Tolerate the Christian right ... WHY ?

[Schneibster]

Or that fertilized human ova are "people," who should be protected by law from "murder."

[JimC]

Then, of course, we have the christian left...

Liberation theology, and all the rest...

Give me a tired old C of E minister, full of compromise and vague kindness anyday of the week...

[apophenia]

If science says then it must be so. magic sky daddy. Science accounts for everything. no longer a matter of conjecture ... long disproven.

Science works. Radio. X-ray diagnosis of bad teeth and broken bones. Airplanes. Refrigerators. Cell phones.

Just that simple. It's not hard, it's not a philosophical position, it's not bullshit. It's as plain as the nose on your face, you can't get around it. It plain flat works. You can test what it says.

Actually, it is so a philosophical position -- science rests on philosophy --- not a lean, not a foot-on-the-floor bedroom scene from the days of olde, but a full body laying upon. I suspect you've been smoking too much scientism.

I don't intend to defend this "wittywoman" who can't spell "atheist" correctly to save her ever loving ass, but there is just as much wrong in distorting things in the other direction. (And why doesn't at least a miniscule portion of wit depend upon being able to spell words correctly, or at minimum, acquire some software to aid her. "wittywoman" indeed.)

[Schneibster]

If science says then it must be so. magic sky daddy. Science accounts for everything. no longer a matter of conjecture ... long disproven.

Science works. Radio. X-ray diagnosis of bad teeth and broken bones. Airplanes. Refrigerators. Cell phones.

Just that simple. It's not hard, it's not a philosophical position, it's not bullshit. It's as plain as the nose on your face, you can't get around it. It plain flat works. You can test what it says.

Actually, it is so a philosophical position -- science rests on philosophy --- not a lean, not a foot-on-the-floor bedroom scene from the days of olde, but a full body laying upon. I suspect you've been smoking too much scientism.

Please link to an article on the philosophy of X-rays.

ETA: Meanwhile, let me direct your attention to the Sokal affair.

[Pensioner]

I love this video.

[Svartalf]

After all, not so long ago a prominent scientist did say science no longer has any mystery to uncover. Oooops, that was before they discovered ...... rather a lot actually.

First of all, which prominent scientist?

That would have been the famous scientist, Phileas Fogg, a fictional character invented by Jules Verne for his 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. At least according to Walt Disney's 2004 film adaptation, which attributed this to him: "Everything worth discovering has been discovered." The novel itself contains no such quote, so witty is quite correct that it has been said not so long ago.

Whuddh? Uncle Jules' novels have featured a number of "famous" (in the Verneverse) scientists and more importantly engineers (Pr Arronax in 20 000 leagues under the seas, and the characters of Voyage to the center of the Earth, incluting the late Dr Saknussem being the foremost scientists), but Fogg never was one of those, he's just a gentleman from Savile Row.

[Robert_S]

Who was it said "Of course science doesn't know everything. If it did, it would just stop."

[Audley Strange]

In terms of delusional beliefs my main concern would be that people who believe the world is in its final days would be in charge of nuclear weapons and would be yelling 'bring it on' whenever international tensions heat up a bit!

Quite. They are a Death Cult and while they might not be actively supported the by majority, it wouldn't be the first time in history a bunch of lunatics stole a democracy from a jaded public who's economy was shaky , whose politicians were deeply ineffectual and corrupt and left a large part of their populace both distrustful and disenfranchised and felt their country on a moral and cultural decline.

The Left Wing of the Church and the Traditional Right wing of the church are attempting to do the thing that people always criticise Muslims for not doing in that they are ostracising the Reconstructionists. However Yaweh's psychos have a massive amount of political and financial influence and being Antinomian they are quite happy to breach any legal, moral or divine because they believe they are doing the work of the Mystical Space Chimp. This is heresy to even many of the Sola Scriptura mob. I've even heard them been described as "Radical evil" by some bishop (who's name escapes me for the moment.)

So, I'd say that if even some of those whackjobs are concerned about this movement, the rest of us should have the wits not to dismiss them outright.

[apophenia]

If science says then it must be so. magic sky daddy. Science accounts for everything. no longer a matter of conjecture ... long disproven.

Science works. Radio. X-ray diagnosis of bad teeth and broken bones. Airplanes. Refrigerators. Cell phones.

Just that simple. It's not hard, it's not a philosophical position, it's not bullshit. It's as plain as the nose on your face, you can't get around it. It plain flat works. You can test what it says.

Actually, it is so a philosophical position -- science rests on philosophy --- not a lean, not a foot-on-the-floor bedroom scene from the days of olde, but a full body laying upon. I suspect you've been smoking too much scientism.

