the Universe and Everything

[SignorSuperdouche]

So a few of us have hijacked the Life thread (and the SA rape stats thread too, but it's hard to come up with a witty title about rape) by turning it into a faux intellectual discussion on politics, religion and when it's ok to punch a dude. I though it would probably be a good idea to fork the discussion so we can have our own special place to live out our delusions of informed discussion and stop annoying everyone else.

Hooray for us!

In the rules you propose it might be useful after all to get rid of a part of the population because it will surely free jobs for others, there is little chance that the immigrant's nation to which you cause harm will retaliate also so it might end the violence loop and obey your rules.

Firstly I'd like to say that it was never my intention to suggest that my definiton of "justified violence" was a particularly good one, I just was just saying that if you were trying to come up with one that would probably be as close as you are likely to get.

That aside, I don't think it's as bad as you're making out. In my view, your example of violence directed towards foreign workers doesn't pass the test for a couple of reasons:

The "Johnny Foreigner has taken my job" argument is almost always a gross over simplification. Simply put if there wasn't a market for foreign workers then there wouldn't be a significant number them, and if there is a market for foreign workers then simply getting rid of the workers will not get rid of the market's need for them. Basically I take issue with your assertion that "it will surely free jobs for others".

Secondly, I had intended that balancing the harm caused through violence/non violence should be done objectively rather than from anyones point of view. In this case the harm caused to the immigrants hugely outweighs the harm of other people being out of work.

There's other things I'd like to comment on but nobody wants to read a wall of text so I'll let someone else have a go next. Please bring up anything that will make us look, and more importantly feel, smart for discussing.

[OssK]

but it's hard to come up with a witty title about rape

My pick would have been

Now 9-in-10 women in the UK want to live in South Africa

But I might be the only one to laugh at that.

Firstly I'd like to say that it was never my intention to suggest that my definiton of "justified violence" was a particularly good one, I just was just saying that if you were trying to come up with one that would probably be as close as you are likely to get.

On this sounds a lot like you defending yourself from me attacking, I'm sorry if I came across as trying to Godwin you out or something, it's just that I did not see in what way the rules you exposed were applicable.

The "Johnny Foreigner has taken my job" argument is almost always a gross over simplification. Simply put if there wasn't a market for foreign workers then there wouldn't be a significant number them, and if there is a market for foreign workers then simply getting rid of the workers will not get rid of the market's need for them. Basically I take issue with your assertion that "it will surely free jobs for others".

That would put the whole unemployment issue on the market's back wouldn't it ? It means that we tried as a capitalist system to push from below rather than to pull from above the whole society. We made shitty jobs and built our society on these, they must exist otherwise prices go through the ceiling 'cause because of these jobs salaries went down... I could believe that.

There's other things I'd like to comment on but nobody wants to read a wall of text so I'll let someone else have a go next. Please bring up anything that will make us look, and more importantly feel, smart for discussing.

I'll take the curtain, what's the other thing ?

As an alternative use for this topic, we could try and invent a new video-game genre...

[James]

Crap, I just posted a whole load of drivel in the Life thread. Should I migrate it? It probably shouldn't be anywhere.

[Nachimir]

I'd like to post a little on militant atheism and religion here.

OssK, yes, I think your experience might be a little skewed. When faith enters politics, I find it disgusting and would fight it. When it's fucking up people's lives by (for instance), making them feel guilty about their sexuality, or keeping them in an unhappy marriage, then I'll speak against it.

However, I've met a shit ton of religious people now who are generally relaxed, capable of having differences of opinion with understanding and without invective, and aren't trying to control, influence or persuade others. They're just people trying to get on with their lives who happen to believe what I regard as fairy stories. Never mind, they're still good people and, shock horror, mentally competent too.

Considering that a cosmology student I worked with once answered my question "How verified are, say, Stephen Hawking's theories?" with "Basically they're the best guesses we've got" and my brother spent three years firehosing me with the philosophy of science, and nearly every teacher I had was, at some point, unable to answer my questions on things like magnetism reaching the point of "that's just the way it is and we don't know why", then my views on faith have mellowed over the past few years.

Every single person, even the most militant atheist, has faith in something, even if it's that there's no god, or that there house won't have burned down when they get back there, that their lover isn't fucking someone else right now, that vitamin C is good for them, or that Heinz baked beans are better than Tesco Value baked beans. These are mundane and mostly inconsequential forms of faith that we don't think about or often debate, and the same could be said of a lot of things religious people put their faith in.

