Philosophy & Religion

[Genecks]

Perhaps things should go like this:

 

Board 1: Philosophy

 

Sub board: "philosophy of logic, science, and more" "Metaphysics and speculations" "religion and metaphysics" "religious discussion"

 

That ought to take care of the problem.

 

"Religion and meta(physics)"

- Description: This section is to discuss religion while relating it to science, such as meditation's effects on the central nervous system.

 

Otherwise, you can just toss the religion section. Afterwards, you ought to keep the philosophy and metaphysics section. Split it into two subboards: "Philosophy of logic, science, and more" "Metaphysics and speculations"

 

I don't know why you guys tossed out the philosophy board. I personally liked it. Also, I think you guys are missing the point of having philosophy as a part of your knowledge if you don't consider the scientific method as an important, philosophical achievement. Talking about Popper and others has great importance. The concept of determinism was/is of importance to Einstein and many psychologists/neuroscientists.

[-I-]

Determinism= purpose

Is this life like a replay-already determined, where the end can't be changed?

Sounds like a decision made by a brain, and a creul one at that.

 

What sounds more feasible is time and matter were made without a conscious decision making process, (or what brain, from where, come on ?) yes it just happened. Just as the presence of life in organisms just happened.

 

It's Nature. There are no replays.

I wish I good get this message through to my kids before they start driving.

Looks like you can use logic on the problem Phi, possibility vs feasiblity has served me find so far.

[the tree]

Determinism= purpose

[...]

Sorry, no.

Determinism is the doctrine that all actions are determined by the current state and immutable laws of the universe, with no possibility of choice, or it is the property of having behavior determined only by initial state and input. [Wiki]

 

It's very handy to look up words you're not sure about before you write a whole post on the wrong premise.

 

edit also, what? That had nothing to do with what was being discussed. Oh well.

[iNow]

I'm kinda new here, so my opinion won't necessarily carry as much weight, however...

 

You want religion, go to church.

You want discussions on religion, hang out with people who think the same or go to church groups.

You want science, read journals.

You want discussion on science, come here.

 

 

I don't go into churches every Sunday and try to yell louder than the preacher why evolution is correct and belief if the flying spaghetti monster is a silly, childish, waste of curiousity and intellect.

 

Why should folks be allowed to come here to do the equivalent?

[the tree]

You want discussions on religion, hang out with people who think the same or go to church groups.

If you only discuss religion with people who already think the same as you then you're not likely to learn too much. A successful forum on Religion would be a useful resource and there could be lots to learn from it, the question is could such a thing exist?

[iNow]

If you only discuss religion with people who already think the same as you then you're not likely to learn too much. A successful forum on Religion would be a useful resource and there could be lots to learn from it, the question is could such a thing exist?

 

I agree with your position completely. Differing opinions are wonderful things. However, if I wanted to discuss religion, I'd got to a site dedicated to doing so.

 

 

Mommy... why does the preacher touch me in my special place?

[Realitycheck]

I would say make a forum devoted to morals and philosophy, without the religion. Then just see what happens. We can always boot the creationists whenever they get out of hand. For a long time, I wondered how you get someone to act responsibly without putting the fear of god in their mind, but I think the best way is to set an example and show them the benefits of doing things right.

[doG]

Don't be too quick to dismiss religion. It is a valid social science that is a monumental variable in many societies and their governments. In this context there is much to be discussed, learned, etc..

 

As a first cause of man or the universe there is no more reason to discuss it here than there is cross stitch or knitting. It is an endless debate with no proof to end the debate for good. It's pointless to hash it over endlessly.

[Realitycheck]

I have been wondering what valued religions formed completely independent of Judaism, what the world would be like if Judaism had not formed. I would venture to say that the tree of knowledge was symbolic of marijuana and its potential for stimulating the mind. I wonder how much this truly contributed to the rise of civilization, if at all, considering all of the side effects that it surely presented. Some of the Native Americans had pretty good values, I believe. This kind of thing I wouldn't mind discussing in such a forum, rather than the standard, "It never happened like that because that's not what it says!"

[pioneer]

Evolutionary theory is the accepted posture of science when it come to describing the progression of life. But if you think about evolutionary theory, it is actually liberal arts history. History deals with facts and dates, which are often better in terms of accuracy and completeness compared to the evolutionary data set. Based on their well documented data, historians forms theories but leave room for furhter debate. Evolution uses a one-dogma approach, which is blasphemous to debate. It sounds like a religion to me.

 

Let me put it in perspective. Which has the most solid data. The American Civil War or the history of the dinosaurs? Obviously, the Civil War data is far more complete with only tiny discontinuities, if any. Yet many things are still open for debate inspite of far better data. Evolutionary theory is supported with far less data yet it doesn't allow any deviation? Evolution should be properly transferred to the liberal arts category of history.

 

If we wanted to know about ancient Egypt, we call in the scientists to dig for facts. Other scientists then debate the meaning but leave the door open to the historians to debate the bigger issues more. Evolutionary history may have the worse, relative data collection, yet it is the only area in hisotry that insists on conformity to its one dogmatic approach. Maybe the less you know the more one thinks they know. Maybe scientists should leave evolutionary history to the specialist who have a better perspecitve of the pitfalls that occur defining history theory. It is sort of an analogous to historians being in charge of science. Obviously, they have their own bend, which would approach science much differently.

 

This is the heart of the problem between evolutionary history-science and religion. The kettle is calling the pot black. Religion used to have a monoply for dogma. Evolutionary history gave science a way to act like religion, i.e., dogma based on historically thin data. It is a religious war.