Please link to an article on the philosophy of X-rays.

ETA: Meanwhile, let me direct your attention to the Sokal affair.

Please. If you think the Sokal affair is even relevant to a contemporary discussion of the philosophy of science, I think I'll sit this one out.

However, since you appear to be feeling your oats, explain the following.

1. The meaning of probability - an essential concept in modern physics (and if you quote a frequentist interpretation, I'll just laugh; and since the Copenhagen interpretation of QED rules out a propensitarian interpretation (something to do with Bell's Inequalities and real space, or so I'm told), that leaves you with, what?).

I'll give you a head start with this entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Interpretations of Probability:

‘Interpreting probability’ is a commonly used but misleading name for a worthy enterprise. The so-called ‘interpretations of probability’ would be better called ‘analyses of various concepts of probability’, and ‘interpreting probability’ is the task of providing such analyses. Or perhaps better still, if our goal is to transform inexact concepts of probability familiar to ordinary folk into exact ones suitable for philosophical and scientific theorizing, then the task may be one of ‘explication’ in the sense of Carnap (1950). Normally, we speak of interpreting a formal system, that is, attaching familiar meanings to the primitive terms in its axioms and theorems, usually with an eye to turning them into true statements about some subject of interest. However, there is no single formal system that is ‘probability’, but rather a host of such systems. To be sure, Kolmogorov's axiomatization, which we will present shortly, has achieved the status of orthodoxy, and it is typically what philosophers have in mind when they think of ‘probability theory’. Nevertheless, several of the leading ‘interpretations of probability’ fail to satisfy all of Kolmogorov's axioms, yet they have not lost their title for that. Moreover, various other quantities that have nothing to do with probability do satisfy Kolmogorov's axioms, and thus are interpretations of it in a strict sense: normalized mass, length, area, volume, and indeed anything that falls under the scope of measure theory, the abstract mathematical theory that generalizes such quantities. Nobody seriously considers these to be ‘interpretations of probability’, however, because they do not play the right role in our conceptual apparatus. Instead, we will be concerned here with various probability-like concepts that purportedly do. Be all that as it may, we will follow common usage and drop the cringing scare quotes in our survey of what philosophers have taken to be the chief interpretations of probability.

Whatever we call it, the project of finding such interpretations is an important one. Probability is virtually ubiquitous. It plays a role in almost all the sciences. It underpins much of the social sciences — witness, for example, the prevalence of the use of statistical testing, confidence intervals, regression methods, and so on. It finds its way, moreover, into much of philosophy. In epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, we see states of opinion being modeled by subjective probability functions, and learning being modeled by the updating of such functions....It figures prominently in such staples of metaphysics as causation and laws of nature. It appears again in the philosophy of science in the analysis of confirmation of theories, scientific explanation, and in the philosophy of specific scientific theories, such as quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and genetics. It can even take center stage in the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of religion. Thus, problems in the foundations of probability bear at least indirectly, and sometimes directly, upon central scientific, social scientific, and philosophical concerns. The interpretation of probability is one of the most important such foundational problems.

2. The scientific proof that inductive inference can be closed by a sufficient number of observations (also known as answering Humean skepticism of inductive inference).

3. If falsifiability can only tell us what theories are false, how do we know what theories are true?

4. The standard logical form modus ponens is frequently appealed to in the form "if hypothesis H, then observations X, Y, Z" -- upon making observations X, Y, and Z, the scientist concludes that hypothesis H is true. Yet this is a logical fallacy, known as affirming the consequent: if A then B, finding that B does not imply anything about A -- as there are a multi-fold number of possibles that are consistent with B. So if this inference from observables is not valid via modus ponens, what logical tautology does the link between observation and theory depend upon?

5. How do we determine deductively that for any pair of phenomena A and B, A causes B -- or if it cannot be deductively demonstrated, how do we determine with absolute certainty that A causes B (and how certain is absolutely certain -- or, if we can't be absolutely certain, how do we arrive at a sufficiently probable conclusion -- there's that probability again -- to conclude that the hypothesis that A causes B is "likely" true). (Feel free to define "likely" for us.)

6. Explain how scientists transcend Epistemological holism to arrive at definite conclusions about specific theoretical statements, to separate theory from observation so the one doesn't taint the other, and how they can claim truth in an infinite chess game in which an infinite number of moves can preserve a false theory?

