A New Series

[goran]

It still blows my mind that people are grown enough to stop believing in Santa, Easter bunny, tooth fairy, monsters under the bed... but still believe in "invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day."

When you believe in an imaginary figure that only you can see or hear, it’s called a psychological problem. If you believe in an imaginary figure that even you can’t see or hear, it’s a religion.

Recommendation: Zeitgeist

Thank god I'm an atheist.

[Commander McLane]

It still blows my mind that people are grown enough to stop believing in Santa...

It seems that you've made up your mind, and I wouldn't argue with you, although I don't like the derogatory tone. I'd just like to mention that there is in fact a difference between Bishop Nicholas of Myra (first half of the 4th century AD) and the rest of the list, inasmuch as St. Nicholas actually existed.

Thank god I'm an atheist.

True. Thank god you are whatever you are.

[Cmdr James]

As a scientist/physicist I can only claim to be agnostic. Personally, I do not believe in "God" as the creator of the Universe (and therefore us, by happenstance), but as a proper scientist I must keep an open mind, simply because while science cannot prove the existence of a divine, omnipotent, creator, nor can it conclusively disprove it either, and until disproved I cannot (and should not - if I am a proper scientist) say "there is no God".

Whilst from a strict point of view this is correct, the same is true of the tooth fairy, Thor, Zeus, unicorns, and indeed a cheese sandwich floating behind your head which disappears if anyone tries to detect it. I am sure you, and most scientists would say these things do not exist, and I really dont understand why people claim that "as a scientist I cannot say God doesnt exist". Do you really claim to be uncertain if there is a magic cheese sarnie behind you?

If God does exist, then it is not certain that he (it?) is not detectable by science, so the statement God cannot be proven is dubious at best. It is also possible to investigate specific religious claims such as the power of prayer, so even if a higher power of some kind cannot be disproven, at least in principle Gods (or at least claim made about them) as understood by most common religions are disprovable (or provable).

For the record, I have nothing against the traditional agnositc position that God is unknowable.

[DaddyHoggy]

Sagely words - and it clearly explains the faint whiff of cheese and onion that seems to follow me around wherever I go...

[goran]

Maybe even galaxy 2?

[Disembodied]

Yersss ... the problem with that comedy graph (apart from swallowing the idea that "history" is the same thing as "technological progress") is that, during the "Christian Dark Ages", Greek scientific thought was alive and well and progressing nicely in the Islamic world (from whence it was brought into Western Europe via Spain). The Chinese were pretty well advanced, too – in many cases arguably more advanced than the Greeks or the Arabs.

The Romans, meanwhile, were positively backward: far less sophisticated scientifically, mathematically or philosophically than most of their neighbours, either Greek, Persian, North African, or Celtic. That big green upward chunk is dead wrong: I'm struggling to think of any significant Roman advance in science. They were very good at organising large armies, though, and writing up their version of events after everyone else was dead.

The long scientific hiatus in Western civilisation might more properly be blamed on Roman militarism, cultural vandalism and conservatism (which, admittedly, to an extent, was preserved within the Catholic Church). That, and the following centuries of nomadic incursions and invasions (which eventually did for the scientific and cultural peak of Islamic civilisation, too). If nothing else, at least Christianity preserved literacy in the West, as well as elements of a philosophical interest in the origins of the universe ...

[Commander McLane]

Yersss ... the problem with that comedy graph (apart from swallowing the idea that "history" is the same thing as "technological progress"...

...and—now you mention it—apart from the idea that a comedy graph actually could be used as evidence for or against anything (there aren't even units on the y-axis))...

[Kaks]

Yep, that graph is a great sales pitch: colourful, vague, and inspiring confidence in its assertions, as if by magic!

While I totally agree with the analysis of the 'dark ages' - by some estimates about 2/3 of 'western culture' wouldn't actually exist without the work of countless muslim scholars, artisans & inventors during our middle ages, who preserved and built upon classical knowledge that had all but disappeared from europe, I do disagree with dismissing the roman era.

During the pax romana most citizens had access to widespread central heating, glass windows, fast food joints, multi-storeys cement tenements and a surprising amount of futuristic sounding stuff, including - ok, this is 'probably' slightly controversial - tons of cheap & plentiful 'robots'...
They might not have been great innovators, but them latins seem to have known how to use good inventions when they saw them...

Had the roman infrastructure survived the collapse of the centralised state that supported it, inventiveness might not have necessarily followed, though... "necessity is the mother of invention" might well be a hackneyed phrase, but it's certainly got the ring of truth about it!

[Disembodied]

During the pax romana most citizens had access to widespread central heating, glass windows, fast food joints, multi-storeys cement tenements and a surprising amount of futuristic sounding stuff, including - ok, this is 'probably' slightly controversial - tons of cheap & plentiful 'robots'...
They might not have been great innovators, but them latins seem to have known how to use good inventions when they saw them...

Oh, definitely: I'm not saying they were unsophisticated, or incapable of using someone else's ideas or technology when it suited. They just weren't interested in what we might call "progress". In fact, very few human societies have ever been interested in progress. The idea that we might do better than our ancestors seems to be a highly unusual one. Almost all human societies seem to prefer the belief that they are living at the tail-end of something that once was great; that their ancestors were stronger, smarter, bigger, longer-lived, more magical and generally just all-round better than people today could ever hope to be. It's probably the natural default worldview of human beings, given our long childhoods. It's certainly an insidious point of view: it's incredibly easy to fall into the pattern of believing that everything used to be better, back when ... [fill in the blank for yourself].