[Dak]

Evolution uses a one-dogma approach, which is blasphemous to debate.

 

umm...

 

science holds that evolution is the only known way in which life forms can change over time to become other lifeforms (sort of)... therefore, when, from eg the fossil record, we see life changing in form over time it is assumed that this is evolution.

 

If you can demonstrate another mechanism by which life could change over time, then this would negate the above; if you can show a change in life-form that happened that is inconsistant with evolution then this would throw evolution's monopoly into question. however, no-one has done either of the above.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

What relevance does this have to the discussion at hand?

[Severian]

I would have no problem with a P&R forum if the debate was going to be of the standard seen at:

 

http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Short_course.php?Course_selection=9&Mode=Old

 

Unfortunately, from past experience, I don't think our subscriber base is sufficiently mature, both emotionally and scientifically, to engage in constructive discussion on religious matters.

[doG]

Unfortunately, from past experience, I don't think our subscriber base is sufficiently mature, both emotionally and scientifically, to engage in constructive discussion on religious matters.

 

Wouldn't that depend on whom you allow into the discussion? Access to P & R forums could be restricted to a subset of the overall membership which agrees to a rule set specifically assembled for those forums.

[Royston]

subscriber base

 

Which of course includes Severian

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Immaturity could easily be banned from the P&R forum. That's the point: that we can take a new approach to moderation where we just silence the irritating and immature people.

[ydoaPs]

Immaturity could easily be banned from the P&R forum. That's the point: that we can take a new approach to moderation where we just silence the irritating and immature people.

As of right now, what's the status? Is it go or no go?

[Fred56]

Methinks one way to look at religion, sorry Religion, from a sciencey perspective would be to examine any parallels between the two. Is Religion scientific? Is Science religious? Faith, by definition is acceptance or belief in the unknown (and unknowable), but belief in something without actuality is otherwise known as delusion. Does Science have a "faith", or ritual? What's the difference between a scientist checking some calculation, and a priest crossing himself? Things like that.

[pioneer]

The focus with religious discussions, are often on the unproveable aspects of God or Creationism. But on the other hand, religion has been around for a long time, so it provides a huge data set with respect to the evolution of humanity and the human mind. If you factor out the metaphysical and only look at religious motivations and its impact on history, it has a lot of fossils, which show how the human mind evolved over time. What we think today, although evolved, is only about 1% of the data. Go back even 50 years, and this modern point of view, was a little mosquito. It evolved from things before it, like human came from apes, and dinosaurs.

 

Irronically, when it comes to human evolution, which was less physical and more emotional-intellectual, the scientific mind uses sort of a creationist's approach, thinking that its modern theories of the mind didn't logically evolve from anything that came before it. Freud and Darwin are sort of the Adam and Eve of the modern era. Religion acts more like evolutionists, when it comes to the human mind, in that they keep 5000 years of fossil data in mind, using this solid data to help them extrapolate a nice smooth curve to the present. Many religious people embrance science, since it is part of that evolution of the human mind. They also know where it all came from. It didn't begin 100 years ago. The ancient people were not us with old clothes. These dinosaurs were very different than us. Religion has good documentation of who they were and how and why these became mammals, then humans, then us.

 

One of the modern concerns that I see, is the scientific philosphy, centered on the modern Adam and Eve, are, sort of trying to be modern by using a path that has been documented by religion to have already occurred. It would be like a scientist meeting a person who is trying to alter their genes so they could become an ape. Science would try to intercede and tell them this was a precusor state and is not the direction of forward progress. But if that person was unaware of coming from apes, it is new to them, so they think it has to be modern and more advanced. With a collective philosphy that is only 100 years old, that blanks out the past before this, anything from that past, looks brand new, so it appears to be a step forward. Religion are the human evolutionists and are trying to say it has been done. But the pseudo neo-creationists can't see that.

[Fred56]

There is certainly a large body of religious philosophical thought. Most early scientists (Newton, Leibniz, ...) were called philosophers. Philosophy of every stripe has has an impact on scientific thinking at some stage or other.

[PhDP]

Immaturity could easily be banned from the P&R forum. That's the point: that we can take a new approach to moderation where we just silence the irritating and immature people.

 

That would be a nice idea, I really miss this part of the forum. Some discussions were really interesting.

[Fred56]

K

What's the story with how a lot of earlier Renaissance thought, if you look at some of it, seems to look a lot like what cosmologists are saying too, if you substitute the religious terminology with the cosmological, Spinoza's thinking, for example, seems to be trying to define what the relationship is between the universe and us, if you ignore the conclusions (and substitute the cosmos for God). So he first tries to define both? I think he does an ok job, for his day, and some of it seems kind of prescient. Descartes couldn't get beyond a certain grasp of "imagery" or of experience, and how to conceive of it.

(and how come there are 42 'axioms' in Ethics or "on the shore", in the poem)?

[Reaper]

So, what is the status of the P&R sub-section right now? Yay, or nay?

[doG]

This is exactly why we will not be having any more religious discussions here at SFN. Supposedly intelligent people who can't bother to run a shitcheck on their mouths.

 

Thread closed.

 

Some can, some can't. I still think you could use a forum with a controlled group membership and the infraction system to limit the participants to those that can run a shitcheck on their mouths.

[Phi for All]

I really appreciate your efforts to be cool-headed about this, doG.

 

I'm beginning to believe it's just the topic. On the subject of religion, it doesn't seem to matter what the stance is, too many people are pre-convinced they're right.