It's as David Hume said: even though we cannot know anything for certain, we must assume things to be true in the name of sanity. If I have to start every reasoning with "assuming that the universe we think we live in is real and has certain rules including [...] and [...] and that we can trust our observations of this etc. etc. ", I'll be ripe for a psychiatric institution in less than a week.
This is why philosophy is an important thing which should be discussed in schools. You get to avoid so many of these arguments as an adult because you're already taught that so much of this has already been discussed at length throughout history.
+S4R1N I agree, but school doesn't teach people how to reason without fallacies and create original answers, which is fundamental to understanding philosophy. Even if you try to ask a class for what they think, they would open their text books and try to find the right answer to pass the class. There is an extreme aversion to talking about these subjects because they can be so personal and unique to everyone's experiences, so it's very easy to become bogged down in details that people generalities to cope with the information overload. These generalities spark conflict as exemptions to them are brought to the forefront until no one agrees with each other and everyone begins defending their generalities instead of actually studying and learning from each other.
I actually really enjoy philosophy, and find it lacking in a lot of internet conversations. So it's always refreshing when I see it discussed, such as was done here in this video.
agreed, but assuming it was done correctly, most of the discussion that I see in this comment section was nothing but a waste of time for everyone involved
Philosophy used to be considered the king of the sciences, and it was actually the basis of science, in that the scientific theory *assumes* that the universe is repeatable and consistent, bound by fundamental laws. That was actually a radical belief 2000 years ago. The entire world believed that things happened only because the gods sustained them, and that gods were fickle and inconsistent. Your fire burns because the god of fire is happy with you, not because you made it properly. Mine doesn't because I pissed the god of fire off somehow, not because I made it poorly. Judaism and Christianity were rare exceptions in that they said there was only one god, and more importantly that that god was consistent and reliable, 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' Therefore, the universe He sustained was the same. Therefore, what happened in the lab, or on your back porch, could be relied upon to happen again somewhere else if you did things the same way. Therefore, science. Agnostic/atheistic science actually abandons it's own philosophical underpinnings because it has no reason for the universe to be consistent. Instead it relies in circular reasoning of 'it's consistent because we've always seen it consistent, we've always seen it so because we ignore the people that see it otherwise, we ignore them because we know it's consistent.' That doesn't mean science is wrong, just that it has some fundamental explaining to do.
I know this vid is a few years old, but Einstein never wanted to "debunk" quantum mechanics, just the notion of inherent randomness and faster-than-light interactions. He believed there was a larger picture behind QM in which all this apparent weirdness makes perfect sense. That's not an "unscientific" viewpoint, and he definitely approached it in a scientific way. In fact, Einstein's papers on the subject led directly to Bell's non-locality theorem, one of the most important discoveries in all of QM. Bell's theorem completely contradicted Einstein's views of course, but it's not "unscientific" to be wrong.
So you’re saying that he saw it as being similar to early astronomers not understanding or being able to predict the motion of the planets because their understanding of the solar system was wrong, and as soon as they figured out how the solar system actually works, they were able to predict their motion with perfect accuracy? So he believed that there was some rhyme or reason to QM that we didn’t understand and if we only figured it out then we’d be able to predict quantum phenomena? That’s a much more interesting hypothesis. Completely unprovable right up until it’s proven, but very interesting.
Spotty adolescents with not enough homework. By contrast: EC. I fancy myself well read on Japan, yet their sengoku jidai series made me think of things I had never considered. So much for 2 trimesters of coursework, countless books, boundless films and documentaries. 72 minutes of cartoon content with goofy accents to deflate my belief I actually know the topic.
“Some people say, How can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.” ― Richard Feynman
Thank you for this! Your view of faith and belief is so open and inclusive, truly welcoming and valuing every point of view. As a devout Christian who has often been attacked while traversing the nerdy communities I know and love, seeing such a fresh and positive view being expressed by people of power over these communities makes me breathe a little easier. Thanks very much!
Relevance = 100%. This may well be one of the best explained, most relevant and most interesting EC videos out there. Well done guys - you've really excelled yourselves.
Respectfully disagree. They are obviously biased and are letting their bias's show through in this episode. They say we have faith in Euclidian math, but that isn't true. We trust euclidan math cause it was proven to be true in that frame of reference.
I think that the knee-jerk reaction to the statement that scientific principles are based on axioms ("faith"), is because modern-day creationists often abuse this point to conclude that both assertions based on the scientific method and assertions based on religion are equally based on "faith", and therefore equally valid in principle. The word "faith" is often used to describe the process of "willing it to be true" in a religious context. Because of this, and because of the misuse of the word "faith" in discussions over creationism versus the scientific method, the word "faith" has become a word that is avoided at all costs by anti-religious agitators. This seems to be mainly a symptom of the English language, as in my native language (Dutch) the word for faith: "Geloof" is much more neutral word and can be both used to mean "faith" and "belief". The difference between scientific thinking and religious thinking lies in the dealing with dogma. religious thinking sticks to the faith based assertion no matter what the evidence later implies. Scientific thinking is prepared to do away with previously held faith-based assertions if that assertion turns out to not line up with the evidence.
It's actually exactly in this context that i think Faith should gtfo. If you have faith in your scientific results, this means you trust in them. This could very easily lead to Scientists finding results they wanted & overlooking those that disprove them. (and yes, i know this happens..) And that is exactly the problem. IMHO no scientist should have faith in their work or science, since all scientists should actively LOOK to disprove their own research. Nothing is true until you've disproven every other possible explanation. And since the universe is infinite, good luck proving anything conclusively~ These are not statements of truths, they are meant to make a point. Let's see if people get it.
Domyras I think their point is to have faith in your findings but also be willing to accept if it turns out to be wrong. That and there is also the possibility you may not have the resources to prove something yet. For example, people used to say the world was flat but they did not have the mathematical equations, measuring equipment etc. to disprove it. The problem wasn't necessarily that the world turned out that the world was round but that some people refused to even think about the possibility of the world being round. The thing about actively looking to prove yourself wrong is while correct you should double, triple or even quadruple check you work until your absolutely sure, it may still be wrong. You may spend your whole life trying to disprove your scientific theory and see no flaws in it but then 10, 000 years later someone else finds a flaw in that theory. Not only that but sometimes people will miss their own mistakes. However, if you mean that it is impossible to conclusively prove anything because the universe infinite that wouldn't necessarily mean something wrong. While yes it could be wrong there is always a chance of it being right in the same way it could be wrong. Who knows it may turn out the universe isn't infinite or maybe we live in a multiverse etc. There is also the possibility that something could be right sometimes, or in certain areas. For example, it is 12:00, for me this is true but if you live in a different time zone this is not true. Or if I give you a multible choice from a-c and ask you what the answer is and you correctly guess b before i give you another question in which you incorrectly guess b this only makes b incorrect for the second answer, so if you changed your answer for one because b was incorrect for two they are both wrong. Or if you want to get more extreme there are we can move in 6 cardinal directions up, down, forward, back, left and right but if there is a universe that exist in two dimensions this may be incorrect in that universe. My point is it is possible for an answer to be right sometimes but not all the time, if the universe is infinite that would not necessarily mean everything we know is technically wrong but somethings are right in certain scenarios.
Its kind of depends on the religious thinking a counter argument example I would draw on is the difference between Galileo and Copernicus both men essentially proposed the same thing but one man went to war with the church and the other was awarded and rewarded by it most people think Galileo ran into his problems because he disputed what the church was teaching which is only true if you follow things in the strictest sense the real issue came down to Galileo wanting to publish his findings right away for everyone as irrefutable fact while the church wanted him to wait and go through the proper channels of that time and so that they could finish haveing theological debates over its merits because in essence at that time alot of priests and monks were the great scientists of the day so changes would have to be made in church doctrine and in how things would be looked at and taught to say religion doesn't change and adapt based on scientific findings is only really true if you follow protestant fundamentalism because catholism openly preaches some things in the bible are parables and not to be taken for betum which is why Catholics also have always backed the big bang theory as well as in limited cases abortion and pulling the plug on comatose patients I wouldnt be surprised at all if some bits of evolution made its way into catholic doctrine as time goes on yah no lots of people want to pigeon hole things but science and religion walked hand in hand for a long time the people who committed atrocities because of religion were almost always going to commit an atrocity religion just happened to be there scape goat that day
@@DomyTheMad420 I dont think thats quite the faith this video is talking about, even if you're actively trying to disprove everything you do, you still need to have faith in some root set of things for you to actually be able to do anything
@@xn4pl If that's what you think then you don't understand religion, or at least the differences between them. Evangelical Bible Belt christianity doesn't represent the billions of people who follow a faith.
nyutrig what concept do you feel is being misrepresented in this video? Considering a major part of the video was how people are/were acting like the people they disliked.
they dont use the word "faith" correctly. they make a false equivalency with the generic word "faith" as opposed to "believing something without evidence.
nyutrig so you aggravated by A) semantics B) and that science never takes something on faith. If A bothers you then understand that the word faith has multiple meanings and is like being aggravated when someone says 'pop' instead of 'soda' or vice versa. If B bothers you then realize that science acknowledges it's short coming by being so flexible. E.g. over 500 years ago every respected scientist would have rejected the idea of plate tetonics. They had evidence to support their current theories and hypothesis. Yet when presented with new evidence they rejected it at first and then considered it. The idea that whole land masses were moving was insane. Just as suggesting the the earth wasn't the center of the universe or that tiny lifeforms caused illness. So it was a problem with the evidence itself and not the logic that followed. Additionally why be mad at something so trifling anyway. A suspension in belief, that what you know may not be correct, is pivotal to the success of not just science but humanity as a whole.
thatguyunknoe well first of all when you say its like pop and soda, i disagree. those are 2 words with the same meaning. with faith we are talking about 1 word with 2 meanings. this is one issue. the other issue is, when pointed out by their community on how they were misinformed, they responded by basically saying "you mad?" to the community, then ignoring them. and im not mad. why does pointing out someone being wrong equate to being angry?
Wow. When I first watched this video, I was an edgy athiest teenager and I was super confused and thought calling yourself "agnostic" was fence-sitting and kinda dumb. Now I suddenly remembered this video. I have changed so much since then that basically everything said in this video aligns exactly with how I see the subject of faith. I wish I knew what made me change, cuz I'm so often frustrated when I talk to people and they don't understand this. Probably one of my favorite videos on this channel.
This video encapsulates pretty much everything myself and many others at my university (specifically the physics department, as it so happens) has ever said about science and faith, and everything that has ever irritated us about people who seem to think of science as a form of absolutism, devoiding it of any exploratory/truly questioning nature. Thank you SO very much for making it! :D
+Dominique Hipolito I agree. People need to learn contentment. Allow yourself to be imperfect at times, as all people are. After that, you can then allow other people to be imperfect at times. Everyone's definition of perfection is different anyway. If everyone in the world could do just that one thing, the world would be a much happier place.
Well, if you must know, I am actually avid about history, especially the history of human conflict. I've even co-written a 180-page thesis on it in college. So, yeah, I've been around both google and old books. And all my research has revealed something important: no religious war is actually fought for religion. It's always been, as you said, for politics, economy and race. In fact, if you break down how people saw their religions back then, and how they see it now, it does boil down to those three things. "My religion=my politics, my economy, my race." You see this in how Arab and Persian Muslims frequently committed atrocities against one another on the basis of ethnicity, even if they were "fighting for God." Likewise, Crusaders massacred countless other Christians as they pillaged Europe on the way to Jerusalem. Extra History has a series about this already. The thing I wanted to point out with the names of these dictators is that they persecuted religious people with reasons including an antagonistic view of religion. Sounds pretty atheistic to me. Their reasons can have variations, but they are ultimately the same. "This is my turf; you go by my rules." You don't have to be atheist to commit crimes for secular reasons. I mean, yeah nobody has nor will ever fight for atheism (though that might make an interesting game) but wouldn't you say that these have little to do with religion anyway? Sounds pretty atheistic to me. On a side note, it was a horrible generalization to accuse every religion. Have you taken into account Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism and other religions no one bothered to weaponize? So, yeah, based on my research, I have to disagree with you when you say religion is a cause for conflict. And I have to very strongly disagree when you say it's always been the source of suffering, or that only religious people have committed such crimes. It's actually just one of the tools. A civic-cultural body of customs and beliefs shared by an organized body of people that, like everything else, can and has been weaponized in times of war.
+Aria Rashidzadeh whether there is a god isn't important. What's important is people's attitude towards differences in beliefs. If you consider stalin's rejection of religion as something for the masses, then yes it is atheistic.
This whole video is an equivocation of the word faith in two different contexts. Faith in the religious context is belief without evidence. "Faith" used in this video in the scientific sense is trust in methods that provide measurable and verifiable results. Science never made claims of providing absolute truths. This video notes the fact that science depends on that we know our understanding is always incomplete and are ready to revise it. This should make it clear enough that the religious idea of faith is not present.
Cloud Seeker "The problem in this video is that it's a bunch of game designers that have most likely never been involved in anything that is scientific." These guys are game designers? I didn't know that. They actually have published titles? But yes, the complete lack of understanding of what science is...yeah that's kind of a problem.
Tenzek No, "faith" is the acceptance of something without demonstrable empirical evidence. While science consists of conclusions based on evidence, those conclusions have their foundation in unprovable assumptions. He's not talking about hypotheses being disproven or even theories being disproven. He's talking about Postulates. You cannot prove postulates, by their very nature. You just have to accept, or believe, or have faith in the fact that they are true (pick your phrase. It really doesn't matter). Science and mathematics (upon which all science is based) are logic systems. All logic systems must have a base set of assumptions, which you must accept as true before any logical tests can be conducted, or any evidence can be interpreted. These assumptions, are, by their nature, impossible to prove, but must be true in order for the logic system to be sound. While we can formulate logical tests based on these assumptions, and our tests can reinforce the hypothesis we developed based on our assumptions, that reinforcement does not serve as proof. If those assumptions prove to be false, then our whole logic system crashes, and we have to start from scratch. This is not simply a hypothesis being proven false. This is something much more fundamental. The example EC gave was apt. Euclid's 5th postulate confounded philosophers and mathematicians for centuries. Because of its convoluted nature, mathematicians tried, in vain, for centuries, to prove that it was not necessary to accept it on faith in order to build a robust geometric system. Countless mathematicians spent their entire careers trying, and failing, to disprove this postulate. It was only 1500 years after Euclid's death that three mathematicians, independently, and using different approaches, proved that it did have to be accepted on faith in order to have a sound logical system, by adopting two separate alternatives to the 5th postulate, and building weird, bizarre (to our tiny 2-D monkey brains), robust geometric systems based on these new "assumptions". Note they never proved or disproved anything. They changed assumptions, and developed new proofs for statements which would be false under the old assumptions. These discoveries, and the fact that they might have real-world applications to certain celestial (read: relativistic) observations, not only forced science to readjust its focus, but rendered observations previously believed to be significant completely meaningless. The absolute greatest thinkers in all of science and mathematics in the greatest civilizations of the time were hung up on this for 1 1/2 millennia, desperately trying to prove that the unprovable could be proven. And what did someone who thought outside the box ultimately prove? "Nope, you've just gotta take it on faith." So, what was that you were saying about only having to have faith in the methods? This is not to say that science is illogical, or somehow equal to, greater than, or less than religion. It's saying that scientists and mathematicians have their own baseless assumptions upon which they must base their world view as a matter of necessity, as well. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Jeff Shehane Belief in religion is a stopping point. There is no stopping point in science because you're not asked to believe any truths, nor are you presented with any to be believed. Postulates are not truths. Assumptions in science give context to a description. They define the limitations of a model, or simplify a complicated concept. Misrepresenting this as an equivalent absolute truth to the Word of God appears to be the source of this fallacy. You're acting as if science considers such things unquestioned truth, and therefor requires you to hold belief in them. Euclid's 5th postulate helps to define classical geometry. Geometry is representational like math in general. It's used to model and describe reality. This is like saying that we take language on faith because words in English mean something totally different when you read them as French. The trick in his description is that he applies a postulate of one model to a different model, and notes it does not fit. Then he applies a religious interpretation to make it support his point, but that does not fit science. You'd have to take the postulate as an absolute truth, and that's never what it was meant to be. Most people are familiar with Newtonian physics. Within a limited set of conditions, it provides accurate enough results to be practically useful. It is not an absolute truth. It's not even generally true (meaning we know of cases where it is demonstrably false.) This is how science works. Belief in the context you're using makes no sense in science. It would stop questions and prevent us from looking for answers - the opposite of the point of science. Someone may personally hold a belief about science, or about something that science claims. That does not make such a belief equivalent to science, and it won't stop people from testing further to see if it ever fails to hold up to new results. Science doesn't care about personal beliefs, or compel accepting its statements as Truth. At best this is a case of confusion in semantics. I'll not be cynical enough to claim it's done on purpose.
Jeff Shehane Well, my reply got fairly long to include explanation. Let me give a quick summation. Postulates are things to be discussed in science. They're not truths, but ways to define what it is we're talking about so that it can be discussed with rigor. Applying the religious concept of belief in absolute truths is a mistake. It is in fact quite the opposite - not a compulsion to accept, but a method to explore.
Jeff Shehane No, the parallel postulate does NOT require faith. It is true that it can't be proven, but faith only requires a lack of evidence. Evidence is weaker than proof - you can have evidence of something without being able to prove it. The simplest explanation for why you can't PROVE the postulate is that it's effectively a negative statement. In other words, Euclid's fifth postulate actually makes TWO claims in a stealthy way. One claim is "there is always a line B that doesn't intersect another line A, but does hit a point P that isn't on line A." This part can be massaged into a negative statement by saying that the line B you just made has NO intersection with line A. So, OK, a negative existence statement. That's probably bad. But even worse, the postulate ALSO states that there is no third line C (distinct from line B) that can touch point P without touching line A. That's an even bigger non-existence claim! Oh noes! HOWEVER, and this is why it's not faith, there is actually evidence that this postulate holds up. Not proof! Just evidence. See, you can test it empirically all day long and it has thus far always worked. In any case you can make up, we will be able to find one line B, and no line C. This has, as I said, been the case with every single test example known. Again, I stress that this is absolutely inadmissible as a mathematical proof, but an unbroken pattern of success in countless trials where failure is theoretically possible does, in fact, constitute evidence. And faith, as you know, requires a lack of EVIDENCE, or contradiction of EVIDENCE. Lack of PROOF is not sufficient to call something "faith." So once again, science is not without evidence. And for what it's worth, science is pretty much ALWAYS short of proof. It's just a well-supported claim of a model or law based on the best available evidence. Science merely says "here's our best idea of the pattern behind the observed data." Nowhere does science require the assumption that it's 100% accurate, and nowhere does science use faith. EDIT: But seriously, thank you for providing an intelligent argument. So many others here don't even know what science is.
I've always been more spiritual than religious, but I have a healthy and hearty appreciation for both science and religion and what they offer and bring to the table. Religion offers community, inner comforts, uplift and the means to explore yourself. Science offers progress, better living, outer comforts and the means to explore your world. It's astonishing to me, how little this generation knows about history (A subject I'm very happy you guys at Extra Credits are also shedding more light on!) when you listen to these extremist arguments in one direction or another. It was Christian Monasteries where much scientific progress was made in the dark ages. We have a humble monk to thank for our understanding of vegetable husbandry. We have the Aztecs, some of the most brutal religious extremists in history, to thank for the concept of the absence of number, or the 'zero' numeric. We can thank Plato for the concept of the republic, in which he included the notion that a strong faith is required. And while some say that Islam's greatest contribution to science was the sacking and burning of the Great Library, Islamic scientists made world-changing discoveries on the subjects of economics, chemistry and mathematics. People tend to take an all-or-nothing approach to faith and science, forgetting that it's they're both searching for truth. Not a patentable "THE TRUTH" but just... truth. I like and appreciate how even-handed you guys tackled this subject.
***** Religion is the community of like-seeking individuals, generally looking to someone of wisdom for guidance, who draws their guidance from a divine figure. The passionate evangelist, the wise imam, the scholarly lama and the practical rabbi. Spirituality is the personal pursuit of divinity and fulfillment of becoming closer to your divine spark, the quest for enlightenment. The traveler, the explorer, the yogi, the sensate. That is how *I* define the difference. What most religions offer is not for me, but it is for others. I find God in my own way.
Zucca Xerfantes The way in which you pursue enlightenment, I would say, is religious in nature. The history of world religions is filled with curious itinerants who rejected the communal faiths surrounding them; take Martin Luther the German friar, for example, who came to the conclusion that man's connection to God was not in the hands of the Church, but that it could be pursued through faithful prayer without the need of a clerical medium. The Protestant religions that Martin Luther helped gave rise to could certainly be called religious in nature, despite his belief in a, as you put it, "personal pursuit of divinity." So let me ask you another question. Let us suppose that, at some point in your life, you stumble across a spiritual epiphany. Would you not want to share your revelation with others? If you did, do you not see how, if others were to accept what you profess to be truthful, it may begin to resemble your communal criteria for religion as scores of people flock together to share in this newfound wisdom, perhaps even begin to instruct their children in your teachings that they may go on to live fulfilling lives? That is why I feel that "spiritualism" and "religion" are two names for the same thing, and that the majority of so-called "spiritualists," in my experience, are really saying that they are disillusioned with the organized religion that they grew up exposed to, but still long to explore the mysterious, divine, and wondrous.
***** This may surprise you, but no, I wouldn't. Because everyone's heart is different, and so too, their soul. If I had a spiritual revelation and epiphany, I would go out and encourage people to find their own in their own way. I don't believe in one-size-fits-all spirituality, after all. I was never disillusioned to religion. I still think it has, is and can be a force for good in the world. My problem with religion is that, to use your example, my teachings would be twisted and warped as the years wear on. I could write it all down in a book and people would argue over interpretations and splinter off into little boxes to cling to what they think one passage or another means. And that's only if people don't bring emotion into it. If they do, they could fight over it. And finally, a few clever and ambitious people would use my teachings as a means of control over people and would alter bits and pieces of my writings to suite their needs. So I encourage people to find their own spiritual center. Not to shun it, as disenfranchised atheists and anti-theists do when they get disillusioned with religion. Religion, I think, is the best place to start though. And sometimes what's in their heart falls in line with what's being taught. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer on this one.
Unfortunately, it is sad that, yes, this is still a burning problem. However, I do not think it is a part of "human nature," at least not a part of it that we can't change. It is a long shot, but I truly believe that, if everyone just accepted everyone's differences, then things would be on the right path. However, maybe you are right... after saying that outloud, that doesn't seem very possible.
Nicholas Riggs Most people don't mind when others have different viewpoints and beliefs, but there has to be a limit. Your beliefs simply shouldn't affect others who don't believe it. Like how there was a hospital who was catholic sponosored so it didn't abort a baby eventhough the mother and child would have most likely both died. Just read it www.aclu.org/blog/reproductive-freedom-womens-rights-religion-belief/pregnant-woman-suffers-you-wont-believe-whos This is completely unacceptable and shouldn't be tolerated and accepted.
Nicholas Riggs Yeah, like how your religion says that a morally-perfect being (ie your god) condemns everyone who isn't your religion to an eternity of torture in hellfire, and that gays should be put to death for no reason. That's totally a good example of "accepting people's differences." Man, I just can't figure out why your tolerant, loving religion has such difficulty getting along with the majority of the world. I guess it's a mystery!
GreyWolfLeaderTW ...Ok then. Should I consider you a religious person? If yes, then what religion are you? If christianity or islam, then do you believe the holy books fully because they are holy books. Or do you change some morals in them? If you do, then you made your own secular morals. I would guess that you accept that catholic hospitals do this to other people. If everyone can use their own morals without anyone stopping them, then thieves should be able to steal. If the bible didn't say it's wrong, do you think people would continue stealing? Most people like the laws made from secular thinking rather than your religious ones. But if we can truly seperate ourselves from you, then everything will be simply amazing. Unfortunately, we can't.
GreyWolfLeaderTW It's not an appeal to popularity. It's because religious laws are based on bullshit. You're basically saying "a supernatural being (who I can't prove even exists) told me these rules, so you have to do whatever I say." That's a self-appointed dictatorship, and there's no reason for me to listen to you. The only reason anyone ever has listened to religious laws is because religious people scammed their way into power and would execute those who didn't obey them. Also, there are 613 laws in the Bible, not 10. Try actually reading it. And while we're here, "these laws haven't changed in a long time" is a stupid argument. What, so they're super old and that means they're supposed to be better? Why don't we still use bronze-age swords in the Army? That technology hasn't changed in a long time, either. Oh, because older answers are not automatically better than newer ones, and are in fact usually worse (or else there wouldn't BE a new answer). Finally, in a secular, humanist system, everybody gets an equal say. Everybody gets to explain why their way is best. The difference between reasonable people and you is that reasonable people have REAL explanations that MAKE SENSE, whereas you have "a magic ghost in an old book said so" as your entire basis. That's fucking insane, and I guarantee you would see it my way if it were any religion that disagrees with yours making the laws.
The thing is, randomness is defined by things beyond control of a specific system, and this uncertainty was treated as if actual form. I think the quantum randomness is due to lack of understanding.
Somebody take that pic shown when he says "like us some science" (the one with all four of them raving in lab coats) and make a poster or tee-shirt of that!
Proverbs 1:22:"How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?" Great Video Man!
There are three postulates we must take on faith: 1. I am. 2. My senses are sometimes accurate. 3. Physical evidence is a valid way of justifying beliefs. Einstein didn't reject quantum physics because of his belief in science, science demands he question his beliefs in the presence of new evidence..