[DaddyHoggy]

As somebody who has worked for the MOD - and therefore read a bit of military history, I'd say war was (one of) the main driver for technological advance. Nothing like trying to find new and exciting ways to kill your neighbour without being killed your self tends to give scientists access to funds only previously dreamed of - the Manhattan project any one?

(BTW, that solar powered UAV that flew around for 24hrs - it won't lead to advances in transportation, but it will lead to a revolution in how the military spy on the battlefield...)

[Disembodied]

As somebody who has worked for the MOD - and therefore read a bit of military history, I'd say war was (one of) the main driver for technological advance. Nothing like trying to find new and exciting ways to kill your neighbour without being killed your self tends to give scientists access to funds only previously dreamed of - the Manhattan project any one?

Ah, but that's now, in a technological society that has been geared, for the last 200 years or so, to expect technological progress. In the Classical world, there was very little technological or even tactical change, and what there was tended to be presented as "going back to how they did things in the Iliad". There's a really interesting book called Soldiers and Ghosts by J E Lendon, about war in antiquity, which deals with this long-standing obsession with a Homeric ideal of warfare. Even into the Renaissance you got this sort of thing happening; Machiavelli tried to argue that armies shouldn't use stone fortifications or even gunpowder artillery, because the Romans hadn't.

Which is not to say that there hasn't always been a certain level of Darwinian selection going on in warfare! As anyone dumb enough to have taken Machiavelli's tactical advice would have discovered ...

[Poro]

First, how do you measure a relation scientifically? You can say that you love your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend, but how do you measure that scientifically?

Why would you need to? Love is an abstraction which is subjective and varies from person to person. It is just a feeling in our minds. Are you sure this example illustrates your point to your advantage?

Scientific method and testing would have a hard time proving anything in this realm.

As would religion or faith, regardless of the 'realm'. The whole 'Can't prove love' analogy is like saying: "There exists one thing whose existence can’t be proved; therefore God, whose existence can’t be proved, exists." (I appreciate you didn't take it that far)

Second, many of the (alleged) interactions between god and humans have taken place in the past, and are therefore out of the bounds of science.

Of course, why would anyone claim to be able to scientifically test that? If you were going to test an interaction between an alleged source, and their ability to affect the universe... you'd do it now.

Not a question which science will ever be able to answer.

I'm beginning to think this is cut n' paste apologetics. I'm sorry if I'm wrong Commander McLane, and that these are your views, but this is all sounding rather familiar. I don't see how this relates to anything I said about "interactions", so I think you're broadening this out into any particular point you want to make on the subject. Oh and science tells us a lot about he human body. If someone claims that a person rose from the grave after definitely dying, guess who the burden of proof is upon?

You also cannot scientifically prove that Julius Caesar ever existed, or Socrates, or Charlemagne, or Oliver Cromwell, or Abraham Lincoln. Generally, there is no way of scientifically proving that any person who already died has ever existed.

Again, nothing to do with my quoted section, again cookie-cutter apologetics. I hope I don't sound too off-hand there, but that is a bit silly isn't it? All those people mentioned are claimed to have been born in a natural way, lead lives that do not breach the laws of physics, and died in a 'naturalistic' way. Jesus is claimed to be a divine incarnation and to have performed miracles whose frequency diminishes in perfect accordance with increased knowledge of nature. The claims are utterly different. They do not therefore require "scientific proof". It's like saying "Cerberus can't be proven today, but neither can [any particular single-headed dog that existed centuries ago]"

The whole tone of your response seems to be 'Science can't prove everything'. Well of course not.

Obviously knowing the hard facts about cosmogony is not the same as appreciating your accountability.

Again, is it just me, or does this have nothing to do with, my post? I don't mean to bang on about it (even though I have written a lot right now ) but these seems incoherently connected to my actual point. Bringing up accountability is like attaching the horse to the rear of the cart

You have reiterated that religion is about the 'relation'. Fine, but I'm not sure what that has nothing to do with existence... which is all my point was about. I can 'relate' to things which do not exist (abstract imagery/concepts conjured by various literary forms, for example). I agree that religion and science describe things from a different viewpoint: but I also think they describe different things entirely, i.e. they are not different ways of understanding the same thing, but ways of describing separate things.

EDIT: *Gulp* That WAS a long post.

[Cmdr James]

You have reiterated that religion is about the 'relation'. Fine, but I'm not sure what that has nothing to do with existence... which is all my point was about.

Its worse than that, religion is not about relation, it is an umbrella term for a set of beliefs in paranormal entities. I cant see what else you would class Gods as, my apologies if that offends anyone.

What Commander McLane said as I understand it, is that his specific religion, makes no assertions about the nature of the universe but rather about the emotional or pastoral side. My reading of his statement would be that God created the laws of physics, and the universe complies with them. That is to say that God created the conditions in which the universe came to exist, but didnt actually do the creating directly. Much like the 'God created evolution' that many sensible christians use to reconcile both evolution, and God creating life in its current form.

I guess what Im trying to say is that people seem to be arguing against Commander McLane without really having a grip on what it is that he believes.

I dont think this is the right place for a proper theological debate. Mostly because people will get offended, and it wont achieve anything.

[goran]

Yep, religious persons really gets offended easily. When there is no proof for any of your beliefs there is not much else you can do. EOT for me, sorry for disturbing...

just...