Prometheus

The problem psychology had (has?) is in quantifying the phenomena it studies (and whether it is possible to have a science that does not quantify). Can we usefully quantify things like happiness, pain, loneliness - what about that painful yet pleasant feeling parents are said to experience on seeing their children leave the nest? There are loads of neuroscientists in my group and they certainly like to quantify things and generally leave well alone things they cannot. I guess i'm asking the question not whether psychology is a 'real' science - but what is the current domain of psychology in which it can bring the scientific method be bear?

I disagree, but largely on semantic grounds. I think for it to be art it requires some intent in it's creation, which this did not. That does not mean people cannot gain some insight from it. In a similar way people may gain some insight from a sunrise or waterfall: but we do not generally consider these as art. I'm not willing to back my argument up too much though: people take from art what they will regardless of attempts to rationalise it. By the way was this the story of someone who deliberately placed some glasses on the floor of an art gallery to make the point that people are pretentious enough to consider anything as art?

'Superstitious' behaviour has also been observed in pigeons. I can imagine this being a precursor to more complex ritualistic behaviour. In the same way we are programmed to see a tiger face amongst the leaves, we could be programmed to seek god(s) (or some other supernatural thing) in the gaps of our understanding.

In lieu of the good advise and wise words i wish i could give you, i recommend volunteering at a care home or something similar. You get exposure to many different people who have lived very different lives: some of them tell anecdotes well too. You get to see what it's like to perceive reality in very different ways (dementia, drug induced etc.), which can be interesting. It can be hard work, but some people find that satisfying. Many find that helping people gives them a sense of wellbeing. Hell, you might even find you like it in which case you could consider a career in healthcare. And if it fails to do any of that it will still look good on your CV.

To describe something as being in its infancy requires us to know something about its lifespan. Young means nothing if we don't know what counts as old: it's a relative term. Hopefully science now is still only in its infancy, but that will be for later generations to decide.

Saved by the Bell - there's a blast from the past. I don't think we need to invoke any sort of god in order to explain art. If reality recreates art then that is just the process of humans affecting their surroundings - in this case its humans influencing other humans.

The intention is important. I used to think it was important that art should be able to stand by itself - no prior knowledge needed. That changed when i found out a little more about Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare. I found out the horse was believed to have been taken from a painting of Death personified and that knowledge added a new flavour to how i saw the painting. With more study i'm sure i could get closer to what the artist intended to convey. As for pop music: it's not art in that the makers aren't trying to communicate a way they perceive some aspect of existence - they're trying to make your feet tap and head bob. But there is a great deal of overlap and the category 'pop' is very diverse and ill-defined..

Cool - i'll try to find a copy in the library so i can try before i buy.

Tough question. I'd say that art is a process of communication. Someone has some way of looking at some aspect of existence and attempts to communicate that to others. The trouble is the thing they are trying to communicate is so subtle and nuanced that everyday language fails, so they create some art to better convey the meaning. As with any communication the process is (at least) a two-way process - the artist puts something out there and we then take something from it. Whether we take what the artist intended or not matters less than that something new is stirred in the receiver. I've heard it said that if you do not understand some art in the way the artist intended then you have missed the point, but i feel this is far too stringent. Can anyone really be sure they understand exactly what was the intention of the artist?

'Unadulterated takeaway nugget', is a term you introduced but it was not the impression i was trying to convey. My point is a much more general one about the role of stories in civilisation. Aesop's fables, for instance, are simple stories that convey some sense of wisdom. Shakespeare's plays are much more elaborate and nuanced stories that explore different aspects of the human condition. Milton reinterpreted the story of the fall in Paradise Lost to reveal a Satan we could all recognise in ourselves. What is the 'nugget' in all of these? Nothing, except that they all resonate deeply within many humans - that is all. I agree that such a vaguely conceived idea can hardly be described as 'true' (and certainly not unadulterated takeaway nugget) except in the most literary sense: they take us outside ourselves so that we may see ourselves in a different light. Biblical stories are similar to Aesop's and Shakespeare's stories (and all good stories) in that they tell us something about the human condition. What that 'something' is may well change with time and place. I guess i am talking of the philosophy of art more than religion in the normal sense - but i believe we can learn far more from religious stories when we regard them as ways our ancestors understood the world and their place in it.

True enough. But if we can accept institutions can be racist or sexist (and i don't think that's a contentious claim?), then we should acknowledge that religious institutions can have equally pernicious traits.

I'm glad i understood. I find it a really tricky concept to communicate: to a scientifically literate crowd you can end up sounding like a nutbag, and to a religious/spiritual crowd they can end up taking you way too literally. I should say, that is in addition to the actual crimes committed by religions (murder and rape and what not...).

