The philosophical background to this dichotomy comes from the fact that what we can measure and what we can theoretically measure have always been in a flux. Quantum mechanics posits that we cannot measure certain things if we measure certain other things, and that such is built into the structure of the universe. The universe in this case means everything that exists, and “other realms” is a meaningless concept. Just like saying as a childish game “infinity plus one”, which is meaningless unless defined as infinity, or equal, when it loses its meaning alltogether.

To me, personally, the universe, nature, means reality, and the supernatural, or the religious, means non-reality. These two cannot coincide, nor can they live together in co-existence, because while fantasy might help us in the lack of knowledge, rules of thumb and simplistic models of the human condition are never good enough for the curious mind. Science is the process of gathering knowledge and producing more reliable models that can be used to better our existence, and to feed our intellectual pleasure just to know more.

The problem with religion in general is that it’s handed down, and it tries to deal with reality, all in different ways. All religious interpretations are bursting at their seams to acommodate the reality science has brought us. Any creationist or otherwise “fundamentalist” religious observer should not be reading this, as computers are impossible. The same scientific theories that make your personal computers possible prove the mainstream scientific concensus of the age of the universe.

(& thanks Kuhnigget for your post 117.)

Can you provide proof that you exist? Or is it merely belief?

Former atheist & philosophy Professor Anthony Flew who went onto accept that God exists has an answer for this:

“To the question, “how do I know I exist?” a professor famously replied, “And who’s asking?”
- Philosopher and author, Antony Flew, P.181 ‘There is a God’, Harper One 2007.

Interesting though isn’t it that a number of atheists such as Professor Flew, Laura Schlessinger who was a former editor of ‘Skeptic’ magazine before converting to Judaism and becoming a prominent radio talk show host & even C.S. Lewis the renowned Christian apologist and author of the ‘Narnia’ series among others, have reflected some more on their former atheism and decided against it and in favour of religion after all.

Now, honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t claim to be the greatest mind in history or anything and I can see the case for both atheist & religion sides here. I’ve also read widely and from both sides of this debate and I think at times both sides and many individual sources and commenters have had their flaws, fallacies, misunderstandings and strawmen. No one here I think can cast the first stone being without sin. (Logical, metaphorical, personal & bias-wise.) But I guess what I am trying to say is just:

“Its NOT that simple.”

Far greater minds than ours have struggled heavily with this issue and come to differing conclusions. It is one of the great philosophical questions – perhaps the greatest. It isn’t just a simple and straightforward and clear as the videoclip here & many atheists seem to suggest.

I do think the videoclip is overly stereotypical and reflects an overwhelmingly negative one-sided biased perspective against those who are religious – a category I wouldn’t necessarily include myself in. I do think they have made a straw man caricature and failed to properly see the other side of the coin.

Myself, I just don’t know, not really. I find some atheist arguments convincing and they do argue well and logically in a rather cold sort of way but when I ask myself quietly “is there a God?” something deep inside me replies “yes.”

I’m sure that sounds silly and irrational & it doesn’t really get it across properly and as I’ve noted I’m really not sure but hey, that’s where I’m coming from.

As for quoting Einstein and others, well as I said before, I’m not meaning to be a troll or rude or disruptive or anything but merely to offer a few words of wisdom and alyernative perspectives from folks who I freely acknowledge to be much smarter than me that provide a bitof extra context for this whole matter. I’m amazed some people seem to be so offended and so furious with doing that. While I can understand you’ve had other religious “trolls” here before please try not to over-react and assume that anyone who thinks differently and disagrees with you is one of them. That’s all.

As I don’t speak canary, I’ll defer to ignorance on the second half of your point. For all I know they could be tweeting about differential equations.

Perhaps, but they are of no use to us for answering the unanswerable, just like religion.

But by the law of contraposition, the statement, “religion is not great at answering the unanswerable” is logically equivalent to the statement “religion is great at unanswering the answerable. It’s just logic.

That is not what the law of contraposition says. The law of contraposition says “p then q, not q then not p”, or “p then no q, q then not p”.. First, there is no “if” or “then”, there is no one thing that implies the other. Second, it would be “not answer”, not “unanswer”. Saying that something is not answering and saying it is unanswering are two entirely different things.

