This is a facinating little debate between Ray Comfort (creationist christian, the guy who was in all those bananas are the atheist worst nightmares videos) and Thunderf00t (Physical Evidence and Reasoned Logic supporter (Pearlist)) who is responsible for the wonderful Why do people laugh at creationists youtube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS5vid4GkEY&feature=PlayList&p=AC34813058...)
Comments
That was officially quite interesting... Esp in part one where Mr Foot talks about "unknowns". Been thinking around this area for little while. Namely, how much of science is in effect an article of faith for me? Here's what I mean:
Scientific knowledge - Evidence which proves hypothesis
Religious knowledge - A truth revealed
Now in order to have scientific knowledge do you need to understand the evidence? For example quantum mechanics... Conceptually I understand it pretty well, electrons, what they are, how they behave etc... all makes sense to me. Until you do the maths. Maths and I have a funny relationship, I am fine up to a point then my brain shuts down, waves a white flag and demands that I go and drink beer. So do I understand quantum mechanics, or am I just finding a theory that makes sense to me and deciding to believe in it?
As I've got older I've found one of the main things I like about scientific knowledge is it does what it says on the tin. You can use it to do all kinds of cool shit and at the end of it you are still left with plenty of mystry, coupled with uncertainty. Even if you do understand the maths. Its the certainty in many religions that bugs me more than anything else... Overly certain atheists get on my tits as well tbh, "Science explains everything! LOL pwned!" can suck my dick. Science doesn't even claim to explain everything. Does God exist? Doesn't matter a bollocks whilst there are a few million people wandering around behaving as though he does. Evolution doesn't give a shit what they believe in, it'll carry on just the same.
Ahhh, a good post for a Monday morning, part ramble, part rant where sense fucked off in the first sentance. :)
I see your rambling rant and raise you a rambling diatribe ;)
I'm very much of the opinion that the scientific method is mankinds greatest achievement a way of understanding the world through our broken flawed bodged together perceptions that lie to us all the time and grasp a sliver of the truth.
We are effectively no different to cavemen (we have nicer sticks with more shiny rocks on the end and more flavours of meat). Our advantage is knowledge 300 years of scientific study a massive body of work no one human lifetime could achieve yet available to us to use and build on improving our lives and allowing us to survive in vastly more numbers than our world could support if we were just simple hunter gatherers or even just farmers. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
I thought the most telling part of the discussion was Tfoot's opinion that the future is bright vs Ray comforts opposite opinion that the future is dark and declining.
A lot of religions seem to be biding time exercises you work in the required manned now and get life out the way so you can sit in some perfect world as a reward for following the rules of your particular cult. I know not all religions see it that way but the Christian varients certainly seem to. They give no stake in advancing society or knowledge I mean why bother it's all pointless merely waiting to be whisked up the stairway to heaven or plunged into hell for being naughty. Any achievement made is just something a capricious deity deigned to give us a toy to keep his pets occupied till they complete their function and then get warehoused.
While it's true that science doesn't understand everything it is our best bet to achieve that, we don't yet know how the universe started or why among many other mysteries but with each discovery with each little glimpse we peel back the onion of reality a bit more finding wonders and beauty everywhere.
It also required very little faith if any certain assumptions are made that this is a naturalistic universe since to assume otherwise is pointless if the answer is always "God dun it" it leads us nowhere. Beyond that everything has to stand on the merits of it's evidence it requires no faith if you can prove it then it is true if not it isn't. There is a certain amount of difficulty in being able to do the calculations or experiments to prove to yourself that this is the case and so we tend to rely on the prevailing scientific consensus (which is not always right but the very fact it can change puts it miles ahead of religious dogma) in theory you could go and prove or disprove any part of science if you had the time materials and will to do so. Where as the more religious nature of things by their very definition can never be proved or disproved they are articles of faith. Proof or disproof would invalidate them.