What one must or mustn't take on faith is up to oneself. A religious individual takes the existence of god on faith. Axioms are arbitrary. Rather than trying to impose your own on people learn to live with this fact and use meta-logical techniques to convince people instead.
I like how you guys don't debunk religion, don't mention millenium old stereotypes or bring up things that happened hundreds of years ago or try to blame religion for all of the bad it admittedly has caused. Instead you guys show what it's /supposed/ to be in the basics, what it's supposed to be for everyone with faith in anything (religion or not). +1 like for you. Keeping that open mind towards things such as religion instead of angrily dismissing them because a loud few ruin it for the rest (also admittedly atheists are becoming more of that crowd nowadays as I've seen) shows great tolerance and what true tolerance should be towards all beliefs/supposed lack thereof. I really like the attitude of "There might be a god, there might not be. Not ruling it out automatically because 'science' has been proven wrong before but we're not going to just embrace it blindly."
My biology teacher is writing a book to connect religion and science. It's called the theory of evolutionary ecology or something. One of the points in it is about how evolution might be guided by God. (I'm agnostic so this interests me greatly)
Max Holbrook That's a really interesting topic. I fall on the young earth side of that debate (don't crucify me for that) and there is a theory called diversification within the young earth community that you might be interested in as well.
Religion doesn't always preach belief without question. Don't generalize religion. You will find many many religious people and churches that encourage questioning and self discovery. It's not about blind belief at all; it's about questioning and understanding and figuring out what you believe. Religion isn't a set of rules; it's a life long process of figuring out how you see the world. As an atheist, I can attest to the fact that becoming an atheist was a process of questioning and reevaluating the way I perceived the world. In the same way, I know a lot of people who went from being atheist to becoming religious, because they questioned and got different answers. There's nothing wrong with religion; it's just that some people use it in the wrong way.
+Nammy Kasaraneni "Atheism is as much a religion as bald is a hairstyle." Ever heard that one? It's an example of how you can't put the two together in the same pot. You don't "become" an atheist. Otherwise you are an atheist in that sense towards anything until you learn about it. Such as a blue orange. You're not religious to say "Blue oranges do not exist because there is no proof of them." You're just making a statement. One which could be proven wrong someday. And please name a religion that does not ask you to believe something without proof. Find me a proven religion. There's no such thing. The scientific method does not "question" and be done with it. Its goal is to prove. Look at the diagram in the video (at 1:52). You said churches "encourages questioning" yeah, but not of THEIR beliefs/holy writings. Questioning your own, as you repeated many times, however is nothing like that. "How I see/perceive/evaluate the world." You can't confirm what you believe, otherwise you wouldn't "believe" it. It would already be true and thus a fact. You don't say you "believe a fact." You can only confirm how strongly you believe *in* something, but that's mincing words. Science does not allow how much an idea is liked or disliked to have any relevance to whether it is true or not. Nor are scientific matters personal.
When I said I became atheist I meant that I chose to stop believing in god(s). And there are no proven religions I agree, because religions cannot be proven. But there are churches that encourage the questioning of even their own beliefs and statements; my friend goes to a church that advocates for that very thing. When I say questioning, I don't mean theory based questioning and in that sense religion and science do differ. I'm not saying that science and religion are the same at all, nor am I saying that being atheist versus being religious is the same. However, I do think the process of deciding whether or not you believe in a God is similar for many people, at least in my experience. I decided I didn't believe in things without proof. Others decided they didn't need proof, and that's, in my opinion, respectable. I would also say that you don't believe facts, but really, I disagree with the concept of fact. If you're a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan, think about the Ruler of the Universe. We trust our perceptions of the world on faith constantly. We believe in what we see, we believe in data and evidence. We believe our theories in order to explain the universe. The difference, though, is that our theories can be disproven, whereas a religious theory cannot. I appreciate discussions like this :) it's a nice change from the usual zealots and trolls
flameshana9 Everything in life, not just religion requires faith. I can investigate and find that Christianity has a sufficient amount of historical proof to make me believe that it's valid, but at some point faith has to come in. I am pretty sure that the Earth and everything on it was created by God, but i don't know for a fact that it's true. That doesn't stop me from believing it though. Do you realize how essential faith in anything is for life? You could not function without faith. You have faith that the doctor is telling you the truth. You have to have faith that the surgeon won't kill you. You have to have faith that you're gonna wake up in the morning. Sure these things have evidence, but that doesn't mean that they will always happen. Faith is not reliant upon the presence or absence of evidence.
+flameshana9 Late, late, late on this, but just one thing: Yes, people do *become* atheists, in the same way someone can *become* some follower of a religion. That's just an outright lie. To simplify matters a bit, the most obvious example is the freshman college student who takes a basic theology, philosophy, or logic course and decides that there is no god, when - before - they grew up in a religious household. That is *literally* becoming an atheist. By that notion, the entire rest of your argument has no grounding for further examination.
My favourite quote right now is "I think therefore I am". For those who don't know, that quote is basically one guy saying I can prove nothing at all. Nothing but one thing: the fact that I exist. It may seem stupid at first but I like the quote so much because it makes me question everything I believe in but at the same time reassures me that there is one thing that I can objectively know which leaves me sad, thoughtful, hopeful, inquisitive and uplifted all at the same time. (No, I'm not a hippie)
So you don't know if you're hippie or not? If you say the only thing you can prove to yourself is your existence... Then you seem you can't be sure about being a hippie, right?
Yea, except that's not true either, you can't know if you're colourblind without others telling you so and since memory is malleable you can't trust that your memory of events you remember vividly are accurate
I do not understand why some people have been giving Extra Credits crap over this :S. At the heart of it, while I do disagree with some things, I agree that it is incredibly sad that people would be SO close-minded that they would call this "retarded" or "unbearable." Really? The definition of faith is the, "absolute trust or confidence in someone or something." In a sense, faith, when refined and proven to be accurate again and again and again, does become something new: Knowledge... To have a knowledge or an assurance of something IS to have faith in it. To finish my point, it is hard to say a statement in which I say, "I have a knowledge/understanding of gravity, but I do not have faith in gravity."
Mister Guy You can harp on me for pulling the REAL definition card all you want, I do not care. You can use examples of the verb "dusting" that have circular logic, and again, I do not care. YOU are the perfect example of what they are talking about - Someone SO close-minded and blinded by your own ignorance and apathy that you will really accost someone over the internet by: calling me and religion in general liars, calling ideas that differ from yours retarded, etc. Like it or not, faith IS trust, it is just people who can not learn to read outside of their narrow mindset will often ONLY associate faith with religion (note- I am not saying faith in a deity and faith that the sun will still be there in the morning is the same, I am saying both use the concepts of faith). Furthermore, had you been paying attention, in the first ninety seconds, he said one of the best things to do is "question what you venerate." In this case, he is talking about science as a whole and questioning the IDEA and FAITH behind science, not talking about science itself which is a conglomeration of testing hypotheses, drawing conclusions from data, and applying it. It seems your misunderstanding of this episode (and what the E.C. team is trying to say) is caused by the very thing they are trying to warn people about: Being close-minded and being unable to look past your shallow and narrow views is sad, disappointing, and overall unpleasant. So I guess, thank you for proving their point, despite having to be the sad example of it. Furthermore, If you hate religion so much (which, I mean, clearly I can draw from what you said) that it affects how you see English words to the point where you want to argue definitions with a random stranger, I advise you gain a sense of empathy, especially because you are only doing yourself and society a disservice by spreading around so many hateful things. I do not care what you are preaching, when you preach it like an asshole, nobody listens - that goes for your views, religious views, and everything in the middle. I truly hope your day/ tomorrow goes better for you, as it seems like you have a lot of anger that can't possibly stem ONLY you disagreeing with someone over the internet.
Mister Guy Faith is just a word. You hate the definition so much? Scream at the dictionary companies like Webster and Britannica and the societies that support them. Like it or not, it means "belief in things which are not based on evidence." , Faith means EXACTLY that. Faith is mainly only really used for religion, but BY DEFINITION, YOUR DEFINITION NO LESS... it will often mean science as well because, as you said, science is always about questioning and changing based on 'evidence' from scientists, no? Lets look at THAT word since we like definitions so much :P. 'Evidence' is the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. I will use this fact in a moment. Just like the video, they make the point that scientists believed without a shadow of a doubt that they were only a few equations from solving ALL of physics. Evidence provided a different thought against it, so all of that 'knowledge' that the 'surely knew' about the universe, turned out to be not based on evidence because, clearly, it was proven wrong with evidence. However... because evidence only uses facts to prove facts, then they could not have used real evidence in coming to the conclusion they only had a few more equations to go... thus, they used faith. Faith in science. They put trust/ a belief in things which were just dis-proven with real evidence. it is just a stigma that faith can only be usable in the context of religion. Now, here is where you are right - science is by NO means less valuable than religion. In fact, I would go as far to say that science, in relation to progress made by humans, faaarrrr outweigh religion. I agree 100% that science has made INCREDIBLE things... I am a global studies/ polisci major and I reflect EVERYDAY on the awesomeness that is skype that allows me to communicate with my peers in Moscow and Berlin respectively and share information and research with them. Scientists find joy in finding out when they are wrong, that a hypothesis turned out MUCH differently than what they originally trusted to be fact or a logical outcome. They used faith in their experiments only to have the pleasure of being shocked at finding a new outcome. Just because my definition of faith, as well as many others, does not coincide with yours does NOT mean I am bullshitting or being dishonest, proving the point of your own mental-shallowness. Ideas of yours that do not allow for others to freely think what they wish are slowly starting to become obsolete in this world. You are CLEARLY too deep in the ocean of biases that you are swimming in to make a logical conclusions based on the English definition of the word "faith." At the end of the day, E.C. made this as a reply to every asshole out there that thinks that there is NOTHING to learn from others views of faith, whether it is in science or religion. This video was made for you, and it saddens me to see you so stiff-necked and so prideful that you cannot come down from your pedestal and acknowledge that while your views of faith are partially correct, they are not 100%... you are, in essence, making the same mistake as those scientists a few years ago, bud. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings by calling you an asshole, I was more taken-aback that anyone could be so presumptuous to the point of calling other ideas retarded. You need to understand that while you do not disagree with my (or anyone else's) words, that does not make them wrong. Have a good day at work/school bud, I sincerely hope it goes well.
Mister Guy People who call people retards arent open minded. Someone with an open mind would have taken Mr. Riggs post and reminded him that he cant confuse knowledge and faith, because the two are fundamentally different. An open minded person would look at what hes trying to say, understand it, and respond with by citing the work of Rene Descarte, mentioned in this video. They would remind him that Descartes problem was that he couldnt know anything, because he refused to allow faith. The only thing he could truly have knowledge of was that he existed as a thinking being, with his famous quote "I think, therefore I am." Additionally, if you had an open mind, you would see that Mr. Riggs definition of faith is absolutely relevant to the conversation, especially considering postulates are a prime factor within the scientific community. If you were open minded, you would see that Religion is one of the pillars that form civilizations, and is one of the social institutions on which societies as a whole function. If you were open minded, you would know that some people have a deep internal need for religion to find peace within their own lives, and that nothing is wrong with that. If you were open minded, you would not be saying things about an institution which you clearly do not understand. If you were open minded, you would have listened to the video, since you are the kind of individual it was directed towards.
jablesusta I must admit, I was originally worried when I opened my inbox and saw yet another post on this subject. Thank you for posing your evidence, and I had totally forgot Descartes' famous postulate of existence! I am also thankful that another person acknowledges the importance of religion in modern times: not as a definitive hard-lined rule book in society, but as a cultural/ spiritual necessity desired by the individual. Would you agree that faith, in anything, is necessary for us to function as human beings because, as Descarte states, we can not have definitive knowledge in all things we have access to? I would like to think so, especially considering there is just TOO MUCH knowledge out there, that some things really just need to be accepted as relevant truth, thus me exercising, what I believe may be, true faith. Anywhoozles, thank you for revitalizing this debate in a mature and level-headed manner!! It was admittedly starting to stagnate. :S
As a professional scientist and regular churchgoer, I really appreciate this episode. I personally like to think of science as God's blueprint for the universe, and it's okay that we're always finding new details about that print we didn't realize before.
I can understand what Extra Credits is trying to convey. Like religious fanatics, it is always those with LEAST understanding of science who use it like a stick to bash religions. I have been guilty of that in some occasions. But I think using the word of Faith is a wrong choice of word (Wittgenstein said something in the line of "Most problems in Philosophy are due to poorly defined words"). Axioms are, as the video said, the starting point. It is not faith because the second it failed to provide the evidence of its truth, good scientists will discard it. This is also why a lot of economists are saying that Economics is not only the dismal "science", but a work of fiction ("Post Hoc Explanation"). Falsifiability is a big point in what is defined as science, although not in the hard form that Popper wants. And I think that is all that Faith is not. It is not that we say "Yes, we believe this axioms to be true", it is "Let's test if these axioms can lead to testable experiments". The "Matrix" or "Brain in a Jar" thought experiment is fundamentally unsolvable. But I don't think people should take it on "Faith" that we are not in a matrix world, or just a brain in a jar. Personally, I don't think it makes a difference. If we are brains in a Jar, then the findings of science define the results in the worlds inside of our mind or the matrix world. Does that imply that there is a possibility of an Architect to the Matrix (aka. God)? Yes, always. You can't really prove a negative. Should you believe in the existence of a God? I don't see the point. He does not seem to be as involved in our day to day life and just left everyone be. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people because Good and Bad are human concepts that any creature capable of creating Matrix world will found it ridiculously beneath it.
Oh, while we're here, it's not "those with least understanding of science" who use it to bash religions. Easy example, Richard Dawkins. Dude knows some science. He's certainly not anywhere near the "least understanding" end of that spectrum compared to the entire human population.
Mister Guy And unfortunately, for every Richard Dawkins out there, there are 10,000 people who, after reading the God Delusion, thinks that he's the second coming of Bono and start, being good internet tough guys, flaming everyone else who believe in God. I have nothing against Richard Dawkins, his God Delusion book was one of the three books that I think changed my mind about how I view the world (the other two being Nassim Taleb's Black Swan and Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad). If you have read Rich Dad Poor Dad, you'd know that it is a really ridiculously bad Finance text book. But I only realised that after taking real finance courses later in my life. I think the same can be said about God Delusion. It is a ridiculously bad Atheist handbook, but its popularity introduced many millions, including me, into Atheism. I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God. I think Dawkins' movement to create radical Atheism was a good idea in the beginning. But there are moments when I shiver when I am reading some of the atheist forums full of people basically mindlessly repeating what he said as if it is a sentence from the bible. For a movement that supposedly create more free thinkers, I think more people need to stop embarrassing other atheists out there by sounding like religious fanatics; or a broken tape recorder. If you have that much time to bash religions, you have time to read books that are actually beneficial for your mind.
whartanto2 OK, so...I've never read any of those books you named. So I wouldn't even recognize if someone were quoting him. But let's get some shit straight: First, Pythagoras did this thing where he showed that "A squared plus B squared equals C squared" and blah blah you know the rest. Repeating what someone else said, when it's true...I mean, what, should I come up with a different way to calculate hypotenuse length? Why not just use the right answer? So if Dawkins said something like "there's no evidence god exists" or whatever, then what's wrong with someone else saying it, too? But I don't even know what you're saying people quote from these books, so maybe you can tell me what you're talking about. Secondly, there CANNOT BE a "handbook for being an atheist." Or if there was, it would say "Don't believe that any god exists," and that's it. That's the whole book, and it's 100% comprehensive. "I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God." So basically you don't care about being right or knowing what you're talking about. You will agree with whatever view is popular and will change your tune the second the population of the room around you changes. Uh, good for you? Sorry, I have a spine, and so I don't just say I agree with stupid shit because other people think it's correct. I actually, you know, say what I think. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter if you don't like the level of confrontation that you see in atheism these days. It's going to be this way until we get good enough education to wipe religion down to nearly nothing, because religion actively harms human civilization. Those of us who are atheist AND, INDEPENDENT OF ATHEISM, care about shit like civil rights or technological advancement are making this happen, and we care very much about it.
Look, I was in the same position that you are six to seven years ago. So I can see a lot of what you are saying now in what I said back then. But as Oscar Wilde aptly said "I am not young enough to know everything" anymore. I am replying to your comment not in the spirit of argument or any emotional response. But just answering your questions since you put the time to ask them. First, there is nothing wrong in repeating what other people has figured out. That is what education is all about. That's how we built on previous generations' knowledge. That's how man rise from stone age to reach for the moon. But there is a difference, using your example, in knowing the Pythagoras theorem and using it to build houses or bridges; or in answering questions if asked; to shouting to everyone you met about the equation, regardless on whether or not they want to know about it. I think as I grew older with atheism, not believing in God changed from something that I want to share with the whole world, like a child who discovered something interesting wanting to share with his mum, or like those evangelical of any religion who wants to share the "Good News" with anyone who opened the door. It turns into something personal, like me liking some music that others may or may not like. It colours everything that I see, the way I see the world, but I have given up trying to make other people like my music - no matter how beautiful I think the world look without the goggle of religion. Their loss, I suppose. But not my loss. Second, atheism, like any meme has a source. Human's instinctual need to believe is such that before there was written language, human has worshipped things in nature. In modern era, this meme happens to be the four horsemen of atheism. Not to say that atheism didn't exist before them, but certainly not as popular as it is today. Especially not in western society. The communists can point out to Karl Marx as the source of their atheism - The opium of the masses, that's what he called religion. I know a lot of people who grew up in Communist country, and despite never having any religion all their life, they neither found religion repulsive or anything special. But if you grew up in religious family, like I was, I am sure it, like anything you have learned in life, has its source in norms of the people around you. This might sound radical to people who think they are free-thinker. It is as repulsive as Ayn Rand fan listening to Obama saying that "if you build a business, you didn't build that". But truly, whether you realise it or not, the most popular concept of "radical atheism" is quite new: That it is not enough that you don't believe in God, you have to do anything in your power to make sure that other people don't believe in God too. I live everyday amongst good, smart, hardworking people who happen to be religious. Despite your belief, they too care about civil rights, liberty, justice, and the newest iPad and Google Glass. I can see them past their religions, and they can see me past my atheism. We have more in common than what differentiate us. You can call it being spineless, but I believe that without tolerance, we lost what define as what is good about humanity. And you are right, I would not die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.
whartanto2 I didn't call being religious "spineless." I called the statement "I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God" spineless, because it is - it's saying that you'd rather agree with people than find the right answer or say what you honestly believe. I don't know how much more textbook this can be. "But as Oscar Wilde aptly said "I am not young enough to know everything" anymore." That quotation can apply to theism, but cannot apply to atheism. So, you know, great job there! Atheism is not a claim to knowledge - it is a statement of a lack of belief. A lack of belief, incidentally, in falsely-claimed knowledge that others present. You got it EXACTLY backwards. Those religious people you see who are, by your judgment, good people, are then victims. Victims of a system that tells them that they're good or bad based on what some bullshit organization of liars and conmen says. Victims of a system that tells them what to believe and how to vote (almost always to the detriment of humanity), and that takes their money in the process. Further, they help to victimize others by giving money to churches and other organizations which pose as charities while in fact consolidating power. And when they get power, they crush human rights. Go look at Africa and the Middle East, where religion is still strong. Or just look at the USA and see where gay people can't get equal rights, then overlay that with where religion is strongest. "...atheism, like any meme has a source." Atheism is not a meme and doesn't need a source. Religion is the meme - religion is the thing that someone else has to tell you about because you could never just get there on your own. Nobody has to tell you NOT to believe in very specific made-up stories. What if I told you that your lack of belief that the events of the Lord Of The Rings books/movies is a meme? See how obviously wrong that is? Not believing in fiction does not require a source - but the fiction itself does. "Their loss, I suppose. But not my loss." What the fuck? Yeah, it's "their loss" when their religion gets homosexuals executed. It's "their loss" when their religion causes people to lose their freedom to think and speak freely. Maybe you don't happen to be inconvenienced personally by the fact that other people's lives are ruined, and often violently ended, by religion. But some of us actually care about other people and aren't willing to pretend that religious belief is harmless because it is demonstrably harmful. Some of us care about EVERYONE'S rights, including (but not limited to) our own. Are you seriously going to pretend that religion affects nothing, and it's just like "Oh I like TV Show X, but my friend likes TV Show Y." Because it is very clearly not that way. You should go back to the way you were, before you caved and just wanted to agree with everyone. Before the spark of life, before the fight in you died. Back when you cared about things beyond yourself and weren't willing to lie to yourself and others in order to avoid any potential conflicts. When you had that...what do you call that, that line of small bones in your back that allow you to stand tall? That thing. Get that back.
There are grand merits to agnosticism. Agnostic, a word meaning "I know not" That mentality serves for amazing growth as one never grows attached to "truth", and merely flows with what is. Water knows not where it flows, but it flows none the less. I am by no means agnostic nor am I, religious or anti-religious.
The thing that gets on my wick with religion is that it teaches people to *not* question. To be satisfied with ignorance. To look at the world and just shrug. Science however does the exact opposite. Science may not have all the answers but it can admit it. Admitting ignorance and persevering is essential to science. And what you are calling "faith" in science isn't what I would call faith. What I call faith is to believe without reason. Of course if you have a reason you would not need faith. In science, those things we take for granted are demonstrably true even though they may not be "proven" in a logical way. For example, prove that 1+1=2. Difficult, right? Perhaps impossible. But it is demonstrable. No faith required. You could be imagining it? That is why you do it more than once and get others to do the same thing. Repeat it. If they find an error, great! Nobel Prize! In religion, if you find an error, you get punished.
What exactly are religious people being ignorant to though? Most religious people in our country (assuming you live in the US) go through the same schooling as the rest of America's youth and experience the same type of education to the sciences. Most don't ignore it and blindly label it untrue too. It all really boils down to a choice. There is no concrete proof that can say whether god or gods exist and there never will be because it is impossible for humans to debunk all of the universe's mysteries. Every person, religious or not, will question their faith in whatever they have faith in at some point in their lives. The only thing that matters is if they decide if it is worth it or not. Only if you have time to read more: Religious and non-religious people, both see each other as being in a matrix like you said. Non-religious people see religious people as living in a fake reality, turning a blind eye to what is in the universe and religious people see non-religious people's reality as fake too, turning a blind eye to what is "actually" beyond this universe we all live in. No one should every feel contempt for anyone else for what they believe in because I'm sure they have though about what they believe in just as much as you have and decided it was worth it. If there are "winners", I would would give the title to the person who has the most satisfaction in what they believe in :).
TearsInMyCup But religion PREACHES ignorance. What was the forbidden fruit? Knowledge fruit. There is not one word of the gospels that praise intelligence. 42% of Americans are creationists. That is an EPIDEMIC of ignorance. I don't care if it is just your belief or it says so in your holy book (which most Christians have never read which is why they have no idea of how MONSTROUS and IMMORAL their religion truly is) you are wrong. There are mountains of evidence for evolution, no evidence for creationism, and their religion teaches them to pick the latter. To remain ignorant. To turn a blind eye to REASON. To go on *faith*. Faith is not a virtue but the glorification of voluntary ignorance. What is beyond the universe? Science is working on it. We can admit that we do not know but will not give up until we do. Religion on the other hand, says "yeah we know, don't ask how, you just need faith lol give us cash and tax exemption" Religion is the lazy easy way out. It is easier than logic, facts, evidence, science, common sense, proof, reasoning, probability, *thinking* intelligence, feasibility, confirmation, wisdom, liklihood, knowledge, rationality, realism, plausibility, intellect, awarness ecetera. You speak of satisfaction? Just imagine if all the time spent in churches was spent pursuing worthwhile endeavours. If all the money given to churches was donated to worthy causes, If religious leaders changed to social work so that they may truly help others, If all the people who prayed actually did somthing constructive about the problem, if the fears of hell and damnation were lifted from all their shoulders. If the love for their unseen deity was redirected towards other people. Give up religion for reality, people. It is MUCH more *satisfying* And BTW I live in the UK.
PonzooonTheGreat I think you are taking the Genesis story more than a bit too literally. It is "the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil." In short, secular humanism. When human beings decide to use feelings to determine what is right and wrong, you will have problems. When people murder, it "felt" like a decent idea at the time. Secular humanism tries with great difficulty to define morality without what they refer to as a "spaghetti monster." This ends up becoming quite a mess, when they try to go by effectively promoting humanity as a whole. This worked very well in Hitler's rhetoric, as Goebbels followed many of the tenets of what was at that time an infantile secular humanism. He was promoting humanity as he saw it: the Aryan humanity. *This* is the warning given in Genesis, not a warning against thought itself. Second, it is important to remember that fundamentalism =/= religion. Faith as preached at least by the Catholic Church, and likely by at least some Protestants as well (though I am not as well versed in their theology) includes faith in the common sense, but is not limited to it. It is also a concept built off of reason, rather than being separate from reason. I think you might want to consider reading some Church documents. Much of what you say about religion runs contrary to my belief system at least, but also very likely a number of others (also, Buddhism teaches moderation as well as I know, and to seek enlightenment through meditation and self-reflection. I tend to think that these aren't concepts you would oppose).