Few of us have the time to check everything presented to us as science, yet we tend to put our faith in it (you would not believe just how detached things we hear are from the actual academia, and sham academia, that spawns them. Every day we're bombarded with "We did some SCIENCE, and the answer was BUY THIS PRODUCT", and not just through advertising. PR agencies specialise in spreading such messages *much* wider than that). Eating X is good for you. Smoking a cigarette will, on average, shorten your life by five minutes (I've always suspected this factoid resides in the same territory as all those "Men think about sex every X seconds" ones). Eating Benecol reduces cholesterol (read much about nutritionism and you wouldn't trust this claim any further than you could throw a ton of the stuff). Walking X number of minutes a day will prevent heart disease (Will it, or do I need to run a half marathon a week before there's any profound effect? What if you've already spent your life eating fried breakfasts? Was the study that found this done on people that were already at a healthy weight? Are the posters I'm seeing for this a PR fueled initiative by my local council that originates with profoundly misinformed people and flawed studies? Worse things have been deliberately perpetrated by local authorities).

Atheism is the best guess I've got at what's going on in this universe. Other people think different things. As long as those agendas aren't harming others by filling them with self-destructive doubts, exploiting their loneliness, encouraging them to control and browbeat others, rinsing them for cash, or otherwise causing harm, then fuck it. I don't need the rest of humanity to believe the same things I do, so why would I preach my own best guess at the state of the universe?

This post was brought to you by far too much Ben Goldacre, but it's relevant. Rubbishing religious beliefs is like shooting fish in a barrel as far as I'm concerned, and outside of politics about as meaningful and fun. What interests me is that there are much more subtle, and sometimes more harmful and exploitative forms of bullshit constantly trying to insinuate themselves into our minds, and all of us fall for some of it.

Edited June 22, 2009 by Nachimir

[James]

Technically, I'm agnostic regarding the existence of any gods, in as much as I don't think the truth is entirely knowable. Philosophically, I'm agnostic about pretty much everything, because I don't believe any empirical observations are entirely reliable, so the doubt I have concerning the non-existence of god should be framed in the context of the doubt I have that I'm sitting on a chair as I write this. I describe myself as an atheist, as my doubt is comparatively small, and because not only do I not believe there is a god; I specifically believe that there isn't one. A pedantic differentiation, perhaps, but one I insist on going on about.

But I'm pretty much entirely in agreement with Nachimir.

Also, before you mentioned Ben Goldacre I was genuinely planning on linking to this. Which always makes me think of this, which isn't so much to do with religion, but is a little bit to do with science by way of its misrepresentation in advertising, particularly in terms of statistics.

[zomboid]

I have a hard time trusting anyone who would have you believe that they've got it all figured out.

Also, I think it's OK to punch a dude when he rapes your politics.

[SignorSuperdouche]

That would put the whole unemployment issue on the market's back wouldn't it ? It means that we tried as a capitalist system to push from below rather than to pull from above the whole society. We made shitty jobs and built our society on these, they must exist otherwise prices go through the ceiling 'cause because of these jobs salaries went down.

That's certainly part of it, although I would be wary of blaming capitalism and free markets - socialism has done it's share of the damage. For example, unions that demand unreasonably high wages and cushy working conditions are as much to blame for the decline in manufacturing in this country as anything else. To misquote Winston Chruchill, capitalism is the worst economic and social system, except for all those other systems that have been tried from time to time.

Every single person, even the most militant atheist, has faith in something

I have to disagree with that. I am an agnostic and I do not have faith in anything. Everything you described (aside from the baked bean thing which is just personal preferance) is what I would call reasonable expectations given the avaliable information. There is a difference between saying "I think X is extremely likely" and "I believe X."

the doubt I have concerning the non-existence of god should be framed in the context of the doubt I have that I'm sitting on a chair as I write this.

This is precisely my position, articulated far more succinctly than I could hope to. I may steal this next time I'm trying to explain my views.

Also, Ben Goldacre is the shit. If you're into skepticism you should check out the skeptics guide to the universe. It's a really cool podcast which was recommended to me by none other than Bill Tiller (not me specifically, he just recommended it in general) and they often discuss Ben and have him on the show fairly regularly.