If i understand dimreepr correctly i agree with him. Taking the example of original sin: the biblical story does not mention what type of fruit was eaten from the forbidden tree, but it has become the apple through the ages. The change in detail makes no real difference to the story. The important point is that some of our ancestors realised that it was knowledge that allowed humans to become moral beings (to know good and evil). Generalising further the actual 'facts' of the story make no difference. It doesn't matter if the story actually happened, it matters only that the story is a fundamental part of our culture. That cannot change (though it could be forgotten). The 'truth' of the story is something dynamic that each generation re-interprets. Of course this isn't 'truth' in the way most people would define it - but the important point is that there is some core to the story our ancestors would recognise and through which we can relate to them. In my opinion the real crime committed by most religions is in not allowing this process of reinterpretation thus stopping the possibility of the spiritual progression of humanity: so we are supposed to forever think it was a bad thing to possess knowledge of good and evil, whereas we could reinterpret the story in a positive light. Then again, maybe i've just totally misunderstood what dimreepr was getting at.

This is a question for historians but we are unlikely to ever have sufficient evidence to know the precise details of how Abrahamic monotheism grew from some fellow named Abraham and the existing tribal religions in the area. We have some general ideas as already mentioned by others - maybe these are more important than the details anyway as they say something about how some humans first interpreted nature. Corrected

Let me know what you think when you've read through it. From the contents page seems to contain a lot of history of the subject?

Those books are on my (ever growing) list of things i should read anyway. I've only read the god delusion, i imagine his books on his actual area of expertise will be better. I was thinking more of a textbook though which i don't think Dawkins books are?

Can anyone recommend a book or two about genetics and evolution? My ideal book would be: Undergraduate level Start from microscopic description/principles of genetics (DNA, transcription etc...) and proceed through to population level genetics/evolution. Have a quantitative focus/flavour - going into reasonable detail of any mathematical/computational models used. Bonus if it includes something about modelling evolution with cellular automata. Would be nice if i could find this all in one book, or maybe a series. Thanks for any pointers.

Maybe they imagine Darwin is to scientists what a prophet is to theists: a messenger revealing truth unto an ignorant world. As such they can not imagine how the ideas of Darwin could be amended or challenged by professed scientists: his words must be immutable. Either that or it's a deliberate ploy to avoid the real issues.

So 5 seconds is as far as got in that video. The Buddha didn't say: “The mind is everything. What you think, you become,” Apparently the closest thing to that in Buddhist scripture (Majjhima Nikaya 19) is:“Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.”

I have a Wiccan brother into crystal healing and magik and all that jazz. If you are willing to look past all the fluff you can usually find something you can relate to on some level. For instance a common belief among Wiccans is to regard Earth as a living entity imbued with spirit. We can put aside the spirit part and just discuss the idea of the planet as a living entity and that our actions have consequences to it.

Time won't account for how i've aged:

This is a common reason for people believing in god(s) or the afterlife, but it really is just a matter of how you perceive your existence. I find it amazing that our conciousness emerges from entirely material antecedents - that watery bags of protoplasm can come to ponder the fact of their existence - and that we are not something separate from the universe but we are it. For some people who experience the world not as a separate being from it, but as part of it - not separated from the universe by our skin, but continuous with the universe through our skin - then death is perceived very differently. It is just the return of the wave to the ocean, a swirl of dust reforming into some other pattern, decaying on the one hand and nourishing on the other as our molecules return to the cycle of life. Of course it is up to you how you interpret your existence, but i hope you realise there are alternatives to the prevalent Abrahamic view. There are as many experiences of death as there are people. For some it may be a 'cold terrifying realization' while for others it will be a blessed release with every nuance in between (often by the same person at the same time). I'm sure you'll agree it would be just as wrong to force a reinterpretation of someone's experience of death as a 'cold terrifying realization' as it would be for someone to reinterpret your own near death experience.

Are you talking about the method of exhaustion Archimedes used to find bounds on pi, whereby a circle is approximated by a polygon - the more sides the polygon has the more narrow are the bounds (how close were the Greeks to understanding limits and maybe then calculus?). Apparently the method was first developed around the same time that the old testament was written so it's possible, but we are unlikely to ever actually know. If it can, somehow, be shown that this is the case it would be a nice little piece of evidence that the old testament was written only by humans.

So my understanding of Christianity is that evil was something absent from the world until Lucifer rebelled (and then the fall introduced that evil to the world). But in the absence of evil, there was nothing but good. With the yin yang concept if we have no evil, there can be no good, for you need the one to define the other. I prefer the latter idea too, it does not encourage us to chase a perfection that does not really exist (and only exists in Heaven in Christian mythology).

The Babylonians and Egyptians expressed better approximations of pi a thousand years before the old testament was written.