PonzooonTheGreat I understand your point, but I think your sentiments are for the wrong reason. As I said before there is no way of proving if there is a god/gods or not. In your life, you may have the privilege of meeting a homosexual child abused by their family based on Christian beliefs and left that lifestyle and found more fulfillment in Atheism. You may have the privilege to meet a suicide survivor who finds life worth living again through a new found faith. You can't really decide for them what satisfies or fulfills their lives. The real problem is when people try to tell them that their faith or lack of faith in a religion is wrong when they find complete satisfaction in how they are living their lives, which I see is what you're doing and have been doing for awhile. You see what I mean? If you're a victim of such actions, the only advice I can give is to not fight back and move on, because the more you try to defend your beliefs shows that you are insecure in your own beliefs feeling the need to justify yourself. At least thats what is looks like. This goes for all religious/non-religious people. Honestly, I don't know what is true or not true, you may be right, but what is important is that you keep doing what fulfills you. If that's evangelistic atheism then, I can't really tell you to stop what you're doing and I'm happy that you find happiness is spreading the atheistic awareness. What it does seem like though is that you are unhappy, and angry and anger leads to the DARK SIDE. May the force be with you.
Dogma is poisonous to either the religious and scientific community. Every idea has an appropriate response and, as an agnostic myself, I think it is beneficial to have a good breadth of views to challenge yourself rather than validating your point of view. It's like reading a book that, though it challenges you, is entertaining because it destroys your viewpoint. That's why I love reading Russian literature, German literature, and others because it's not that I agree with them but because they challenge me.
Dogma's not poisonous. *Dogmatism*, maybe, but to simply have dogma is what we all do normally. Science, too, has a dogma, which is just the accumulation of all theories, laws, hypotheses, thought experiments, and experience hitherto. Dogma changes; dogma is neutral, if not entirely postive. I think _Dogmatism_ is clearly harmful, the expectation that what is dogma at any given time must necessarily and always be so.
I find the conflation of the kind of "faith" that involves feeling confident gravity will continue to exist, and the kind of faith that a proposition is true with no evidence whatsoever, and even in contradiction of mountains of evidence to be both incredibly frustrating as well as intellectually dishonest.
Have you guys considered that there are various gradients to 'faith'? I can easily and validly posit that 'scientific faith' is much much more probable than 'religious faith'. Simply asserting that both science and religion use 'faith' seems to me like a false equivalency.
***** Sure, I can agree with that. I'm just opposed to an implication, if it was intended, that religion and science are interchangeably useful. I think that scientific 'faith' has done more good for the world than religious 'faith', but yes I do also believe that religious faith can be good as well.
+unifieddynasty Well science has been proven wrong a variety of times, in fact it's almost guaranteed that science will be wrong again, over and over. Meanwhile, Odin promised to kill all of the ice giants, and I don't see many ice giants around, do you? I don't thing science is a replacement for religion, though, since religion covers things that cannot be tested by science. You can't scientifically prove that other people even exist, since if you try any experiment on many different people, or even the same people at different times, you will get vastly different results. This makes it impossible to complete the vital step of the scientific method of having peers recreate your results to verify their validity. The scientific method can teach us a lot about our world, but understanding physics isn't the meaning of life, at least not to most people. The scientific method can't give us meaning, which is something we humans desperately search for in every inch of our lives. A nihilist would say there is no meaning, and we are all no more important than the dust we will become, while others would say there is more meaning than anyone could ever comprehend. In the end, does it even matter if you're right about everything? It's important to us because we attribute meaning to being right or wrong about things. Maybe your life's purpose is to become right about everything, or at least to be most likely right about as many things as possible. Anyway, this all got over-complicated but I just can't see science as a replacement for religion or vice versa, and seeing them as conflicting is as silly as Team French Fry vs. Team Ketchup when they can be great together!
Zadamanim "Well science has been proven wrong a variety of times, in fact it's almost guaranteed that science will be wrong again, over and over." You are arguing semantics. The scientific process demands constant skepticism. You might call that 'being wrong over and over', but this is also known as 'acknowledging a more accurate truth over and over'. Science is much more useful for explaining things than religion because it never justifies its ignorance with assorted supernatural happenings. "Meanwhile, Odin promised to kill all of the ice giants, and I don't see many ice giants around, do you?" Please don't use Facebook memes as an argument against science. "I don't thing science is a replacement for religion, though, since religion covers things that cannot be tested by science. " Sure. I never claimed that science is a replacement for religion. A more apt replacement would be atheism, or simply irreligion. "You can't scientifically prove that other people even exist..." Doubtless there are numerous philosophical things that are outside the bounds of science. Let me repeat that I don't think science can replace religion in certain regards, just as I don't think religion can replace science in certain regards. Science versus religion is a false dichotomy when it comes to certain things. In certain things, especially of the material, tangible world, science evidently holds precedent over religion. And there are other things that science has no business trying to explain. Going back to my original point, my problem with some religious interpretations is that they take an easy way out. It is intellectually lazy to say 'the gods did it', rather than inquiring further. Thus why scientific 'faith' holds precedent over religious 'faith' when it comes to the material, tangible world.
Zadamanim "But I also believe that one day the two can be seen as different accounts of the same events. If you compare the events that happen at the beginning of the bible and simply replace the "days" with millions and millions of years, then the order of each creation matches up with modern science, with light coming first, then planets, then a distinction between the atmosphere and the ground, then plant life, fish, birds, land animals, and lastly humans coming into play." Bro, I really admire your perseverance in trying to reconcile religion and science. The thing is that one can interpret the holy books in almost any way, since the definition and connotation of words can always be changed. And if you look at the historical trend, religious claims about the physical world usually tends to change to conform to the new scientific discoveries of the time. In summary, religion has a trend of reacting to science. This is why I say that science holds precedence over religion in explaining certain things.
***** Well that's why I don't subscribe myself to every religion, just the one I think might be ahead of the curve on this one. Or at least the one I interpret as being "right all along!" even if that's retroactively "right all along." :P
The best response to the internet being wrong ever. Also, quite possibly the most objective and pragmatic source of discussion of religion and science ever presented on the internet.
The difference between scientific faith and religious faith is that in science it's merely a starting point, because you have to make some assumptions in order to even function properly, but in religion it's one of the main components, and requires much bigger assumptions. Thus I feel Occam's Razor tends to side against religion in almost every case, and thus I find it unnecessary at best.
"Thus I feel Occam's Razor tends to side against religion in almost every case, and thus I find it unnecessary at best. " Occam's Razor or Religion? O.o ...aah, i see what you did there >:)
what you inadvertedly did back there is a sort of opinion net ...politicians use it all the time. Per example: "The NSA seems intent on dealing with the Anonymous movement, thus i feel that their actions should come under more scrutiny." By omitting the subject from the second sentence of that phrase you've created a nice little Schrodinger's cat, whereby your actual opinion is in a perceived state of uncertainty. However most people will jump to conclusions and assume either one or the other, as-well as interpreting your intent as either malicious or benign. -"If your against Anonymous, yure against FREE SPEECH!" -"Our Government knows best. I never did like the way them Hackers poke their nose where it doesn't belong." It's a GREAT way to create a debate with very little input except confusion ^_^
neferiusnexus Well, that was unintentional. I'm very open about my opinion that religion is no longer needed in society. It was useful in the past for maintaining social order and providing people with answers and comfort, but now I feel there are better ways to achieve the same goals that don't involve believing in supernatural forces that can neither be confirmed nor falsified.
i too share this fundamental belief ...there is plenty of fiction around nowadays to alleviate Humanity's innate and fundamental crave for escapism, but lending it any real Faith or credence is a grave mistake that could potentially set thing back to a Medieval stage :I As Humans, our minds always tread a fine line between what we perceive and what we imagine. Thus we should always strive to see that fine line more clearly so-as to know what is on which side.
Knowledge is a subset of belief. It is categorically something that is both believed and verified to be true. Truth is that which conforms to reality. Absolute certainty is not a required component of knowledge; there are degrees to which we can verify things to conform to reality. I'll illustrate: You are in a field. In the distance you see a barn. You could say you KNOW that there is a barn in the field because you can see it… but I could point out that we haven’t eliminated the possibility that it might not be a barn at all but a giant photo cutout of a barn or a hologram. But you can still say you are REASONABLY certain there is a barn in the field. You can go up to the barn and verify that it is in fact a barn, and not a cutout or hologram. You are now MAXIMALLY certain there is a barn but technically you could never be ABSOLUTELY certain that there is a barn in the field until you can confirm, for one example, that you are not experiencing a severe delusion when in reality you are actually locked away in an institution. And how do you do that? “Absolute” isn't a realistic set of terms to navigate the reality we experience. We don't navigate life on what we are absolutely certain about; we operate based on our beliefs and so we want to make sure our beliefs are justified rather than unjustified and that we believe in as many true things as possible and as few false things. Going back to the barn in a field analogy, we aren't even at the "see a barn in the distance" phase of certainty in terms of god claims. I will not say that God absolutely does not exist, but until acceptable standards of evidence are met, I am justified in saying he does not exist (in terms of maximal certainty). Rejection of a proposition is the reasonable starting point for any proposition.
+Coyote 6 "I will not say that God absolutely does not exist, but until acceptable standards of evidence are met, I am justified in saying he does not exist (in terms of maximal certainty)." Well said, good sir. +1 Empiricism point for you :D
+Coyote 6 I wish more people could understand this. I hate to say it, but this is the kind of thing that a philosophy class helps you reach. Too many people preach that you can't be absolutely certain of science and then don't realize that it invalidates the entirety of human existence. It's a pointless argument.
***** I'm afraid it's not. They err on the side of uncertainty, which is simply an unreasonable stance. The point of this person's comment is to show that we have to entertain a certain level of belief in what we know in order to function. Yet, people don't apply that same level of scrutiny to ideas such as God. It's simply illogical.
+GweLof Science has always been open to challenge that is the very basis of science itself. It seems many people, including extra credits, don't really know what it is.
Nope. I'm still not agreeing with this. Faith is certainty without proof, and certainty should never exist because there is never absolute and undeniable proof, no matter how likely something may seem. We will never have total knowledge, and therefore there may always be something that can turn our understanding on its head. We just have to accept that. No faith is ever needed.
delorean225 "I said that if he says faith is false but still says that there's no absolute proof of anything, than you MUST have faith in order to take what we know as fact as fact." Not quite. Faith is belief that is not supported by evidence. Evidence is not the same as 100% watertight proof, like what you can do in mathematics. In other words, you can have evidence that something is true (e.g. "I found traces of gunpowder on the suspect's hands") without having absolute 100% proof. And since science does not go beyond "theory," it is ALWAYS telling you "this is how it looks so far, but this idea could be off." There is no faith in this process at any point.
delorean225 No... Acting as though something is definately true because you know that the chance of it being wrong is too small to bother with isn't the same as actually believing that there is no chance that it could be wrong.
KittXenn "Acting as though something is definately true because you know that the chance of it being wrong is too small to bother with isn't the same as actually believing that there is no chance that it could be wrong." And that is EXACTLY why science doesn't involve faith. When something is as thoroughly proven as it can possibly be (outside of mathematics, where 100% absolute proof is possible), what is it called? That's right, it's called a THEORY, and all theories are available to be challenged by anyone at any time. In other words, science itself does not place absolute certainty on these things. So science already accounts for what you just said, and therefore does not use any faith at all.
faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something. "this restores one's faith in politicians" *synonyms: trust, belief, confidence, conviction;*
As an atheist I have one problem with this episode: there are two uses of the word faith that are different but are the same word 1. Faith as necessity In some cases, like math, logic, we need to start from a point in believing in our observations. 2. Faith without necessity There are times, like in religion but not limited to it, where people believe things that have no use in society. For example, believing in a being external to our universe that can’t be proven. The difference here is that if we don’t believe what we see, we can’t know anything vs. If we don’t believe in a god. In my opinion, these should not be equated because one is necessary in order to learn and the other is not.
It’s perfectly possible to have both religious and scientific faith. I’m Catholic and yet, while I don’t see myself becoming a scientist, I am in awe of all the scientific marvels that have been created, and will be created. All the discoveries and advancements made is kind of cool. Even to someone like me who sucked at high school science haha. Just because you may have more, or complete faith in one over the other, that doesn’t mean that these two things need to be at odds with each other. It’s perfectly okay to have a firm belief on both. Why can’t more people understand that?
Thank you, this is the kind of logic I see people abandon when arguing over atheism or creationism. I see it on both sides and both sides need to sober up.
I was legitimately shocked at how open and thoughtful this was. As a christian and lover of philosophy, I not only agree that science (and all philosophy) must begin with faith, but also that all religious expression must involve reason. I believe this is why the books of proverbs and ecclesiastes urge christians to pursue wisdom in a general sense and think things through. Better understanding of the world has given me a better understanding of God, and vice-versa. In fact, Solomon seemed to imply that science was like a form of worship when he wrote "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of man to seek it out." Again, thanks for the great vid, this earned you guys a sub.
As someone who is a a Christian, but loves learning about science, I love how you guys handle this topic. You are clearly putting in effort to practice what you preach. Everyone can look science and faith how they please, but they shouldn't shut themselves off from hearing the other side out.
Well, that was shit. We don't take the axioms on faith. We take them as "good enough so the tool that is the resulting system to be used effectively". We used Euclidean geometry not on faith, but because it was a good enough approximation to serve a useful purpose. The Theory of Relativity is most probably again just a good enough approximation. Good enough so that we have usable GPS and fly within the Solar System without missing the target destination by more than a few centimeters. That's why we use its axiomatic system: because we can fucking use it.
Science does require faith but the typical problem with faith is it tends to blind us from fact when we follow it too strongly, so science outright abandons anything with a single contradiction, making a clear difference between blind faith and the best assumption
Science does not require faith. Science is entirely based on doubt. Faith is belief that is not based on evidence, and the scientific method, which you can google in like, two seconds, requires exhaustive data collection and analysis at every turn. Scientific theories are rigorously tested by multiple, independent groups. The studies are published, and this publication includes the complete description of the experiments performed to the highest level of detail we can think to provide, along with ALL resulting data points. At no point in any scientific theory is the reader told "just trust us, it happened this way" - the reader is given clear directions to be able to repeat the experiments and check the results for themselves. And if a theory were just complete bullshit, it would be discovered almost immediately. The first engineer who tries to build a device that exploits the principles of the theory would find that the device never works right. The first scientist who tries an experiment based on the theory would find it keeps turning out inexplicably wrong. And then when they try to figure out WHERE it's going wrong, boom, they find out the theory is wrong, and now it's not a theory anymore. So no, science DOESN'T require faith. Any faith. At all. Ever.
I get what you're saying, but I still see the initial idea as essentially faith, but not quite blind faith, because it is based on their best evidence that they expand on, becoming more and more fact. Scientific theories are things we can never prove, but match all the evidence without contradiction, you can't truly prove evolution, but it is accepted as true because it has no flaws. I never said it was wrong, I believe in evolution and the big bang theory because they are the most believable and credible, and have no contradiction. We don't know for a fact that they are true but they are the best we have
One of my favorite sayings on this topic comes from Babylon 5, the season 4 finale: "Faith and Reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than with just one."
I don't really understand why people cling so desperately to this idea that there are other, better ways of understanding the world around us other than science. Science is just a methodized way of learning about the world by making observations about it, finding patterns, making predictions, and testing those predictions. We've been doing this long before it was called "science," and we all do this every day without even trying. What other way is there? How are you going to learn anything about...anything, if you don't make any observations? Religion and science only come into conflict when religion insists that it is also a method of understanding the world around us, effectively trying to do science's job. I think the backlash against religion by science advocates is a result of the fact that religion can't seem to stop doing exactly that.
Graidon Mabson "Religion and science only come into conflict when religion insists that it is also a method of understanding the world around us...I think the backlash against religion by science advocates is a result of the fact that religion can't seem to stop doing exactly that." Also because religion is dictating morality to people, and often people don't like this. In some cases, it's because religion says stuff like "gay people are abominations who should be killed on sight," and in others it's simply because religion can't back up its moral statements. But this is where the fight with science and logic becomes necessary for religion - its entire claim to authority is "because this supernatural being said so." And in addition to the objection, "being supernatural doesn't make you morally perfect or unquestionable," there's also the question, "how do you know that," which religion cannot answer, and science and logic both make this shortcoming exceedingly clear.
Andrew Crawford "Might there be a way to scientifically test religious claims?" No, there is no possible way to test them. Not the supernatural claims, anyway. Think about it: To be supernatural, you have to be able to ignore the laws of the natural world, or change those laws. If you can't do either of those things, you're really not supernatural, are you? OK, so now that we know what supernatural beings are, how can we distinguish "this is a case of us not knowing something about natural law, or missing some important piece of data" from "this is a case of our test subject violating or changing natural law"? We can't. We would have to be omniscient (which is also impossible, but that's a separate proof) to know that. Let alone that we'd need to be able to get a god to perform miracles on command. Religion's claims (again, just talking about supernatural stuff here) are, in fact, impossible to test. Which is how we know, for certain, that they are made up...if they can't BE tested, then obviously nobody ever tested them.
Andrew Crawford "And what do scientists do, when they encounter a non-falsifiable experiment:" I think you meant "hypothesis," not "experiment," but here's your answer: C) Discard the hypothesis, as it is not supported by evidence and therefore cannot become a theory. If evidence becomes available later, we can always come back to it. So that's what we should do with religion. Throw it in the trash, because it's not supported by evidence and - and this is provable - never can/will be.
Andrew Crawford "Go ahead then. Prove it." This is in reference to my claim that "[Supernatural claims are] not supported by evidence and - and this is provable - never can/will be." So, OK, here we go. 1. To be supernatural, an entity must exhibit at least one of the following two traits. It must be able to ignore the laws of nature, and/or alter those laws. (I cannot imagine a supernatural being that doesn't have at least one of those traits, but if you can, let me know and I'll add it.) 2. If we don't know ALL there is to know about ALL the potential factors at play, we can't eliminate the possibility that there is an unknown factor contributing to the allegedly supernatural or miraculous event we are witnessing. To explain this further, (A) something we don't understand, or (B) a trick being played on us are not supernatural. Only (C) a genuine violation or alteration of the very laws of nature itself is acceptable. For example, a necklace with a radioactive stone might appear "supernatually cursed" to people who don't understand radiation, or a magician's trick might appear "supernaturally powerful" to people who don't know about the secret trap door or whatever. We have to be sure that we know everything about the laws of nature and all relevant data points before we can say that something is breaking those laws. 3. We can never know with certainty that we currently have a complete and correct understanding of the laws of nature, which is omniscience regarding natural law. The best we can do is to have some really advanced theories, but theories can be wrong. Further, knowing that there's no trick involved essentially means omniscience regarding the state of all matter/energy/fields/etc. in the universe. So that's basically it. To identify something as not fitting in with the system, we have to know the whole system, and know that we're not being tricked. We cannot possibly know that, because that amounts to omniscience, which is also impossible for us to achieve. (That's a separate proof, I can do that one if you really need it, but ask yourself if you honestly don't know that you can't be omniscient.)
Andrew Crawford Your example of experiencing a lifetime of religion might be scientific, but it's not very good science, for 2 reasons: 1: you're relying entirely on your personal experience, which is the most unreliable method of observation we know of. 2: your experiment has been repeated by millions of people around the world, but the results are not consistent at all. Some people have experienced a life time of religion and found that there was no god after all. Others have done and have found a god, but it isn't the one you believe in.
2:19 1. Existance of Matrix cannot be disproved or proved, which means that we shouldnt care. 2. Reasons of men being colorblind are studied, and we can say why they are colorblind. Plus we can use special tools to prove that colors invisible to colorblind people are real. 3:00 Axioms are not aplied to any empirical knowledge, they describe things which do not exist in real world. Math is just the language of science. Axioms can't and don't describe real objects, facts about real, physical objects are derived from observation, they do not come from mathematical ideas, mathematical ideas are only used to describe them
ivan sichko the Axioms work within the limits that they were made to work but when put outside of those limits they break down and fall apart leading to the need of new and hopefully better axioms to help explain or at least help define the new limits that we have found in the universe be it the very small or even the very large. It is when the limits change that the axioms usually break and need new molding to be true again Science teaches us to always question what we think we know and test it to see if it is true or not. To the questioning and testing if we meet the same limits as the axioms are meant for then they will work in the proof that colors exist, 2D and 3D materials exist but what about the 4D materials? how do you explain them? that is one of the questions that has been posed in a interview that i have seen i have not seen any answer as it did not go into enough depth for how the 4D materials worked nor do i think i would understand how they do either. I do not claim that i know but i do claim that someone should find out why so we can at least understand how and why they work like they do and hopefully use that knowledge to the betterment of the nation and of the world's population too. Then you have what about when you have the particles so small that we cannot see them anymore how do we tell that they are there? and how do we measure them? how do we move them? and etc. like that in whatever kind of physics it is for that stuff. I am sure there are others that i do not know about but at this time i do not know them but if you do please tell me so i can find out and at least see what they are as the smarter ppl in the world than i am find out the ways that this stuff works.
I really think this is an apples to oranges thing, when you say faith, it means something very different then what you think it means you need to define the word faith before you use it in this context
If you don't think that your beliefs have to be true, then go a head and believe what ever your personal experience tells you. Some of us care about if what we believe is true or not... and the easiest person to fool is yourself.JakesFavorites
JakesFavorites You're so close to realizing why your religion (like all religions) is full of shit, but then you miss it! "That's where faith comes in" is the exact spot where you fuck up. Let me rephrase what you said so you can see the error more clearly. "It's not possible to prove that certain things, such as angels, exist. So, for that reason, if you feel like you met a magical being, you just HAVE TO BELIEVE IT'S TRUE WITHOUT EVIDENCE, JUST USE WISHFUL THINKING, instead of not believing them due to the fact that you have no evidence at all. I mean, it's more fun to believe fantastical nonsense than to get hung up on the fact that you don't actually know what you're talking about. Oh, also, this is a special rule that only applies to my personal version of my religion. Nobody else gets a free pass, I only give this out to things I want to be true. Because I said so."
JakesFavorites Yup, Numbers 31 is one place. Thanks, patmos09. Another place is Deuteronomy 21: 10-14, which says that a Jewish warrior can force a female POW to marry him. In case we want to pretend not to connect the dots here, wives were property, meaning they couldn't refuse to have sex with their husbands, and this woman is becoming a wife non-consensually. Forcing her to marry you also forces her to have sex with you, and as we all know, forcing someone to have sex with you is rape. Now, let's have your proof that supernatural beings, whether it's your god, or angels, or whatever, exist. And by the way, I know how to prove that you cannot possibly know that supernatural things exist, so be prepared for me to pull that out. Eagerly awaiting your response.
JakesFavorites You are so ignorant of your own scriptures it's a fucking joke. There's no reference to sex slaves in the Bible? Exodus 21: 7-11 specifically describes rules for selling your daughter as a sex slave. What, you don't know how to type "sex slaves bible" into google before you just make shit up? You don't think we can check? Everyone posting here IS ON THE INTERNET. We can check things like that in seconds. Maybe you should actually get familiar with what YOUR RELIGION says, since you clearly have no idea. Also, the fact that you think it's totally morally fine to approach someone else's town completely unprovoked, demand that they all be your slaves, and kill/rape them all if they don't instantly surrender shows you to be a fucking psychopath. Which makes sense, because your god is a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, slavery-loving, genocidal, anti-thought monster. Who also, as far as we know, doesn't even exist. Oh, unless you have some evidence that he does exist. Do you? I've been asking you for like, what, it's gotta be over a week now, and you just keep dodging over and over. I'm beginning to think you might not actually have proof that this "supernatural being" of yours even exists at all. If you do, though, let's have it.
I get what they're saying. But there's a pretty big difference between the presuppositions like "I exist and the world isn't a figmant of my imagination" and "There's an omnipotent super being that created the universe and is watching everything I do and judging me" apples and oranges, mate. especially when one is actually based on evidence.
+Xavier Long .... They aren't saying religion is 100% useful and true. They're just saying that the core of religion, which is faith, that is your example of existing, is useful for science.
Unnamed the Anonymous They're trying to go the PC route with this "See they can both co exist, and even be useful" route. And I don't agree. A postulate is not remotely the same as religious faith, so why bring up religion at all unless the intention is to try and make religion seem useful in the realm of logic and inquiry?
***** Not entirely correct. Their original intent was to comment on how religion is used for gaming, which includes the core of religion, which is faith. They commented on how gaming hasn't used faith at all in gaming, further arguing that faith is used even in science, albeit only to 'trust' axioms or presuppositions and observations. Never have they intended to incorporate religious faith in science, though I do agree that is simply impossible.
Unnamed the Anonymous *further arguing that faith is used even in science,* *"See they can both co exist, and even be useful"* What am I missing here? I never said that they said they were trying to incorporate religious faith into science, I said they're trying to make them seem as if they can co exist, and make religious faith seem useful by using an example of "faith" thats not at all the same or similar. stop trying to argue with me over nothing
***** Why can't they coexist? For thousands of years, religion has existed in our society, yet science continue to grow. Though one can argue they have impeded on each other over the centuries, they can coexist. What part their 'faith' and religious faith isn't similar? Religion only uses that 'faith' as a core of their teachings, therefore rising it to an extreme; while science uses 'faith' minimally, only as 'observation confirmer'. But, science do use it.
The huge problem here is people believe religion and science answer the same question, when they don't. Religion provides the why, it talks about morality and self improvement, and provides meaning to life. Science provides the how, it describes systems and mechanisms. Saying one makes the other unimportant is like saying art proves why we don't need mathematics.
I agree. I personally believe that God made the universe and science to explain how the universe works. Science is how we understand the universe. WIth science, we could better ourselves with technology and advancements while religion provides the question of morality, spirituality, and guidance as to not forget the advancement of the mind. Science for the body, religion for the mind
The first sip from the cup of science leads to atheism, but at the bottom of the cup God sits waiting for you. Any scientific theory we know accepts that it has to be able to be falsefied. So in essence science accepts as one of it's most important rules that it does not offer absolute truth in any kind or form.
