The god delusion... Religious debate

[Glaucus]

I really don't think that anyone with a true understanding of scientific method would do that, that is half the point of methods and the reason why high schools here are now teaching a lot of method utilization in all faculties from day 1.

your right. But a lot of people (including many in this thread) shout out they are atheists and hold up the science card as evidence on why they are an atheist. But it does not add up. It's a growing trend and is very alarming.
Many atheists are no more open minded that the religion extremists.

 

[Dolph]

I really don't think that anyone with a true understanding of scientific method would do that, that is half the point of methods and the reason why high schools here are now teaching a lot of method utilization in all faculties from day 1.

Dawkins does it all the time. Anyone who believes that science yields truth is also doing it (so anyone who follows a scientific realist philosophy), they are all expanding the method beyond that which is was designed to yield, namely prediction of observed behaviour.

Science is not concerned with explaining the world, but with predicting the world, and the latter does not require the former.

High school teaching of the scientific method and the a priori nature of the assumptions that underpin it is, to be honest, pretty crap in most places.

 

[Talrinys]

your right. But a lot of people (including many in this thread) shout out they are atheists and hold up the science card as evidence on why they are an atheist. But it does not add up. It's a growing trend and is very alarming.
Many atheists are no more open minded that the religion extremists.

Absolutely, i have a hard time putting Dawkins into this category though, i really do I don't think he's an extreme atheist, and i think the 4 hoursemen clip clearly showed that even amongst the known authors there is not always a wish for a single church to close. It has much more to do with discourse and a pursuit of truth. I'm an atheist among many christian friends (naturally since i went to a catholic school and many of my classmates are still close friends) and i have absolutely no problem with them practicing their religion. I just do not accept it as a get out of discussion for free card, and neither should religious people accept an atheist just covering behind a science book. Sam Harris clearly and beautifully describes the trouble behind creating a serious scientific ethical science, and if atheists want to use science as a true shield, they need this element as well since ethics and morals are what religion is about.

 

[Talrinys]

Dawkins does it all the time. Anyone who believes that science yields truth is also doing it (so anyone who follows a scientific realist philosophy), they are all expanding the method beyond that which is was designed to yield, namely prediction of observed behaviour.

Science is not concerned with explaining the world, but with predicting the world, and the latter does not require the former.

High school teaching of the scientific method and the a priori nature of the assumptions that underpin it is, to be honest, pretty crap in most places.

Come over here, our physics teacher just made a huge point out of it this morning. I have no idea how it works in the UK but teachers here usually have quite a high standard of education and an awareness of scientific method.

I apologize, i have not read the whole thread, so i do not know if you have read Dawkins' book. But he spends a whole chapter arguing as to why the predictions from pure science are more clean and more reliable than those with religion mixed in. I don't think it's Dawkins fault if his readers would go on after a chapter like that believeing that science is infallible, quite to the contrary.

 

[Dolph]

Come over here, our physics teacher just made a huge point out of it this morning. I have no idea how it works in the UK but teachers here usually have quite a high standard of education and an awareness of scientific method.

Our chemistry lecturers at Uni made a big point of it as well, but at lower levels (GCSE and A level in the UK), it's barely mentioned, unless you're lucky enough to have a good teacher prepared to go outside the syllabus.

I apologize, i have not read the whole thread, so i do not know if you have read Dawkins' book. But he spends a whole chapter arguing as to why the predictions from pure science are more clean and more reliable than those with religion mixed in. I don't think it's Dawkins fault if his readers would go on after a chapter like that believeing that science is infallible, quite to the contrary.

I've read it, and I still disagree with many of his conclusions, because fundamentally he's using his reputation in science (and he is a very good scientist) to push his faith as a meaningful philosophical position.

That science provides better predictions is not in doubt, science was designed to provide predictions. Whether the entities and processes that science proposes to explain those predictions exist in a mind and theory independant manner is not a question science can answer, it's one of philosophy and that is where Dawkins falls down, as well as any attempt to counter or attack theism (as opposed to religion) with science.

 

[Talrinys]

Our chemistry lecturers at Uni made a big point of it as well, but at lower levels (GCSE and A level in the UK), it's barely mentioned, unless you're lucky enough to have a good teacher prepared to go outside the syllabus.



I've read it, and I still disagree with many of his conclusions, because fundamentally he's using his reputation in science (and he is a very good scientist) to push his faith as a meaningful philosophical position.

Yeah, i suppose that's where we have our disagreement but it's nice to debate with someone who has the same understanding of science.
I have absolutely no problem seeing how Dawkins could be interpreted as arrogant.
I'm not familiar with how the british school system works, but we have a seperate course that teaches methods, the combination of various faculties to solve a problem etc. It's the course with the most hours in high school and also one that counts for a large part of the final grade. The implementation is generally terrible in terms of getting anything meaningful out of the combination of the faculties because the teachers haven't gotten into this yet (it was introduced last year), but i don't really think that any students believe that natural sciences produces a definite truth.

 

[Gothic Draconia]

As soon as you start to study religion, you realise how so many of the different religions are diametrically opposed to each other. They can't all be right can they? I guess it all depends on you parents or where you are born. Faith is is such a stupid thing.

