Some Important Facts for the Religious (and Everybody Else)

[Politesse]

So, you do believe in the supernatural of some kind? That would explain your sciencey comment. Science does not support magic spells at least not yet

What part of agnostic was unclear?

If it quacks like a duck...

You are accusing me of lying about my philosophical perspective? This reminds me of a few days ago, when you accused me of lying about my own memories.

I wonder what might lead someone to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is a liar.

Do you ever tell little white lies, Unknown Soldier? To defend your worldview? Is it okay, perhaps, to post "facts" you know aren't factual, for the sake of making a socio-religious argument? Just curious.

 

[abaddon]

Religious folk, like everyone, need to take into account the scientific facts when forming a life-philosophy. Any "worldview" must conform with the facts or (obviously) be incorrect. It's not the case a person gets to believe just any feel-good belief - not if you want to be connected with reality. But, I'd argue it is the case that science leaves WAY more latitude about what life-philosophies, and even religions, one can explore than some ... let's call them "science fans"... would find comfortable. After all, feeling uncomfortable with other sorts of believers around in the world is not a specifically religious phenomenon.

Sometimes these "discussions" have the air of such intolerance of other sorts of believers. It's easy to present oneself as a science-fan by listing some scientific facts, but slip in some propagandistic BS like the notion you can't be both religious and in-line with science too (so therefore you need to be a secularist or you're an ignoramus). Then if someone argues with such propagandistic BS, it can falsely be made to look like a protest against science.

About the "pedantry" issue... frankly, I see nothing to learn in the OP because it's not news. They're important facts but they're known far and wide already. So there's nothing to learn except maybe to adjust one's knowledge of these facts. For example, if I came here with outdated info about the universe as 13.6 billion years old but found it's now considered 13.8, then I can go "thanks for the heads-up!" But even that was kind of robbed of me, because the OP isn't about accurate facts; it's just some vacuous blah-blah about how ignorant that "religion" is.

And also, I wonder... does anyone else here (aside from Politesse, I figure he's already on-board with it) share my interest in a more impartial, less partisan discussion of religions, in place of the endless "ReLigUn is bAd!!" stuff year after year, decade after decade?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

we have no reason to suggest that consciousness is impossible without a "physical brain"

Other than a total lack of any evidence, and the absence of any reason to even hypothesise that it might be.

I'm not exactly on the hill tops proclaiming this is otherwise. A specific claim (well a "fact") was made that a physical brain (undefined) is required for consciousness (undefined). I don't believe that this is a known fact. We know that on Earth, consciousness exists via physical brains. Is it the only way? That'd fall down to what is being defined as a "brain".

We have no reason to suggest that there aren't plesiosaurs living under the Europan ice, but in the absence of any reason why we might suspect such a thing, or any evidence that it might be true, our experience and knowledge that strongly hints at the unlikelihood of such a thing should be sufficient for us to reject it.

"It's not impossible" is the most pathetic assertion ever. It's far from a sufficient claim as to make belief in something non-ridiculous.

It is one thing to say we are not aware of consciousness without a brain, it is another to say it is a fact that it can't exist.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And also, I wonder... does anyone else here (aside from Politesse, I figure he's already on-board with it) share my interest in a more impartial, less partisan discussion of religions, in place of the endless "ReLigUn is bAd!!" stuff year after year, decade after decade?

Aren't we already there? 2000 to 2006 or so was a ripe time of the Internet Wars on religion and atheism. These days, there are quite a bunch of crickets in the religion sub forums, because there is virtually nothing left to say or argue. Maybe we need more mutated shrimp.

That said, religious people have provided us with endless gifts in science. So many of the founding fathers of our sciences were Christians and while they tried to prove their faith through science, they didn't let their faith intercede on their observations, which is why they are still the founding fathers. These days, it is a kind of Pffft sort of deal until the alt-right starts trying to re-establish religion in the State.

 

[steve_bank]

Scimce versus re;gio and mythology are two different things. Newton was a Christian as was Galileo. Religion does not necessarily preclude rational factual thinking, but as we see it often does.

Religion is fine until it becomes a narrow controlling ideology like all human ideologies can dos.

Chrtuan engineers I wolred with compartmentalized sconce and religion. Thye may belive the Earth was created 4000 yearss ago, but they do nor use the bible to design something. I knew creationist engineers who wwre very good. They know very well science, but choose a mythology. They are educated in science. A great many Chrtia and others only know a scripture.