And it’s true – why else would 60% of Americans not believe in the theory of evolution if religion were not damn good at unanswering it?

A true conclusion can still result from an illogical argument. “Illogical” does not automatically mean “false”.

Depends what metric we’re using for “good.” If the metric is accuracy, than religion and random are equal. Since there can be no correct answer to an unanswerable question, all wrong answers are equally valid, as they’re equally wrong.

As I already stated, random answer generators are more likely to produce a correct answer than religion is because it is able to cover a much larger subset of possible answer spread more evenly over the range of possible answers.

If, on the other hand, you factor in quality of narrative, I’m afraid religion wins. I mean, to answer the fundamental unanswerables, religion has wrathful Gods and vengeful demons and smiting and begatting and all kinds of action-packed stories.

You apparently have not looked at many random generators. I have seen some pretty cool plots and characters come out of those things, far more interesting than most religion stories IMHO (and most movies, actually).

No, it doesn’t logically follow. Not answering and unanswering are two different things. Although it is true that religion is quite good at, and in many cases tries very hard to, unanswer the answerable, it is not necessarily the case. For instance canaries are not good at answering the unanswerable, but neither are they very good at unanswering the answerable.

As I don’t speak canary, I’ll defer to ignorance on the second half of your point. For all I know they could be tweeting about differential equations.

But by the law of contraposition, the statement, “religion is not great at answering the unanswerable” is logically equivalent to the statement “religion is great at unanswering the answerable. It’s just logic.

And it’s true – why else would 60% of Americans not believe in the theory of evolution if religion were not damn good at unanswering it?

Compared to a random answer generator it is a terrible way since it only comes up with a tiny subset of possible answers.

Depends what metric we’re using for “good.” If the metric is accuracy, than religion and random are equal. Since there can be no correct answer to an unanswerable question, all wrong answers are equally valid, as they’re equally wrong.

If, on the other hand, you factor in quality of narrative, I’m afraid religion wins. I mean, to answer the fundamental unanswerables, religion has wrathful Gods and vengeful demons and smiting and begatting and all kinds of action-packed stories.

Ask the same unanswerables of a random generator and what will you get? “The color of hubris?” “A tincture of Dada?” “Minneapolis on a stick?” Yeah, that’ll fill the pews.

While I, and many others, would certainly agree that the !Kung practices you refer to “ought to be” considered infanticide, I am afraid I must loudly and clearly dispute your view of when a “human life” “begins.” For most medical and legal purposes, a “human life” is said to “end” when the human body/brain can no longer support the level of activity that gives rise to an integrated, self-aware, human personality. In infants, this arises slowly, as any observant parent, unblinded by religious nutballery, will know. In full-term infants, it takes several months before they become noticeably aware that they are separate beings, distinct from their parents/caregivers, and there is no “magic moment” that is rationally defensible in the biological development of a human person, just as there is no developmental “magic moment” when a child ceases to be a child and becomes an adult.

It is true that, upon conception (and even before), there is something “alive.” However, to maintain that (cue my channeling Sam Harris) a ball of 150 cells, lacking ANY neurons can somehow suffer its own destruction, or if you must, “death,” CANNOT BE LOGICALLY OR RATIONALLY SUPPORTED IN ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER.

To believe that a 3-day old blastocyst has moral interests capable of trumping our concern for an otherwise normal 9 y/o girl with 3rd degree burns on over 70% of her body, a girl whose suffering might be relieved through embryonic stem-cell research that “Salaam-Shalom-Peace” would prohibit, is in fact, a moral invalid them self.

I will throw a bone out there for the pro-life types. As a general rule of thumb, I consider an infant to be a human being worthy of my moral concern from:

a. the time it comes out, or,

b. from such time as recognizably human brain-wave activity can be detected while still in utero.

(note that the above in no way trumps my moral concern for the legitimate health and well-being of the mother)

This raises a legitimate moral, and perhaps legal, concern. The “age of viability,” usually considered to be the time at which a newborn can survive outside the body of the mother, is being continually pushed back by advances in neonatal medicine. Infants born as early as the 23rd week have survived to go home with the parents (after spending a considerable time in the neonatal ICU of course).

