Tory/Marcus/Glen -
Good to hear your "voice" T, after a hiatus... (and that of Vladymir as
well, also AWOL for some time?)
I think this discussion or even conflict is an important one, and tends
to get argued on superficial grounds. This discussion, as it unfolds,
promises to be a little deeper.
I have to support Tory's implications about belief, faith, and
delusion. We tend to dismiss another's beliefs, no matter *what* they
arise from or are grounded in as "delusion" if we don't share those
beliefs (or perhaps just nuances of them). The three Ibrahamic
religions, the several variants of Catholicism, the *many* variants of
Protestantism are a good example of this splitting of hairs, whilst
other religious or philosophical views would dismiss the entire concept
of paternalistic creator out of hand, offering up yet another cosmology,
code of conduct, etc. as "the one true way", then again factionating
into the bigendians and little endians of Johnathon Swift's parody.
I am sympathetic with the view of the scientific method (repeatability)
that Marcus presents, yet I fear it aggravates the issue in some ways,
as it admits wholeheartedly that all theories are contingent and through
experience, but also by the structure of the system, we realize that
every "objective truth" found by science is contingent on new evidence
and new theoretical structurings. I learned decades ago to not allow
myself to think of Scientific Truths as absolute... wonderfully
predictive in many contexts... powerfully supportive of engineering...
but not the route to absolute Truth (if there even be such a thing?).
Our Faith in the scientific method, scientific thinking or the
collective scientific institutions of the world is a form of Faith as
well. And as Glen points out, there are some judgements of the
collective scientific institutions which can be a bit hollow upon close
inspection and those are the ones which often gather the most virulent
advocates. I would suggest that all emergent phenomena fall into this
category, with Darwinian Selection a most common example (Global
phenomena such as emergence/divergence of species attributed to the
local survival/selection pressures of the individual). Non Scientists
who have strong Belief in Science perhaps do the worst damage... it is
quite fashionable among the non-scientific intelligentsia to support
Scientific Theories as if they were Truth. Evolution being a strong
example. Anthropogenic Climate Change is perhaps becoming another.
There is a lot of Scientific Evidence growing to support the latter and
it is (in the past 10-20 years) fashionable to Believe in it, but it is
far from a Scientific Certainty such as Classical Mechanics,
Thermodynamics, Relativity.
This *is* where *I* happen to put my Faith, what little I have... in the
methods of Science and in Scientific Thinking as well, and I find it
extremely difficult to put any similar Faith in another system... maybe
most particularly those which attempt to adopt the tropes and trappings
of Science. The suite of New Age ideas that arose (mostly) in the 1980s
but often based in much older systems such as Astrology and Occultism
were acutely difficult for me, as they suggest various forms of
causality and imply "proof" by a (psuedo) scientific method.
While *I* cannot embrace any of the Theistic spiritual systems
(religions by another name) literaly, I *do* find many of the more
whimsical (my term) and colorful traditions such as the pantheons of
egyptian/mesopotamian/hindu/greek/roman/norse and the animism of many
aboriginal cultures extremely compelling, NOT to understand the physical
world and it's idiosyncratic behaviour, but to understand the human
world and *our* ideosyncracies whilst embedded *in* the physical
world. Such systems do not provide any "answers" for me as such, but
do often provide useful and interesting perspective.
I cannot help but think that for those who are entirely wedded to a
singular religious system are drawn by the same features that I am...
only they mistake weak correlation for strong causation. I am suspicious
of the exclusionary nature of many religions especially one for which
the highest sin is Shirk or belief in False Gods, or those which name
it's adherents to be the "chosen people".... but *that* is a different
issue than Belief, Faith, Truth methinks...
- Steve
On 01/08/2015 10:47 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
Victoria writes:
"So any belief other than one's own is a delusion?"
Subjective experience must run counter to objective evidence to get this label.
A belief that can be represented by a set of features, understandable by
independent observers in a repeatable way is not a delusion. If someone wants
to bind a name like Seraphim to such a set of features, they may, provided the
other observers agree that name is not confused with other useful names. But
if no features are described in detail, there is no way to tabulate evidence or
cross-check the tabulations. Faith creates names for things, and constraints
amongst things which either can't be grounded in evidence or must endure being
mistaken. One way to endure is by recruiting more people to have affinity for
those ungrounded names and constraints.
Well, Tory makes a good point, though, about the ability of our methods
(scientific or not) to establish any sort of objectivity. Sure, faith (and
it's kin) is one of the most egregious and specious of the pseudo-objective
centroids, gathering lots of people who talk about faith as if it's a real
thing, but never being able to actually describe what it means, what it does,
how it works, etc.
But there are plenty of other concepts, even in science, that are guilty ...
not just as guilty, perhaps, but guilty still. I tend to think evolutionary
selection is one of them. All of us who believe in it can describe what we
think happens and, each of us has an onion-like description. Our outer layers
all agree fairly well (much like the faithful). But as you peel each onion,
the inner layers can look different from one selection believer to another.
Worse yet, amongst the lay population who _say_ they believe in evolution,
their onion is really more of a hollow spheroid, with a flimsy outer layer
alone.
And one way for believers in selection to endure is to recruit more people by
giving them hollow spheroids to play with.
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