[OssK]

Every single person, even the most militant atheist, has faith in something

This and MisterHyperDouche's answer basically depend on what you call faith. To me faith is blind, otherwise it's a conviction.

that there house won't have burned down when they get back there, that their lover isn't fucking someone else right now, that vitamin C is good for them, or that Heinz baked beans are better than Tesco Value baked beans

This is not faith, it's either taste in the last case or just erm.... things ?... You don't update on a minute's basis the things that you've learned to take for granted such as "houses don't just burn like that". Faith would be

-hey man, get back home quick, your house is on fucking fire !

-No it's ok, it's not

-Yes it is, your wife called, it's on tv, look here on google earth we can see it !

-No, all of these could be faked, I have faith that my house will be just fine when I come back to it.

The same goes for Vitamin C, if I'm presented with evidence of it being bad for my health or innefective, I'll update my model of the universe to exclude Vitamin C from the "good for me" list...

Faith would be, again, not doing it on the sole motive that what I have been told earlier is always truer than what you're telling me.

[James]

Call it what you will; we all make countless assumptions all the time, with varying degrees of supporting evidence. Of course I believe that there is more evidence for the things I believe than the things that I don't, but I'm open to the possibility that I've completely misread things. I'm confident that I haven't, but speaking in absolute terms, unless you are going to thoroughly research the basis for each thing that you believe, there isn't a fundamental difference between your judgement that the science and mathematics and psychology and economics behind everything you believe is right, and a religious person's that the translators of their holy texts and the writers of their holy texts and the priests and the prophets are telling the truth about God or gods or reincarnation or karma or ley lines whatever their religion concerns. I believe my system of beliefs is more reasonable and logical and consistent and so on, but, on a personal level, most of this is inferred rather than deduced.

I guess it's the problem of generating the first premises or axioms from which to derive everything else. Can things really be self-evident? I don't really know. I guess I shouldn't talk too much on the subject, as I haven't looked into it properly, but it's something that unsettles me about both science and maths (and the idea of reliable knowledge in general). As an analogy, imagine a vast and impressive structure, with thousands of layers beautifully and securely seated on those below. However, the very bottom of the building is completely obscured by dense fog. As far as I can see, the building is structurally secure, and it certainly looks like it has good foundations, but I just can't be sure.

It may be that I'm just horribly ignorant. Practically speaking, I don't think it really matters. But it does make me hesitant to get all high-and-mighty about my belief system, no matter how much more likely I think it is than its alternatives.

I'd like to point out that I don't mean to overplay all this doubt and equality stuff. I might have given the impression that you may as well flip a coin to decide what you believe. I don't. I think it makes much more sense to follow the atheistic path (sorry for conflating science with atheism a little in this post -- my mistake). I'm just not going to judge people who don't do that. Unless they're completely nutty cultists or something, I guess. Hooray for consistency!

This is precisely my position, articulated far more succinctly than I could hope to. I may steal this next time I'm trying to explain my views.

I've encountered the same principle expressed in terms of invisible elephants orbiting the Earth and so on, which, whilst amounting to the same thing, are perhaps a little distracting in their outlandishness. They might appear more like a cheap dig than a genuine analogy, I think. "Your god is like an invisible space elephant" could turn some people off what you're saying. Then again, so could comparing it to a chair. Oh well, at least I tried.

[gdf]

Technically, I'm agnostic regarding the existence of any gods, in as much as I don't think the truth is entirely knowable. Philosophically, I'm agnostic about pretty much everything, because I don't believe any empirical observations are entirely reliable, so the doubt I have concerning the non-existence of god should be framed in the context of the doubt I have that I'm sitting on a chair as I write this. I describe myself as an atheist, as my doubt is comparatively small, and because not only do I not believe there is a god; I specifically believe that there isn't one. A pedantic differentiation, perhaps, but one I insist on going on about.

I think most people are agnostic to some degree. For all my militant atheist tendencies, I can't really say that I haven't got some degree of doubt either. It's all about application, though. I live my life on the assumption that there is no supreme being, not least one which is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. It's the same way that, as Nachimir says, we have "faith" in various aspects of everyday existence, though I'd argue that religion is a different kind of faith in that it barely qualifies as empirical or rationally gained at all. I have faith that when I click the Home button in my browser it goes to the Firefox Start Page because it's practical to think so and in the past it has done as expected.