If it would be murder (as I think it is) to kill a 23-week “preemie” in the neonatal ICU, that does raise, as I said, a legitimate legal and ethical question of why it would be legally/ethically permissible to destroy an infant at the same stage of development which is still inside the womb (provided the health and well-being of the mother is not endangered). I do not pretend to have an answer, and if anyone else’s answer invokes the presence of an immortal, immaterial, supernatural, human soul (for as Thomas Jefferson said, one is then essentially talking about “nothings”), then as far as I am concerned, they have nothing useful to contribute to a grave moral and ethical dilemma.

No matter what answers you or I could come up with, I feel that such a grave decision should be left up to the consciences of the concerned parties (primarily the pregnant woman and her partner, if the relationship is a healthy one) and the best medical advice of a compassionate, expert physician.

Fair enough. But if religion is not great at answering the unanswerable, it logically follows that it is also great at unanswering the answerable.

No, it doesn’t logically follow. Not answering and unanswering are two different things. Although it is true that religion is quite good at, and in many cases tries very hard to, unanswer the answerable, it is not necessarily the case. For instance canaries are not good at answering the unanswerable, but neither are they very good at unanswering the answerable.

No – it’s a terrible way to come up with the answer to the unanswerable. But it’s a great way to come up with an answer to the unanswerable.

Compared to a random answer generator it is a terrible way since it only comes up with a tiny subset of possible answers.

No, that is the exact opposite of what I am saying. I am saying that religion is not great at “answering the unanswerable”, it is terrible at it.

Fair enough. But if religion is not great at answering the unanswerable, it logically follows that it is also great at unanswering the answerable.

Think about it.

Exactly. That’s the problem.

If, as you admit, religion will never get the right answer, then by definition it is a terrible way to come up with an answer. It is no better than a random answer generator.

No – it’s a terrible way to come up with the answer to the unanswerable. But it’s a great way to come up with an answer to the unanswerable. And if religion can be distracted with the unanswerable long enough, it’ll leave science free to answer the answerable without having to go to court constantly to keep itself in the textbooks.

Exactly. Religion, philosophy, belief, whatever you want to call it – is great at answering the unanswerable – or, more accurately, unverifiable – questions. That’s where it belongs. Religions and philosophers can debate their own answers to the purpose of life, the universe, and everything for the forseeable future and never get it “right,” because there is no verifiable answer.

No, that is the exact opposite of what I am saying. I am saying that religion is not great at “answering the unanswerable”, it is terrible at it. If, as you admit, religion will never get the right answer, then by definition it is a terrible way to come up with an answer. It is no better than a random answer generator.

In fact it is worse than a random answer generator, since for the most part religion only comes up with answers that people find comforting, while there is no reason to think that the “correct” answer is the least bit comforting. If the “correct” answer is one that people would really not like, then a random answer generator would be much more likely to pick it than a human religion or philosopher would.

@ toasterhead: but what it boils down to is that nothing can answer those questions. All we can do is make wild guesses. Religion is not superior to picking answers out of a hat in that regard. So your argument seems to be there are two types of questions: those that science can answer, and those that nothing can answer.
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Exactly. Religion, philosophy, belief, whatever you want to call it – is great at answering the unanswerable – or, more accurately, unverifiable – questions. That’s where it belongs. Religions and philosophers can debate their own answers to the purpose of life, the universe, and everything for the forseeable future and never get it “right,” because there is no verifiable answer.

Where religion and philosophy do not belong is in the realm of the verifiable. When they start trying to prove the unproveable – say, using the fossil record or the nature of galaxies as “evidence” for God – they are stepping outside of their boundary, and creating conflict unnecessarily.

Science and faith can coexist peacefully as long as each sticks to its area of expertise. I think that was the point of the video, wasn’t it?

And no I don’t mean to impose my believes on anyone else or insist everyone belives as I do. I just ask to be treated with the same courtesy and respect you wish for yourselves.

To quote Islam “there is no compulsion in religion.”

To quote Christianity “Let he is who is without sin cast the first stone – love thy neighbour as yourself.”

To quote Judaism “Do unto others are ye would be done unto.”

Now look again at that “putting faith in its place” video and imagine it was arguing exactly the reverse (”Putting Science in its place”) – would you find it so convincing and reasonable then?

You earlier criticize this video with –

I think instead that – like Dawkin’s bitter and extreme rants – this will do the atheist cause more harm than good by alienating and offending reasonable people who know things are not as simple as such bullies and sophists try to make them seem.