 

[Nick1881]

Religion? lol

That is all.

 

[Talrinys]

As soon as you start to study religion, you realise how so many of the different religions are diametrically opposed to each other. They can't all be right can they? I guess it all depends on you parents or where you are born. Faith is is such a stupid thing.

Absolutely, but that isn't really going to win many arguments and it still leaves you with a large hole where religion once answered a lot of questions. Mind you, i'm on your side, but we need a better argument than that.

 

[Dolph]

As soon as you start to study religion, you realise how so many of the different religions are diametrically opposed to each other. They can't all be right can they? I guess it all depends on you parents or where you are born. Faith is is such a stupid thing.

There are successful scientific theories that are, to all intents and purposes, opposed to each other (eg they are fundamentally incompatible yet both predictively accurate). Does that make science such a stupid thing?

 

[Dolph]

Yeah, i suppose that's where we have our disagreement but it's nice to debate with someone who has the same understanding of science.
I have absolutely no problem seeing how Dawkins could be interpreted as arrogant.
I'm not familiar with how the british school system works, but we have a seperate course that teaches methods, the combination of various faculties to solve a problem etc. It's the course with the most hours in high school and also one that counts for a large part of the final grade. The implementation is generally terrible in terms of getting anything meaningful out of the combination of the faculties because the teachers haven't gotten into this yet (it was introduced last year), but i don't really think that any students believe that natural sciences produces a definite truth.

In general it's not those with a good scientific education in the UK who believe that science produces or defines truth, more those who accept it blindly without fully understanding it. In that regard it's much the same as the difference between a religious scholar and the faithful man in the street, one understands what they are talking about, the other does not, but the latter is much more likely to be vocal than the former.

 

[Talrinys]

In general it's not those with a good scientific education in the UK who believe that science produces or defines truth, more those who accept it blindly without fully understanding it. In that regard it's much the same as the difference between a religious scholar and the faithful man in the street, one understands what they are talking about, the other does not, but the latter is much more likely to be vocal than the former.

Sure, it just seems that either Dawkins and the others cherrypick the religious scholars that they debate with, or there really isn't anything like the internal criticism and debate amongst religious academics as there is amongst the natural scientific community.

 

[Dolph]

Sure, it just seems that either Dawkins and the others cherrypick the religious scholars that they debate with, or there really isn't anything like the internal criticism and debate amongst religious academics as there is amongst the natural scientific community.

There is a lot of criticism and debate among the religious community, especially cross-religion, but it tends to get ignored as Solipsism and not reported, much the same as most philosophy does, especially by those who favour science as a philosophy as well as a means of prediction.

I would, for example, highly recommend that the god delusion and the dawkins delusion are read as a pair, because while both are fundamentally ego strokers for the authors, the point and counterpoint nature causes you to think a bit more about what is actually being said and discussed, even though I don't care for the christian focus of the dawkins delusion in the slightest.

 

[Gothic Draconia]

There are successful scientific theories that are, to all intents and purposes, opposed to each other (eg they are fundamentally incompatible yet both predictively accurate). Does that make science such a stupid thing?

No, but you tell me how an Australian Aborigine and a Muslim person are both correct in their world view? Tehy both have faith based on little more than old wives tales.

Science gets revised as new ideas come about. Religion, on the whole, does not. Science just tries to explain and if it were a person, would be happy to be proven wrong.

 

[Dolph]

No, but you tell me how an Australian Aborigine and a Muslim person are both correct in their world view?

That depends on a variety of things, not least the nature of whether the world is truely mind-independant or not. There are facets of various belief structures that are incompatible, but many of these stem from tradition or simplification of the text, rather than the scripture itself (see christianity as a strictly monothesitic religion, that does not appear anywhere in the bible, rather an instruction not to worship other gods appears)

Science gets revised as new ideas come about. Religion, on the whole, does not. Science just tries to explain and if it were a person, would be happy to be proven wrong.

Science doesn't try to explain, it tries to predict, that's why the assumptions made are concerned with predictive, not explainative, accuracy. The proposed mechanism for the prediction does not need to have any bearing on reality to be scientifically useful.

 

[Robosapien]

Personification of science and religion, nice.

 

[Robosapien]

Science doesn't try to explain, it tries to predict, that's why the assumptions made are concerned with predictive, not explainative, accuracy. The proposed mechanism for the prediction does not need to have any bearing on reality to be scientifically useful.

Isn't that mathematics?

 

[Dolph]

Isn't that mathematics?

No, mathematics is a formal, axiomatic and tightly structured language for defining and describing interactions.

Occam's razor, for example, has nothing to do with mathematics, yet it's a fundamental assumption taken a priori for the scientific method.

 

[Fuzz]

My life is led by tangibility.
If you can touch it, hear it, see it and taste it, it's real as far as I am concerned.
I think the bible is nothing more than a good story book.

 

[Robosapien]

No, mathematics is a formal, axiomatic and tightly structured language for defining and describing interactions.

Occam's razor, for example, has nothing to do with mathematics, yet it's a fundamental assumption taken a priori for the scientific method.

Can't argue with that. Largely because I can't be bothered looking up what a priori means. You're a clever sod.

So you think that science chooses the simplest model to predict reality and therefore the model probably isn't complete?