Indeed, a lot of the things discussed are obliterated when it comes to real life application. For all my rhetoric, it's impossible not to have friends or family that aren't religious or have different political views to my own (though it does disturb me that some of my nearest and dearest think I'm going to Hell). Even with this debate at large, we all probably live our lives in similar ways. I'm happy to go along with capitalism even if I know it's a fundamentally skewed system because I can't really avoid doing so. Even philosophers can assume their own theories are nonsense. In a weirdly apt way, Descartes didn't really think he was dreaming when he wrote Meditations, but it was impossible for him to say either way.

A big heap of muddy digression to get through there, sorry. Doubt it's adding much to the discussion and I'm not sure the point I was trying to make, but there you go.

Edit: Oh dear, you posted again as I was writing this.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I don't want to be condescending here, but lets get down to basics. This is the definition of faith:

2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence

This is completely different from assumptions based on observation and you absolutely cannot say they amount to the same thing.

speaking in absolute terms, unless you are going to thoroughly research the basis for each thing that you believe, there isn't a fundamental difference between your judgement that the science and mathematics and psychology and economics behind everything you believe is right, and a religious person's that the translators of their holy texts and the writers of their holy texts and the priests and the prophets are telling the truth about God or gods or reincarnation or karma or ley lines whatever their religion concerns.

I'll get into the other stuff in a mo, but lets start with mathematics here because it's a special case. Mathematics is fundamentally different from the sciences in that it is a completely abstract discipline. It doesn't matter that you can scratch your chin and say "But how do you prove that 1 + 1 = 2?" because 2, as a concept, was invented to be the answer to "What is 1 + 1?". It's perfectly possible to define valid a numerical system where 1 + 1 = 3 and construct mathematical proofs around this system. Mathematical proof is undeniable truth, it's only when you apply mathematics to a real world problem that require the underlying axioms to be true that you have to have any "faith".

imagine a vast and impressive structure, with thousands of layers beautifully and securely seated on those below. However, the very bottom of the building is completely obscured by dense fog. As far as I can see, the building is structurally secure, and it certainly looks like it has good foundations, but I just can't be sure.

I understand where you're coming from on this, but it's actually completely irrelevant. You could still accurately describe all the layers that you can see and that's all science tries to do.

Say I don't have a clear understanding of how a car works, but I've built up an abstract model where putting my foot on the accelerator makes the car go, the brake makes it stop and turning the big wheel makes it go in a different direction. This abstract model tells me everything I need to know about operating a car (or lets pretend it does) so why does it matter if I don't understand what a carburettor is? Obviously if my car brakes down then so does my model and I need to find someone who understands more than I do but until then my layer of abstraction is perfectly valid. Newton's laws of motion, to pull an example out of my arse, are exactly the same kind of abstraction and it doesn't matter that they brake down at very large or very small scales because it was never intended to explain everything (Actually Newton thought it did explain everything, but then he thought God was sending him secret messages too)

I've encountered the same principle expressed in terms of invisible elephants orbiting the Earth and so on

I'm familiar with Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot etc but what I especially liked about this is that it puts in a far more mundane context. I used to use the boiling point of water as my point of reference but it always took me forever to explain what I actually meant.

I think most people are agnostic to some degree. For all my militant atheist tendencies, I can't really say that I haven't got some degree of doubt either.

You can't be agnostic to some degree, either you are agnostic or you are not. It's unfortunate that in popular parlance atheist has come to mean agnostic and agnostic has come to mean some wishy-washy excuse for not wanting think about it or express an opinion. I really feel that this confusion over the terminology is part of the reason people misunderstand the issues themselves.

[James]

Edit: Oh dear, you posted again as I was writing this.

And quite an "oh dear" post it was, too.

I'll get into the other stuff in a mo, but lets start with mathematics here because it's a special case. Mathematics is fundamentally different from the sciences in that it is a completely abstract discipline. It doesn't matter that you can scratch your chin and say "But how do you prove that 1 + 1 = 2?" because 2, as a concept, was invented to be the answer to "What is 1 + 1?". It's perfectly possible to define valid a numerical system where 1 + 1 = 3 and construct mathematical proofs around this system. Mathematical proof is undeniable truth, it's only when you apply mathematics to a real world problem that require the underlying axioms to be true that you have to have any "faith".