Apparently, from watching a video critical of the abuse of power by those trying to push their religion on others, you come away with a video critical of the abuse of power by those trying to push their religion on others.

The part you seem to ignore, is the essential part. You act as if the video is calling for laws banning religion. Nowhere in the video is there any suggestion of this, or anything even remotely similar.

Let me write out the last part of the video, which says pretty much the same thing as the religious quotes you provided at the end, and what you wrote just before that.

It’s not whether we believe in gods, but how we treat each other, that says the most about our character.

If you attack, condemn, or use emotional blackmail on people, because they don’t share your belief in one or more gods, you’re invited to consider what this says about you and how it squares with the values you claim to embrace.

Nothing in this video is contradicted by any of the religious quotes you provided, apparently for the purpose of contradicting this video. These religious quotes actually present the same message as the video, since all of the quotes are about the hypocritical abuse of power.

You wrote -

And no I don’t mean to impose my believes on anyone else or insist everyone belives as I do. I just ask to be treated with the same courtesy and respect you wish for yourselves.

You comment is not a disagreement with what is stated in the video, but a summary of what is stated in the video.

By definition. “Belief” derives from the world for “love.” Love is irrational.

Do you have a source for this? As best as I can tell “belief” derives from the old high germanic word for “faith”, with “belief” and “faith” switching definitions some time between the 14th and 16th centuries. Whatever the case it, the entomology is irrelevant, it is the current definition that matters.

It can’t be measured, it can’t be weighed, it can’t be photographed, it can’t be spectrum-analyzed. Yet I doubt any of us would say it doesn’t exist. None of us (I hope) would say it’s a bad thing.

In principle, sure it can. Our ability to non-invasively analyze the functions of a human brain is becoming more and more sophisticated every day. There is no reason to think that love cannot be measured in time, probably sooner as opposed to later.

So what, exactly, are we supposed to conclude from this? That people are capable of asking questions that even in principle cannot be answered? That is obvious, and I don’t see how it is really helpful to the discussion.

Therefore, any religious belief is inherently irrational.
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I’d take it a step further. All belief is inherently irrational.

By definition. “Belief” derives from the world for “love.” Love is irrational.

Love – and I don’t mean sex or altruism or familial bonding here, I mean the Beatles lyric, Hollywood montage, Shakespearean sonnet version – makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. Not as a survival mechanism, not as a reproductive strategy, not as an instrument of group cohesion.

It can’t be measured, it can’t be weighed, it can’t be photographed, it can’t be spectrum-analyzed. Yet I doubt any of us would say it doesn’t exist. None of us (I hope) would say it’s a bad thing.

But it’s still irrational.

You were the one who said those were “why” questions, not me.
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Yes, but the answers you proposed were not answers to the “why” questions, they were answers to the “how” questions. If my examples were poor, I apologize. It’s only because of the imprecision of our language that the two have become interchangeable, but in my mind they are very different.

How, as I see it, refers to mechanism. It’s inherently objective. How things work, how they originated, how they came to be, how their pieces fit together, etc.

Why, as I see it, refers to value. It’s inherently subjective. By “why does the universe exist” I mean “is there a fundamental purpose to the universe existing?” By “why does life exist” I mean “is here a purpose for life to exist?” By “why is the sky beautiful” I mean “why do I like that particular hue of blue?”

You cannot attempt to answer those questions objectively – not without creating more questions. If there’s a purpose to the universe, who decided on it? If someone decided on it, who designated that being the purpose-giver. Or one could argue with equal validity that there’s no purpose to the universe, and if not, why not. It’s a matter of opinion. I see this type of question as infinitely debatable but fundamentally unanswerable.

Our brains are capable of both. In fact, our brains require both. We cannot survive being solely objective and logical, nor can we survive being solely subjective and emotional.

> The principle of parsimony requires that we opt for the former, unless
> there is real evidence for the latter. Therefore, any religious belief is
> inherently irrational.

Parsimony is a great operational guideline. It is not an iron law, for obvious reasons. There are huge scopes of phenomena that we cannot expose to observation currently, in every scientific field. We have no direct evidence of the existence of these phenomena. Every science right now is studying a system that is vastly more complex than classical mechanics, and Occam’s Razor predates mechanics by a quite a bit. The 14th century was a period when people were trying to understand basic phenomena; complex explanations were contraindicated. The 21st century is a period when people are trying to understand vastly more complicated phenomena, usually transdisciplinary. Complexity is the norm.