The first part is good, but the second part should be more like "The further you delve into science, the more things you will find that do not line up with random chance."
And no atheist or scientist says anything about having absolute certainty and not being falsified, we are simply stating that in the light of the evidence explored, that every religions notion of a god has been falsified
So really, God has no place in any scientific theory, because he cannot be falsified. You make the assumption that somewhere, there is absolute truth, and that's an assumption I would contest.
Taber McFarlin And as such you take things you could never prove and call act as though they are infallible... I don't see much difference between that and believing God is real. Yet If I go anywhere or watch anything even relatively scientific, there is some evolutionary or atheistic point shoved down my throat. Even in children's movies now, but we're the ones oppressing you with our religion...
It all boils down to the fact that you will never know or prove anything with absolute certainty. And while a all knowing (and therfore all powerfull) "thing" of any form could exist, not even this (lets call it) concept of "all knowing thing" could, for itself know that it is all knowing since it doesn`t now if there is anything outside its perception or knowledge, which would make it not allknowing / powerfull. Science (as a concept, how individual groups or humans act is another matter) has two things going for it: 1.) It aknowledgeds that it won`t be able to produce any results with absolute certainty. 2.) Despite point one, IT WORKS! We can deduct engineering concepts which enable us to change and explore the world around us ;)
I don’t really agree with your use of the word “faith” but i understand what you’re saying and agree with you. I prefer “trust” over “faith” just because faith’s such a loaded term. That’s because the trust we put in science is different to faith. The trust is based on repeated experiments and continuous justification that support that induction is trust worthy, because in all of human history there’s never been a case where the laws of physics have just suddenly changed. It’s trust with very very good reason to support it. Whereas faith in the way we use in a religious sense isn’t as justified. (Nothing wrong about that thou)
Ryan Ratchford I would turn to the Principle of Induction. They require faith, rather than trust, because no experiment could justify it. It's impossible to prove or disprove the principle of indiction, and so we believe it is true despite the lack of evidence. Maybe saying "I trust scientists" makes more sense.
I'd disagree. I am aware of the principle of induction, but it's also reasonable to say that induction and repetition of experiments have proven themselves to be reliable. There's a reason why science has developed the way it has. As David Hume said, to be rational, we should proportion our beliefs to the evidence. If the beliefs are supported by enough evidence then they are reasonably justified. The idea that the laws of nature always stay the same has been supported by every single scientific experiment, and every day by each and every person on the Earth. Therefore is a very well justified belief. But the claim that one of the laws of physics has temporarily changed or can even change has never been proven to be observed. Therefore is an unjustified belief. (That's how i see faith as being different- faith's a virtue because you're meant to believe without sufficient evidence)
Ryan Ratchford I'd recommend Bertrand Russell because he goes into the problem of induction, but to say that it has been proven is actually begging the question. The principle of induction can be stated as such: similar events occur similarly under similar circumstances. That has held true in the past, but how do we know it will hold in the future? We could say that in the past, the past looked like the future, but that has no relation to future-futures unless we assume the principle of induction. I'd also recommend "Wireless Philosophy," which is another TH-cam channel. They have 2 episodes on the problem of induction.
Thank you, I have actually read Russel and watch Wireless Philosophy. I know we can't be perfectly certain that the principle of induction will continue, but looking at all the evidence that supports it, we can be "maximally certain" (As sure as we could ever possibly be) and for a pragmatist this is more than enough. I know we can't prove the principle of induction- i'm sure i didn't and apologises if i did- but in order to achieve any empirical knowledge we need to take it as a premise- the laws of physics are constant. (Along with the premises- The laws of physics are logical and can be discovered. As well as- All the foundations of logic and maths) Nearly every single type of intellectual pursuit necessitates all of these premises. And we can't be 100% sure that they're true, but they have so much supporting them that we know its far more likely they're useful and work to give us correct answers (Which Science does) and that's all we need from them. The distinctions between reasonably justified beliefs and faith is really subjective, where i personally trend towards is that it is pretty much universally reasonable to assume the laws of physics are going to remain constant. But less reasonable to assume they can be broken or that things like the supernatural exist (based on the consensus that there lacks sufficient evidence) Similar to what David Hume says- it's more reasonable to believe in the continuity of nature than to believe in the supernatural. Hence my distinction of justified belief in induction as "reasonable trust" (Not certainty) Different to religious faith (Which would require extraordinary evidence to be sufficiently justified)
Tim Minchin said it best: "Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation, so that believe can be preserved." Scientists observe something and form hypotheses and eventually theses for said observations, but only as long as there is evidence for them.
Creationism and Evolution should not be compared. Creationism states that a God created everything while Evolution says that species change over time into similar or new spiecies entirely through mutations. One deals with how life came to be while the other explains how this life changes.
As a man of faith and science, it saddens me to see some of the comments below. It's ironic that those who believe in the scientific method themselves do not adhere reviewing the material presented and instead just shut off when it doesn't suit them. As for religion itself, I am Catholic but I know people of different faith from Buddhism to Mormonism and I believe that there is no "right" religion or faith for everyone; only ones that people can find what they are looking for. Even atheist have faith in lack of God (to various degree) otherwise there's no reason to hold on to that thinking. To those who say they don't believe in anything, I feel sorry for you because that kind of attitude will never allow you to seek and find a deeper meaning in life, be it one on religion or one on logic and science.
Well.....you seem to be mixing up "I'll just act like this is true for now" with "I beleive in the deapths of my heart that this is true." Good science(or when you get down to this level maybe it's good philosophy?) is option 1, while true faith is option 2. When Einstein went all option 2 on quantum mechanics that was bad science.
So, first off, science, doesn't have an opinion or belief, any more than "running" has an opinion on transport. Some people, that make up the community, have opinions, that vary. You're essentially saying "No, WE don't hold things as truths, but THEY do". Incorrect. Some of "us" (with example given i this video), do hold too strongly to those axioms. Some (I'd say most) of "them", don't fit the box you've put them in. I don't meet many religious folk who don't question their faith, and here you are telling me about what they believe "to the depths of their heart", and how this makes them different (i.e. worse) than you and your associated group, who wouldn't do that kind of thing. You're just not accurately describing the world around you. You've built a strawman, you've done a no true scotsman, all in apologetics format, to tell us how different you are from the faithful. That's more than a little ironic.
Baalthazaq I'm not saying that most scientists(or science nerd teens) are good at skepticism, heck even Einstein fucked it up. I am just explaining the core of an ideal scientific process, and how it does not require faith in axioms. (other that possibly "The world makes sense")
You're also overstating what faith is to be convenient. Blind faith, and faith, are different things. That's why we have the saying "Blind faith". There's acceptance without absolute proof. Faith. There's acceptance without or against evidence. Blind faith. Every conclusion from collected evidence is a leap of faith. Every inductive leap. However, you have this idea that faith, regular faith, is something alien, and you dramatically overstate what it entails. To you, it is thinking things without or against truth, and that's not science, so you refuse to accept it as a benign term. Which it is. It's "sometimes we work on assumptions based on best models". This is not a scandal for the scientific community.
Baalthazaq So now we're just arguing about what words mean? ugh.. As I was trying to say the ideal scientific process involves only _acting_ as if one beleives something that is not perfectly proven. And still trying to disprove it once in a while. But who knows if the human brain is even capable of suspending beleif in so many things like that?
Well, it's important. If you're saying "science doesn't _____", the meaning of the blank is more important than the word. I'm not a fan of nihilism. Science is a human endeavor, and the scientific method is a process undertaken by humans. Proof by induction (i.e. proof by experimentation) requires faith to call conclusions conclusions. We can also accept and modify new conclusions from there. That's fine too. As far as I'm aware, Descartes concludes "I think therefore I am", and goes on shortly to conclude God. He goes straight to faith (probably too far). The only real refinement of that is Bertrand Russel, who reduced it to "There is thinking". Everything beyond that requires faith, before we can even begin a meaningful scientific process.
Faith in science is a misnomer. "Having faith" is simply an added layer for those who do not understand contextual/contingent reasoning. Faith may or may not prevent someone from realizing something or effectively processing data; however, it is never necessary. Axioms and formulas are simplified summaries as representation for initial conditions; that's it. These videos just ignore the fact that [IF given xyz; then 123 follows] and 'believing something is so'- are two completely different things. In other words your belief has nothing to do with whether something matches reality or not. To sum up; rational explanations are for proposed scenarios and not this "inference of reality" that these folks are straw manning.
Aside from the words I don't understand you're showing of how ignorant you are. How do you know that your initial conditions are correct? What you don't get is how basic all of this is. It is your faith in your ability to observe things what where talking here about. You or anyone will never be able to prove that his observations are correct. That's totally impossible.
Izzal Lirum " Aside from [the words I don't understand] [you're showing of how ignorant you are]." - That's an ironically funny statement. "How do you know that your initial conditions are correct?" - This was addressed in my original comment: [IF given xyz; then 123 follows]; contextual/contingent reasoning for rational explanation. Again your belief has nothing to do with whether something matches reality or not. Any observations are simply evidence to provide the link between proposed initial conditions to their similarity with reality; they are not synonymous with the explanation itself. In other words; we don't say that this IS reality- we simply show how it mimicks reality in the models that we use. This is how we are able to create models that are simultaneously correct but do not match our Universe. "What you don't get is how basic all of this is." - Whether or not that "all of this" is basic, you have not shown my understanding to be flawed. "It is your faith in your ability to observe things what where talking here about." - Again; faith is not a requirement. Our ability to observe things speak for themselves. Attempting to breach one's own limitations (wanting to know if our observations are absolute) is irrelevant and unproductive. If you have faith, you simply have an extra layer that is unnecessary- whether it hinders your ability to process effectively is a whole different matter. "You or anyone will never be able to prove that his observations are correct. That's totally impossible." - The first sentence shows your limited understanding of Science. Science is not in the business of "proving" things; it's only interested in disproving things. When an idea goes from merely a hypothesis to the highest respected level in Science (which is Theory); it means that- that idea was not able to be disproved. As for the second sentence; I would ask how do you know that?
TwoWayDeadEND You know I will just skip most of it and answer some parts. "Attempting to breach one's own limitations (wanting to know if our observations are absolute) is irrelevant and unproductive." Sorry, but that is just bullshit. Seeing that observations are the most basic thing there is it is natural that when these are wrong everything else crumbles. So it is necessary to take all observation with a strain of salt. That being that at the end you only believe in the accuracy of your observations or otherwise any entire theory wouldn't even work. The second one is easy. Everything you perceive you perceive trough observation. Thus you cannot prove that your observation is correct than for doing so you would have to observe. To "prove" anything without faith is a perfect impossibility. About the other stuff let me still say something. "Disproved" huh? You really don't get it. It doesn't matter wether you prove or disprove something. It all comes down to observation. And that comes down to faith. So no matter how you twist it nothing can be "proven" or "disproven". You know I get that you're limiting all things to the things at hand the things you can perceive but that doesn't mean those can't be questioned. You can't escape it. Everything is based on faith.
TwoWayDeadEND Of course I have to admit that it is no use to think about an impossibility but unlike you I find it to be something that shouldn't be forgotten nor ignored. That there is no perfect truth or at least for us humans to perceive. That at the end everything is based on no matter how anyone puts it faith. Pure, blind and absolute faith.
Izzal Lirum First, I would appreciate it if you tried spacing your text a bit; that way it's easier to respond to. Second, I will respond the same way as my first reply- for it allows me to be as accurate as I know how to be. If at some point we start getting into common territory I might start utilizing some flow as it looks like you are doing; anyways here goes: "Seeing that observations are the most basic thing there is it is natural that when these are wrong everything else crumbles. So it is necessary to take all observation with a strain of salt." - That would be the case if observation and explanation were the same thing; but as I have already mentioned they are Not the same thing. Again, I never said observations are everything- they are simply a vehicle necessary to create things that people can use in every day life. In short; Observations are the provision of linking a models predictions to reality. So correction; observations (You don't choose to use your senses- they simply function; how well they do is a different matter) are never wrong- but assertions as to their inference can be shown to be inconsistent with a model. In other words; if the results of "understanding" fail to provide a Consistent (Key word) Practical Application within the real world then either the model needs updating and or our accessing of reality was/is insufficient. "That being that at the end you only believe in the accuracy of your observations or otherwise any entire theory wouldn't even work." - Believing the accuracy of any observation is irrelevant to whether your assertions of those observations match predictions in a model. "Everything you perceive you perceive trough observation. Thus you cannot prove that your observation is correct than for doing so you would have to observe." - Again, proving an observation to be correct is unproductive- they speak for themselves; first through how consistent they are within a model and then how useful they are in practical application. "To "prove" anything without faith is a perfect impossibility." - Your need for "proving" is a waste of time and isn't how Science works. It basically comes down to the Synergy of Evidence and Rational Explanations- Evidence has no purpose without a Rational Explanation; and Rational Explanations need a link (Evidence) to utilize within our world. As to faith; well I've already explained its concern in this discussion. "It doesn't matter wether you prove or disprove something. It all comes down to observation. And that comes down to faith. So no matter how you twist it nothing can be "proven" or "disproven"." - It doesn't all come down to observation (explained in the segment above this one). Actually disproving is easy; the only time you Technically can't is when something is unfalsifiable (such as some Supernatural Claims). Its simply a matter of Interaction. For example; if someone says there is an invisible cake on this table- its there you just can't see it; all you have to do is swipe something along the surface, if it hits an invisible object then their claim hasn't been disproved but if you don't then essentially it has been. They can then try to make more claims as to why an invisible Cake was undetected; and thus you continue to test accordingly. "You know I get that you're limiting all things to the things at hand the things you can perceive but that doesn't mean those can't be questioned. You can't escape it. Everything is based on faith." - I don't follow. How am I limiting all things to the things at hand the thing I can perceive? As for questioning- I would never tell anyone to Not question something with the exception where there is no time in a life or death scenario. So not to be a smart ass but; the question isn't should something be questioned- the question is how something should be questioned and how much questioning is sufficient (aka Consistent predictions and Practical Applications). And again, how do you know everything is based on faith? Through what means can "prove" this?
3 years later, and people still knee jerk and don't actually listen to what is being said. I like that you guys actually stepped up and tried to get people to be as open minded as they claim to be! hopefully someday they will! ^_^
This is one of the best videos on youtube. This is the first time someone other than me, that I know of, said that axioms are a leap of faith; it was refreshing to hear and fun to see a gamer visualize all the concepts. Well done. I only differ the depiction of Einstein and what he took to the grave, because I've tried to address the same thing. I believe Einstein didn't accept that there was nothing more to the universe, that when you dig deep enough, you find dice and nothing more. He did not accept the axiom of the dice (if you can call the dice argument an axiom). I believe the universe is self similar, it builds on itself, and when you observe a system you observe the emergent behavior of that underlying system. A good example of this is the derivation of gravity as an emergent behaviour of interacting properties of space-time. Einstein was looking for these underlying systems.
[paused halfway through vid] Sure, observation isn't perfect, but we can quantify our uncertainty, our margin of error. If you took observations at face value, which is not good science, then maybe you could say the scientific method involves some faith. But the point of science is to remove as much faith as possible and for those things that science has not yet explained, to remain sceptical and vigorously examine claims. As for the 'discussion' that provoked this video, thats just the internet once again misrepresenting something, in this case science.
EpicMRPancake Exactly. Scientists are skeptical on purpose, and yet a person who has faith is "trusting." Skeptics are by definition UNtrusting, questioning, doubting. Faith is acceptance, and doubting is the opposite of acceptance. As they said sometimes you have to make some assumptions, but every time you disprove one thing or another you actually make progress. Faith never looks to make progress at all because it does not have any interest in challenging anything. Science does not want faith and acceptance of anything (even a fact), it wants progress. Science wants proof, and proof is the same as disproof.
As a Christian, I really don't even get why science vs religion is and was ever a thing. Currently, I cannot recall anywhere in the Bible I've been reading that disagrees with Big Bang, Evolution, etc.
I don't either. A catholic priest was the person who originally conceived The Big Bang theory too. Or look at the fact that the bible stated the earth was round and the universe expanded, thousands of years before it became scientifically accepted. Hebrews 11:3 can even be considered as pointing to atomic particles. Genesis 10:25 refers to the earth being divided after the flood (the splitting of Pangaea).
Honestly, the whole Science vs Religion thing started out as a means of maintaining control over the population. Namely, The Church's power rested solidly on their ability to maintain control of the masses, and the only way to do that was to present the Church's leaders and their views as infallible. Science came along, and was able to demonstrate that The Church was wrong about certain facts concerning how our world and the universe works. This made Science a threat to the power and wealth that The Church's leaders had amassed, and the war against Science was born...
Really? You must mean that your personal interpretation of the bible doesn't conflict with science. Objectively, however, it is very easy to see why the conflict between religion and science exists. There are countless inconsistencies between what the bible claims about the world and what we now know scientifically. Not to mention moral claims that religion makes that can only be rationalized in a religious context. Science can't make absolute claims of truth but it is very good at ruling certain things out as so implausible as to more or less be impossible in any practical sense. As long as people attach themselves to absolutist positions, whether religious, scientific, or other, and science continues to reveal new information about the nature of reality that can challenge those beliefs, conflict is inevitable.
Practically all of the scientists before the 1950s were Christian. Bear in mind also that the Theory of Evolution was postulated, tested, and proven by Christians. Evolution vs. Creationism is an internal debate within Christianity, and always has been. (Yes, I realize that I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think that's a very quotable phrase, and I'd like it there for the general public. :P)
I've never understood the concept of Science vs. Religion. To me they address two completely different questions. Science is concerned with finding out how the universe works, religion instead tries to determine why it works.
+Christopher McKee Every how brings a why, and every why brings another how. Religion does not attempt to determine why the world works, it throws a group of stories at a wall and calls them true, and those who are fools will accept it as truth absolutely even when it is proven wrong.
UKFB / Monster I fail to see the correlation between why and how. If a student completes an assignment, knowing why he completed it tells you nothing about how he completed it and vice versa. Also, I wasn't aware that all religion (even the unfalsifiable parts) had been proven wrong.
Christopher McKee Oh dear god I have to type it all again! Anyway, I meant that answering how attracts a question of why it is that way, and answering that asks how that why came to be. Also, when did I say anything about all religions being proven false? I was just saying that people are so faithful to a religion that if it was proven wrong they would stick to it, and that still happens today. Not all, but some, and they annoy a great deal.
Religion covers both 'how'; the physical mechanics of the universe, how it was created, and the 'why'; a philosophy of life, moral teaching, funny hats, lies to tell yourself so that the inevitable non-existence existential horror that awaits you doesn't seem so scary. Religion just does the 'how' badly, and often insists that their how/why is the only correct one, so if you use science's how you challenge religion's how/why and the legitimacy of that religion on a fundamental level.
this was a great wakeup call for me, before this video i used to be quite the edgy atheist, and now i feel bad about myself, but im glad I listened to the whole thing.
I'm not sure how to deal with the idea of being open-minded about faith. As I see it used, faith is a belief not based on evidence. Faith is, in itself, being closed-minded about other possibilities (e.g. that god does not exist). So am I open-minded about closed-mindedness? Ummmm... pass.
Cloud Seeker Very very awesome description of what it means to be open-minded. As someone who has a very strong policy of hearing everyone's opinions, it's intensely frustrating to be viewed as stubborn and close-minded when people aren't telling me anything I haven't heard or considered before.
Asha2820 "I'm not sure how to deal with the idea of being open-minded about faith. As I see it used, faith is a belief not based on evidence. Faith is, in itself, being closed-minded about other possibilities (e.g. that god does not exist)." You are exactly correct! An open mind considers the idea, sees that there is no evidence, and rejects the idea until valid evidence is brought back. Faith takes the idea, gives it special, non-merit-based privilege, and accepts or rejects on that basis without considering the actual idea at any point.
Hi Cloud Seeker An excellent, tight explanation of open-mindedness; I can sign up to that. Three things that I would note 1. You say that '[being] open-minded [has] got nothing to do with possibilities'. When I use the word possibility, I am talking about statements that people put forward for testing. You call them 'new ideas' 2. 'I treat religions in the same way I treat pseudoscience like homeopathy'. I find it better not to label a claim as pseudo-scientific before testing that claim. Once it has been tested, by all means call it pseudo-science, but don't approach a claim to test it's veracity with a bias already in place. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean this, but I thought it worth pointing out. 3. I tend to think of scepticism and open-mindedness as two sides of the same coin. If you have a claim 'A', we must be open-minded enough not to accept 'NOT A' without testing, but sceptical enough to not to accept 'A' without testing. At the heart of both lies the curiosity to look for new ideas and evidence, the respect for the robust testing of these ideas, and the humility to change our minds if the evidence suggests.
Hi Cloud Seeker, Do you see the irony of saying that you don't need to test a claim, and then propose a list of tests (some heuristic, some more scientific) with which to judge the likelihood of a claim? As for scepticism and open-mindedness being two sides of the same coin: Although our knowledge needs to be reviewed when we come across new evidence, scepticism and open-mindedness are mainly used for new ideas, when we are ignorant about some matter. The reason I don't apply open-mindedness when considering the claim of hobgoblin bridge-builders is that I already know that hobgoblins are fictional. If your claim was that the Golden gate bridge was build by Irish immigrants... I would have to claim ignorance. I would have to do some research, look at sources, read accounts and judge the claim by the available evidence using both open-mindedness (not rejecting the claim out of hand) and scepticism (not accepting the claim out of hand). The difference between our definitions is that you equate knowledge with closed-mindedness, whereas I only use the terms closed- or open-mindedness with reference to new claims that are being investigated. Where there is no evidence that can be brought to bear on a claim (as with gods), we must sometimes resort to Ockham, and judge a claim by its simplicity (No more things can be assumed to exist than necessary) and specificity (More specific claims are less likely to be true than less specific claims).
Gotta say I've really enjoyed these episodes. As someone who has wrestled with faith, religion, and science their whole life and continues to do so I appreciated the opinion that they all naturally intersect. It gives me hope.
In my senior year one of my professors (electrical engineering department) went off on a long tangent that may have been one of the best lectures of my life. Science's goal is to achieve accurate "models." Note, models are NOT statements of absolute truth, they are just our best representations of truth. No one should have absolute faith in models because that is not the purpose of models. It would be like believing my car will perform cpr in an emergency. As an engineer, I get a kick out of humanities majors trying to tell me how science has somehow debunked my faith. It's all rather ironic. Without a doubt, you can both embrace science and have deep religious faith.
Ancile in philosophy, we call it the best defensible position. Not the truth, just the opinion/belief that we accept as a result of hard work and earnesty.
And if you look below my comment you will find further heated, knee-jerk debate because you cannot use reason to shake someone from a conclusion that was not reached with reason. There are unreasonable people on either side of this whole thing, and those are the ones that fight, they will never admit that the other side has any ground to stand on, regardless of any actual evidence or logical reasoning because both sides fail to properly take logic into account. Nonetheless, excellent video, by far the most balanced I've seen, thank you for that, just don't expect much reasonable discourse over it...
I agree, I think it's an identity issue, some people who don't have a clear identity cling to these problems, they like to pick sides to feel they belong, and they will fight the opposite side no matter what. So you will never really achieve an open minded debate with them because in their mind they're not willing to listen. These are just some random thoughts i could be wrong but it really is sad seeing people reacting so defensive and over sensitive about it
and, as a starting point, that is an excellent way to live. Doubt (in the case of accepting what you think you know) is the first step towards more knowledge, regardless of its outcome (speaking as a christian with full faith in science and its possibilites.)
Before scrolling through all of these and/or posting comments, please keep in mind that the video's definition of faith. An immediate Google search of 'faith' is "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" (at least, my search result was that). Please keep in mind that definition throughout the video.
"Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it would stop."
-Dara O'Briain
And spirituality kind of stopped.
Since science is a process, and a tool.
Science might hold this philosophy. Some of its enthusiasts, on the other hand...
Was expecting this episode to be about how RNGs are bs.
me too lol
You swing your Golden Halberd of Fiery Justice at the Giant Rat (lvl 3).
It misses.
+Camille Banez Well, ok, what do you think about crits? Do they make games better?
RNGs are still way better than PRNGs.
Jones Crimson What are PRNGs?
It's as David Hume said: even though we cannot know anything for certain, we must assume things to be true in the name of sanity. If I have to start every reasoning with "assuming that the universe we think we live in is real and has certain rules including [...] and [...] and that we can trust our observations of this etc. etc. ", I'll be ripe for a psychiatric institution in less than a week.
Joel Gawne Not me. How do you think I know it would take less than a week for me to lose it?
Can't we just make all our observations with the qualifier being implied?
@@Jamandabop I believe we already do.
@@Jamandabop This is one of the many mental shortcuts that we use.
This is why philosophy is an important thing which should be discussed in schools.
You get to avoid so many of these arguments as an adult because you're already taught that so much of this has already been discussed at length throughout history.
+S4R1N I agree, but school doesn't teach people how to reason without fallacies and create original answers, which is fundamental to understanding philosophy. Even if you try to ask a class for what they think, they would open their text books and try to find the right answer to pass the class. There is an extreme aversion to talking about these subjects because they can be so personal and unique to everyone's experiences, so it's very easy to become bogged down in details that people generalities to cope with the information overload. These generalities spark conflict as exemptions to them are brought to the forefront until no one agrees with each other and everyone begins defending their generalities instead of actually studying and learning from each other.
