another.  Who created God?  Then who created gods creator. Etc.
Positing a supernatural being doesn't answer this question, it just renames the uncaused cause.

It does rename the uncaused cause but it removes it from the natural universe and so the scope of conventional causation. Are we not more inclined to accept the existence of an uncaused or even self-causing cause ie. God, outside the universe than within it where normal causal rules apply?
I think when we make the crossover from natural to superantural the idea of 'what caused it?' becomes less pressing if not incoherent. Of course the nature of the cause which straddles this line will always be somewhat mysterious.

Shit, I've got to go...

[european son]

Electrons aren't unobservable, indeed they are almost too accomodating, happy to look like waves one minute and particles the next!

i meant unobservable in a truly empirical sense. i dig that the distinction between the observable and unobservable isn't static or clear (i'd stick electrons on one side of the divide and faraway planets only observable thru a telescope on another), but i disagree with those that say that the distinction doesn't exist.

i wouldn't go as far as some antirealists to call unobservables merely logical constructs, but i wouldn't classify them as directly empirically observable either. i guess i'm agnostic about them.

Science (physics) doesn't (or shouldn't) make claims to Truth, merely claims to a sufficiently accurate description of reality.

spot on. my problem is with the mouthy layman who claims the Truth (or even in the case of someone like Popper, an approach or tendency to Truth) of scientific investigation (rather than its descriptive accuracy, as you've rightly stated) whilst at the same time dismissing epistimelogically similar religious claims as dogma.

Quine: "The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most..."

Well exactly, one gives you results that allow you to accurately model reality (objects), and one doesn't (Homeric gods).

agreed, i believe in physical objects, and not the gods, but i accept, like Quine, that "epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind".

i think the snobby attitude of the scientific realist regarding theistic claims is ill-founded because of this.

[smoker]

One of my big bugbears is that clinical depression has become so fashionable. Doctors are so fucking eager to dispense Prozac like tic-tacs that any wankblind teenager can get hold of the stuff and call themselves a "depressive".  There is a world of difference between being depressed and being a depressive, one is the inability to raise your head from the pillow, and the sight of pretty much everything pulling your gut and heart into a deep stone well of despair, and the other one is the result of too much internet, Limp Bizkit and not enough excersise.

just a little linky - http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1145372,00.html

[Capuchin]

However, one uncaused cause is as good as another.  Who created God?  Then who created gods creator. Etc.
Positing a supernatural being doesn't answer this question, it just renames the uncaused cause.

It does rename the uncaused cause but it removes it from the natural universe and so the scope of conventional causation. Are we not more inclined to accept the existence of an uncaused or even self-causing cause ie. God, outside the universe than within it where normal causal rules apply?
I think when we make the crossover from natural to superantural the idea of 'what caused it?' becomes less pressing if not incoherent. Of course the nature of the cause which straddles this line will always be somewhat mysterious.

Shit, I've got to go...

How can you remove the cause from the natural universe?
In order for a supernatural creator to create everything else it must be involved and therefore co-exist with it, to some extent. If the creator exists,  there is no nothingness. Either the creator was created and you continually pass the buck backward or its existence is infinite, and if you can conceive of that then you can accept that existence itself is infinite.

Either existence really did spring from 'nothing', or there is no such thing as 'nothing' as the other alternative is a creator-being who also negates the possibility of 'nothing' and confirms the possibility of an infinite universe.

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

Bah are we STILL at this?

Capuchin has a point. Not to mention you need to deal what it is to be natural and supernatural

All this talk of causation goes a bit further than it ought to too since very few people actually have any kind of handle on what it is.

[Capuchin]

Sorry to bring it up again :shit-eating grin:

just a little linky - http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1145372,00.html

Yeah, but that goes on about tranqs you can get addicted to, but from what (little) I know about anti-depressants is that they aim to make you feel 'normal'. ie. not on a high, but at a level able to cope with life.
So I don't know if the article applies.

[Cerys]

Well, I know what my general belief structure is, and that's good enough for me.  Don't ask me to explain it though: I'd lose all credibility.

[butnut]

I'm enjoying life a lot at this moment - there's an American woman on Radio 4 talking very seriously about Kant, but the way she says his name, it sounds like cunt!

Hooray - childish humour!

[Ronson]

stalin

[Almost Yearly]

Yes.


Especially when Sex And The City's on.

[king mob]

Will enjoy it when this afternoon has dragged to a close & i'm in the pub.

[Purple Tentacle]

Will enjoy it at 8.00am tomorrow morning when I wake up and realise I don't have to go to work. And can stay under the duvet for another 6 hours.

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

Actually it's odd how americans get confused about how to pronounce Kant.
Obviosuly if they pronounced it  the standard ienglish way it'd sound like can't (in americo) so the stop stutter and then decide that it must be CAN'T (english pronunciaiton) Except with an extended exhalation for LOL NO AAA sound.

It doesn't bother me it's just stupid. Although calling Nietsche, Nietschy is immensely irritating