Parsimony is also not required in any system of logic, and has absolutely nothing to do with either logic or irrationality.

@ TheBlackCat

I think you have a vastly more optimistic view of scientific progress than I do, although I agree that toasterhead picked some bad examples. Not that I don’t think that any of those things is, in and of itself, worthy of investigation, but I simply do not believe that science is capable of answering every question.

Science is about derivation. We have to find things out. Every time we find something new out, it opens up new things to learn about, not less. Every model I’ve seen of scientific knowledge is a growth model: we learn more, we expose more things to observation, we can learn more about those new things. It’s not about less unknowns, it’s about more unknowns.

Part of this comes from my background as a mathematician. If you can’t prove *basic algebra* on the natural numbers to be complete and consistent (again, reference my earlier mentioning of Gödel), you can’t arrive at a complete and consistent descriptive theory about anything that relies upon such a structure. We know that there are infinite unprovable things in mathematics, and we know that there are actually infinitely more infinite unprovable things in mathematics than there are provable things. If basic addition is that impervious to complete understanding, there’s just no way we’re going to get anywhere near to full understanding of the universe.

Which, IMO, is a great thing. It means that there’s always something new to find out, right?

I still don’t see the questions you cite as “why” questions. They’re “how” questions. How the rules of physical interactions came about. How the universe came to exist. How the brain interprets input.

You were the one who said those were “why” questions, not me.

We know that a human life begins when a genetically unique being that will become a unique individual person is first formed – at conception. If a baby is aborted or miscarried we know a life is lost.

No, you claim to know this. I simply do not agree, and neither do most people in the U.S. You state it as though it were a proven fact, but provide no justification for that.

Life begins when a sperm cell fuses with an egg cell and a unique individual that will one day, all things proceding normally, be an independent thinking, loving, feeling, human woman or man is born.

If all things proceed normally, nothing will be born. The vast majority of conceptions end in miscarriage, something like over 90% if I recall correctly. Usually this happens before the woman even knows she is pregnant. Birth is the exception, rather than the rule.

A being that would have been – that was genetically unique* has been killed and prevented from fully being.

I think this is where your central problem lies. You are mixing up potential life with life. A potential life is not the same thing as an actual life. A potential human is not the same thing as an actual human. Preventing something from forming is not the same thing is destroying something that has already formed. You can claim all you want that they are the same, but they aren’t. If it were, we would all be murders because we all have the potential to become murders. We would all be millionaires because we all have the potential to become millionaires.

You are totally wrong in every single one of these examples. Science cannot answer those questions yet, but that does not mean that science is not capable of answering them. It is completely plausible that science will come up with a comprehensive explanation for how the rules of basic physical interactions came about, or why the universe exists instead of not existing, and it is pretty much certain that we will understand the detailed workings of the brain that underly our subjective perceptions of the world.

I still don’t see the questions you cite as “why” questions. They’re “how” questions. How the rules of physical interactions came about. How the universe came to exist. How the brain interprets input.

And perhaps science will find answers for some of the “whys”, but not without generating more “why” questions. As anyone who’s ever argued with a two-year-old knows, there’s always another “why.”

If you look at why in the more poetic, philosophical sense – why does light interact with gaseous matter in that way; why did our eyes evolve to interpret the color blue the way they do; why does blue appear blue and not orange or octarine; why do matter and energy exist in the first place; etc — it is a question not answerable by science. These “why” questions are in the realm of philosophy, of which religion is a subset. It’s not that science is bad at answering them, it’s that science is irrelevant to them.

You are totally wrong in every single one of these examples. Science cannot answer those questions yet, but that does not mean that science is not capable of answering them. It is completely plausible that science will come up with a comprehensive explanation for how the rules of basic physical interactions came about, or why the universe exists instead of not existing, and it is pretty much certain that we will understand the detailed workings of the brain that underly our subjective perceptions of the world.

Wrong. It is infanticide. The baby is alive. And we all really know it.