The kind of thing that unsettles me a little is stuff like Gödel's incompleteness theorems and so on. I suppose they don't precisely undermine the foundations of mathematical systems so much as their universality, though.

Anyway, I was more going for the fact that you probably haven't proved or seen proved all the stuff you rely on in your life, but perhaps that isn't accurate.

I understand where you're coming from on this, but it's actually completely irrelevant. You could still accurately describe all the layers that you can see and that's all science tries to do.

Doesn't that mean that all science can tell you is "assuming that the premises this principle is based on are true, such-and-such is true"? That's fine, of course, but in order to apply any of it you have to make some sort of assumption.

Say I don't have a clear understanding of how a car works, but I've built up an abstract model where putting my foot on the accelerator makes the car go, the brake makes it stop and turning the big wheel makes it go in a different direction. This abstract model tells me everything I need to know about operating a car (or lets pretend it does) so why does it matter if I don't understand what a carburettor is?

It doesn't, provided the car manufacturer hasn't rigged it to explode after a certain number of miles, or whatever. You trust the manufacturer because you have no reason not to. You also trust that it knows what the hell it's doing. Similarly, we trust that scientists have no ulterior motives and are working from correct information. What if one of the apparently self-evident premises at the source of it all turned out to be false, or not true in all cases? I don't really know if that's at all a possibility, but I'm not sure how it can be logically ruled out.

Anyway, this is confused rambling that probably isn't worth very much at all. I would agree that what I'm talking about probably isn't "faith", but it is a degree of trust and assumption.

I'd also like to point out that I'm not worried that science and maths is actually all wrong and it's all been an incredible coincidence. I'm just saying.

I'm familiar with Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot etc but what I especially liked about this is that it puts in a far more mundane context. I used to use the boiling point of water as my point of reference but it always took me forever to explain what I actually meant.

Well I'm glad you liked it.

You can't be agnostic to some degree, either you are agnostic or you are not. It's unfortunate that in popular parlance atheist has come to mean agnostic and agnostic has come to mean some wishy-washy excuse for not wanting think about it or express an opinion. I really feel that this confusion over the terminology is part of the reason people misunderstand the issues themselves.

As far as I know, "agnostic" means that you think ultimate truth is unknowable. I think that strictly speaking almost everything is unknowable, as we can't necessarily trust any source of information, including our own senses. On the other hand, I'm an atheist in that I deny the existence of gods.

It's pretty late and I'm very tired so this might make even less sense than the last one. I really don't remember where I was going with all of this. Sorry.

[gdf]

And quite an "oh dear" post it was, too.

Well that wasn't very nice.

SignorSuperDouche:

You can be agnostic to a degree, but that isn't perhaps the best way of putting it. I can't "know" there is no god(s), but I can say it's pretty unlikely and act on the assumption that there are none. Agnosticism doesn't necessarily mean you think there's a 50:50 chance that each option at hand will be correct. In principle, I take the only apparent rational position of agnosticism, but I don't pretend that unless some pretty strong evidence in favour of the existence of a deity arises I'm going to take it that one doesn't exist. I'm a de facto atheist, but with a wee sprinkling of doubt.

[i'm not even going to put the usual "I'm probably a fucking idiot" disclaimer on this one, if there's one thing that scares me about this forum it's having to justify everything I say and then sticking a big fat "maybe I just suck" at the end

Still, I'm out of my depth and should probably get the fuck out of this topic]

[OssK]

Unrelated : I love the "God just created the world, Dinosaurs ? he made it look like they were old, your memories ? He made them up" Because if he's all powerfull, what prevents him from doing so ?

Couldn't find a source over on the interwebneted but I found this that made me smile:

So you are an omnipotent being, and you just created the universe?

and everything in it. Now you want to get your very important rules for living to your children or creations. Do you

a) Tell a very small subset of the people in a remote spot, and tell them to spread the word

Give everyone the innate ability to figure out your rules for living.

c) other

[James]

Well that wasn't very nice.

Mine, I meant.

Still, I'm out of my depth and should probably get the fuck out of this topic

Yeah, I feel like I might have to retire from it, too. My thoughts are kind of muddled and they get even more confused when I try to verbalize them.