 

[atrib]

I post a devastating critique of somebody's religion, and I find myself in a wrestling match with a defender of that religion who goes off on a tangent refusing to be reasoned with.

I'm sure you truly believe that's what's going on.

Seriously, who's on a tangent here? You're the one refusing to discuss the content of your own OP.

The content of his OP is that the universe and the solar system are billions of years old, and that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees millions of years ago. These facts are well established, and widely disseminated in the western world. Yet some people choose to deny these facts and assert that these are not true because their religious dogma tells them otherwise. That is the point of the fucking OP, not what place of decimal we should round off to when talking about the age of the universe. He is new here and likely distracted by your repeated attempts to focus on the precision with which these numbers can be established, which is not the fucking point of his post, as opposed to the fundamental conflict that exists between what we objectively know based on our scientific work and what religious dogma asserts to be true.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Scimce versus re;gio and mythology are two different things. Newton was a Christian as was Galileo. Religion does not necessarily preclude rational factual thinking, but as we see it often does.

Religion is fine until it becomes a narrow controlling ideology like all human ideologies can dos.

Chrtuan engineers I wolred with compartmentalized sconce and religion. Thye may belive the Earth was created 4000 yearss ago, but they do nor use the bible to design something. I knew creationist engineers who wwre very good. They know very well science, but choose a mythology. They are educated in science. A great many Chrtia and others only know a scripture.

I think that demonstrates how humans naturally gravitate in both directions, we want our fantasy and our reality. I'm a giant fan of fantasy, engaging in fantasy is quite restorative. But I know it's fantasy because of how my particular brain operates. Some brains don't operate like mine and think the fantasy is the reality and never question those claims.

 

[Politesse]

The content of his OP is that the universe and the solar system are billions of years old, and that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees millions of years ago. These facts are well established, and widely disseminated in the western world. Yet some people choose to deny these facts and assert that these are not true because their religious dogma tells them otherwise.

If he's not right either, and moreover doesn't care whether he is or not, why choose his "side" in some damn culture war? I'm not even talking about religion, which is not actually the supposed topic of the OP. Aside from some speculation about minds after death, all of the topics he raised with his "facts" are material, measurable, quantifiable, clearly demonstrable physical processes that do not require any supernatural agents to explain, and I do not see them as religious matters at all. Or they shouldn't be. If the goal is a clear understanding of the material world, the only position that matters, that bears any meaningful worth at all in helping us understand the true nature of the physical universe, is that which embraces the methods and practices of the sciences. If he thinks that it doesn't matter whether or not "facts" are accurately represented, he's part of the problem, not the solution. I don't like it at all when fundy Christians try to subvert scientific conversations, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cheer when a secularist commits similar errors.

If you care about my respect... though I assume he does not... but if you care about my respect, then don't tell me what your label is. Show me. The callous disrespect for the sciences in the OP is what offends me about it, not my clandestine membership in some shadowy Christian cult or whatever. Labels mean nothing. I know plenty of Satanists with a good head on their shoulders and healthy respect for the scientific study of the world. And I know plenty of people who go into "atheist" internet spaces with what is really a social axe to grind, but no clue (or regard for) how the epistemology they are supposedly championing actually works. People who don't care about accuracy or rational process are far more of a threat to global well-being than any philosophical school could ever be in isolation. If his point is that that scientific inquiry should be celebrated (by misrepresenting its conclusions?), he's doing a very bad job of it.

If on the other hand, you want to argue with "some people" about what "some people" believe, have them drop by the forum sometime. I am not "some people", and their beliefs, whoever "they" may be, are irrelevant to the conversation until one of them shows up to make their case. All we have here is one person who showed up, said "here are the important facts", proceeded to type a bunch of things that were not actually facts, and one grumpy quasi-Paganish agnostic who had too long of a week to resist pointing out the obvious contradiction inherent between those two conditions. Figure out what you believe and what it means to pursue the world in a scientific framework, before worrying about what "some people" are doing wrong. On that, I do quite agree with Jesus of Nazareth (apparently the unseen topic of the thread?). If there's a speck in your eye, you won't be able to fix that by volunteering to take out someone else's log.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The Babylonians were but one group of pagans whose mythology was reworked by the Bible writers to create their own creation mythology. None of this plagiarism is possible if the God of the Bible is real.

You getting your facts wrong in no way advances this point.