Anyway. I look forward to your reply. Though more gratuitous references to things like the Sokal Affair as if they were meaningful responses to the question of the dependency of science on philosophy will only make me cross. Oh, and did I forget to mention -- you can't use math or logic in science, because those aren't science, and, are essentially the province of philosophy. (Do I hear Godel rolling over in his grave? I think I do.) Good luck figuring out your eigenstates without them.

[HomerJay]

good stuff

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There's a good sized contingent of Dominionists in the US military. I could dig up articles if anyone's google-fu is weak.

This thread makes me think of the Heinlein book Revolt in 2100, which appears in his Future History as If This Goes On.... He also foreshadows it in Stranger In A Strange Land, much more intelligibly in the long version published after his death. Much of the most interesting material simply could not be published in a book in the US at the time of the original release. He thought the Dominionists were just as insane as we do today. And they were. And they hadn't even managed to insert penetration agents in the military.

Um, Stranger was trimmed to keep the cost of the hardback under $10, a princely sum at the time. Which parts of it do you think were the "more intelligibly" bits. I found the uncut version to be only slightly more interesting that the original. I first read it in 1964, IIRC.

[Ronja]

I'm starting to get worried (low level, but no joke). We will need to implement a modern Underground Railroad to get our 'merkan FRAs into Canada, if one of those !@#$%& ?+§£{!!s starts to look like they are getting elected.

My wife and I actually shook hands and promised to leave the country if Sarah Palin were ever elected President by a majority or voters. The same would apply to Bachmann and, as far as I can tell, perhaps Perry.

Make sure your whole family has valid passports at all times - though I hope this story is exaggeration (please tell me that renouncing one's US citizenship does not cost $450 ):

8 Signs that the US Government is Making it Harder For You to Become an Expat

1. Escalating Cost of Passports
2. Proposed Biographical Questionnaire (already used sometimes, the author claims)
3. Air Travel Difficulties
4. Airport Security (and "behavioral signs" of stress, fear, irritation etc. are used to "pin-point" suspicious people, she claims)
5. World wide of invasion of privacy
6. Taxation of foreign income
7. Financial reporting requirements (not all overseas banks will accept US citizens as customers because of these, she claims)
8. The IRS is becoming even more aggressive

I really, truly hope someone can tell me that all that^^ (or at least most of it) is hogwash.

[Schneibster]

If science says then it must be so. magic sky daddy. Science accounts for everything. no longer a matter of conjecture ... long disproven.

Science works. Radio. X-ray diagnosis of bad teeth and broken bones. Airplanes. Refrigerators. Cell phones.

Just that simple. It's not hard, it's not a philosophical position, it's not bullshit. It's as plain as the nose on your face, you can't get around it. It plain flat works. You can test what it says.

Actually, it is so a philosophical position -- science rests on philosophy --- not a lean, not a foot-on-the-floor bedroom scene from the days of olde, but a full body laying upon. I suspect you've been smoking too much scientism.

Please link to an article on the philosophy of X-rays.

ETA: Meanwhile, let me direct your attention to the Sokal affair.

Please. If you think the Sokal affair is even relevant to a contemporary discussion of the philosophy of science, I think I'll sit this one out.

Do, by all means. I think most, not all, philosophy is crank bullshit. Ethics is not bullshit; unfortunately, after you deconstruct it, ethics becomes meaningless. Pretty much like most things do. I fail to see the point, unless it is to make free money for writing about bullshit; and the Sokal affair proved it is.

However, since you appear to be feeling your oats, explain the following.

1. The meaning of probability - an essential concept in modern physics (and if you quote a frequentist interpretation, I'll just laugh; and since the Copenhagen interpretation of QED rules out a propensitarian interpretation (something to do with Bell's Inequalities and real space, or so I'm told), that leaves you with, what?).

Apparently you're unfamiliar with, you know, interpretations of quantum mechanics that are newer than, say, sixty or seventy years old. Do you know what decoherence is? It's the answer to precisely that problem, and the approach is validated by the fluctuation theorem. Which was recently proven correct, predicting the rate at which reality decoheres, when it predicted anti-entropic evolution of a fluid under the influence of a laser; you might have heard about that one in the newspapers.

You'll need to keep up with a bit more modern science if you want to say anything meaningful.

2. The scientific proof that inductive inference can be closed by a sufficient number of observations (also known as answering Humean skepticism of inductive inference).

What's that got to do with science? It's one of those conundrums that only people who are staring at their navels care about in the first place.

3. If falsifiability can only tell us what theories are false, how do we know what theories are true?

We don't. Everything is provisional. Get over it.