Science is self correcting constantly evolving (hehe) and always open to new directions, if they ever get the LHC working properly we stand to witness either a confirmation (boring) or disproof (exciting) of fundamental parts of our current understanding of particle physics.
Religion tends to steal away the achievements of mankind when everything you do is really just god pissing about nothing belongs to us no discovery is really that it's just god decided it was time for us to know about nuclear fusion for some purpose in his abstract unknowable game.
People like comfort see a darkening world a clock winding down to Armageddon when the whole game will be ended and the board swept clean the final score revealed, people like Tf00t see a bright future where science and technology enrich our lives and give us greater and greater understanding of the universe we live in revealing new wonders with each passing day. I know which long term view I prefer.
[fumbles inside jacket] Ok, calling the diatribe and putting in a bumbling muse. ;)
Just to be clear, I to rank the scientific method as one of the greatest achievements of man. And in F00t Vs Comfort I side with F00t. I think that science and religion are good at doing different things... As a method of explaining the natural world science is the clear winner, never the less I don't think this makes religious knowledge bad at everything. I'm going to try and explain further with a the example of Ki.
"Ki is the basic unit of the unit of the universe. It is the infinite gathering of infinitely small particles. Everything is ultimately composed of Ki. If you pursue this concept to the depth of human conciousness, you will understand the universal mind which governs all creation, loving and protecting all life... Everything originates from the Ki of the universe." Koichi Tohei
There, that's pretty religious. We don't really have a word for it in the west, however its thought to be bioelectricity for which the wiki definition is:
"Bioelectromagnetism (sometimes equated with bioelectricity) refers to the electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields produced by living cells, tissues or organisms. Examples include the cell membrane potential and the electric currents that flow in nerves and muscles, as a result of action potentials. It is not to be confused with bioelectromagnetics, which deals with the effect on life from external electromagnetism."
I'd argue that what you have here is 2 different ways of understanding the same thing, with both giving rise to some pretty valid applications. Ki is central to all internal martial arts (such as Tai Chi) which promote good health and the ability to kick ass. Bioelectromagnetism (apparently) has applications in biomedical engineering. I'd not want to lose either understanding and this is why I am reluctant to completely dismiss religious knowledge.
In the case of Christianity a literal interpretation is not something I agree with, however as a way of understanding the world I think its played its part in creating some pretty impressive things (Art for a start). I really don't see a problem with drawing from either or both traditions depending on circumstance.
I dodge your bumbling muse and counter it with an insightful tirade :D
Religion has it's place it has inspired people to produce some stunning art, architecture, wars, booze (those monks love their beer), and some music that's not so good but it takes all sorts. It's also had a sizeable cultural impact, partly down to it's use as a mechanism to keep the poor in line, but it also offers comfort to a lot of people who are afraid of death. But its ideas on the world in general should be kept as far away from areas of medicine and science at all costs.
Lots of things that are actually complete bollocks can have seemingly coherent explanations and appear to work when in fact they are worthless. Take Homoeopathy a crazy idea from the dark ages before the germ theory of medicine which reckons diluting stuff makes it stronger. It works because of the placebo effect which is very powerful and also the fact that the vast majority of illnesses clear up on their own and if you are taking something for an illness you credit what ever treatment you last used as the "cure".
Acupuncture is similar it has whole swathes of theory and learning about where you jab what using what shakra to fix things but proper studies have shown this is all bollocks you can jab randomly and get the same effects which are no better than a placebo. And as an aside Acupuncture is another area that claims Ki or Qi or Chi or Qhi is the basis of it's function.
An awful lot of these traditional medicines and practices are about because of a prescientific understanding of the world guess work theories made up because they seemed to work at the time. Studied properly in a way that means powerful and subtle effects like the placebo effect can't trick things these things fall on their arse.
So take Tai Chi for example it is much more an expression of physics than it is of mystic knowledge and mysterious energy flows. It's about levers and moments of force an innate understanding of how to use a attackers own strength against them which can be full explained by Physics. It keeps you healthy but then so does cycling but we don't claim this is because of mystical energy flows from the bell through the bike frame invigorating the body.
