• A look at Earth, the universe, dark matter, science/religion, & life in general
    31 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z69oon8o-e4 The video's title was very click-baity so I didn't know how else to title the thread, a very good video to watch regardless.
Science/Religion? As though it's either one or the other? There are some people who believe in both though, even though Religion is objectively bad for the Human race.
I think you've summoned him, he should be here any moment now
I used a slash because there's a point in the video where they're talking about both. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
religion is as much of a tool as science is, it all depends on how it is used. many religions, including most Judeochristian religions (which is nearly always the only religions anyone is referring to when they are referring to religion on this forum), are used primarily as vectors of control over people, but they are not the only religions. to say that a concept which has been pivitol in our growth as a species is "obiectively bad" is extremely narrow-minded and not fully thought through.
While I'm not going to go as far to say Religion is absolute or objectively bad, I do think that Science as a tool that discovers truth is a much more praiseworthy tool than Religion as a tool of dogma.
The reason I don't like it is because almost all conflicts throughout history have stemmed from religious beliefs, I know that even if it didn't exist, Humans would fine some way to still fuck each other over and do stupid shit, like Pride being one of those other things, but I just don't like how much shit has stemmed Religion.
The key word here is "dogma." There are many religious people who are not dogmatic with their religious beliefs and consider science to be a tool through which they can learn more about the universe they believe their chosen deity/s had a hand in creating. If need be, they also allow for their religion to evolve over time instead of having to chose between dogma and science. That's why, for example, you have Christians who don't take the bible literally and accept the scientific consensus about the origin of the species.
I don't mind people like that, who can accept science and the facts and come with it, if someone believes in a God or multiple Gods, asking the question, "But where did that Comet that wiped out the Dinosaurs come from?" as some way of believing a God did that, I'm not really going to be one to talk any shit, since nobody knows the truth of the existence of basically fucking anything, it's just the shit heads that disagree with someone else's beliefs then start some shit over it.
i'm going to disagree hard with your assessment that almost all conflict throughout human history stems from religion. i'm actually hard pressed to think of many conflicts that are purely religiously motivated and not just exploiting religion to advance political goals. most conflicts in our history come from struggles over power. post-collapse of the roman empire, conflict over religion became much more prominent in europe, but even that had muddlings of political backrooming and motivations.
Religion is inherently dogmatic by it's nature. If it was not, the only alternative is truth through experimentation and observation (as apposed to truth through divine, metaphysical, or supernatural source/attribution). I'm not saying that one can't use both systems (since there are great people of science who would prove this wrong) (and furthermore I don't think it's 100% possible, Humans are fundamentally predisposed to dogmatic and superstitious belief), but science gives you the tools to understand the universe as it is, so if you confide in that process, why stop arbitrarily with your religious beliefs, apply it to all fragments of your experience and knowledge; you'll come out with a better model of reality. That simple process is why I'm an atheist. The scientific method gives structure for what can be reasonably believed, and what needs to be proven before it can be accepted as true; I don't believe in all 10,000* religions of the world, but what separates me from the person who doesn't believe the other 9,999* religions of the world, is that I don't arbitrarily draw a line in the sand, just as I don't believe in the literal teapot orbiting the sun, because there hasn't been any substantiating proof, I don't hold belief in any of the world's religions. *There are probably uncountable religions people have believed in, this number is merely for example sake.
People always bicker over something. (Usually money) Religion is just a convenient excuse to justify that action.
This more than anything. If anyone wants to see religion being used for political gain and manipulation then check out the Borgia TV series, it should be on Netflix.
Religion itself isn't inherently bad, but people like to use it to manipulate and control people. Same goes for just about everything.
The problem is you're once again enforcing a dichotomy. "Either you believe in things that can't be proven scientifically, or you trust the scientific method alone." Many religious people would disagree that you must make a choice between the two. They can go hand in hand - science explains how we got here, and religion explains what our purpose is. Yes, there's people who believe you can have a good fulfilling life even while you accept that the universe is cold and meaningless - but there are others who refuse that line of thinking and chose to believe there is more to life than atoms and stardust.. You can't objectively prove either viewpoint is true, because the very act of believing in a god or religion is an act of faith in things that are unseen and can not be scientifically measured. Now, as we know, there are many cases where science can say that the old book you believe in doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But again, you don't have to take your chosen scriptures literally to find value in its words. And while you can say scientifically that man was not created in a literal six days alongside every other species, you can't really prove experimentally that there isn't a god. And if people find value in believing there is someone beyond time and space who had a hand in the creation of the universe, and wants them to do good to their fellow humans beings and the rest of his creations, then more power to them as far as I'm concerned. It only becomes a problem when people instead use these beliefs to justify evil - which again is not an inherent danger of religion like some people think it is.
Ironically enough that belief of yours is not much different than theirs as God hasn't been without a doubt disproven yet.
In what way has he been "disproven" enough? Ultimately the thing about a deity that exists outside of of space and time is that it can't be measured or observed. And a lot of things you've listed for religion also exist in pretty much every other area as well. People pick and choose facts to suit their needs for just about everything. Part of it just the nature of humans. Religion as dogma, is cultural. The reason it's less prevalent now is because everything nowadays pushes atheism, and due to the information age, it gets pushed to different cultures in farther away lands. For example poorer countries still retain a lot of their religion, while countries with easy access to the internet do not. It's not really because it's flat out wrong, it's peer pressure Either way, I can agree with most of what you said, but my previous point was not being open to there being a God is the same closed-mindedness a lot of religious people have as well, not that religion as a whole, isn't as prevalent.