I actually really enjoy philosophy, and find it lacking in a lot of internet conversations. So it's always refreshing when I see it discussed, such as was done here in this video.
agreed, but assuming it was done correctly, most of the discussion that I see in this comment section was nothing but a waste of time for everyone involved
S4R1N I liked my philosophy class in college
Philosophy used to be considered the king of the sciences, and it was actually the basis of science, in that the scientific theory *assumes* that the universe is repeatable and consistent, bound by fundamental laws. That was actually a radical belief 2000 years ago. The entire world believed that things happened only because the gods sustained them, and that gods were fickle and inconsistent. Your fire burns because the god of fire is happy with you, not because you made it properly. Mine doesn't because I pissed the god of fire off somehow, not because I made it poorly.
Judaism and Christianity were rare exceptions in that they said there was only one god, and more importantly that that god was consistent and reliable, 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' Therefore, the universe He sustained was the same. Therefore, what happened in the lab, or on your back porch, could be relied upon to happen again somewhere else if you did things the same way. Therefore, science.
Agnostic/atheistic science actually abandons it's own philosophical underpinnings because it has no reason for the universe to be consistent. Instead it relies in circular reasoning of 'it's consistent because we've always seen it consistent, we've always seen it so because we ignore the people that see it otherwise, we ignore them because we know it's consistent.'
That doesn't mean science is wrong, just that it has some fundamental explaining to do.
I know this vid is a few years old, but Einstein never wanted to "debunk" quantum mechanics, just the notion of inherent randomness and faster-than-light interactions. He believed there was a larger picture behind QM in which all this apparent weirdness makes perfect sense. That's not an "unscientific" viewpoint, and he definitely approached it in a scientific way. In fact, Einstein's papers on the subject led directly to Bell's non-locality theorem, one of the most important discoveries in all of QM. Bell's theorem completely contradicted Einstein's views of course, but it's not "unscientific" to be wrong.
Jackoff says what?
@@jakericardo7100 what
?????????????
@@mucpougaming6092 you fool
So you’re saying that he saw it as being similar to early astronomers not understanding or being able to predict the motion of the planets because their understanding of the solar system was wrong, and as soon as they figured out how the solar system actually works, they were able to predict their motion with perfect accuracy? So he believed that there was some rhyme or reason to QM that we didn’t understand and if we only figured it out then we’d be able to predict quantum phenomena? That’s a much more interesting hypothesis. Completely unprovable right up until it’s proven, but very interesting.
"To think about the consequencies of an absolute belief in science"
Only a sith deals in absolute
"Do, or do not. There is no try."
That itself is an absolute
@@SirShanova just as we have to at some point have faith, we at some point have to use absolutes, we can only do our best to minimize them.
The most dangerous mistake you can make as a TH-camr is expecting the commenters to say something worthwhile in a rational, calm, open-minded way.
John Cullen don't confound dangerous and ludicrous.
Take who seriously? EC, or the commenters?
The commenters on TH-cam. By contrast, I 💘 EC.
OK. TH-cam is yet another thing where the content itself ranges from great to terrible, and the fanbase is usually on the latter end of the spectrum.
Spotty adolescents with not enough homework.
By contrast: EC. I fancy myself well read on Japan, yet their sengoku jidai series made me think of things I had never considered. So much for 2 trimesters of coursework, countless books, boundless films and documentaries. 72 minutes of cartoon content with goofy accents to deflate my belief I actually know the topic.
“Some people say, How can you live without knowing? I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.” ― Richard Feynman
God always rolls for initiative in my book
God always takes Improved Initiative at character gen 😂
Does that mean autists are supposed to exist?
What's your book
@@whyamideadindiscord3081 the monster manual
Nice joke😂
I loved this episode, and the points are true, but God does not play dice. He plays scrabble.
hahahahaha
No, everyone knows God is a corporatist. God plays monopoly
+QED he always gets annoyed when Stan buys Board Walk and Park Place. real reason Satan is in hell.
S. McCullough I think he plays sorry more than anything. I mean people really get shafted when he draws a bad card.
S. McCullough It's people like you with Trollface profile pics that the wars like Crusades exist. Rightfully so. KEK VULT!
Thank you for this! Your view of faith and belief is so open and inclusive, truly welcoming and valuing every point of view. As a devout Christian who has often been attacked while traversing the nerdy communities I know and love, seeing such a fresh and positive view being expressed by people of power over these communities makes me breathe a little easier. Thanks very much!
Relevance = 100%.
This may well be one of the best explained, most relevant and most interesting EC videos out there. Well done guys - you've really excelled yourselves.
+buddyltd too bad the comments are still bad if not worse than the last one
TH-cam comments are notorious. At least some can get good stuff from it.
buddyltd right but...
true
Respectfully disagree. They are obviously biased and are letting their bias's show through in this episode. They say we have faith in Euclidian math, but that isn't true. We trust euclidan math cause it was proven to be true in that frame of reference.
I think that the knee-jerk reaction to the statement that scientific principles are based on axioms ("faith"), is because modern-day creationists often abuse this point to conclude that both assertions based on the scientific method and assertions based on religion are equally based on "faith", and therefore equally valid in principle.
The word "faith" is often used to describe the process of "willing it to be true" in a religious context. Because of this, and because of the misuse of the word "faith" in discussions over creationism versus the scientific method, the word "faith" has become a word that is avoided at all costs by anti-religious agitators. This seems to be mainly a symptom of the English language, as in my native language (Dutch) the word for faith: "Geloof" is much more neutral word and can be both used to mean "faith" and "belief".
The difference between scientific thinking and religious thinking lies in the dealing with dogma. religious thinking sticks to the faith based assertion no matter what the evidence later implies. Scientific thinking is prepared to do away with previously held faith-based assertions if that assertion turns out to not line up with the evidence.
It's actually exactly in this context that i think Faith should gtfo.
If you have faith in your scientific results, this means you trust in them.
This could very easily lead to Scientists finding results they wanted & overlooking those that disprove them. (and yes, i know this happens..)
And that is exactly the problem.
IMHO no scientist should have faith in their work or science, since all scientists should actively LOOK to disprove their own research.
Nothing is true until you've disproven every other possible explanation.
And since the universe is infinite, good luck proving anything conclusively~
These are not statements of truths, they are meant to make a point.
Let's see if people get it.
Domyras I think their point is to have faith in your findings but also be willing to accept if it turns out to be wrong. That and there is also the possibility you may not have the resources to prove something yet. For example, people used to say the world was flat but they did not have the mathematical equations, measuring equipment etc. to disprove it. The problem wasn't necessarily that the world turned out that the world was round but that some people refused to even think about the possibility of the world being round. The thing about actively looking to prove yourself wrong is while correct you should double, triple or even quadruple check you work until your absolutely sure, it may still be wrong. You may spend your whole life trying to disprove your scientific theory and see no flaws in it but then 10, 000 years later someone else finds a flaw in that theory. Not only that but sometimes people will miss their own mistakes. However, if you mean that it is impossible to conclusively prove anything because the universe infinite that wouldn't necessarily mean something wrong. While yes it could be wrong there is always a chance of it being right in the same way it could be wrong. Who knows it may turn out the universe isn't infinite or maybe we live in a multiverse etc. There is also the possibility that something could be right sometimes, or in certain areas. For example, it is 12:00, for me this is true but if you live in a different time zone this is not true. Or if I give you a multible choice from a-c and ask you what the answer is and you correctly guess b before i give you another question in which you incorrectly guess b this only makes b incorrect for the second answer, so if you changed your answer for one because b was incorrect for two they are both wrong. Or if you want to get more extreme there are we can move in 6 cardinal directions up, down, forward, back, left and right but if there is a universe that exist in two dimensions this may be incorrect in that universe. My point is it is possible for an answer to be right sometimes but not all the time, if the universe is infinite that would not necessarily mean everything we know is technically wrong but somethings are right in certain scenarios.
Its kind of depends on the religious thinking a counter argument example I would draw on is the difference between Galileo and Copernicus both men essentially proposed the same thing but one man went to war with the church and the other was awarded and rewarded by it most people think Galileo ran into his problems because he disputed what the church was teaching which is only true if you follow things in the strictest sense the real issue came down to Galileo wanting to publish his findings right away for everyone as irrefutable fact while the church wanted him to wait and go through the proper channels of that time and so that they could finish haveing theological debates over its merits because in essence at that time alot of priests and monks were the great scientists of the day so changes would have to be made in church doctrine and in how things would be looked at and taught to say religion doesn't change and adapt based on scientific findings is only really true if you follow protestant fundamentalism because catholism openly preaches some things in the bible are parables and not to be taken for betum which is why Catholics also have always backed the big bang theory as well as in limited cases abortion and pulling the plug on comatose patients I wouldnt be surprised at all if some bits of evolution made its way into catholic doctrine as time goes on yah no lots of people want to pigeon hole things but science and religion walked hand in hand for a long time the people who committed atrocities because of religion were almost always going to commit an atrocity religion just happened to be there scape goat that day
@@jorgenoname6062 and cases where biblical text is denied in favour of the idea god is good
@@DomyTheMad420 I dont think thats quite the faith this video is talking about, even if you're actively trying to disprove everything you do, you still need to have faith in some root set of things for you to actually be able to do anything
Science, Math, Religion, and Faith all have this in common:
They teach us there's always more out there that we don't know and understand.
Not really though......
@@detachsoup6061 Care to elaborate?
But only religion is here to give you the reason to not trying to learn more.
@@xn4pl If that's what you think then you don't understand religion, or at least the differences between them. Evangelical Bible Belt christianity doesn't represent the billions of people who follow a faith.
@@gale3509 Look up the 5 ways of Thomas Aquinas. They have a pretty straight forward run down, tell me what you think of them.
The fact that so many people still missed the point after having it spelled out is deflating
did you ever think that maybe you missed the fact that he is misconstruing the concept? maybe that he is wrong?
nyutrig what concept do you feel is being misrepresented in this video? Considering a major part of the video was how people are/were acting like the people they disliked.
they dont use the word "faith" correctly. they make a false equivalency with the generic word "faith" as opposed to "believing something without evidence.
nyutrig so you aggravated by A) semantics B) and that science never takes something on faith. If A bothers you then understand that the word faith has multiple meanings and is like being aggravated when someone says 'pop' instead of 'soda' or vice versa. If B bothers you then realize that science acknowledges it's short coming by being so flexible. E.g. over 500 years ago every respected scientist would have rejected the idea of plate tetonics. They had evidence to support their current theories and hypothesis. Yet when presented with new evidence they rejected it at first and then considered it. The idea that whole land masses were moving was insane. Just as suggesting the the earth wasn't the center of the universe or that tiny lifeforms caused illness. So it was a problem with the evidence itself and not the logic that followed.
Additionally why be mad at something so trifling anyway. A suspension in belief, that what you know may not be correct, is pivotal to the success of not just science but humanity as a whole.
thatguyunknoe well first of all when you say its like pop and soda, i disagree.
those are 2 words with the same meaning. with faith we are talking about 1 word with 2 meanings. this is one issue.
the other issue is, when pointed out by their community on how they were misinformed, they responded by basically saying "you mad?" to the community, then ignoring them.
and im not mad. why does pointing out someone being wrong equate to being angry?
Wow. When I first watched this video, I was an edgy athiest teenager and I was super confused and thought calling yourself "agnostic" was fence-sitting and kinda dumb. Now I suddenly remembered this video. I have changed so much since then that basically everything said in this video aligns exactly with how I see the subject of faith. I wish I knew what made me change, cuz I'm so often frustrated when I talk to people and they don't understand this. Probably one of my favorite videos on this channel.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded. "
-Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
Very cool game!
Alpha Centauri was underrated... I loved that game !
wouldn't loaded dice still be deterministic?
This video encapsulates pretty much everything myself and many others at my university (specifically the physics department, as it so happens) has ever said about science and faith, and everything that has ever irritated us about people who seem to think of science as a form of absolutism, devoiding it of any exploratory/truly questioning nature. Thank you SO very much for making it! :D
"Einstien, stop telling God what to do!" -Neils Bohr
Jesus, people, it's hasn't ever been about science or religion, but about people's attitudes towards different values.
+Dominique Hipolito I agree. People need to learn contentment. Allow yourself to be imperfect at times, as all people are. After that, you can then allow other people to be imperfect at times. Everyone's definition of perfection is different anyway. If everyone in the world could do just that one thing, the world would be a much happier place.
+Aria Rashidzadeh stalin, castro, mao ze dong, kim il sung, saddam hussein
Well, if you must know, I am actually avid about history, especially the history of human conflict. I've even co-written a 180-page thesis on it in college. So, yeah, I've been around both google and old books.
And all my research has revealed something important: no religious war is actually fought for religion. It's always been, as you said, for politics, economy and race. In fact, if you break down how people saw their religions back then, and how they see it now, it does boil down to those three things. "My religion=my politics, my economy, my race."
You see this in how Arab and Persian Muslims frequently committed atrocities against one another on the basis of ethnicity, even if they were "fighting for God." Likewise, Crusaders massacred countless other Christians as they pillaged Europe on the way to Jerusalem. Extra History has a series about this already.
The thing I wanted to point out with the names of these dictators is that they persecuted religious people with reasons including an antagonistic view of religion. Sounds pretty atheistic to me.
Their reasons can have variations, but they are ultimately the same. "This is my turf; you go by my rules." You don't have to be atheist to commit crimes for secular reasons. I mean, yeah nobody has nor will ever fight for atheism (though that might make an interesting game) but wouldn't you say that these have little to do with religion anyway? Sounds pretty atheistic to me.
On a side note, it was a horrible generalization to accuse every religion. Have you taken into account Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism and other religions no one bothered to weaponize?
So, yeah, based on my research, I have to disagree with you when you say religion is a cause for conflict. And I have to very strongly disagree when you say it's always been the source of suffering, or that only religious people have committed such crimes. It's actually just one of the tools. A civic-cultural body of customs and beliefs shared by an organized body of people that, like everything else, can and has been weaponized in times of war.
+Aria Rashidzadeh Wow you really misunderstood everything I said.
+Aria Rashidzadeh whether there is a god isn't important. What's important is people's attitude towards differences in beliefs.
If you consider stalin's rejection of religion as something for the masses, then yes it is atheistic.
I just bought a 5$ container of guacamole and some chips and im glad I did.
I hope it was tasty
Indigo Magus twas very.
M4nbird do you feel like sharing? :)
whartanto2 i ate it two weeks ago
sowwy
wow r00d
This whole video is an equivocation of the word faith in two different contexts.
Faith in the religious context is belief without evidence.
"Faith" used in this video in the scientific sense is trust in methods that provide measurable and verifiable results.
Science never made claims of providing absolute truths. This video notes the fact that science depends on that we know our understanding is always incomplete and are ready to revise it. This should make it clear enough that the religious idea of faith is not present.
Cloud Seeker
"The problem in this video is that it's a bunch of game designers that have most likely never been involved in anything that is scientific."
These guys are game designers? I didn't know that. They actually have published titles?
But yes, the complete lack of understanding of what science is...yeah that's kind of a problem.
Tenzek
No, "faith" is the acceptance of something without demonstrable empirical evidence. While science consists of conclusions based on evidence, those conclusions have their foundation in unprovable assumptions. He's not talking about hypotheses being disproven or even theories being disproven. He's talking about Postulates. You cannot prove postulates, by their very nature. You just have to accept, or believe, or have faith in the fact that they are true (pick your phrase. It really doesn't matter).
Science and mathematics (upon which all science is based) are logic systems. All logic systems must have a base set of assumptions, which you must accept as true before any logical tests can be conducted, or any evidence can be interpreted. These assumptions, are, by their nature, impossible to prove, but must be true in order for the logic system to be sound. While we can formulate logical tests based on these assumptions, and our tests can reinforce the hypothesis we developed based on our assumptions, that reinforcement does not serve as proof. If those assumptions prove to be false, then our whole logic system crashes, and we have to start from scratch. This is not simply a hypothesis being proven false. This is something much more fundamental.
The example EC gave was apt. Euclid's 5th postulate confounded philosophers and mathematicians for centuries. Because of its convoluted nature, mathematicians tried, in vain, for centuries, to prove that it was not necessary to accept it on faith in order to build a robust geometric system. Countless mathematicians spent their entire careers trying, and failing, to disprove this postulate. It was only 1500 years after Euclid's death that three mathematicians, independently, and using different approaches, proved that it did have to be accepted on faith in order to have a sound logical system, by adopting two separate alternatives to the 5th postulate, and building weird, bizarre (to our tiny 2-D monkey brains), robust geometric systems based on these new "assumptions". Note they never proved or disproved anything. They changed assumptions, and developed new proofs for statements which would be false under the old assumptions.
These discoveries, and the fact that they might have real-world applications to certain celestial (read: relativistic) observations, not only forced science to readjust its focus, but rendered observations previously believed to be significant completely meaningless.
The absolute greatest thinkers in all of science and mathematics in the greatest civilizations of the time were hung up on this for 1 1/2 millennia, desperately trying to prove that the unprovable could be proven. And what did someone who thought outside the box ultimately prove? "Nope, you've just gotta take it on faith."
So, what was that you were saying about only having to have faith in the methods?
This is not to say that science is illogical, or somehow equal to, greater than, or less than religion. It's saying that scientists and mathematicians have their own baseless assumptions upon which they must base their world view as a matter of necessity, as well. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Jeff Shehane
Belief in religion is a stopping point. There is no stopping point in science because you're not asked to believe any truths, nor are you presented with any to be believed.
Postulates are not truths. Assumptions in science give context to a description. They define the limitations of a model, or simplify a complicated concept. Misrepresenting this as an equivalent absolute truth to the Word of God appears to be the source of this fallacy. You're acting as if science considers such things unquestioned truth, and therefor requires you to hold belief in them.
Euclid's 5th postulate helps to define classical geometry. Geometry is representational like math in general. It's used to model and describe reality. This is like saying that we take language on faith because words in English mean something totally different when you read them as French. The trick in his description is that he applies a postulate of one model to a different model, and notes it does not fit. Then he applies a religious interpretation to make it support his point, but that does not fit science. You'd have to take the postulate as an absolute truth, and that's never what it was meant to be.
Most people are familiar with Newtonian physics. Within a limited set of conditions, it provides accurate enough results to be practically useful. It is not an absolute truth. It's not even generally true (meaning we know of cases where it is demonstrably false.) This is how science works. Belief in the context you're using makes no sense in science. It would stop questions and prevent us from looking for answers - the opposite of the point of science.
Someone may personally hold a belief about science, or about something that science claims. That does not make such a belief equivalent to science, and it won't stop people from testing further to see if it ever fails to hold up to new results. Science doesn't care about personal beliefs, or compel accepting its statements as Truth.
At best this is a case of confusion in semantics. I'll not be cynical enough to claim it's done on purpose.
Jeff Shehane
Well, my reply got fairly long to include explanation. Let me give a quick summation.
Postulates are things to be discussed in science. They're not truths, but ways to define what it is we're talking about so that it can be discussed with rigor.
Applying the religious concept of belief in absolute truths is a mistake. It is in fact quite the opposite - not a compulsion to accept, but a method to explore.
Jeff Shehane
No, the parallel postulate does NOT require faith. It is true that it can't be proven, but faith only requires a lack of evidence. Evidence is weaker than proof - you can have evidence of something without being able to prove it.
The simplest explanation for why you can't PROVE the postulate is that it's effectively a negative statement. In other words, Euclid's fifth postulate actually makes TWO claims in a stealthy way. One claim is "there is always a line B that doesn't intersect another line A, but does hit a point P that isn't on line A." This part can be massaged into a negative statement by saying that the line B you just made has NO intersection with line A. So, OK, a negative existence statement. That's probably bad. But even worse, the postulate ALSO states that there is no third line C (distinct from line B) that can touch point P without touching line A. That's an even bigger non-existence claim! Oh noes!
HOWEVER, and this is why it's not faith, there is actually evidence that this postulate holds up. Not proof! Just evidence. See, you can test it empirically all day long and it has thus far always worked. In any case you can make up, we will be able to find one line B, and no line C. This has, as I said, been the case with every single test example known.
Again, I stress that this is absolutely inadmissible as a mathematical proof, but an unbroken pattern of success in countless trials where failure is theoretically possible does, in fact, constitute evidence. And faith, as you know, requires a lack of EVIDENCE, or contradiction of EVIDENCE. Lack of PROOF is not sufficient to call something "faith."
So once again, science is not without evidence. And for what it's worth, science is pretty much ALWAYS short of proof. It's just a well-supported claim of a model or law based on the best available evidence. Science merely says "here's our best idea of the pattern behind the observed data." Nowhere does science require the assumption that it's 100% accurate, and nowhere does science use faith.
EDIT: But seriously, thank you for providing an intelligent argument. So many others here don't even know what science is.
I've always been more spiritual than religious, but I have a healthy and hearty appreciation for both science and religion and what they offer and bring to the table.
Religion offers community, inner comforts, uplift and the means to explore yourself. Science offers progress, better living, outer comforts and the means to explore your world.
It's astonishing to me, how little this generation knows about history (A subject I'm very happy you guys at Extra Credits are also shedding more light on!) when you listen to these extremist arguments in one direction or another.
It was Christian Monasteries where much scientific progress was made in the dark ages. We have a humble monk to thank for our understanding of vegetable husbandry. We have the Aztecs, some of the most brutal religious extremists in history, to thank for the concept of the absence of number, or the 'zero' numeric. We can thank Plato for the concept of the republic, in which he included the notion that a strong faith is required. And while some say that Islam's greatest contribution to science was the sacking and burning of the Great Library, Islamic scientists made world-changing discoveries on the subjects of economics, chemistry and mathematics.
People tend to take an all-or-nothing approach to faith and science, forgetting that it's they're both searching for truth.
Not a patentable "THE TRUTH" but just... truth.
I like and appreciate how even-handed you guys tackled this subject.
Out of curiosity, what would you say the difference between spiritualism and religion is?
*****
Religion is the community of like-seeking individuals, generally looking to someone of wisdom for guidance, who draws their guidance from a divine figure. The passionate evangelist, the wise imam, the scholarly lama and the practical rabbi.
Spirituality is the personal pursuit of divinity and fulfillment of becoming closer to your divine spark, the quest for enlightenment. The traveler, the explorer, the yogi, the sensate.
That is how *I* define the difference. What most religions offer is not for me, but it is for others. I find God in my own way.
Zucca Xerfantes The way in which you pursue enlightenment, I would say, is religious in nature. The history of world religions is filled with curious itinerants who rejected the communal faiths surrounding them; take Martin Luther the German friar, for example, who came to the conclusion that man's connection to God was not in the hands of the Church, but that it could be pursued through faithful prayer without the need of a clerical medium.
The Protestant religions that Martin Luther helped gave rise to could certainly be called religious in nature, despite his belief in a, as you put it, "personal pursuit of divinity." So let me ask you another question.
Let us suppose that, at some point in your life, you stumble across a spiritual epiphany. Would you not want to share your revelation with others? If you did, do you not see how, if others were to accept what you profess to be truthful, it may begin to resemble your communal criteria for religion as scores of people flock together to share in this newfound wisdom, perhaps even begin to instruct their children in your teachings that they may go on to live fulfilling lives?
That is why I feel that "spiritualism" and "religion" are two names for the same thing, and that the majority of so-called "spiritualists," in my experience, are really saying that they are disillusioned with the organized religion that they grew up exposed to, but still long to explore the mysterious, divine, and wondrous.
*****
This may surprise you, but no, I wouldn't. Because everyone's heart is different, and so too, their soul. If I had a spiritual revelation and epiphany, I would go out and encourage people to find their own in their own way.
I don't believe in one-size-fits-all spirituality, after all.
I was never disillusioned to religion. I still think it has, is and can be a force for good in the world.
My problem with religion is that, to use your example, my teachings would be twisted and warped as the years wear on. I could write it all down in a book and people would argue over interpretations and splinter off into little boxes to cling to what they think one passage or another means.
And that's only if people don't bring emotion into it.
If they do, they could fight over it.
And finally, a few clever and ambitious people would use my teachings as a means of control over people and would alter bits and pieces of my writings to suite their needs.
So I encourage people to find their own spiritual center.
Not to shun it, as disenfranchised atheists and anti-theists do when they get disillusioned with religion.
Religion, I think, is the best place to start though. And sometimes what's in their heart falls in line with what's being taught.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer on this one.
Zucca Xerfantes So you would keep it yourself, then? All of it?
*There are only two things that are infinite. The universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe.* _-Albert Einstein_
99% of all quotes on the internet are inaccurate.
-Abraham Lincoln
"All my research is stolen from other people"
-Albert Einstein
"I created an earthquake machine! We're all gonna die!!" - Nikola Tesla
MAGNETS, BITCH, YEAAAAAAAAAH" - Nikola "Jessie Pinkman" Tesla
"Please, stop."
- your parents.
Mentioning religion on the internet will always spark a shitstorm.
It's human nature.
Unfortunately, it is sad that, yes, this is still a burning problem. However, I do not think it is a part of "human nature," at least not a part of it that we can't change. It is a long shot, but I truly believe that, if everyone just accepted everyone's differences, then things would be on the right path. However, maybe you are right... after saying that outloud, that doesn't seem very possible.
Nicholas Riggs Most people don't mind when others have different viewpoints and beliefs, but there has to be a limit. Your beliefs simply shouldn't affect others who don't believe it. Like how there was a hospital who was catholic sponosored so it didn't abort a baby eventhough the mother and child would have most likely both died. Just read it
www.aclu.org/blog/reproductive-freedom-womens-rights-religion-belief/pregnant-woman-suffers-you-wont-believe-whos
This is completely unacceptable and shouldn't be tolerated and accepted.