So you're saying that Moses wrote the creation stories in Genesis 1-2 and the entire Pentateuch as directed by God. Eve and Adam were historical persons and the respective mother and father of all people. Modern cosmology and biology are then wrong about natural history. Any Babylonian mythology that resembles God's creation stories is due either to coincidence or plagiarism on the part of the Babylonians. Is that why I'm wrong in what I said in the OP?

What idiot would make a fuss over a report of a serial killer's murders by insisting the report's estimate is supposedly off by such a small and trivial amount?

Because you're calling things facts when they aren't.

Is it not a fact that in my analogy a serial killer killed a large number of people? Am I wrong about that?

Are you actually arguing that the murder of a human being is an unimportant fact?

Of course not. Misreporting the exact number of people killed doesn't change the fact that the murderer is a serial killer, the main reason I would denounce him. The news agencies as we post are reporting estimates of the number of Ukrainians killed by Putin forces. Would you tell those news agencies they're wrong because you find estimates of Ukrainian casualties that differ a bit from their estimates? Only an idiot would do that.

I assure you, to the victim and their family, the idea that it not only isn't certain but doesn't matter whether or not the victim's murder is ever solved would be pretty damn upsetting. No, a murder is not a trivial matter by any reasonable definition of trivial.

I'm sure the families of the murder victims would all agree with my denouncing the murderer none of them objecting to my estimate of the number of his victims.

And though it is perhaps of less immediate import, the study of the origins of the universe is still an important topic, or the study of human evolution, or just about any of the topics you raised.

True, the sciences of cosmology and biology are very busy gathering more data and formulating theories to explain the evidence they have. But the figures I posted in the OP agree closely with all current estimates.

Being wrong about any of it could potentially degrade the utility of any theories using those conclusions as a starting assumption. For instance, the divergence point of chimpanzees and humans has considerable importance in genomics studies and epidemiology; it isn't just "trivia".

Being wrong is a risk that researchers need to take to discover new knowledge as any scientist will tell you. If errors are exposed, then they should be corrected. No "degradation of any theories" results, of course.

And throwing contradictory information out there without explanation if throwing fuel to the fire for people who are trying to take down science for real.

Sometimes scientific data is hard to reconcile. If conflicts occur, then it's important that those conflicts be reported so that scientists can get busy trying to find out why the data is in conflict.

 

[Politesse]

That said, all in all, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the results of my intervention. Instead of just citing "facts" without context, Unknown Soldier has now been obliged to:

1. Cite some relevant sources (albeit mostly wikipedia and some opinion pieces), that we can now discuss the merit of.
2. By post #36, he admitted error even if not fault, and even calculated his degree of error quantitatively.
3. In the same post, he noted the important difference between an absolute value and an estimate for the first time, a distinction painfully missing from the original posting.
4. He seems to suddenly understand what error bars mean, too, and is now, at least in some posts talking about his provided figures as falling within a reasonable range, rather than whether or not they are "facts".

Overall, the current state of Unknown Soldier's thesis is drastically improved from the unedited draft he first posted. Were he to post it again, say on another forum, it would almost certainly have significant revisions. Sometimes arguing with someone you imagine to be some bitter enemy, your own position is actually improved and refined. So, hope may not be lost for the Socratic method, however acrimonious it may be in practice at times. With any luck, his next rant against will religion will at least have some better research behind it.

Yes, I'm pretentious, and yes, perhaps a bit rude. But I'm also right. I'll leave you to guess which I consider to be more important.

 

[Politesse]

Being wrong is a risk that researchers need to take to discover new knowledge as any scientist will tell you. If errors are exposed, then they should be corrected.

Fucking Exactly. Finally. I'm glad we were able to come to agree on what was, at least for me, the most important point of my critique. Jesus, that was harder than pulling teeth.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Sometimes these "discussions" have the air of such intolerance of other sorts of believers.

So I've noticed. Here's an example:

My guess is that they cannot concede that they are wrong and give up the battle knowing that they will not convert me.

That's delusional horseshit.

Fritz left for the reason he said. I pos-rep'd that post because I agree with his point. He's done the best thing for himself, as there's nothing to learn from automatons who only repeat clichéd bullshit that they picked up on the Net from 15, 20 years ago.

That looks very intolerant to me.

It's easy to present oneself as a science-fan by listing some scientific facts, but slip in some propagandistic BS like the notion you can't be both religious and in-line with science too (so therefore you need to be a secularist or you're an ignoramus).

It's very intolerant to characterize other people's viewpoints that way.

Then if someone argues with such propagandistic BS, it can falsely be made to look like a protest against science.

