Text 3992, 182 rader
Skriven 2006-07-16 12:44:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4465.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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@MSGID: <r0fkb2hp2rer61sjlf8mu080nukrcq9iub@4ax.com>
@REPLY: <slota2t828vo5p7vck2qt71vbnk2f53nu4@4ax.com>
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:21:49 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
<nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:hpjgb2t0q37gmofuis9ffk9vgergdua653@4ax.com...
>
>>>There's two ideas of purpose.  You may or may not hold a concept of
>>>a greater purpose above your own, and then there's the ideas that you
>>>might decide your life has a goal or purpose.
>>>
>>>If the latter is illusion, then you're fooling yourself? :)
>>
>> Seems to me that a goal and a purpose are two different things, in
>> that you can have the first without having the second (or, I suppose,
>> the second without having the first). Then too, "greater purpose" can
>> be local or it can be global. My greater purpose, forex, might be as a
>> carrier of DNA, or it might be as a thermodynamically-driven chemical
>> reaction that creates order from chaos or chaos from order, depending
>> on whether you look at it from the future or the past.
>
>Sure...If you allow your consciousness to be dominated by trans-self species 
>concerns, or the mechanics of metabolism.  Very few humans make that a 
>central structuring form of their lives.
>
>Moreover, would you like talking to them?  :)

The interesting thing, though, is that I think we do make those things
a central concern, even though we're seldom aware of it. I mean, look
at the sales of cookbooks . . . hell, it can be argued that even the
sales of cat books are an outcome of our DNA-propagating instincts, of
our tendency to nurture children.

>> Or it may be
>> something devised by a deity, albeit such explanations tend to be weak
>> on what purpose the deity serves herself -- more a putting off than a
>> solving.
>
>You treat the deity as a purely human construction, picking logical nits. 
>To someone who believes, stuff concering the diety(ies) isn't a construction 
>or at least isn't enitrely.  Strikes me the choice to keep that filter in 
>place is to never see what a believer sees.  I'd wonder if it would be 
>possible to even conceptualize what a believer sees.  When I try on that 
>filter and look back at a beliver, all I see is self-deception on the part 
>of  the believer, which doesn't grant much respect.

I share that prejudice to some extent, but at the same time, I see
religion as having a practical role in human survival. In that sense,
in the sense that it encodes culturally important behavioral memes,
religion seems "real" to me, and worthwhile.

I tend to think that religion, art, dreams, daydreams, and hypnosis
are intertwined. Religion might be looked upon as art that claims to
be completely true when in fact it's only partially true (as opposed,
say, to our historical fiction, which generally claims only to be
partially true, though people tend to accept it as truer than it is).
So from a personal, subjective perspective, I can compare it to the
"willing suspension of disbelief" that most people experience to some
degree when watching a movie or even listening to music. And to some
extent, I think, even those of us who don't ascribe a literal
existence to the deity find our intellectual beliefs and emotional
responses changing as a result of our exposure to art or to religion,
just as we would had we been given suggestions under hypnosis. So for
all our vaunted rationalization, we are to some extent affected by the
same socially useful meme-sharing phenomenon.

>Anyway, if there is actually a deity out there and you desire supplemenatary 
>information, go right to the source and ask the horse.

God is a horse? That would explain a /lot/ -- being situated under his
hiney, you know.

>>>> And can't it?
>>>
>>>You can certainly use science to provide evidence of consequences... but
>>>morality judges whether those consequences are good or bad ones.
>>
>> Why can't science examine what makes those consequences good or bad?
>> It seems to me that both psychology and neuroscience have done that,
>> as more recently has evolutionary biology and even mathematics.
>
>Depends on what you're looking for.
>
>Science as psychology can plumb the depths of why people think what they do. 
>As statistics, it can tell you what percentage of a population believe a 
>certain way.  As history, it can tell you how belief has evolved over time.
>
>Science cannot tell you what "good" is because that's subjective, albeit 
>subjective centered in a common region.  As explained above, science can map 
>the region but it cannot make that ah-ha leap to what IS good.  Scienctists 
>can make that leap but science, methodological tool that it is, is denied 
>the ability by the very nature of its Method.

I'm not sure that that's so. I gave in another post the example of the
incest taboo, which has been refined by science as our understanding
of procreation and genetics has improved. And science understands why
every society considers their version of the incest taboo to be good:
a society that ignored it on a wide scale would become less
competitive due to inbreeding.

>Put another way, science can tell you about the story but it can't make you 
>experience it.  "Experience" requires imagination and imagination is not 
>empirical.

>>>>>From a scientific perspective, the problem would in large measure boil
>>>> down to the role of cooperation in evolution.
>>>
>>>Only on a large scale.  Just to clarify, your position is that science is
>>>only capable of answering moral questions on an evolutionary level?
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by moral questions. As you point out below,
>> science doesn't attempt to assign moral values. It can tell us where
>> our moral values come from, examine the process whereby we form them.
>> It can even recognize that some acts are moral and some amoral within
>> a given context and aid in the refinement of moral strictures and
>> judgment, by for example refining the primitive incest taboos into
>> modern ones based on a knowledge of genetics. But by the same token,
>> science recognizes that moral systems are at least to some extent
>> contingent, personal, and arbitrary. It can suggest changes only
>> within the context of externally-supplied parameters.
>
>....Which means science is great at mapping out known moral terrain but 
>incapable of exploring or reshaping that terrain.

I don't think I'd go so far -- see the changes to the incest taboo
above, or look at other moral alterations that have come about due to
science. I'd say science fills much the same role here as less
rigorous observation and thought.

I do agree that for most there's an intermediate step, one in which
the scientific findings are dramatized, placed in an emotional context
within the imagination to which you refer above.

>>>>>  Science can't measure
>>>>>whether I look at my life as being a good or wasted life.
>>>>
>>>> Again, can't it? At the very least, it could ask (and I'm sure
>>>> psychologists have).
>>>
>>>What measurement would science possibly use to quantify how I measure my
>>>life?
>>>Anyone can ask...that doesn't make it science.
>>
>> But asking questions can be a part of science. Psychologists, for
>> example, ask them all the time, and I'm sure they've asked questions
>> about the very phenomenon you describe.
>
>The best a psychologist can do is be able to forumlate exactly what and how 
>Carl (or anyone) defines his life.  Again, we're back at being told about 
>what's going on. Psychology gives me information about the individual not 
>the experience.
>
>If I experience a momentary intense connection to God, psychology can talk 
>about how past experiences might have colored the way I perceived God or 
>measure how the experience has altered me.  Biophysics could tell me what 
>was happening in my brain at the time, etc.  Can't tell you beans about what 
>it was like for me to touch God.  Just run analysis on what I say.

Carl had specifically mentioned measurement, though.

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                                                               
                      
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
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