Nicholas Riggs
Yeah, like how your religion says that a morally-perfect being (ie your god) condemns everyone who isn't your religion to an eternity of torture in hellfire, and that gays should be put to death for no reason. That's totally a good example of "accepting people's differences." Man, I just can't figure out why your tolerant, loving religion has such difficulty getting along with the majority of the world. I guess it's a mystery!
GreyWolfLeaderTW ...Ok then. Should I consider you a religious person? If yes, then what religion are you? If christianity or islam, then do you believe the holy books fully because they are holy books. Or do you change some morals in them? If you do, then you made your own secular morals. I would guess that you accept that catholic hospitals do this to other people. If everyone can use their own morals without anyone stopping them, then thieves should be able to steal. If the bible didn't say it's wrong, do you think people would continue stealing? Most people like the laws made from secular thinking rather than your religious ones. But if we can truly seperate ourselves from you, then everything will be simply amazing. Unfortunately, we can't.
GreyWolfLeaderTW
It's not an appeal to popularity. It's because religious laws are based on bullshit. You're basically saying "a supernatural being (who I can't prove even exists) told me these rules, so you have to do whatever I say." That's a self-appointed dictatorship, and there's no reason for me to listen to you. The only reason anyone ever has listened to religious laws is because religious people scammed their way into power and would execute those who didn't obey them.
Also, there are 613 laws in the Bible, not 10. Try actually reading it. And while we're here, "these laws haven't changed in a long time" is a stupid argument. What, so they're super old and that means they're supposed to be better? Why don't we still use bronze-age swords in the Army? That technology hasn't changed in a long time, either. Oh, because older answers are not automatically better than newer ones, and are in fact usually worse (or else there wouldn't BE a new answer).
Finally, in a secular, humanist system, everybody gets an equal say. Everybody gets to explain why their way is best. The difference between reasonable people and you is that reasonable people have REAL explanations that MAKE SENSE, whereas you have "a magic ghost in an old book said so" as your entire basis. That's fucking insane, and I guarantee you would see it my way if it were any religion that disagrees with yours making the laws.
The thing is, randomness is defined by things beyond control of a specific system, and this uncertainty was treated as if actual form. I think the quantum randomness is due to lack of understanding.
Somebody take that pic shown when he says "like us some science" (the one with all four of them raving in lab coats) and make a poster or tee-shirt of that!
Ahhhhhh. 2013. Back when there was still hope a reasonable conversation was possible on the internet. How innocent we all were
Some things never change, mention religion in the wrong places you’re done for
"Come let us reason together" - The Bible
Proverbs 1:22:"How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?" Great Video Man!
There are three postulates we must take on faith:
1. I am.
2. My senses are sometimes accurate.
3. Physical evidence is a valid way of justifying beliefs.
Einstein didn't reject quantum physics because of his belief in science, science demands he question his beliefs in the presence of new evidence..
What one must or mustn't take on faith is up to oneself. A religious individual takes the existence of god on faith.
Axioms are arbitrary. Rather than trying to impose your own on people learn to live with this fact and use meta-logical techniques to convince people instead.
"Science and Religion are essentially one and the same. They try to make sense of the world. They both explore that one thing, which is infinite."
I like how you guys don't debunk religion, don't mention millenium old stereotypes or bring up things that happened hundreds of years ago or try to blame religion for all of the bad it admittedly has caused. Instead you guys show what it's /supposed/ to be in the basics, what it's supposed to be for everyone with faith in anything (religion or not). +1 like for you.
Keeping that open mind towards things such as religion instead of angrily dismissing them because a loud few ruin it for the rest (also admittedly atheists are becoming more of that crowd nowadays as I've seen) shows great tolerance and what true tolerance should be towards all beliefs/supposed lack thereof.
I really like the attitude of "There might be a god, there might not be. Not ruling it out automatically because 'science' has been proven wrong before but we're not going to just embrace it blindly."
My biology teacher is writing a book to connect religion and science. It's called the theory of evolutionary ecology or something. One of the points in it is about how evolution might be guided by God.
(I'm agnostic so this interests me greatly)
Max Holbrook That's a really interesting topic. I fall on the young earth side of that debate (don't crucify me for that) and there is a theory called diversification within the young earth community that you might be interested in as well.
you dont need to defend science hes a big boy now he can look after himself
"Einstein really ought to stop telling God what to do." -Niels Bohr
Well, this is exactly how Alchemy became Chemistry.
Religion doesn't always preach belief without question. Don't generalize religion. You will find many many religious people and churches that encourage questioning and self discovery. It's not about blind belief at all; it's about questioning and understanding and figuring out what you believe. Religion isn't a set of rules; it's a life long process of figuring out how you see the world. As an atheist, I can attest to the fact that becoming an atheist was a process of questioning and reevaluating the way I perceived the world. In the same way, I know a lot of people who went from being atheist to becoming religious, because they questioned and got different answers. There's nothing wrong with religion; it's just that some people use it in the wrong way.
+Nammy Kasaraneni "Atheism is as much a religion as bald is a hairstyle." Ever heard that one? It's an example of how you can't put the two together in the same pot. You don't "become" an atheist. Otherwise you are an atheist in that sense towards anything until you learn about it. Such as a blue orange. You're not religious to say "Blue oranges do not exist because there is no proof of them." You're just making a statement. One which could be proven wrong someday.
And please name a religion that does not ask you to believe something without proof. Find me a proven religion. There's no such thing. The scientific method does not "question" and be done with it. Its goal is to prove. Look at the diagram in the video (at 1:52).
You said churches "encourages questioning" yeah, but not of THEIR beliefs/holy writings. Questioning your own, as you repeated many times, however is nothing like that. "How I see/perceive/evaluate the world." You can't confirm what you believe, otherwise you wouldn't "believe" it. It would already be true and thus a fact. You don't say you "believe a fact." You can only confirm how strongly you believe *in* something, but that's mincing words. Science does not allow how much an idea is liked or disliked to have any relevance to whether it is true or not. Nor are scientific matters personal.
When I said I became atheist I meant that I chose to stop believing in god(s). And there are no proven religions I agree, because religions cannot be proven. But there are churches that encourage the questioning of even their own beliefs and statements; my friend goes to a church that advocates for that very thing. When I say questioning, I don't mean theory based questioning and in that sense religion and science do differ. I'm not saying that science and religion are the same at all, nor am I saying that being atheist versus being religious is the same. However, I do think the process of deciding whether or not you believe in a God is similar for many people, at least in my experience. I decided I didn't believe in things without proof. Others decided they didn't need proof, and that's, in my opinion, respectable.
I would also say that you don't believe facts, but really, I disagree with the concept of fact. If you're a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan, think about the Ruler of the Universe. We trust our perceptions of the world on faith constantly. We believe in what we see, we believe in data and evidence. We believe our theories in order to explain the universe. The difference, though, is that our theories can be disproven, whereas a religious theory cannot.
I appreciate discussions like this :) it's a nice change from the usual zealots and trolls
flameshana9 Everything in life, not just religion requires faith. I can investigate and find that Christianity has a sufficient amount of historical proof to make me believe that it's valid, but at some point faith has to come in. I am pretty sure that the Earth and everything on it was created by God, but i don't know for a fact that it's true. That doesn't stop me from believing it though. Do you realize how essential faith in anything is for life? You could not function without faith. You have faith that the doctor is telling you the truth. You have to have faith that the surgeon won't kill you. You have to have faith that you're gonna wake up in the morning. Sure these things have evidence, but that doesn't mean that they will always happen. Faith is not reliant upon the presence or absence of evidence.
Logan Hollis Felt like starting a religious debate, then decided your points about faith were your main purpose, and decided to just smile and nod.
+flameshana9 Late, late, late on this, but just one thing: Yes, people do *become* atheists, in the same way someone can *become* some follower of a religion. That's just an outright lie. To simplify matters a bit, the most obvious example is the freshman college student who takes a basic theology, philosophy, or logic course and decides that there is no god, when - before - they grew up in a religious household. That is *literally* becoming an atheist. By that notion, the entire rest of your argument has no grounding for further examination.
My favourite quote right now is "I think therefore I am". For those who don't know, that quote is basically one guy saying I can prove nothing at all. Nothing but one thing: the fact that I exist. It may seem stupid at first but I like the quote so much because it makes me question everything I believe in but at the same time reassures me that there is one thing that I can objectively know which leaves me sad, thoughtful, hopeful, inquisitive and uplifted all at the same time. (No, I'm not a hippie)
So you don't know if you're hippie or not?
If you say the only thing you can prove to yourself is your existence... Then you seem you can't be sure about being a hippie, right?
What "I think, therefore I am" really means is "The only thing in the entire universe that I can be absolutely sure of is my own experience".
Yea, except that's not true either, you can't know if you're colourblind without others telling you so and since memory is malleable you can't trust that your memory of events you remember vividly are accurate
I do not understand why some people have been giving Extra Credits crap over this :S. At the heart of it, while I do disagree with some things, I agree that it is incredibly sad that people would be SO close-minded that they would call this "retarded" or "unbearable." Really? The definition of faith is the, "absolute trust or confidence in someone or something." In a sense, faith, when refined and proven to be accurate again and again and again, does become something new: Knowledge... To have a knowledge or an assurance of something IS to have faith in it. To finish my point, it is hard to say a statement in which I say, "I have a knowledge/understanding of gravity, but I do not have faith in gravity."
Mister Guy You can harp on me for pulling the REAL definition card all you want, I do not care. You can use examples of the verb "dusting" that have circular logic, and again, I do not care. YOU are the perfect example of what they are talking about - Someone SO close-minded and blinded by your own ignorance and apathy that you will really accost someone over the internet by: calling me and religion in general liars, calling ideas that differ from yours retarded, etc. Like it or not, faith IS trust, it is just people who can not learn to read outside of their narrow mindset will often ONLY associate faith with religion (note- I am not saying faith in a deity and faith that the sun will still be there in the morning is the same, I am saying both use the concepts of faith). Furthermore, had you been paying attention, in the first ninety seconds, he said one of the best things to do is "question what you venerate." In this case, he is talking about science as a whole and questioning the IDEA and FAITH behind science, not talking about science itself which is a conglomeration of testing hypotheses, drawing conclusions from data, and applying it. It seems your misunderstanding of this episode (and what the E.C. team is trying to say) is caused by the very thing they are trying to warn people about: Being close-minded and being unable to look past your shallow and narrow views is sad, disappointing, and overall unpleasant. So I guess, thank you for proving their point, despite having to be the sad example of it. Furthermore, If you hate religion so much (which, I mean, clearly I can draw from what you said) that it affects how you see English words to the point where you want to argue definitions with a random stranger, I advise you gain a sense of empathy, especially because you are only doing yourself and society a disservice by spreading around so many hateful things. I do not care what you are preaching, when you preach it like an asshole, nobody listens - that goes for your views, religious views, and everything in the middle. I truly hope your day/ tomorrow goes better for you, as it seems like you have a lot of anger that can't possibly stem ONLY you disagreeing with someone over the internet.
Mister Guy Faith is just a word. You hate the definition so much? Scream at the dictionary companies like Webster and Britannica and the societies that support them. Like it or not, it means "belief in things which are not based on evidence." , Faith means EXACTLY that. Faith is mainly only really used for religion, but BY DEFINITION, YOUR DEFINITION NO LESS... it will often mean science as well because, as you said, science is always about questioning and changing based on 'evidence' from scientists, no? Lets look at THAT word since we like definitions so much :P. 'Evidence' is the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. I will use this fact in a moment.
Just like the video, they make the point that scientists believed without a shadow of a doubt that they were only a few equations from solving ALL of physics. Evidence provided a different thought against it, so all of that 'knowledge' that the 'surely knew' about the universe, turned out to be not based on evidence because, clearly, it was proven wrong with evidence. However... because evidence only uses facts to prove facts, then they could not have used real evidence in coming to the conclusion they only had a few more equations to go... thus, they used faith. Faith in science. They put trust/ a belief in things which were just dis-proven with real evidence. it is just a stigma that faith can only be usable in the context of religion.
Now, here is where you are right - science is by NO means less valuable than religion. In fact, I would go as far to say that science, in relation to progress made by humans, faaarrrr outweigh religion. I agree 100% that science has made INCREDIBLE things... I am a global studies/ polisci major and I reflect EVERYDAY on the awesomeness that is skype that allows me to communicate with my peers in Moscow and Berlin respectively and share information and research with them. Scientists find joy in finding out when they are wrong, that a hypothesis turned out MUCH differently than what they originally trusted to be fact or a logical outcome. They used faith in their experiments only to have the pleasure of being shocked at finding a new outcome.
Just because my definition of faith, as well as many others, does not coincide with yours does NOT mean I am bullshitting or being dishonest, proving the point of your own mental-shallowness.
Ideas of yours that do not allow for others to freely think what they wish are slowly starting to become obsolete in this world. You are CLEARLY too deep in the ocean of biases that you are swimming in to make a logical conclusions based on the English definition of the word "faith." At the end of the day, E.C. made this as a reply to every asshole out there that thinks that there is NOTHING to learn from others views of faith, whether it is in science or religion. This video was made for you, and it saddens me to see you so stiff-necked and so prideful that you cannot come down from your pedestal and acknowledge that while your views of faith are partially correct, they are not 100%... you are, in essence, making the same mistake as those scientists a few years ago, bud.
I am sorry if I hurt your feelings by calling you an asshole, I was more taken-aback that anyone could be so presumptuous to the point of calling other ideas retarded. You need to understand that while you do not disagree with my (or anyone else's) words, that does not make them wrong. Have a good day at work/school bud, I sincerely hope it goes well.
Nicholas Riggs I liked the part where Mister Guy said he was "open minded".
Mister Guy People who call people retards arent open minded.
Someone with an open mind would have taken Mr. Riggs post and reminded him that he cant confuse knowledge and faith, because the two are fundamentally different. An open minded person would look at what hes trying to say, understand it, and respond with by citing the work of Rene Descarte, mentioned in this video. They would remind him that Descartes problem was that he couldnt know anything, because he refused to allow faith. The only thing he could truly have knowledge of was that he existed as a thinking being, with his famous quote "I think, therefore I am." Additionally, if you had an open mind, you would see that Mr. Riggs definition of faith is absolutely relevant to the conversation, especially considering postulates are a prime factor within the scientific community.
If you were open minded, you would see that Religion is one of the pillars that form civilizations, and is one of the social institutions on which societies as a whole function. If you were open minded, you would know that some people have a deep internal need for religion to find peace within their own lives, and that nothing is wrong with that. If you were open minded, you would not be saying things about an institution which you clearly do not understand.
If you were open minded, you would have listened to the video, since you are the kind of individual it was directed towards.
jablesusta I must admit, I was originally worried when I opened my inbox and saw yet another post on this subject. Thank you for posing your evidence, and I had totally forgot Descartes' famous postulate of existence! I am also thankful that another person acknowledges the importance of religion in modern times: not as a definitive hard-lined rule book in society, but as a cultural/ spiritual necessity desired by the individual. Would you agree that faith, in anything, is necessary for us to function as human beings because, as Descarte states, we can not have definitive knowledge in all things we have access to? I would like to think so, especially considering there is just TOO MUCH knowledge out there, that some things really just need to be accepted as relevant truth, thus me exercising, what I believe may be, true faith. Anywhoozles, thank you for revitalizing this debate in a mature and level-headed manner!! It was admittedly starting to stagnate. :S
As a professional scientist and regular churchgoer, I really appreciate this episode. I personally like to think of science as God's blueprint for the universe, and it's okay that we're always finding new details about that print we didn't realize before.
I can understand what Extra Credits is trying to convey. Like religious fanatics, it is always those with LEAST understanding of science who use it like a stick to bash religions. I have been guilty of that in some occasions.
But I think using the word of Faith is a wrong choice of word (Wittgenstein said something in the line of "Most problems in Philosophy are due to poorly defined words").
Axioms are, as the video said, the starting point. It is not faith because the second it failed to provide the evidence of its truth, good scientists will discard it. This is also why a lot of economists are saying that Economics is not only the dismal "science", but a work of fiction ("Post Hoc Explanation").
Falsifiability is a big point in what is defined as science, although not in the hard form that Popper wants. And I think that is all that Faith is not. It is not that we say "Yes, we believe this axioms to be true", it is "Let's test if these axioms can lead to testable experiments".
The "Matrix" or "Brain in a Jar" thought experiment is fundamentally unsolvable. But I don't think people should take it on "Faith" that we are not in a matrix world, or just a brain in a jar. Personally, I don't think it makes a difference. If we are brains in a Jar, then the findings of science define the results in the worlds inside of our mind or the matrix world.
Does that imply that there is a possibility of an Architect to the Matrix (aka. God)? Yes, always. You can't really prove a negative. Should you believe in the existence of a God? I don't see the point. He does not seem to be as involved in our day to day life and just left everyone be. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people because Good and Bad are human concepts that any creature capable of creating Matrix world will found it ridiculously beneath it.
Oh, while we're here, it's not "those with least understanding of science" who use it to bash religions. Easy example, Richard Dawkins. Dude knows some science. He's certainly not anywhere near the "least understanding" end of that spectrum compared to the entire human population.
Mister Guy And unfortunately, for every Richard Dawkins out there, there are 10,000 people who, after reading the God Delusion, thinks that he's the second coming of Bono and start, being good internet tough guys, flaming everyone else who believe in God.
I have nothing against Richard Dawkins, his God Delusion book was one of the three books that I think changed my mind about how I view the world (the other two being Nassim Taleb's Black Swan and Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad).
If you have read Rich Dad Poor Dad, you'd know that it is a really ridiculously bad Finance text book. But I only realised that after taking real finance courses later in my life. I think the same can be said about God Delusion. It is a ridiculously bad Atheist handbook, but its popularity introduced many millions, including me, into Atheism.
I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God. I think Dawkins' movement to create radical Atheism was a good idea in the beginning. But there are moments when I shiver when I am reading some of the atheist forums full of people basically mindlessly repeating what he said as if it is a sentence from the bible.
For a movement that supposedly create more free thinkers, I think more people need to stop embarrassing other atheists out there by sounding like religious fanatics; or a broken tape recorder.
If you have that much time to bash religions, you have time to read books that are actually beneficial for your mind.
whartanto2
OK, so...I've never read any of those books you named. So I wouldn't even recognize if someone were quoting him. But let's get some shit straight:
First, Pythagoras did this thing where he showed that "A squared plus B squared equals C squared" and blah blah you know the rest. Repeating what someone else said, when it's true...I mean, what, should I come up with a different way to calculate hypotenuse length? Why not just use the right answer? So if Dawkins said something like "there's no evidence god exists" or whatever, then what's wrong with someone else saying it, too? But I don't even know what you're saying people quote from these books, so maybe you can tell me what you're talking about.
Secondly, there CANNOT BE a "handbook for being an atheist." Or if there was, it would say "Don't believe that any god exists," and that's it. That's the whole book, and it's 100% comprehensive.
"I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God." So basically you don't care about being right or knowing what you're talking about. You will agree with whatever view is popular and will change your tune the second the population of the room around you changes. Uh, good for you? Sorry, I have a spine, and so I don't just say I agree with stupid shit because other people think it's correct. I actually, you know, say what I think. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter if you don't like the level of confrontation that you see in atheism these days. It's going to be this way until we get good enough education to wipe religion down to nearly nothing, because religion actively harms human civilization. Those of us who are atheist AND, INDEPENDENT OF ATHEISM, care about shit like civil rights or technological advancement are making this happen, and we care very much about it.
Look, I was in the same position that you are six to seven years ago. So I can see a lot of what you are saying now in what I said back then. But as Oscar Wilde aptly said "I am not young enough to know everything" anymore.
I am replying to your comment not in the spirit of argument or any emotional response. But just answering your questions since you put the time to ask them.
First, there is nothing wrong in repeating what other people has figured out. That is what education is all about. That's how we built on previous generations' knowledge. That's how man rise from stone age to reach for the moon.
But there is a difference, using your example, in knowing the Pythagoras theorem and using it to build houses or bridges; or in answering questions if asked; to shouting to everyone you met about the equation, regardless on whether or not they want to know about it.
I think as I grew older with atheism, not believing in God changed from something that I want to share with the whole world, like a child who discovered something interesting wanting to share with his mum, or like those evangelical of any religion who wants to share the "Good News" with anyone who opened the door.
It turns into something personal, like me liking some music that others may or may not like. It colours everything that I see, the way I see the world, but I have given up trying to make other people like my music - no matter how beautiful I think the world look without the goggle of religion. Their loss, I suppose. But not my loss.
Second, atheism, like any meme has a source. Human's instinctual need to believe is such that before there was written language, human has worshipped things in nature. In modern era, this meme happens to be the four horsemen of atheism. Not to say that atheism didn't exist before them, but certainly not as popular as it is today. Especially not in western society. The communists can point out to Karl Marx as the source of their atheism - The opium of the masses, that's what he called religion.
I know a lot of people who grew up in Communist country, and despite never having any religion all their life, they neither found religion repulsive or anything special. But if you grew up in religious family, like I was, I am sure it, like anything you have learned in life, has its source in norms of the people around you.
This might sound radical to people who think they are free-thinker. It is as repulsive as Ayn Rand fan listening to Obama saying that "if you build a business, you didn't build that". But truly, whether you realise it or not, the most popular concept of "radical atheism" is quite new: That it is not enough that you don't believe in God, you have to do anything in your power to make sure that other people don't believe in God too.
I live everyday amongst good, smart, hardworking people who happen to be religious. Despite your belief, they too care about civil rights, liberty, justice, and the newest iPad and Google Glass. I can see them past their religions, and they can see me past my atheism. We have more in common than what differentiate us.
You can call it being spineless, but I believe that without tolerance, we lost what define as what is good about humanity. And you are right, I would not die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.
whartanto2
I didn't call being religious "spineless." I called the statement "I like not being a minority when we are discussing existence of God" spineless, because it is - it's saying that you'd rather agree with people than find the right answer or say what you honestly believe. I don't know how much more textbook this can be.
"But as Oscar Wilde aptly said "I am not young enough to know everything" anymore."
That quotation can apply to theism, but cannot apply to atheism. So, you know, great job there! Atheism is not a claim to knowledge - it is a statement of a lack of belief. A lack of belief, incidentally, in falsely-claimed knowledge that others present. You got it EXACTLY backwards.
Those religious people you see who are, by your judgment, good people, are then victims. Victims of a system that tells them that they're good or bad based on what some bullshit organization of liars and conmen says. Victims of a system that tells them what to believe and how to vote (almost always to the detriment of humanity), and that takes their money in the process. Further, they help to victimize others by giving money to churches and other organizations which pose as charities while in fact consolidating power. And when they get power, they crush human rights. Go look at Africa and the Middle East, where religion is still strong. Or just look at the USA and see where gay people can't get equal rights, then overlay that with where religion is strongest.
"...atheism, like any meme has a source."
Atheism is not a meme and doesn't need a source. Religion is the meme - religion is the thing that someone else has to tell you about because you could never just get there on your own. Nobody has to tell you NOT to believe in very specific made-up stories. What if I told you that your lack of belief that the events of the Lord Of The Rings books/movies is a meme? See how obviously wrong that is? Not believing in fiction does not require a source - but the fiction itself does.
"Their loss, I suppose. But not my loss."
What the fuck? Yeah, it's "their loss" when their religion gets homosexuals executed. It's "their loss" when their religion causes people to lose their freedom to think and speak freely. Maybe you don't happen to be inconvenienced personally by the fact that other people's lives are ruined, and often violently ended, by religion. But some of us actually care about other people and aren't willing to pretend that religious belief is harmless because it is demonstrably harmful. Some of us care about EVERYONE'S rights, including (but not limited to) our own. Are you seriously going to pretend that religion affects nothing, and it's just like "Oh I like TV Show X, but my friend likes TV Show Y." Because it is very clearly not that way.
You should go back to the way you were, before you caved and just wanted to agree with everyone. Before the spark of life, before the fight in you died. Back when you cared about things beyond yourself and weren't willing to lie to yourself and others in order to avoid any potential conflicts. When you had that...what do you call that, that line of small bones in your back that allow you to stand tall? That thing. Get that back.
Science without religion is lame, Religion without science is blind. ~Albert Einstein
There are grand merits to agnosticism.
Agnostic, a word meaning "I know not"
That mentality serves for amazing growth as one never grows attached to "truth", and merely flows with what is.
Water knows not where it flows, but it flows none the less.
I am by no means agnostic nor am I, religious or anti-religious.
The thing that gets on my wick with religion is that it teaches people to *not* question. To be satisfied with ignorance. To look at the world and just shrug. Science however does the exact opposite. Science may not have all the answers but it can admit it. Admitting ignorance and persevering is essential to science. And what you are calling "faith" in science isn't what I would call faith. What I call faith is to believe without reason. Of course if you have a reason you would not need faith. In science, those things we take for granted are demonstrably true even though they may not be "proven" in a logical way. For example, prove that 1+1=2. Difficult, right? Perhaps impossible. But it is demonstrable. No faith required. You could be imagining it? That is why you do it more than once and get others to do the same thing. Repeat it. If they find an error, great! Nobel Prize!
In religion, if you find an error, you get punished.
Even if we weren't entirely sure that we are in the matrix or not why would that make an experiment less valid?
What exactly are religious people being ignorant to though? Most religious people in our country (assuming you live in the US) go through the same schooling as the rest of America's youth and experience the same type of education to the sciences. Most don't ignore it and blindly label it untrue too. It all really boils down to a choice. There is no concrete proof that can say whether god or gods exist and there never will be because it is impossible for humans to debunk all of the universe's mysteries. Every person, religious or not, will question their faith in whatever they have faith in at some point in their lives. The only thing that matters is if they decide if it is worth it or not.