If somebody broad-brushes a list of facts garnered by modern science as wrong because estimated values in that list differ a bit from other estimates, then yes, that looks like a protest against science to me. Either that or the naysayer is demonstrating the most woeful ignorance of how scientists report their discoveries.

About the "pedantry" issue... frankly, I see nothing to learn in the OP because it's not news. They're important facts but they're known far and wide already. So there's nothing to learn except maybe to adjust one's knowledge of these facts.

You're ignoring the part of the OP about how knowledge of scientific and historical facts exposes the claims of religion as false. That was my point in composing the OP and initiating this discussion.

For example, if I came here with outdated info about the universe as 13.6 billion years old but found it's now considered 13.8, then I can go "thanks for the heads-up!"

I've pointed out repeatedly that small differences in such estimates is completely beside my point. The truth of the OP does not depend on what estimates of values used in modern science are most accurate but what those values tell us about our world and how that knowledge differs from what religion tells us.

But even that was kind of robbed of me, because the OP isn't about accurate facts; it's just some vacuous blah-blah about how ignorant that "religion" is.

If religious faith is based in errors, then it may well be based in ignorance. Why rule out that possibility?

And also, I wonder... does anyone else here (aside from Politesse, I figure he's already on-board with it) share my interest in a more impartial, less partisan discussion of religions, in place of the endless "ReLigUn is bAd!!" stuff year after year, decade after decade?

You are welcome to discuss whatever you wish as far as I'm concerned. I can certainly understand why you would ask for less criticism of your religion.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Being wrong is a risk that researchers need to take to discover new knowledge as any scientist will tell you. If errors are exposed, then they should be corrected.

Fucking Exactly. Finally. I'm glad we were able to come to agree on what was, at least for me, the most important point of my critique. Jesus, that was harder than pulling teeth.

You didn't expose any errors.

 

[steve_bank]

Scimce versus re;gio and mythology are two different things. Newton was a Christian as was Galileo. Religion does not necessarily preclude rational factual thinking, but as we see it often does.

Religion is fine until it becomes a narrow controlling ideology like all human ideologies can dos.

Chrtuan engineers I wolred with compartmentalized sconce and religion. Thye may belive the Earth was created 4000 yearss ago, but they do nor use the bible to design something. I knew creationist engineers who wwre very good. They know very well science, but choose a mythology. They are educated in science. A great many Chrtia and others only know a scripture.

I think that demonstrates how humans naturally gravitate in both directions, we want our fantasy and our reality. I'm a giant fan of fantasy, engaging in fantasy is quite restorative. But I know it's fantasy because of how my particular brain operates. Some brains don't operate like mine and think the fantasy is the reality and never question those claims.

I had plastic surgery to look like a Klingon.

 

[steve_bank]

That said, all in all, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the results of my intervention. Instead of just citing "facts" without context, Unknown Soldier has now been obliged to:

1. Cite some relevant sources (albeit mostly wikipedia and some opinion pieces), that we can now discuss the merit of.
2. By post #36, he admitted error even if not fault, and even calculated his degree of error quantitatively.
3. In the same post, he noted the important difference between an absolute value and an estimate for the first time, a distinction painfully missing from the original posting.
4. He seems to suddenly understand what error bars mean, too, and is now, at least in some posts talking about his provided figures as falling within a reasonable range, rather than whether or not they are "facts".

Overall, the current state of Unknown Soldier's thesis is drastically improved from the unedited draft he first posted. Were he to post it again, say on another forum, it would almost certainly have significant revisions. Sometimes arguing with someone you imagine to be some bitter enemy, your own position is actually improved and refined. So, hope may not be lost for the Socratic method, however acrimonious it may be in practice at times. With any luck, his next rant against will religion will at least have some better research behind it.

Yes, I'm pretentious, and yes, perhaps a bit rude. But I'm also right. I'll leave you to guess which I consider to be more important.

We all owe you a sincere debt of gratitude for taking the time to straighten us out. Your influnce on thread is deeply profound.

On behalf of all of us, thank you.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

That said, all in all, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the results of my intervention.

None of my attempts not to mention the attempts of other people here to reason with you have apparently succeeded.

Instead of just citing "facts" without context, Unknown Soldier has now been obliged to:

1. Cite some relevant sources (albeit mostly wikipedia and some opinion pieces), that we can now discuss the merit of.

My posting those links was tongue-in-cheek meant to make light of your demanding sources of information that is commonly known by scientists and historians.