Video concludes with a dude saying only Christians can put together the puzzle. What a waste of time.
The amount of beings potentially existing beyond the reach of scientific testing is limited only by the imagination, and all are equally plausible. Believing in any particular one, especially in a universe that functions just fine without them, is pointless, arbitrary, and wishful thinking. As for morality, whether people want to accept it or not, all morality either comes from one's self, or from following the self-derived views of others. This applies to any moral beliefs based on any "higher power." When you accept that, you can more freely examine your own biases.
That's not even remotely true. Religion is the reason for less than 7% of wars and the world's worst dictators were usually atheist (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, even Hitler was fairly anti-religion) Religion didn't cause the mongol conquests, the wars of the three kingdoms, the two world wars, the napoleonic wars, the korean and vietnam wars, the american revolution and so forth and so forth. It would be overwhelmingly easier to list the wars caused by religion rather than the ones not caused by it. And I don't recall religion making the atomic bomb, pumping the atmosphere full of pollution, or deforesting the amazon, I don't remember the bible saying "thou shalt not kill, unless your king or government tells you to" religion is a tool of society, its used for good and evil.
Many of the exact questions asked by people like Plato/Socrates/Aristotle apply equally today. All our scientific advancement hasn't given even an inkling of an answer, and has often made the questions more profound, not less (like the first mover or the moral life). To just say that we've continually been able to answer the deep questions of human existance simply isn't true.
Give four examples of such questions asked by the ancient philosophers that we dont have some kind of answer to today. You not being able to understand or finding the answer stupid on emotional level excluded.
I already gave two. Why not respond to those? One is the concept of the problem of infinite regression of causes. Something has to be the first cause, or "mover." The second is the question of how to live a good and moral life.
That is not how logic (the tool) works.
I've already gone over why the first cause argument is nonsense multiple times. As for the latter, it can be answered perfectly fine without science or religion.
To the first one, that there might be some need for a first cause does not necessitate said first cause being any sort of deity, or even a conscious entity - and even then the need for a first cause and the impossibility of infinite regression is a concept we have derived from our very limited experience of how reality functions as we see it in this small slice of our universe, so to presume universality is quite a stretch when one speaks of some theoretical thing outside the universe which has caused it to come into being. To the second one, the answers to that are subjective, as is even the question itself - what is "good" and what is "moral" as concepts are not static things, so there will never be a clear cut final answer. To presume ethical questions to be ever conclusively answered by empirical understanding is naive at best, so I can't disagree with you there.
I worship the big bang as god, and black holes as spawns of satans, fight me
Hey, more realistic than any other religion, where do I sign up?
I'm not the one forcing a dichotomy of things either being natural or not, that's the nature of the universe. Either you posit that everything is natural and can thus be measured and examined, or things exist beyond nature and are therefore cannot be examined and measured. It's like being pregnant, you're never "a sort of" pregnant, either you are or you aren't. I admit that "supernatural" things may exist, but we haven't been able to observe them, and even if we could, they'd by definition be unmeasurable - meaning its effects can't be measured (and therefore don't impact the natural world we inhabit). Furthermore, why do we have to have purpose, a rock doesn't have to have purpose (or does it), so why are humans special. Maybe the universe is just an uncaring void filled with matter that follows certain rules (that we can deduce), and we're a product of that. If people want to believe we have purpose, power to them, but just because you want something doesn't make it true. One viewpoint (the universe exists (ostensibly), we're products of stardust (we've got a good idea how stars form, and how heavy elements form, etc) is verifiable and scientifically rigorous; the other (that... some specific god from some specific book, from some specific time period, did something or other) has no way to be tested and proven as true or false. There are mostly wrong things in the Bible from a fact perspective, that doesn't really interest me since it's a product of its time. And yes there may well be stories from it that people find valuable - but if we agree that the bible isn't inherently "correct" or "divine" and merely a book of stories from an ancient time period; why use it? There are contemporary books that have the same value, and without all the baggage the Bible has. Anyway, the issue with "disproving" god is that you can't really prove such a negative, nor is it science's job to do so - claims need to be substantiated before they're given credence. Give evidence of god (your specific god, and evidence that substantiates explicitly what is being claimed) and you'll solve religious conflict world-round. I think any dogmatic thinking (I.E, things are so because divine reasoning) is inherently harmful to human progress, if a religious person is going to yield at every conflict to reality/science, then that's not really a problem at all, the issue is since they're already drawing that aforementioned line in where they've decided to critically/scientifically analyse their beliefs, what's to stop them from putting up those walls for some specific subset (I.E, gay marriage being "wrong" to many Christians). I think we're better off using the golden rule, and the principles of Secular humanism to develop our moral and legal frameworks in society, as opposed to religious texts. The "FSM" is a poke at ideas of the earlier debate we've been having, since you can't "prove" their god to be wrong, just as I can't "prove" your god to be wrong. Just for context. A person can do good and be wrong, just like a person can do bad and be right (and how we morally define those terms is its own complicated topic). This even gets very involved in morals and ethics, we can even bring the opinions of Noam Chomsky in if we'd like. Is the US justified in doing "good" in Iraq, but undoubtedly killing thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) in doing so? That's the issue with "Good" vs "True" really, Truth can be more or less drilled down and examined and discovered, and just about objectively pinned down (Though how abstract "truth" is from say, the speed of light, can be muddy without a really long in-depth explanation of how we can get from one to the other). Good on the other hand, well... I'm sure you've heard the saying before: "Nobody is a villain in their own story".
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