Most of the religious explanations the world and its workings don't stand up to testing and don't really add much to the pool of human knowledge.
Religion has some interesting ideas on morality social issues and food preparation, like any of these more social things the ideas are worth looking at since any idea on that sort of thing is as valid as any other more or less some of the more extreme things still fall outside. But as a way to gain understanding about the world and how it works it's a path to nowhere it always eventually gets to "God dun it" no mater what the question.
I'll block the tirade and slide into an illuminating expression. :)
I'd agree that religion shouldn't attempt to muscle in on science, but then I don't think it does in particular. People like Mr Comfort give it a vallient attempt but given that they are resorting to the base "God did it" science quite correctly tells him and people like him to bugger off and leave it alone. The 2 schools of thought remain clear and distinct, if they religious nuts managed to get Creationism taught in science lessons in schools I'd be far more concerned. In the case of medicine the picture becomes far more complex.
First off whilst religious knowledge is a significant offender when it come to medicine there are worse. Examples such as the MMR scandal implicate sloopy "research" and the media in presenting a confusing picture to the public regarding health issues. When it comes to your faith healers/homoeopathy/acupunture/whichcraft etc... I would question how much damage they actually do. The placebo effect (as you say) is very powerful but in order to get it going the subject needs something to believe in. That maybe a sugar pill, it maybe a needle in yer knee but as you say a vast majority on conditions clear themselves up and therefore if people feel better in the short term then I don't really see the issue. I'd argue that in the case of more serious issues most people who have access to western style medicine seek its assistance, even if they are engaged with one or more of the alternatives. If they don't? I feel the need to quote Bill Hicks "Its not like we're losing a cure for cancer here is it?"
I remember seeing an article on the science of martial artists breaking blocks of ice and such things. It made me chuckle as the conclusion was that they hit it *really* fucking hard. Looked at this way martial arts both internal and external are expressions of phsyics, however I reckon this only tells half the story. I'll stick with Tai Chi as an example given that we've started down that road in any case. In an earlier post I referred to the concept of chi as being "integral" to the art. Chi powers the strikes and enables the stealing of your opponants power. If you remove that concept then you're no longer doing Tai Chi but simply moving in a certain way and in so doing the art loses its effectiveness. I have never met a practioner of Tai Chi who understands what they are doing in terms of physics and I'd be surprised if such a practioner exists. I'd relate it to Newtonian mechanics, just because it doesn't work in all circumstances doesn't mean you discount it as a way of understanding when it does work. For me chi is similar, if I want to scrap I think of what I'm doing in terms of chi. If I'm away travelling and need jabs I go to the doctors.
Like I say I think there is value in both forms of knowledge and I don't see the need to sacrifice one for the sake of the other. They are both regularly abused and taken out of context and that is the thing I'd like to see change.
I anticipate your slide and move into a defiant exposition
The vaccine thing makes me hopping mad, people putting not only their own child at risk of getting hideous diseases (just because things like measles are seen as no big deal these days which is a stupid they are killers they are only no big deal with the vaccine in place protecting you people forget the horror of these disease) but also compromising the herd immunity putting the vulnerable at risk. We'd nearly wiped out these disease now we are having outbreaks of measles and the like again fully preventable yet people suffer.
Ah the "Where's the harm" gambit well let me lay that out for you. Often these practitioners of woo will state their mumbo jumbo is better and more effective than anything, for cases where they are treating a cold or back pain or general aches and such that is symptoms of life there's not a lot of harm but what about people that really need help or diseases that do need real medicine.
There was a rash of people a few years back that got malaria because rather than anti malaria drugs they took homoeopathic remedys. Malaria is not a nice disease people do die from it, just taking a bit of water is not an effective preventative. Even today some Homoeopaths will recommend their magic water to treat malaria despite their ruling body quite sensibly backing away as fast as possible from this.