Only if you have time to read more:
Religious and non-religious people, both see each other as being in a matrix like you said. Non-religious people see religious people as living in a fake reality, turning a blind eye to what is in the universe and religious people see non-religious people's reality as fake too, turning a blind eye to what is "actually" beyond this universe we all live in. No one should every feel contempt for anyone else for what they believe in because I'm sure they have though about what they believe in just as much as you have and decided it was worth it. If there are "winners", I would would give the title to the person who has the most satisfaction in what they believe in :).
TearsInMyCup But religion PREACHES ignorance. What was the forbidden fruit? Knowledge fruit. There is not one word of the gospels that praise intelligence. 42% of Americans are creationists. That is an EPIDEMIC of ignorance. I don't care if it is just your belief or it says so in your holy book (which most Christians have never read which is why they have no idea of how MONSTROUS and IMMORAL their religion truly is) you are wrong. There are mountains of evidence for evolution, no evidence for creationism, and their religion teaches them to pick the latter. To remain ignorant. To turn a blind eye to REASON. To go on *faith*. Faith is not a virtue but the glorification of voluntary ignorance.
What is beyond the universe? Science is working on it. We can admit that we do not know but will not give up until we do. Religion on the other hand, says "yeah we know, don't ask how, you just need faith lol give us cash and tax exemption"
Religion is the lazy easy way out. It is easier than logic, facts, evidence, science, common sense, proof, reasoning, probability, *thinking* intelligence, feasibility, confirmation, wisdom, liklihood, knowledge, rationality, realism, plausibility, intellect, awarness ecetera.
You speak of satisfaction? Just imagine if all the time spent in churches was spent pursuing worthwhile endeavours. If all the money given to churches was donated to worthy causes, If religious leaders changed to social work so that they may truly help others, If all the people who prayed actually did somthing constructive about the problem, if the fears of hell and damnation were lifted from all their shoulders. If the love for their unseen deity was redirected towards other people.
Give up religion for reality, people.
It is MUCH more *satisfying*
And BTW I live in the UK.
PonzooonTheGreat I think you are taking the Genesis story more than a bit too literally. It is "the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil." In short, secular humanism. When human beings decide to use feelings to determine what is right and wrong, you will have problems. When people murder, it "felt" like a decent idea at the time. Secular humanism tries with great difficulty to define morality without what they refer to as a "spaghetti monster." This ends up becoming quite a mess, when they try to go by effectively promoting humanity as a whole. This worked very well in Hitler's rhetoric, as Goebbels followed many of the tenets of what was at that time an infantile secular humanism. He was promoting humanity as he saw it: the Aryan humanity. *This* is the warning given in Genesis, not a warning against thought itself.
Second, it is important to remember that fundamentalism =/= religion. Faith as preached at least by the Catholic Church, and likely by at least some Protestants as well (though I am not as well versed in their theology) includes faith in the common sense, but is not limited to it. It is also a concept built off of reason, rather than being separate from reason.
I think you might want to consider reading some Church documents. Much of what you say about religion runs contrary to my belief system at least, but also very likely a number of others (also, Buddhism teaches moderation as well as I know, and to seek enlightenment through meditation and self-reflection. I tend to think that these aren't concepts you would oppose).
PonzooonTheGreat I understand your point, but I think your sentiments are for the wrong reason. As I said before there is no way of proving if there is a god/gods or not. In your life, you may have the privilege of meeting a homosexual child abused by their family based on Christian beliefs and left that lifestyle and found more fulfillment in Atheism. You may have the privilege to meet a suicide survivor who finds life worth living again through a new found faith. You can't really decide for them what satisfies or fulfills their lives. The real problem is when people try to tell them that their faith or lack of faith in a religion is wrong when they find complete satisfaction in how they are living their lives, which I see is what you're doing and have been doing for awhile. You see what I mean? If you're a victim of such actions, the only advice I can give is to not fight back and move on, because the more you try to defend your beliefs shows that you are insecure in your own beliefs feeling the need to justify yourself. At least thats what is looks like. This goes for all religious/non-religious people.
Honestly, I don't know what is true or not true, you may be right, but what is important is that you keep doing what fulfills you. If that's evangelistic atheism then, I can't really tell you to stop what you're doing and I'm happy that you find happiness is spreading the atheistic awareness. What it does seem like though is that you are unhappy, and angry and anger leads to the DARK SIDE. May the force be with you.
Dogma is poisonous to either the religious and scientific community. Every idea has an appropriate response and, as an agnostic myself, I think it is beneficial to have a good breadth of views to challenge yourself rather than validating your point of view. It's like reading a book that, though it challenges you, is entertaining because it destroys your viewpoint. That's why I love reading Russian literature, German literature, and others because it's not that I agree with them but because they challenge me.
Dogma's not poisonous. *Dogmatism*, maybe, but to simply have dogma is what we all do normally. Science, too, has a dogma, which is just the accumulation of all theories, laws, hypotheses, thought experiments, and experience hitherto. Dogma changes; dogma is neutral, if not entirely postive. I think _Dogmatism_ is clearly harmful, the expectation that what is dogma at any given time must necessarily and always be so.
I find the conflation of the kind of "faith" that involves feeling confident gravity will continue to exist, and the kind of faith that a proposition is true with no evidence whatsoever, and even in contradiction of mountains of evidence to be both incredibly frustrating as well as intellectually dishonest.
Have you guys considered that there are various gradients to 'faith'? I can easily and validly posit that 'scientific faith' is much much more probable than 'religious faith'. Simply asserting that both science and religion use 'faith' seems to me like a false equivalency.
***** Sure, I can agree with that. I'm just opposed to an implication, if it was intended, that religion and science are interchangeably useful. I think that scientific 'faith' has done more good for the world than religious 'faith', but yes I do also believe that religious faith can be good as well.
+unifieddynasty Well science has been proven wrong a variety of times, in fact it's almost guaranteed that science will be wrong again, over and over. Meanwhile, Odin promised to kill all of the ice giants, and I don't see many ice giants around, do you? I don't thing science is a replacement for religion, though, since religion covers things that cannot be tested by science. You can't scientifically prove that other people even exist, since if you try any experiment on many different people, or even the same people at different times, you will get vastly different results. This makes it impossible to complete the vital step of the scientific method of having peers recreate your results to verify their validity. The scientific method can teach us a lot about our world, but understanding physics isn't the meaning of life, at least not to most people. The scientific method can't give us meaning, which is something we humans desperately search for in every inch of our lives. A nihilist would say there is no meaning, and we are all no more important than the dust we will become, while others would say there is more meaning than anyone could ever comprehend. In the end, does it even matter if you're right about everything? It's important to us because we attribute meaning to being right or wrong about things. Maybe your life's purpose is to become right about everything, or at least to be most likely right about as many things as possible. Anyway, this all got over-complicated but I just can't see science as a replacement for religion or vice versa, and seeing them as conflicting is as silly as Team French Fry vs. Team Ketchup when they can be great together!
Zadamanim "Well science has been proven wrong a variety of times, in fact it's almost guaranteed that science will be wrong again, over and over."
You are arguing semantics. The scientific process demands constant skepticism. You might call that 'being wrong over and over', but this is also known as 'acknowledging a more accurate truth over and over'. Science is much more useful for explaining things than religion because it never justifies its ignorance with assorted supernatural happenings.
"Meanwhile, Odin promised to kill all of the ice giants, and I don't see many ice giants around, do you?"
Please don't use Facebook memes as an argument against science.
"I don't thing science is a replacement for religion, though, since religion covers things that cannot be tested by science. "
Sure. I never claimed that science is a replacement for religion. A more apt replacement would be atheism, or simply irreligion.
"You can't scientifically prove that other people even exist..."
Doubtless there are numerous philosophical things that are outside the bounds of science.
Let me repeat that I don't think science can replace religion in certain regards, just as I don't think religion can replace science in certain regards. Science versus religion is a false dichotomy when it comes to certain things. In certain things, especially of the material, tangible world, science evidently holds precedent over religion. And there are other things that science has no business trying to explain.
Going back to my original point, my problem with some religious interpretations is that they take an easy way out. It is intellectually lazy to say 'the gods did it', rather than inquiring further. Thus why scientific 'faith' holds precedent over religious 'faith' when it comes to the material, tangible world.
Zadamanim "But I also believe that one day the two can be seen as different accounts of the same events. If you compare the events that happen at the beginning of the bible and simply replace the "days" with millions and millions of years, then the order of each creation matches up with modern science, with light coming first, then planets, then a distinction between the atmosphere and the ground, then plant life, fish, birds, land animals, and lastly humans coming into play."
Bro, I really admire your perseverance in trying to reconcile religion and science. The thing is that one can interpret the holy books in almost any way, since the definition and connotation of words can always be changed. And if you look at the historical trend, religious claims about the physical world usually tends to change to conform to the new scientific discoveries of the time. In summary, religion has a trend of reacting to science. This is why I say that science holds precedence over religion in explaining certain things.
***** Well that's why I don't subscribe myself to every religion, just the one I think might be ahead of the curve on this one. Or at least the one I interpret as being "right all along!" even if that's retroactively "right all along." :P
Take the time it takes to read my comment as a sort of shelter from all the other less constructive comments around.
+Mason Guyman Sure. Also, Estus is love. Estus is life.
Rafael Nóbrega
Well said!
+Mason Guyman This comment has no constructive value to it. So are there comments that are destructive?
thank you
+rainick
The comment was a paradox stated merely in order to waste the readers' time.
The best response to the internet being wrong ever. Also, quite possibly the most objective and pragmatic source of discussion of religion and science ever presented on the internet.
Faith is belief without evidence. Science is, by definition, based on evidence.
The difference between scientific faith and religious faith is that in science it's merely a starting point, because you have to make some assumptions in order to even function properly, but in religion it's one of the main components, and requires much bigger assumptions. Thus I feel Occam's Razor tends to side against religion in almost every case, and thus I find it unnecessary at best.
"Thus I feel Occam's Razor tends to side against religion in almost every case, and thus I find it unnecessary at best. "
Occam's Razor or Religion? O.o
...aah, i see what you did there >:)
neferiusnexus Religion. And I actually don't see what I did there.
what you inadvertedly did back there is a sort of opinion net ...politicians use it all the time. Per example: "The NSA seems intent on dealing with the Anonymous movement, thus i feel that their actions should come under more scrutiny."
By omitting the subject from the second sentence of that phrase you've created a nice little Schrodinger's cat, whereby your actual opinion is in a perceived state of uncertainty. However most people will jump to conclusions and assume either one or the other, as-well as interpreting your intent as either malicious or benign.
-"If your against Anonymous, yure against FREE SPEECH!"
-"Our Government knows best. I never did like the way them Hackers poke their nose where it doesn't belong."
It's a GREAT way to create a debate with very little input except confusion ^_^
neferiusnexus Well, that was unintentional. I'm very open about my opinion that religion is no longer needed in society. It was useful in the past for maintaining social order and providing people with answers and comfort, but now I feel there are better ways to achieve the same goals that don't involve believing in supernatural forces that can neither be confirmed nor falsified.
i too share this fundamental belief ...there is plenty of fiction around nowadays to alleviate Humanity's innate and fundamental crave for escapism, but lending it any real Faith or credence is a grave mistake that could potentially set thing back to a Medieval stage :I
As Humans, our minds always tread a fine line between what we perceive and what we imagine. Thus we should always strive to see that fine line more clearly so-as to know what is on which side.
Knowledge is a subset of belief. It is categorically something that is both believed and verified to be true. Truth is that which conforms to reality. Absolute certainty is not a required component of knowledge; there are degrees to which we can verify things to conform to reality. I'll illustrate:
You are in a field. In the distance you see a barn. You could say you KNOW that there is a barn in the field because you can see it… but I could point out that we haven’t eliminated the possibility that it might not be a barn at all but a giant photo cutout of a barn or a hologram. But you can still say you are REASONABLY certain there is a barn in the field. You can go up to the barn and verify that it is in fact a barn, and not a cutout or hologram. You are now MAXIMALLY certain there is a barn but technically you could never be ABSOLUTELY certain that there is a barn in the field until you can confirm, for one example, that you are not experiencing a severe delusion when in reality you are actually locked away in an institution. And how do you do that?
“Absolute” isn't a realistic set of terms to navigate the reality we experience. We don't navigate life on what we are absolutely certain about; we operate based on our beliefs and so we want to make sure our beliefs are justified rather than unjustified and that we believe in as many true things as possible and as few false things.
Going back to the barn in a field analogy, we aren't even at the "see a barn in the distance" phase of certainty in terms of god claims. I will not say that God absolutely does not exist, but until acceptable standards of evidence are met, I am justified in saying he does not exist (in terms of maximal certainty). Rejection of a proposition is the reasonable starting point for any proposition.
+Coyote 6 "I will not say that God absolutely does not exist, but until acceptable standards of evidence are met, I am justified in saying he does not exist (in terms of maximal certainty)." Well said, good sir. +1 Empiricism point for you :D
+Coyote 6 This should be in the top comments.
+Coyote 6 I wish more people could understand this. I hate to say it, but this is the kind of thing that a philosophy class helps you reach. Too many people preach that you can't be absolutely certain of science and then don't realize that it invalidates the entirety of human existence. It's a pointless argument.
***** I'm afraid it's not. They err on the side of uncertainty, which is simply an unreasonable stance. The point of this person's comment is to show that we have to entertain a certain level of belief in what we know in order to function. Yet, people don't apply that same level of scrutiny to ideas such as God. It's simply illogical.
+GweLof Science has always been open to challenge that is the very basis of science itself. It seems many people, including extra credits, don't really know what it is.
Nope. I'm still not agreeing with this.
Faith is certainty without proof, and certainty should never exist because there is never absolute and undeniable proof, no matter how likely something may seem. We will never have total knowledge, and therefore there may always be something that can turn our understanding on its head. We just have to accept that. No faith is ever needed.
Our senses are true. If they weren't we wouldn't have them. We wouldn't have survived this long if our senses weren't true
delorean225
"I said that if he says faith is false but still says that there's no absolute proof of anything, than you MUST have faith in order to take what we know as fact as fact."
Not quite. Faith is belief that is not supported by evidence. Evidence is not the same as 100% watertight proof, like what you can do in mathematics. In other words, you can have evidence that something is true (e.g. "I found traces of gunpowder on the suspect's hands") without having absolute 100% proof. And since science does not go beyond "theory," it is ALWAYS telling you "this is how it looks so far, but this idea could be off." There is no faith in this process at any point.
delorean225 No... Acting as though something is definately true because you know that the chance of it being wrong is too small to bother with isn't the same as actually believing that there is no chance that it could be wrong.
KittXenn
"Acting as though something is definately true because you know that the chance of it being wrong is too small to bother with isn't the same as actually believing that there is no chance that it could be wrong."
And that is EXACTLY why science doesn't involve faith. When something is as thoroughly proven as it can possibly be (outside of mathematics, where 100% absolute proof is possible), what is it called? That's right, it's called a THEORY, and all theories are available to be challenged by anyone at any time. In other words, science itself does not place absolute certainty on these things. So science already accounts for what you just said, and therefore does not use any faith at all.
delorean225 WOW sorry. I misunderstood your post. I really fucked up here. two days without sleep can do that to a person. again, sorry.
‘Don’t tell me what to do with my dice’
-God
faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
"this restores one's faith in politicians"
*synonyms: trust, belief, confidence, conviction;*
That's not how it's used in this context.
You guys are the best thing on youtube !! Honestly you guys are great.
As an atheist I have one problem with this episode: there are two uses of the word faith that are different but are the same word
1. Faith as necessity
In some cases, like math, logic, we need to start from a point in believing in our observations.
2. Faith without necessity
There are times, like in religion but not limited to it, where people believe things that have no use in society. For example, believing in a being external to our universe that can’t be proven.
The difference here is that if we don’t believe what we see, we can’t know anything vs. If we don’t believe in a god. In my opinion, these should not be equated because one is necessary in order to learn and the other is not.
It’s perfectly possible to have both religious and scientific faith. I’m Catholic and yet, while I don’t see myself becoming a scientist, I am in awe of all the scientific marvels that have been created, and will be created. All the discoveries and advancements made is kind of cool. Even to someone like me who sucked at high school science haha. Just because you may have more, or complete faith in one over the other, that doesn’t mean that these two things need to be at odds with each other. It’s perfectly okay to have a firm belief on both. Why can’t more people understand that?
Paladan Thank you! I'm glad someone finally said it. That seems to be the entire comment section and it was getting disturbing
Thank you, this is the kind of logic I see people abandon when arguing over atheism or creationism. I see it on both sides and both sides need to sober up.
Brilliant video and great thoughts. Thanks for your efforts. Keep up the good work.
"What the hell do I draw for that?!" Brilliant xD
I was legitimately shocked at how open and thoughtful this was. As a christian and lover of philosophy, I not only agree that science (and all philosophy) must begin with faith, but also that all religious expression must involve reason. I believe this is why the books of proverbs and ecclesiastes urge christians to pursue wisdom in a general sense and think things through. Better understanding of the world has given me a better understanding of God, and vice-versa. In fact, Solomon seemed to imply that science was like a form of worship when he wrote "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of man to seek it out."
Again, thanks for the great vid, this earned you guys a sub.
As someone who is a a Christian, but loves learning about science, I love how you guys handle this topic. You are clearly putting in effort to practice what you preach. Everyone can look science and faith how they please, but they shouldn't shut themselves off from hearing the other side out.
Well, that was shit. We don't take the axioms on faith. We take them as "good enough so the tool that is the resulting system to be used effectively". We used Euclidean geometry not on faith, but because it was a good enough approximation to serve a useful purpose. The Theory of Relativity is most probably again just a good enough approximation. Good enough so that we have usable GPS and fly within the Solar System without missing the target destination by more than a few centimeters. That's why we use its axiomatic system: because we can fucking use it.
Science does require faith but the typical problem with faith is it tends to blind us from fact when we follow it too strongly, so science outright abandons anything with a single contradiction, making a clear difference between blind faith and the best assumption
Science does not require faith. Science is entirely based on doubt. Faith is belief that is not based on evidence, and the scientific method, which you can google in like, two seconds, requires exhaustive data collection and analysis at every turn. Scientific theories are rigorously tested by multiple, independent groups. The studies are published, and this publication includes the complete description of the experiments performed to the highest level of detail we can think to provide, along with ALL resulting data points. At no point in any scientific theory is the reader told "just trust us, it happened this way" - the reader is given clear directions to be able to repeat the experiments and check the results for themselves.
And if a theory were just complete bullshit, it would be discovered almost immediately. The first engineer who tries to build a device that exploits the principles of the theory would find that the device never works right. The first scientist who tries an experiment based on the theory would find it keeps turning out inexplicably wrong. And then when they try to figure out WHERE it's going wrong, boom, they find out the theory is wrong, and now it's not a theory anymore.
So no, science DOESN'T require faith. Any faith. At all. Ever.
I get what you're saying, but I still see the initial idea as essentially faith, but not quite blind faith, because it is based on their best evidence that they expand on, becoming more and more fact. Scientific theories are things we can never prove, but match all the evidence without contradiction, you can't truly prove evolution, but it is accepted as true because it has no flaws. I never said it was wrong, I believe in evolution and the big bang theory because they are the most believable and credible, and have no contradiction. We don't know for a fact that they are true but they are the best we have
One of my favorite sayings on this topic comes from Babylon 5, the season 4 finale: "Faith and Reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than with just one."
That's wrong, dude. Faith is useless and sometimes damaging.
I don't really understand why people cling so desperately to this idea that there are other, better ways of understanding the world around us other than science.
Science is just a methodized way of learning about the world by making observations about it, finding patterns, making predictions, and testing those predictions. We've been doing this long before it was called "science," and we all do this every day without even trying.
What other way is there? How are you going to learn anything about...anything, if you don't make any observations?
Religion and science only come into conflict when religion insists that it is also a method of understanding the world around us, effectively trying to do science's job. I think the backlash against religion by science advocates is a result of the fact that religion can't seem to stop doing exactly that.
Graidon Mabson
"Religion and science only come into conflict when religion insists that it is also a method of understanding the world around us...I think the backlash against religion by science advocates is a result of the fact that religion can't seem to stop doing exactly that."
Also because religion is dictating morality to people, and often people don't like this. In some cases, it's because religion says stuff like "gay people are abominations who should be killed on sight," and in others it's simply because religion can't back up its moral statements. But this is where the fight with science and logic becomes necessary for religion - its entire claim to authority is "because this supernatural being said so." And in addition to the objection, "being supernatural doesn't make you morally perfect or unquestionable," there's also the question, "how do you know that," which religion cannot answer, and science and logic both make this shortcoming exceedingly clear.
Andrew Crawford
"Might there be a way to scientifically test religious claims?"
No, there is no possible way to test them. Not the supernatural claims, anyway. Think about it: To be supernatural, you have to be able to ignore the laws of the natural world, or change those laws. If you can't do either of those things, you're really not supernatural, are you?
OK, so now that we know what supernatural beings are, how can we distinguish "this is a case of us not knowing something about natural law, or missing some important piece of data" from "this is a case of our test subject violating or changing natural law"? We can't. We would have to be omniscient (which is also impossible, but that's a separate proof) to know that. Let alone that we'd need to be able to get a god to perform miracles on command.
Religion's claims (again, just talking about supernatural stuff here) are, in fact, impossible to test. Which is how we know, for certain, that they are made up...if they can't BE tested, then obviously nobody ever tested them.
Andrew Crawford
"And what do scientists do, when they encounter a non-falsifiable experiment:"
I think you meant "hypothesis," not "experiment," but here's your answer:
C) Discard the hypothesis, as it is not supported by evidence and therefore cannot become a theory. If evidence becomes available later, we can always come back to it.
So that's what we should do with religion. Throw it in the trash, because it's not supported by evidence and - and this is provable - never can/will be.
Andrew Crawford
"Go ahead then. Prove it."
This is in reference to my claim that "[Supernatural claims are] not supported by evidence and - and this is provable - never can/will be."
So, OK, here we go.
1. To be supernatural, an entity must exhibit at least one of the following two traits. It must be able to ignore the laws of nature, and/or alter those laws. (I cannot imagine a supernatural being that doesn't have at least one of those traits, but if you can, let me know and I'll add it.)
2. If we don't know ALL there is to know about ALL the potential factors at play, we can't eliminate the possibility that there is an unknown factor contributing to the allegedly supernatural or miraculous event we are witnessing. To explain this further, (A) something we don't understand, or (B) a trick being played on us are not supernatural. Only (C) a genuine violation or alteration of the very laws of nature itself is acceptable. For example, a necklace with a radioactive stone might appear "supernatually cursed" to people who don't understand radiation, or a magician's trick might appear "supernaturally powerful" to people who don't know about the secret trap door or whatever. We have to be sure that we know everything about the laws of nature and all relevant data points before we can say that something is breaking those laws.
3. We can never know with certainty that we currently have a complete and correct understanding of the laws of nature, which is omniscience regarding natural law. The best we can do is to have some really advanced theories, but theories can be wrong. Further, knowing that there's no trick involved essentially means omniscience regarding the state of all matter/energy/fields/etc. in the universe.
So that's basically it. To identify something as not fitting in with the system, we have to know the whole system, and know that we're not being tricked. We cannot possibly know that, because that amounts to omniscience, which is also impossible for us to achieve. (That's a separate proof, I can do that one if you really need it, but ask yourself if you honestly don't know that you can't be omniscient.)
Andrew Crawford Your example of experiencing a lifetime of religion might be scientific, but it's not very good science, for 2 reasons:
1: you're relying entirely on your personal experience, which is the most unreliable method of observation we know of.
2: your experiment has been repeated by millions of people around the world, but the results are not consistent at all. Some people have experienced a life time of religion and found that there was no god after all. Others have done and have found a god, but it isn't the one you believe in.
2:19
1. Existance of Matrix cannot be disproved or proved, which means that we shouldnt care.
2. Reasons of men being colorblind are studied, and we can say why they are colorblind.
Plus we can use special tools to prove that colors invisible to colorblind people are real.
3:00
Axioms are not aplied to any empirical knowledge, they describe things which do not exist in real world.
Math is just the language of science.
Axioms can't and don't describe real objects, facts about real, physical objects are derived from observation, they do not come from mathematical ideas, mathematical ideas are only used to describe them
ivan sichko i think your missing the point
ivan sichko the Axioms work within the limits that they were made to work but when put outside of those limits they break down and fall apart leading to the need of new and hopefully better axioms to help explain or at least help define the new limits that we have found in the universe be it the very small or even the very large. It is when the limits change that the axioms usually break and need new molding to be true again Science teaches us to always question what we think we know and test it to see if it is true or not. To the questioning and testing if we meet the same limits as the axioms are meant for then they will work in the proof that colors exist, 2D and 3D materials exist but what about the 4D materials? how do you explain them? that is one of the questions that has been posed in a interview that i have seen i have not seen any answer as it did not go into enough depth for how the 4D materials worked nor do i think i would understand how they do either. I do not claim that i know but i do claim that someone should find out why so we can at least understand how and why they work like they do and hopefully use that knowledge to the betterment of the nation and of the world's population too.
Then you have what about when you have the particles so small that we cannot see them anymore how do we tell that they are there? and how do we measure them? how do we move them? and etc. like that in whatever kind of physics it is for that stuff.
I am sure there are others that i do not know about but at this time i do not know them but if you do please tell me so i can find out and at least see what they are as the smarter ppl in the world than i am find out the ways that this stuff works.
