Glen, Comments below, if you care to scroll down.
Nick -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 2:56 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes! people in general) over-simplify complex things. One of my pet peeves is the conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine. [NST ==>] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification. Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice. It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice. The extent to which any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically. [NST ==>] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and practice. If I believe that my child will die if and only if it is God's will AND I believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I will not give my child anti-biotics. If I give my child antibiotics, I don't believe that. Beliefs are what we act on. So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not (merely) reducible to belief or faith. And we know he already knows this by his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya. Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith. Which is it? Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions? Or not? And if not, then how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals? What is the most habitual, instinctively, epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven? [NST ==>] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something? That the distinction between belief and action is ill drawn? The answer is simple: some of us weave thought into our actions more than others. Some religious people hold faith more central to their religion and some hold practice as more central. I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine as _less_ central to their religion than practice. Interacting with the real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing. [NST ==>] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of intellectual behavior and prioritize another, but why? On what grounds. If navels is what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might be really useful. I.e. Hanging out with their group singing songs and eating cookies is more important than the definition of God. (I'd contrast this with, say, mathematicians who self identify as religious. ;-) Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-) Faith is just an idea ... a thought. To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily dependent on thought. I disagree completely. I believe in zombies. I believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is purely epiphenomenal. These animals do not require faith at any layer. [NST ==>] Ok. Our horns are nicely locked here, let's push a bit and see where we get. That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the bedstand is evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the bedstand? (for myself, I would put it even more strongly: that I reach out CONSTITUTES my belief that the glasses are on the bedstand. There is no separate idea followed by an act. If anything, the act creates the idea. But I thought I was having a different sort of conversation with Doug. I thought he and I were discussing the justification of belief. And justification I took to be something we do with words and propositions. And all I was doing was making the [obvious] point that eventually, in any argument, no matter how fairly and well conducted, we reach a point where we have to appeal to a proposition we cannot justify. In haste, Nick, Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 11:31 AM: > But the problem here is not faith, itself, which always lies somewhere > down there amongst the turtles, but the rapidity to which a > shallow thinker appeals to it. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