There is also the question of exploiting desperate people, some people with severe or incurable diseases are told these alternative medicines will cure them. People even have been known to stop taking conventional treatments under recomendation from their alternative medicine people and just take their sham treatment. It can turn a probably preventable death into a certain one. Most treatments for things like cancer are not nice they have very nasty side effects understandably scared and vunerable people have been convinced they don't need to suffer and just take some magical potion and they will feel better. Often they do, for a while, then the disease gets worse and they come back to conventional treatment sadly sometimes when it's far too late.
Aids is another area that woo people attack, they convince people with HIV they don't need to take the quite nasty but these days very effective treatments that can keep people alive and healthy for quite a long time. They convince them not to take the treatments or even that they have been cured. People die young when modern medicine could have given them decades more and long term maybe a cure in their lifetimes.
Even in the cases of terminal illnesses where there is no hope of getting well where modern medicine can only try and give you some quality of life and hold back the disease for a time these sham treatments are dangerous. You might say "What's the harm they have nothing to lose why not try some crazy treatment" well these things are not usually cheap and you can't get the on insurance or NHS. People have drained their life saving and the gotten their families into huge debt to pay for some sham treatment that has no effect (these bogus stem cell clinics springing up in china an the like are a good example) people end up losing what time they have left and their grieving familys with huge debts to pay. It's one thing to try experimental treatments by real doctors where there is a slim chance for extra life another to go to these con artists who have some bullshit eastern mysticism and some caffeine pills and will claim it's a miracle cure then drain the poor bastards dry.
There is a lot of harm in these things it's exploiting people extracting money from the vunerable and playing on peoples fears it conditions people towards magical thinking making them reject proven scientific medicine in favour of the dodgy quack treatments.
But is Chi power more a concept a mental construct to allow you to use the laws of physics to your advantage. There are plenty of things like this that are not real yet serve as useful ways of allowing people to grasp things that other wise are hard to get at instinctively. Physics and Math are not something we are naturally good at we can do them all on paper but often it's hard to get someone to understand them in the real world and separate our intuitive (often times wrong) understanding from hard precise rule of things in motion. Its worth remembering that these martial arts come from a very primative time with little or no understanding of science, much of their explanations are improvised based on what people feel. Someone with an intuitive understanding of their balance and various forces and moments allowing them to redirect force might think this was magic. One person using the weight and momentum of another against them is a very tough thing to understand for a person. Adding this mystical wrapper that it is Chi working the magic probably makes it easier to grasp.
If you were to break all of the moves down on paper analyse the various forces at work over the course of time I suspect it would be completely understandable in terms of the various laws of dynamics.
I'll take the defiance to the body, roll around the exposition and retort with a mindful engagement.
I've looked at the MMR thing in quite a bit of detail and became extremely irritated within the first 3 minutes. From there I just got more and more bugged. It was for the most part a media invention and that aspect was hellish, not to mention watching people go to the homeopathy place and swallowing up a whole heap of shit. As you may have guessed by this point I am not about to mount a sterling defence of homeopathy, given that I view it as a worthless practice at best. That said there are a few things I want to raise around some of the more social concerns.
I accept that in cases of serious illness the damage can be significant, the Bill Hicks quote was rather trite on reflection. We live in a liberal society which places a strong emphasis on freedom for the individual, essentially we allow people to choose not to seek out conventional treatment if they don't want to, but they have to live with the consequences of that decision. The state does have a duty of care towards its citizens even in this context. So have we got the balance right in the case of homeopathy? I'd suggest not given the nature of the claims some of its practioners make, how on earth you'd successfully regulate the expensive water industry I don't know (maybe a system whereby in order to consult a practioner you have to have consulted a proper doctor first: clunky but you get me drift).
I'd have no problem with thinking of Chi as a mental construct to enable the body and mind to do some fairly impressive things. My point is that if you take away that construct then you lose the art. Not all of these martial arts pre-date scientific thinking, numerous internal arts have been founded in the 20th century and their development continues. Chi is at the core of each an every one of them. It may well be that these arts can be expressed in terms of physics etc... but I maintain that they can't be practiced in that way.