No. You don’t know it. You believe it based on your Western-centric interpretation of “alive.” But you don’t know it.
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If this custom was used by a mother in the USA or Britain or elsewhere in the civilised world we would consider it – quite rightly – to be murder & prosecute accordingly. We know that just because they have a cultural belief that says it is not infanticide simply doesn’t make it so any more than the Australian aborigines thinking the landscape was made by a magic snake makes that notion real.

Yes, because in a Western society, which is based on the social groupings that evolved in the European context, society has generally defined the beginning of life semantically to mean birth, with some subsets choosing to define it as conception. That doesn’t make our society or culture any better or more evolved than that of the !Kung or the Aborigines. Just different. Call it cultural relativism if you want, but I don’t recall the Aborigines dropping nuclear weapons on innocent civilians, or the !Kung invading a Middle Eastern country for no reason.
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Please think about how that applies to the !kung culture and the pro-abortion lobby in the West.

Deliberatley ending another persons life is murder. This is what abortion is, regardless of the fact that the baby being murdered is still in its womb and still growing towards being born and growing up one day.

As a proud member of the pro-abortion lobby, I have thought about it. And I have concluded that while I consider it the wrong choice for me, it is not up to me to decide for all society what women cannot do with their bodies.

Is it homicide? Yes. But does that make it morally wrong? Not necessarily. Not all homicide is morally wrong. Is premeditated murder morally equivalent to killing someone in self-defense or via freak accident or when commanded to on the battlefield? Our society says no. Our laws and courts say no. Why not? The end result is the same.

In the case of the !Kung, it is a matter of survival. An indivudual unable to provide or contribute to the group is a drain on the resources of the entire group. Eliminating that individual is a necessary sacrifice for the survival of the group.

Why is abortion any different? Studies have shown a strong correlation between legalized abortion and lowered crime rates, so one could look at abortion as very preemptive self-defense against a future criminal, a future drain on society. Or do you consider yourself pro-crime?

You and I will never agree on the fundamental morality of abortion, though personally I think we do agree – it’s not the choice that we ourselves would make. I’d even venture that we both agree that there should be fewer of them. So the real relevant question is: what should society do about it?

If the goal is to reduce abortions, then banning the practice is absolutely the wrong way to go. Banning alcohol did not end the use of alcohol. Banning drugs has not ended the use of drugs. Banning slavery did not end the practice of slavery. Why would you think that banning abortion would end abortion?
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We can – & lets face it all do – rate cultures by their behaviours and we can tell for instance that Western culture is superior to Chinese or African cultures precisely because of how we treat people – how we do not oppress women, practice infanticide or celebrate monstrous tyrants like Stalin, Mao or the Banana Republic’s Dictator de jour.

Resorting to racism doesn’t exactly help your case, chuckles. Just saying.

She is also wrong in her opening statement. Sicence does not guess at why – it provides detailed explanations, which is far better than religion ever does. This is especially the case for biological evolution, where “goddidit” is wholly unsatisfying and unenlightening, whereas understanding the details of natural selection etc. offers us an illumination of why and how the biota of Earth are the way they are.
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It depends on how you interpret the word “why.” When science answers the question “why is the sky blue?” by explaining that it is the result of Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the 450 nanometer range by air molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere, which then strike the cones on the retinas of our eyes and are converted to neurochemical impulses that are interpreted by our brains as the color we refer to as blue, it is actually answering the question “how is the sky blue?,” not “why.”

If you look at why in the more poetic, philosophical sense – why does light interact with gaseous matter in that way; why did our eyes evolve to interpret the color blue the way they do; why does blue appear blue and not orange or octarine; why do matter and energy exist in the first place; etc — it is a question not answerable by science. These “why” questions are in the realm of philosophy, of which religion is a subset. It’s not that science is bad at answering them, it’s that science is irrelevant to them.

And here’s the thing about “why” answers – they’re not verifiable. They’re purely subjective, purely interpretive. They’re based on feeling, not fact. Thus, the philosophers can stay gainfully employed for many lifetimes by continually answering and re-answering the why questions, just as scientists will always be pursuing better data and more accurate answers to the how questions.

When science sticks to the how and philosophy sticks to the why, both cultures can peacefully coexist. It’s only when this barrier is breached – say, by creationists or intelligent designists attempting to use philosophy to answer the “how” question of how life evolved – that problems arise.