On May 10, 2013, at 1:24 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/10/2013 10:58 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:03 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
> wrote:
On Fri, May 10, 2013 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> How could a pseudo-religion, fake by definition, be superior to
anything?
Well, I'd rather be a fake moron that a real moron, wouldn't you?
> And why should a religion be illogical?
Because if it deals with big issues as religion does and it is not
illogical then the word for that is not "religion" but "science".
Religion is a set of beliefs which cannot be proved. Science is a
means by which one might arrive on such a set of beliefs. Life
requires making decisions but as science never provides 100%
certainty on any idea, science can never tell us what course of
action is correct. For that we must fall back to our beliefs and
hope our decision was right.
That's a very strange formulation? Yes, science is a means of
arriving at a set of propositions that cannot be proved, but so is
astrology and numerology and even just making stuff up. But science
is right much more consistently than other methods and that's what
distinguishes it - not the fact that it's not certain.
My point is that even with good methods of arriving at beliefs (such
as science) we never get certainty.
Yet any time we make a decision we must base that decision on some
belief as if it were true, which is not scientific (but religious), as
it depends on unprovable beliefs.
E.g., if a doctor asks you if you want a digital brain prosthesis, you
must answer yes or no. Science may lead you to believe CTM is true
and the substitution level us right, but you cannot know. Making the
decision involves a leap of faith.
I'm not sure what you mean by religion provides beliefs which cannot
be proved.
I did not say that it provides them. I said a religion is those set
of beliefs. How you got them is another matter.
Of course they are not part of an axiomatic system, so they cannot
be proved or disproved in that sense. But they can certainly
tested in the ordinary sense of "preponderance of the evidence".
For example many religions include a belief that pious and sincere
prayers will be answered. Double blind tests of this belief
show it is not true. So maybe the reason they can't be proved is
that they are false.
Another reason is that nothing can be proved.
I don't think believing is just an act of will that can be applied
to any proposition though, at least that's not what I'd call
believing. You seem to implicitly assume that we need certainty in
order to act - which is obviously not the case.
No, we never have certainty, so certainty is not required to act. But
all decisions we make (consciously or not) are based on beliefs, which
for the sake of the decision, we assume/hope to be true.
Jason
Brent
"All those canes, braces and crutches, and not a single glass
eye, wooden leg, or toupee!"
--- Anatole France, on seeing the objects cast off by visitors
to Lourdes.
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