This is the thing about knowledge, its what you do with it that counts. Nuclear power? Very cool. Nuclear bomb? Very uncool. Chi as used in Tai Chi? Cool. Used to treat colon cancer? Uncool. Again I think the context is all important and that both science and religion have a contribution to make to the world in general, but both can be harmful if used in the wrong way.
The mindful retort catches me unaware and I retaliate with a vengeful reprisal
One of the other things that really bothers me about homeopathy is the fact that they get a cut of my paycheck every month because thanks to the royals homeopath is part of the NHS and gets funded by tax payers despite being bollocks.
Yes theres one thing for freedom to choose (though the alternative people often use this as a way to wedge their crap in with scientific medicine for funding on the NHS) but if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt not to have any useful effect when treating someone for diseases then it shouldn't be offered for them public health and public protection should trump the freedom of snake oil people to get rich.
If chi is just a mental construct then surely it is interchangable you could teach the same sort of thing but substitute any other mechanism even physics related words and it should achive the same results. I suspect the prevalence of Chi is more that people expect it from martial arts more pr thing than a necessity which would be why it still pops up in modern martial arts because people expect it to be there.
Religion in general wants blind devotion faith without proof the degree of strictness to complying with these concepts varies from religion to religion but still at the core there are some things that are required to take on faith and never question. Science is all about questioning and testing gaining proof always keeping an open mind replacing each broken model with a new one as they come along. They are basically incompatible ideas. Plenty of people live lives with both of these things but they have to compartmentalise to some degree. I know not everyone believes that science and religion are incompatible but I think at the core they are and it's better to be honest about this than pretend that you can have both.
People often get ethics morality and social questions as irrevocably tied to religion because in general these things can't really be seen as part of science (which in general is right science makes no stand on morality) but that doesn't mean they are then exclusively religious. You can have these things without religion secular humanism is a good example of that, and it looks quite like things like morality come about as a result of evolution anyway because having things like compassion empathy sacrifice while not good for the individual are advantageous in the terms of a society and a species that forms society's are more survivable than a species of individuals.
The religious taint that covers the concepts of social issues and morality only serves to confuse the issue.
The reprisal hammers down my block so I roll away, back onto my feet and advance into a bumbling muse...
I think you under estimate both the capacity religion has for change and the ability of people to have faith that isn't blind. There's this new religion in South America, after the Catholics buggered off their dogma got mixed up with the local beliefs. Now there's a religion where one of their rituals is to dance around a chicken before going to pray to a big blue statue of Jesus. That is fucking fantastic as far as I'm concerned. There's a whole bunch of liberal Christians out there who have faith in the Bible and believe that we can still learn from it. At the same time they don't take things like the creation literally, preferring to think of it as an explanation that worked at the time it was written. There is a whole spectrum of belief and it doesn't all involve charging headlong into "God did everything!"
Faith and religion serve a valuable purpose in society, it can give people a sense of meaning in their lives and incite people to acts of kindness and charity. There is a church who go out on Broad St regularly and just stand about with their big old wooden cross, hardly the most intrusive thing. In the evenings they can often be found going around the sandwich shops collecting up their soon to be chucked out sarnies and then head off around the town and give 'em to the homeless. They do this because they believe in the Bible, which tells them to go out there and help others, to "Love thy neighbour". I'm quite willing to accept that this kind of thing happens as a consequence of secular moralities and ethics, but I think this approach is quite inaccessable to many people. Science is often misunderstood, there are people who just don't get it.
I've engaged with a number of religous groups on the subject of creation Vs evolution. One of the comments put to me about evolution was "How on earth does a crocodile get womb and another one gets a penis and then they have mammels?!?!? I don't get it." I put forward how evolution actually works as opposed to their frankly crazy interpretation. I've done this a few times to a few groups. In these cases I think you are looking at a situation where even if these people were to reject their religious beliefs they would simply be replacing them with a "belief" in science. They use their religion to give their lives structure and meaning and most religous people manage to do it without causing harm to others or themselves.
