Does science and rationalism always lead to scepticism?

[charlou]

God is just another name for magic, to me its just so unsatisfying to say if I don't understand something to call it magic. Even if magic existed I would want to study it, test it no just give up and say too hard for humans. Its a cop out

Not to be tedious...

Arthur C. Clarke - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

Trying even harder not to be even tediouser, that statement says nothing. It's a self-evident, ( or whatever the word is ).
If it's distinguishable, then it's not sufficiently advanced. It can't be wrong, but it says fuck-all.

In any case, things might be indistinguishable to some people, but not to others. Does he mean indistinguishable to ANY human mind?

With most technology these days, very few people actually understand what's happening. But we don't regard it as magic. So long as SOMEONE gets it, we take their word for it.

If aliens arrived with mysterious technology, it's not likely we'd regard it as magic.
Although some would.

I wonder if there were skeptics on the fringes of cargo cults ...

[rasetsu]

I would say that science has pretty clearly demonstrated that material reality is a meaningless, purposeless, amoral mechanism. Meaning, purpose, morality, and agency are all immaterial creations of a brain which occur as part of the mechanism. Those things don't exist in material reality, but only in our conscious experience.

I would disagree with you on the fact that, as self-aware and emotive beings, we do not exist in a strictly 'material reality'. If someone punches me I may experience the rush of adrenaline which presages a fight or flight response, but as a self-aware being I have the choice to make whether to fight, flee, or do something else entirely. In other words, human beings (at least) are not deterministic automatons whose output is dependent on nothing but the input. We are not cogs in the great machine of the universe. We have this ugly little thing called freewill which makes us something philosophers like to call 'free agents'. Now I'm sure this is all very upsetting to the strictly 'sciency types' here, and I read some books (notably by Mark Hauser) which espouse the idea that our responses to certain stimulae are indeed predetermined and beyond our control, however, even if one was to accept these sorts of hypotheses, it does not preclude free agency in all things (or even most things). What I'm driving at here is we impose, yes impose, immaterial structures of our own device on a 'material reality', but they are, nonetheless, real. What some people call 'morality' is a set of personal mores shared and agreed upon by those people. These same people often go on to form a culture and eventually a society which has laws based on these mores, where individual people are (usually) not assigned a purpose, but society as a whole gains one in its inception - an emergent property if you like - and individuals are free to choose their role within this self-purposed, and moral, artificial (yes artificial) construct, and find meaning and purpose in their reality. So the questions of 'who' and 'why' are not "gigantic blind assertions" as they relate to this artificial, imposed, yet nevertheless real, construct or as they relate to any other artificial, imposed, yet nevertheless real, construct.

[Jason]

Hey! I've got balls.

[hiyymer]

I would say that science has pretty clearly demonstrated that material reality is a meaningless, purposeless, amoral mechanism. Meaning, purpose, morality, and agency are all immaterial creations of a brain which occur as part of the mechanism. Those things don't exist in material reality, but only in our conscious experience.

I would disagree with you on the fact that, as self-aware and emotive beings, we do not exist in a strictly 'material reality'. If someone punches me I may experience the rush of adrenaline which presages a fight or flight response, but as a self-aware being I have the choice to make whether to fight, flee, or do something else entirely. In other words, human beings (at least) are not deterministic automatons whose output is dependent on nothing but the input. We are not cogs in the great machine of the universe. We have this ugly little thing called freewill which makes us something philosophers like to call 'free agents'. Now I'm sure this is all very upsetting to the strictly 'sciency types' here, and I read some books (notably by Mark Hauser) which espouse the idea that our responses to certain stimulae are indeed predetermined and beyond our control, however, even if one was to accept these sorts of hypotheses, it does not preclude free agency in all things (or even most things). What I'm driving at here is we impose, yes impose, immaterial structures of our own device on a 'material reality', but they are, nonetheless, real. What some people call 'morality' is a set of personal mores shared and agreed upon by those people. These same people often go on to form a culture and eventually a society which has laws based on these mores, where individual people are (usually) not assigned a purpose, but society as a whole gains one in its inception - an emergent property if you like - and individuals are free to choose their role within this self-purposed, and moral, artificial (yes artificial) construct, and find meaning and purpose in their reality. So the questions of 'who' and 'why' are not "gigantic blind assertions" as they relate to this artificial, imposed, yet nevertheless real, construct or as they relate to any other artificial, imposed, yet nevertheless real, construct.

Exactly. We live in an immaterial reality; the one our brain creates. Free will is an experience created by a brain. Choice is an experience created by a brain. The actual choosing is done by the mechanism. The "I thinking", "I choosing", "I deciding" are patterns of neurons firing; traits of the biological mechanism which have evolved over the eons. There is no material "I" to even make the choice. Consciousness is the mechanism within the mechanism. It's not that the experience of the agent chooser is irrelevant. It is part of the causal web. The brain doesn't create our world as an unintended consequence. It's just that the I is not the SOURCE that we experience it as being. The immaterial structure on a material reality is there, but it is not an idea or a thought created by an "I". It is an experience created by a brain.