2. By post #36, he admitted error even if not fault, and even calculated his degree of error quantitatively.

What you're saying here is a lie of omission: You are omitting my saying that the difference in estimates of the age of the cosmos you can find posted on the internet are very small and hence trivial.

3. In the same post, he noted the important difference between an absolute value and an estimate for the first time, a distinction painfully missing from the original posting.

That distinction is not important to the point I was making. You know--the point you keep dodging.

4. He seems to suddenly understand what error bars mean, too, and is now, at least in some posts talking about his provided figures as falling within a reasonable range, rather than whether or not they are "facts".

You are again demonstrating the most woeful ignorance of how data is represented. Statisticians and other professionals routinely use single values like means and medians to represent ranges of values in data. If statisticians calculate the mean value of the estimated age of the universe, then it is perfectly appropriate to use that mean value as the reported age of the universe. Facts can be estimates--a fact you appear to be unaware of.

Overall, the current state of Unknown Soldier's thesis is drastically improved from the unedited draft he first posted.

It's about the same. I see no reason to change what I posted in the OP.

Were he to post it again, say on another forum, it would almost certainly have significant revisions.

No. I would just copy and paste it.

Sometimes arguing with someone you imagine to be some bitter enemy, your own position is actually improved and refined. So, hope may not be lost for the Socratic method, however acrimonious it may be in practice at times. With any luck, his next rant against will religion will at least have some better research behind it.

I'm very satisfied with what I posted in the OP. I did wonder at that time if somebody would split hairs over the values I posted, but I dismissed that thought thinking that nobody could stoop that low. So if there is one thing I got wrong, it was my estimation of the honesty of some of the people in this forum.

Yes, I'm pretentious, and yes, perhaps a bit rude. But I'm also right. I'll leave you to guess which I consider to be more important.

I'm right too, but my that fact rules out my opponents as being right. Right?

 

[abaddon]

That looks very intolerant to me.

It's very intolerant to characterize other people's viewpoints that way.

If somebody broad-brushes a list of facts... that looks like a protest against science to me...

... I can certainly understand why you would ask for less criticism of your religion.

I didn't say one word about less criticism of anyone's religion. I expressed some wishful thinking that there could be less cause-fighting, more scholarship-based criticisms. That doesn't in any way obviate that they can be rigorous, even vicious criticisms.

I'll tell you again, just so I can watch you 'correct' me about it again: I'm not religious. I am a nonreligious atheist. Criticism of some kinds of religion-criticizing is not necessarily religion-motivated. Is that something you can wrap your brain around?

Your self-congratulatory posts about "devastating critiques" and about people "fleeing" from you are delusional horseshit.

And mostly I'd like to know which kind of intolerance are you whining about on my part? Intolerance of another sort of believer? Or intolerance of underhanded tactics on your part?

Can you discern the difference there and the significance of it? The kind in your quotes of me is the latter one.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Yes, I'm pretentious, and yes, perhaps a bit rude. But I'm also right. I'll leave you to guess which I consider to be more important.

We all owe you a sincere debt of gratitude for taking the time to straighten us out. Your influnce on thread is deeply profound.

On behalf of all of us, thank you.

I'm still in the dark, though. At this point we all know what isn't right on my list in the OP. But if those list items are wrong, then what are the correct facts? For instance, Politesse has informed us that the universe is not 13.6 billion years old. How old is it then? But more to the point, what correct age of the cosmos is consistent with what religion has to say?

 

[abaddon]

Does "religion" say things? I always thought the different sects of various religions say a lot of different things.

 

[Politesse]

Yes, I'm pretentious, and yes, perhaps a bit rude. But I'm also right. I'll leave you to guess which I consider to be more important.

We all owe you a sincere debt of gratitude for taking the time to straighten us out. Your influnce on thread is deeply profound.

On behalf of all of us, thank you.

I'm still in the dark, though. At this point we all know what isn't right on my list in the OP. But if those list items are wrong, then what are the correct facts? For instance, Politesse has informed us that the universe is not 13.6 billion years old. How old is it then? But more to the point, what correct age of the cosmos is consistent with what religion has to say?

I'm entirely content with the discussions included in the Wikipedia links you provided.

I don't see what the question has to do with "religion" in the first place, at least not necessarily. If someone's particular formulation of religious beliefs compel them not to accept the scientific consensus, I'm willing to hear their argument if they have one but it's going to have to be damned convincing story to overturn that consensus, for anyone not similarly convicted.