Faith serves a function in society and I think it serves a function in scientific thinking as well. My pretty secular and scientific understanding relies heavily on faith, just that my faith is (for the most part) in the scientific method and the community that exploits it to such good effect.
When you start trying to unbundle religion and religious knowledge from society then you get onto shakey ground extremely quickly, like it or not there are hundreds of millions of people who live their lives by that code. If we want to live in a democratic society then their voices deserve to be heard, we might not agree, we might not like it but then its up to us to give them alternatives and don't think that will be achieved by going "you're wrong" all the time. To me it just makes sense that we should seek common ground build from there. Religious thinking has ordered society for thousands of years, indeed scientific thinking grew out of this tradition. I'd not want to lose the contribution that religion makes, not yet and not for the sake of science. I don't think it offers enough in return.
moving fast on my feet I twist out of reach and let loose a scorching harangue
True I suppose the time is running out for the Christian religions historically we must be approaching the next big shift and much like the Roman gods before it some other story will replace them. Maybe Scientology or Voodoo is next to lead the pack. Actually I'm not sure that's what your saying but it is interesting to think about the sort of arguments they must have had back when Zeus/Jupiter was top dog, did he believe in inteligent design I wonder :D
But my point was more that science and religion are incompatible concepts they cant' coexist without some weird internal justifications. Plenty of people do use both humans have no real problem separating themselves like that. That's just the way I see it science by definition precludes god as the answer to any question so how can you say "Ah yes but even tho the universe looks completely naturalistic and I agree with evolution the big bang, gravity etc yet a magic man outside of the universe is really in charge"
With the ethics and morals I wasn't suggesting science replace them here I did point out their derivation as evolutionary concepts but ethics and morals is not something science takes a stand on particularity. I was more saying the concept of being nice to people is not one that requires a god to work. Plenty of secular organisations look after people with no requirement of a all powerful sky man. And sometimes adding religion to the mix complicates things like the whole adoption issue where a load of catholic run adoption outfits were going to shut down because they didn't want to let gay people adopt kids because of some line in the bible that they have interpreted as hate gay people. Which only got resolved by the sort of out of hand special treatment with Tony Blair giving them special dispensation, which should never happen. No special treatment no one is above the law. Indeed a lot of the things it says in the bible you can't do because of current secular morals, stoning of children for instance, murdering adulterers, burning old women at the stake the list goes on.
people want community and a sense of belonging even to the extent that a fair percentage of people who do go to church don't actually believe the stuff but don't realise you can have community and civic giving without any need for Jebus.
I'm not saying that science should just replace religion for all things what I am saying is that for most of those social things (that science doesn't do) you don't need religion there are plenty of ways to get the same thing with no need to worship fictional deities. And if you can have the social stuff the community the morals the ethics without religion with say secular humanism and science takes care of the other questions about the mechanics of the world what is relgion bringing to the table.
Science coming out of religion is an interesting thing, most of our current knowledge was passed down from Islamic scholars a lot of our maths and science originated there. Indeed even the greek/roman era knowledge which was almost destroyed in the dark ages by the Christians we only have it today due to an Islamic library that kept hold of it. But after that the more extreme religious elements rose up and they went from light of the world to a intellectual dead end. Luckilly we had kicked the pope in the teeth a few times by this point and the age of enlightenment began touching off the industrial revolution modern science space flight tv microwave dinner etc.
Religion has tried quite a few times to wipe out science and it is worth remembering it has succeeded at least twice so far with science getting back up off the mat before the ten count in Europe but is still down seeing birdies in some of the islamic world. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, has been said about democracy but it's also true about science. While a fair number of the current churches say they're down with the scientific method it's something that we can never really trust them on or we'll be looking at another dark ages.