Text 4011, 236 rader
Skriven 2006-07-16 19:32:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4484.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:r0fkb2hp2rer61sjlf8mu080nukrcq9iub@4ax.com...

>>> 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.

Since when was the prime focus of a cookbook the optimized metbolization of 
the dish in question?  The focus of any cookbook is *taste*.  Some recent 
cookbooks do try to be dietetc, true but, the object is to make foods that 
do this for us tasty, not optimise their bodily usage.  Very few people are 
preoccpied with their Kerbs Cycle.

Otherwise, I could point out that sensability and arguability have no 
correlation in contemporary society.


>>> 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.

....Then we're agreed?


>>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.

God is Mr. Ed.  Didn't you know that?

And where you situate yourself if your own concern.

The optimist is right.  Dig though enough and you really will find a pony.


>>>>> 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.

Plenty of analysis, zero experience.  Makes my point nicely.  See my next 
comment, which is preserved for reference.

>>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.

You're telling me about the action, now showing it to me.  Science cannot 
consider anything besides the facts of a case because is is based in 
empiricism.

If you want to formulate morality as a statisically averaged mean, science 
can do that.  If you want to define morality as codified and verified 
successful survival strategies amassed over time, science can help you with 
the organization and evaluation work.

If you want to do more than sifting through mouuntians of information, you 
need some heart.  Science doesn't have any, nor was it ever meant to.  It is 
a tool.

It's like music.  You can program a computer for social trends and calculate 
what will sell a million records, then hire a group with those qualities. 
That's not the same as finding a good band.  You are equating the two.


> 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.

That "intemediate step" goes by another name.

Life.


>>>>>>  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.

Talk to Carl about that.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
                                                      
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