4. The standard logical form modus ponens is frequently appealed to in the form "if hypothesis H, then observations X, Y, Z" -- upon making observations X, Y, and Z, the scientist concludes that hypothesis H is true. Yet this is a logical fallacy, known as affirming the consequent: if A then B, finding that B does not imply anything about A -- as there are a multi-fold number of possibles that are consistent with B. So if this inference from observables is not valid via modus ponens, what logical tautology does the link between observation and theory depend upon?

You got it exactly backwards; a scientist attempts not to prove, but to disprove, a hypothesis; failure is (provisional) success. But feel free to keep mischaracterizing it so that everyone will know you don't understand science very well.

5. How do we determine deductively that for any pair of phenomena A and B, A causes B -- or if it cannot be deductively demonstrated, how do we determine with absolute certainty that A causes B (and how certain is absolutely certain -- or, if we can't be absolutely certain, how do we arrive at a sufficiently probable conclusion -- there's that probability again -- to conclude that the hypothesis that A causes B is "likely" true). (Feel free to define "likely" for us.)

No, that's OK, I'd have to use, you know, scary math and stuff.

6. Explain how scientists transcend Epistemological holism to arrive at definite conclusions about specific theoretical statements, to separate theory from observation so the one doesn't taint the other, and how they can claim truth in an infinite chess game in which an infinite number of moves can preserve a false theory?

More navel-staring.

Proof's in the pudding; apparently you didn't understand why I was asking for the philosophy of X-rays, as evidenced by your lack of reply. Good luck with that.

Anyway. I look forward to your reply. Though more gratuitous references to things like the Sokal Affair as if they were meaningful responses to the question of the dependency of science on philosophy will only make me cross.

I bet.

Do you guys do, you know, peer review 'n' stuff yet?

Oh, and did I forget to mention -- you can't use math or logic in science, because those aren't science, and, are essentially the province of philosophy. (Do I hear Godel rolling over in his grave? I think I do.) Good luck figuring out your eigenstates without them.

Logic is not separate from math; it's represented by boolean algebra. Sorry you're having trouble with all the scary math and have to try to take it out of science so you can pretend you understand it, whatever that means when referring to a person who thinks nothing is real.

[Schneibster]

There's a good sized contingent of Dominionists in the US military. I could dig up articles if anyone's google-fu is weak.

This thread makes me think of the Heinlein book Revolt in 2100, which appears in his Future History as If This Goes On.... He also foreshadows it in Stranger In A Strange Land, much more intelligibly in the long version published after his death. Much of the most interesting material simply could not be published in a book in the US at the time of the original release. He thought the Dominionists were just as insane as we do today. And they were. And they hadn't even managed to insert penetration agents in the military.

Um, Stranger was trimmed to keep the cost of the hardback under $10, a princely sum at the time. Which parts of it do you think were the "more intelligibly" bits. I found the uncut version to be only slightly more interesting that the original. I first read it in 1964, IIRC.

Guess you didn't remember the original very well.

ETA: From the introduction, by Virginia Heinlein:

This book was so different from what was being sold to the general public, or to the science fiction reading public in 1961 when it was published, that the editors required some cutting and removal of a few scenes that might then have been offensive to public taste.
...
In the context of 1960, Stranger In A Strange Land was a book that his publishers feared-- it was too far off the beaten path. So, in order to minimize possible losses, Robert was asked to cut the manuscript down to 150,000 words-- a loss of about 70,000 words. Other changes were also required, before the editor was willing to take a chance on publication.

[Seth]

Yes it does. By believing in Jehovah or Jesus one believes that there is a Ultimate Authority who is in charge of everything. Oh they might pretend to support the idea of democracy but they would turn in a second given a charismatic political leader with some cash moxy and major media support the U.S. would be burning witches again within the fortnight.

This argument would be more apt if it only focused in the truly fundamentalist believers; in their case, it certainly rings true. However, the majority of christian believers are not going to translate their somewhat warm and fuzzy belief system into religious fascism, if only because their belief systems are one, small, compartmentalised section of their lives...

I'd agree with that in countries like the UK and Oz, but if polls are to be believed, they take their religion a lot more seriously in the US. For example, 61% still say they wouldn't vote for an openly atheist President.

The Pew Forum is a good resource for this and similar statistics: http://pewforum.org/

Well, I'm not sure that I would vote for an atheist for President, and I'm not a religious person. Most atheists I've met, and a good many I know of, are intolerant bigots who cannot be trusted to respect the rights of the religious majority in this country. I keep waiting for one to surprise me, but so far I've been disappointed. I'm sure there's a qualified atheist out there somewhere who isn't a religious zealot Atheist, but I haven't met him/her yet.