I really think this is an apples to oranges thing, when you say faith, it means something very different then what you think it means
you need to define the word faith before you use it in this context
Faith = belief in absence of evidence.
If you don't think that your beliefs have to be true, then go a head and believe what ever your personal experience tells you. Some of us care about if what we believe is true or not... and the easiest person to fool is yourself.JakesFavorites
JakesFavorites
You're so close to realizing why your religion (like all religions) is full of shit, but then you miss it! "That's where faith comes in" is the exact spot where you fuck up. Let me rephrase what you said so you can see the error more clearly.
"It's not possible to prove that certain things, such as angels, exist. So, for that reason, if you feel like you met a magical being, you just HAVE TO BELIEVE IT'S TRUE WITHOUT EVIDENCE, JUST USE WISHFUL THINKING, instead of not believing them due to the fact that you have no evidence at all. I mean, it's more fun to believe fantastical nonsense than to get hung up on the fact that you don't actually know what you're talking about. Oh, also, this is a special rule that only applies to my personal version of my religion. Nobody else gets a free pass, I only give this out to things I want to be true. Because I said so."
JakesFavorites
Yup, Numbers 31 is one place. Thanks, patmos09.
Another place is Deuteronomy 21: 10-14, which says that a Jewish warrior can force a female POW to marry him. In case we want to pretend not to connect the dots here, wives were property, meaning they couldn't refuse to have sex with their husbands, and this woman is becoming a wife non-consensually. Forcing her to marry you also forces her to have sex with you, and as we all know, forcing someone to have sex with you is rape.
Now, let's have your proof that supernatural beings, whether it's your god, or angels, or whatever, exist. And by the way, I know how to prove that you cannot possibly know that supernatural things exist, so be prepared for me to pull that out. Eagerly awaiting your response.
JakesFavorites
You are so ignorant of your own scriptures it's a fucking joke. There's no reference to sex slaves in the Bible? Exodus 21: 7-11 specifically describes rules for selling your daughter as a sex slave. What, you don't know how to type "sex slaves bible" into google before you just make shit up? You don't think we can check? Everyone posting here IS ON THE INTERNET. We can check things like that in seconds. Maybe you should actually get familiar with what YOUR RELIGION says, since you clearly have no idea.
Also, the fact that you think it's totally morally fine to approach someone else's town completely unprovoked, demand that they all be your slaves, and kill/rape them all if they don't instantly surrender shows you to be a fucking psychopath. Which makes sense, because your god is a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, slavery-loving, genocidal, anti-thought monster. Who also, as far as we know, doesn't even exist.
Oh, unless you have some evidence that he does exist. Do you? I've been asking you for like, what, it's gotta be over a week now, and you just keep dodging over and over. I'm beginning to think you might not actually have proof that this "supernatural being" of yours even exists at all. If you do, though, let's have it.
Never asking questions about what you think you know is the height of foolishness.
I'll put it this way. Faith is based on evidence, but without CONCLUSIVE evidence. Assumptions are baseless. Faith is not, by default, an assumption.
Eating makes you not die = Faith. Sleeping makes you happy = Faith. These are true, but based on faith.
DaNoHatz Pootis Nice to see you have to resort to Ad Hominem to reassure yourself that you can get things right.
It wasn't a "resort". I was making fun of the fact that you don't know the definition of faith.
DaNoHatz Pootis Except the definition in the dictionary fits mine.
DaNoHatz Pootis It's not zero evidence. It's zero proof. Those are two different things.
I get what they're saying. But there's a pretty big difference between the presuppositions like
"I exist and the world isn't a figmant of my imagination"
and "There's an omnipotent super being that created the universe and is watching everything I do and judging me"
apples and oranges, mate. especially when one is actually based on evidence.
+Xavier Long .... They aren't saying religion is 100% useful and true. They're just saying that the core of religion, which is faith, that is your example of existing, is useful for science.
Unnamed the Anonymous They're trying to go the PC route with this "See they can both co exist, and even be useful" route.
And I don't agree. A postulate is not remotely the same as religious faith, so why bring up religion at all unless the intention is to try and make religion seem useful in the realm of logic and inquiry?
***** Not entirely correct. Their original intent was to comment on how religion is used for gaming, which includes the core of religion, which is faith.
They commented on how gaming hasn't used faith at all in gaming, further arguing that faith is used even in science, albeit only to 'trust' axioms or presuppositions and observations.
Never have they intended to incorporate religious faith in science, though I do agree that is simply impossible.
Unnamed the Anonymous
*further arguing that faith is used even in science,*
*"See they can both co exist, and even be useful"*
What am I missing here? I never said that they said they were trying to incorporate religious faith into science, I said they're trying to make them seem as if they can co exist, and make religious faith seem useful by using an example of "faith" thats not at all the same or similar.
stop trying to argue with me over nothing
***** Why can't they coexist? For thousands of years, religion has existed in our society, yet science continue to grow. Though one can argue they have impeded on each other over the centuries, they can coexist.
What part their 'faith' and religious faith isn't similar? Religion only uses that 'faith' as a core of their teachings, therefore rising it to an extreme; while science uses 'faith' minimally, only as 'observation confirmer'. But, science do use it.
The huge problem here is people believe religion and science answer the same question, when they don't.
Religion provides the why, it talks about morality and self improvement, and provides meaning to life.
Science provides the how, it describes systems and mechanisms.
Saying one makes the other unimportant is like saying art proves why we don't need mathematics.
I agree. I personally believe that God made the universe and science to explain how the universe works. Science is how we understand the universe. WIth science, we could better ourselves with technology and advancements while religion provides the question of morality, spirituality, and guidance as to not forget the advancement of the mind. Science for the body, religion for the mind
I feel that everyone needs to watch this video at least once
don't tell god what to do with his dice
TheQuyman Underrated comment.
The first sip from the cup of science leads to atheism, but at the bottom of the cup God sits waiting for you.
Any scientific theory we know accepts that it has to be able to be falsefied. So in essence science accepts as one of it's most important rules that it does not offer absolute truth in any kind or form.
The first part is good, but the second part should be more like
"The further you delve into science, the more things you will find that do not line up with random chance."
And no atheist or scientist says anything about having absolute certainty and not being falsified, we are simply stating that in the light of the evidence explored, that every religions notion of a god has been falsified
So really, God has no place in any scientific theory, because he cannot be falsified. You make the assumption that somewhere, there is absolute truth, and that's an assumption I would contest.
Taber McFarlin And as such you take things you could never prove and call act as though they are infallible... I don't see much difference between that and believing God is real. Yet If I go anywhere or watch anything even relatively scientific, there is some evolutionary or atheistic point shoved down my throat. Even in children's movies now, but we're the ones oppressing you with our religion...
It all boils down to the fact that you will never know or prove anything with absolute certainty.
And while a all knowing (and therfore all powerfull) "thing" of any form could exist, not even this (lets call it) concept of "all knowing thing" could, for itself know that it is all knowing since it doesn`t now if there is anything outside its perception or knowledge, which would make it not allknowing / powerfull.
Science (as a concept, how individual groups or humans act is another matter) has two things going for it:
1.) It aknowledgeds that it won`t be able to produce any results with absolute certainty.
2.) Despite point one, IT WORKS! We can deduct engineering concepts which enable us to change and explore the world around us ;)
I don’t really agree with your use of the word “faith” but i understand what you’re saying and agree with you.
I prefer “trust” over “faith” just because faith’s such a loaded term.
That’s because the trust we put in science is different to faith. The trust is based on repeated experiments and continuous justification that support that induction is trust worthy, because in all of human history there’s never been a case where the laws of physics have just suddenly changed.
It’s trust with very very good reason to support it.
Whereas faith in the way we use in a religious sense isn’t as justified.
(Nothing wrong about that thou)
Ryan Ratchford I would turn to the Principle of Induction. They require faith, rather than trust, because no experiment could justify it. It's impossible to prove or disprove the principle of indiction, and so we believe it is true despite the lack of evidence. Maybe saying "I trust scientists" makes more sense.
I'd disagree. I am aware of the principle of induction, but it's also reasonable to say that induction and repetition of experiments have proven themselves to be reliable.
There's a reason why science has developed the way it has.
As David Hume said, to be rational, we should proportion our beliefs to the evidence.
If the beliefs are supported by enough evidence then they are reasonably justified.
The idea that the laws of nature always stay the same has been supported by every single scientific experiment, and every day by each and every person on the Earth. Therefore is a very well justified belief.
But the claim that one of the laws of physics has temporarily changed or can even change has never been proven to be observed. Therefore is an unjustified belief.
(That's how i see faith as being different- faith's a virtue because you're meant to believe without sufficient evidence)
Ryan Ratchford I'd recommend Bertrand Russell because he goes into the problem of induction, but to say that it has been proven is actually begging the question.
The principle of induction can be stated as such: similar events occur similarly under similar circumstances. That has held true in the past, but how do we know it will hold in the future? We could say that in the past, the past looked like the future, but that has no relation to future-futures unless we assume the principle of induction.
I'd also recommend "Wireless Philosophy," which is another TH-cam channel. They have 2 episodes on the problem of induction.
Thank you, I have actually read Russel and watch Wireless Philosophy. I know we can't be perfectly certain that the principle of induction will continue, but looking at all the evidence that supports it, we can be "maximally certain" (As sure as we could ever possibly be) and for a pragmatist this is more than enough.
I know we can't prove the principle of induction- i'm sure i didn't and apologises if i did- but in order to achieve any empirical knowledge we need to take it as a premise- the laws of physics are constant.
(Along with the premises- The laws of physics are logical and can be discovered.
As well as- All the foundations of logic and maths)
Nearly every single type of intellectual pursuit necessitates all of these premises. And we can't be 100% sure that they're true, but they have so much supporting them that we know its far more likely they're useful and work to give us correct answers (Which Science does) and that's all we need from them.
The distinctions between reasonably justified beliefs and faith is really subjective, where i personally trend towards is that it is pretty much universally reasonable to assume the laws of physics are going to remain constant.
But less reasonable to assume they can be broken or that things like the supernatural exist (based on the consensus that there lacks sufficient evidence)
Similar to what David Hume says- it's more reasonable to believe in the continuity of nature than to believe in the supernatural.
Hence my distinction of justified belief in induction as "reasonable trust" (Not certainty)
Different to religious faith (Which would require extraordinary evidence to be sufficiently justified)
Tim Minchin said it best: "Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation, so that believe can be preserved." Scientists observe something and form hypotheses and eventually theses for said observations, but only as long as there is evidence for them.
Creationism and Evolution should not be compared. Creationism states that a God created everything while Evolution says that species change over time into similar or new spiecies entirely through mutations. One deals with how life came to be while the other explains how this life changes.
these comments make me just as sad as the last video
+Cameron Jensen What's worse about it is that nothing's changed.
A lot of people like to stay set in their ways. For some reason many don't like to be open minded, don't know why though...
Cyberneticxylem To biased to see the truth.
+Alex K That's a pretty interesting way of interpreting learning and ignorance.
+Alex K Very interesting. More than likely true.
As a man of faith and science, it saddens me to see some of the comments below. It's ironic that those who believe in the scientific method themselves do not adhere reviewing the material presented and instead just shut off when it doesn't suit them.
As for religion itself, I am Catholic but I know people of different faith from Buddhism to Mormonism and I believe that there is no "right" religion or faith for everyone; only ones that people can find what they are looking for. Even atheist have faith in lack of God (to various degree) otherwise there's no reason to hold on to that thinking. To those who say they don't believe in anything, I feel sorry for you because that kind of attitude will never allow you to seek and find a deeper meaning in life, be it one on religion or one on logic and science.
I really appreciated this episode. I'm especially critical of religion in my own life, but the way this was put definitely provides fruit for thought.
Well.....you seem to be mixing up "I'll just act like this is true for now" with "I beleive in the deapths of my heart that this is true." Good science(or when you get down to this level maybe it's good philosophy?) is option 1, while true faith is option 2. When Einstein went all option 2 on quantum mechanics that was bad science.
So, first off, science, doesn't have an opinion or belief, any more than "running" has an opinion on transport.
Some people, that make up the community, have opinions, that vary.
You're essentially saying "No, WE don't hold things as truths, but THEY do". Incorrect.
Some of "us" (with example given i this video), do hold too strongly to those axioms.
Some (I'd say most) of "them", don't fit the box you've put them in.
I don't meet many religious folk who don't question their faith, and here you are telling me about what they believe "to the depths of their heart", and how this makes them different (i.e. worse) than you and your associated group, who wouldn't do that kind of thing.
You're just not accurately describing the world around you. You've built a strawman, you've done a no true scotsman, all in apologetics format, to tell us how different you are from the faithful. That's more than a little ironic.
Baalthazaq
I'm not saying that most scientists(or science nerd teens) are good at skepticism, heck even Einstein fucked it up.
I am just explaining the core of an ideal scientific process, and how it does not require faith in axioms. (other that possibly "The world makes sense")
You're also overstating what faith is to be convenient.
Blind faith, and faith, are different things.
That's why we have the saying "Blind faith".
There's acceptance without absolute proof. Faith.
There's acceptance without or against evidence. Blind faith.
Every conclusion from collected evidence is a leap of faith. Every inductive leap.
However, you have this idea that faith, regular faith, is something alien, and you dramatically overstate what it entails. To you, it is thinking things without or against truth, and that's not science, so you refuse to accept it as a benign term.
Which it is. It's "sometimes we work on assumptions based on best models". This is not a scandal for the scientific community.
Baalthazaq
So now we're just arguing about what words mean? ugh..
As I was trying to say the ideal scientific process involves only _acting_ as if one beleives something that is not perfectly proven.
And still trying to disprove it once in a while. But who knows if the human brain is even capable of suspending beleif in so many things like that?
Well, it's important.
If you're saying "science doesn't _____", the meaning of the blank is more important than the word.
I'm not a fan of nihilism. Science is a human endeavor, and the scientific method is a process undertaken by humans.
Proof by induction (i.e. proof by experimentation) requires faith to call conclusions conclusions. We can also accept and modify new conclusions from there. That's fine too.
As far as I'm aware, Descartes concludes "I think therefore I am", and goes on shortly to conclude God. He goes straight to faith (probably too far).
The only real refinement of that is Bertrand Russel, who reduced it to "There is thinking".
Everything beyond that requires faith, before we can even begin a meaningful scientific process.
Faith in science is a misnomer. "Having faith" is simply an added layer for those who do not understand contextual/contingent reasoning. Faith may or may not prevent someone from realizing something or effectively processing data; however, it is never necessary. Axioms and formulas are simplified summaries as representation for initial conditions; that's it. These videos just ignore the fact that [IF given xyz; then 123 follows] and 'believing something is so'- are two completely different things. In other words your belief has nothing to do with whether something matches reality or not. To sum up; rational explanations are for proposed scenarios and not this "inference of reality" that these folks are straw manning.
Aside from the words I don't understand you're showing of how ignorant you are. How do you know that your initial conditions are correct? What you don't get is how basic all of this is. It is your faith in your ability to observe things what where talking here about. You or anyone will never be able to prove that his observations are correct. That's totally impossible.
Izzal Lirum " Aside from [the words I don't understand] [you're showing of how ignorant you are]." - That's an ironically funny statement.
"How do you know that your initial conditions are correct?" - This was addressed in my original comment: [IF given xyz; then 123 follows]; contextual/contingent reasoning for rational explanation. Again your belief has nothing to do with whether something matches reality or not. Any observations are simply evidence to provide the link between proposed initial conditions to their similarity with reality; they are not synonymous with the explanation itself. In other words; we don't say that this IS reality- we simply show how it mimicks reality in the models that we use. This is how we are able to create models that are simultaneously correct but do not match our Universe.
"What you don't get is how basic all of this is." - Whether or not that "all of this" is basic, you have not shown my understanding to be flawed.
"It is your faith in your ability to observe things what where talking here about." - Again; faith is not a requirement. Our ability to observe things speak for themselves. Attempting to breach one's own limitations (wanting to know if our observations are absolute) is irrelevant and unproductive. If you have faith, you simply have an extra layer that is unnecessary- whether it hinders your ability to process effectively is a whole different matter.
"You or anyone will never be able to prove that his observations are correct. That's totally impossible." - The first sentence shows your limited understanding of Science. Science is not in the business of "proving" things; it's only interested in disproving things. When an idea goes from merely a hypothesis to the highest respected level in Science (which is Theory); it means that- that idea was not able to be disproved. As for the second sentence; I would ask how do you know that?
TwoWayDeadEND You know I will just skip most of it and answer some parts. "Attempting to breach one's own limitations (wanting to know if our observations are absolute) is irrelevant and unproductive." Sorry, but that is just bullshit. Seeing that observations are the most basic thing there is it is natural that when these are wrong everything else crumbles. So it is necessary to take all observation with a strain of salt. That being that at the end you only believe in the accuracy of your observations or otherwise any entire theory wouldn't even work. The second one is easy. Everything you perceive you perceive trough observation. Thus you cannot prove that your observation is correct than for doing so you would have to observe. To "prove" anything without faith is a perfect impossibility. About the other stuff let me still say something. "Disproved" huh? You really don't get it. It doesn't matter wether you prove or disprove something. It all comes down to observation. And that comes down to faith. So no matter how you twist it nothing can be "proven" or "disproven". You know I get that you're limiting all things to the things at hand the things you can perceive but that doesn't mean those can't be questioned. You can't escape it. Everything is based on faith.
TwoWayDeadEND Of course I have to admit that it is no use to think about an impossibility but unlike you I find it to be something that shouldn't be forgotten nor ignored. That there is no perfect truth or at least for us humans to perceive. That at the end everything is based on no matter how anyone puts it faith. Pure, blind and absolute faith.
Izzal Lirum
First, I would appreciate it if you tried spacing your text a bit; that way it's easier to respond to. Second, I will respond the same way as my first reply- for it allows me to be as accurate as I know how to be. If at some point we start getting into common territory I might start utilizing some flow as it looks like you are doing; anyways here goes:
"Seeing that observations are the most basic thing there is it is natural that when these are wrong everything else crumbles. So it is necessary to take all observation with a strain of salt." - That would be the case if observation and explanation were the same thing; but as I have already mentioned they are Not the same thing. Again, I never said observations are everything- they are simply a vehicle necessary to create things that people can use in every day life. In short; Observations are the provision of linking a models predictions to reality. So correction; observations (You don't choose to use your senses- they simply function; how well they do is a different matter) are never wrong- but assertions as to their inference can be shown to be inconsistent with a model. In other words; if the results of "understanding" fail to provide a Consistent (Key word) Practical Application within the real world then either the model needs updating and or our accessing of reality was/is insufficient.
"That being that at the end you only believe in the accuracy of your observations or otherwise any entire theory wouldn't even work." - Believing the accuracy of any observation is irrelevant to whether your assertions of those observations match predictions in a model.
"Everything you perceive you perceive trough observation. Thus you cannot prove that your observation is correct than for doing so you would have to observe." - Again, proving an observation to be correct is unproductive- they speak for themselves; first through how consistent they are within a model and then how useful they are in practical application.
"To "prove" anything without faith is a perfect impossibility." - Your need for "proving" is a waste of time and isn't how Science works. It basically comes down to the Synergy of Evidence and Rational Explanations- Evidence has no purpose without a Rational Explanation; and Rational Explanations need a link (Evidence) to utilize within our world. As to faith; well I've already explained its concern in this discussion.
"It doesn't matter wether you prove or disprove something. It all comes down to observation. And that comes down to faith. So no matter how you twist it nothing can be "proven" or "disproven"." - It doesn't all come down to observation (explained in the segment above this one). Actually disproving is easy; the only time you Technically can't is when something is unfalsifiable (such as some Supernatural Claims). Its simply a matter of Interaction. For example; if someone says there is an invisible cake on this table- its there you just can't see it; all you have to do is swipe something along the surface, if it hits an invisible object then their claim hasn't been disproved but if you don't then essentially it has been. They can then try to make more claims as to why an invisible Cake was undetected; and thus you continue to test accordingly.
"You know I get that you're limiting all things to the things at hand the things you can perceive but that doesn't mean those can't be questioned. You can't escape it. Everything is based on faith." - I don't follow. How am I limiting all things to the things at hand the thing I can perceive? As for questioning- I would never tell anyone to Not question something with the exception where there is no time in a life or death scenario. So not to be a smart ass but; the question isn't should something be questioned- the question is how something should be questioned and how much questioning is sufficient (aka Consistent predictions and Practical Applications). And again, how do you know everything is based on faith? Through what means can "prove" this?
3 years later, and people still knee jerk and don't actually listen to what is being said. I like that you guys actually stepped up and tried to get people to be as open minded as they claim to be! hopefully someday they will! ^_^
This is one of the best videos on youtube. This is the first time someone other than me, that I know of, said that axioms are a leap of faith; it was refreshing to hear and fun to see a gamer visualize all the concepts. Well done.
I only differ the depiction of Einstein and what he took to the grave, because I've tried to address the same thing. I believe Einstein didn't accept that there was nothing more to the universe, that when you dig deep enough, you find dice and nothing more. He did not accept the axiom of the dice (if you can call the dice argument an axiom).
I believe the universe is self similar, it builds on itself, and when you observe a system you observe the emergent behavior of that underlying system. A good example of this is the derivation of gravity as an emergent behaviour of interacting properties of space-time. Einstein was looking for these underlying systems.
[paused halfway through vid]
Sure, observation isn't perfect, but we can quantify our uncertainty, our margin of error. If you took observations at face value, which is not good science, then maybe you could say the scientific method involves some faith. But the point of science is to remove as much faith as possible and for those things that science has not yet explained, to remain sceptical and vigorously examine claims.
As for the 'discussion' that provoked this video, thats just the internet once again misrepresenting something, in this case science.
EpicMRPancake Exactly. Scientists are skeptical on purpose, and yet a person who has faith is "trusting." Skeptics are by definition UNtrusting, questioning, doubting. Faith is acceptance, and doubting is the opposite of acceptance. As they said sometimes you have to make some assumptions, but every time you disprove one thing or another you actually make progress. Faith never looks to make progress at all because it does not have any interest in challenging anything. Science does not want faith and acceptance of anything (even a fact), it wants progress. Science wants proof, and proof is the same as disproof.
As a Christian, I really don't even get why science vs religion is and was ever a thing. Currently, I cannot recall anywhere in the Bible I've been reading that disagrees with Big Bang, Evolution, etc.
Because it is in human nature to find reasons that they are superior to another for the least work-intensive reasons.
I don't either. A catholic priest was the person who originally conceived The Big Bang theory too. Or look at the fact that the bible stated the earth was round and the universe expanded, thousands of years before it became scientifically accepted. Hebrews 11:3 can even be considered as pointing to atomic particles.
Genesis 10:25 refers to the earth being divided after the flood (the splitting of Pangaea).
Honestly, the whole Science vs Religion thing started out as a means of maintaining control over the population. Namely, The Church's power rested solidly on their ability to maintain control of the masses, and the only way to do that was to present the Church's leaders and their views as infallible. Science came along, and was able to demonstrate that The Church was wrong about certain facts concerning how our world and the universe works. This made Science a threat to the power and wealth that The Church's leaders had amassed, and the war against Science was born...
Really? You must mean that your personal interpretation of the bible doesn't conflict with science. Objectively, however, it is very easy to see why the conflict between religion and science exists. There are countless inconsistencies between what the bible claims about the world and what we now know scientifically. Not to mention moral claims that religion makes that can only be rationalized in a religious context. Science can't make absolute claims of truth but it is very good at ruling certain things out as so implausible as to more or less be impossible in any practical sense. As long as people attach themselves to absolutist positions, whether religious, scientific, or other, and science continues to reveal new information about the nature of reality that can challenge those beliefs, conflict is inevitable.
Practically all of the scientists before the 1950s were Christian. Bear in mind also that the Theory of Evolution was postulated, tested, and proven by Christians.
Evolution vs. Creationism is an internal debate within Christianity, and always has been.
(Yes, I realize that I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think that's a very quotable phrase, and I'd like it there for the general public. :P)
I've never understood the concept of Science vs. Religion. To me they address two completely different questions. Science is concerned with finding out how the universe works, religion instead tries to determine why it works.
+Christopher McKee Many people who call themselves scientists think that if they find out how they'll in turn discover why.
+Christopher McKee Every how brings a why, and every why brings another how. Religion does not attempt to determine why the world works, it throws a group of stories at a wall and calls them true, and those who are fools will accept it as truth absolutely even when it is proven wrong.
UKFB / Monster
I fail to see the correlation between why and how. If a student completes an assignment, knowing why he completed it tells you nothing about how he completed it and vice versa.
Also, I wasn't aware that all religion (even the unfalsifiable parts) had been proven wrong.
Christopher McKee Oh dear god I have to type it all again! Anyway, I meant that answering how attracts a question of why it is that way, and answering that asks how that why came to be.
Also, when did I say anything about all religions being proven false? I was just saying that people are so faithful to a religion that if it was proven wrong they would stick to it, and that still happens today. Not all, but some, and they annoy a great deal.
Religion covers both 'how'; the physical mechanics of the universe, how it was created, and the 'why'; a philosophy of life, moral teaching, funny hats, lies to tell yourself so that the inevitable non-existence existential horror that awaits you doesn't seem so scary. Religion just does the 'how' badly, and often insists that their how/why is the only correct one, so if you use science's how you challenge religion's how/why and the legitimacy of that religion on a fundamental level.
this was a great wakeup call for me, before this video i used to be quite the edgy atheist, and now i feel bad about myself, but im glad I listened to the whole thing.
I'm not sure how to deal with the idea of being open-minded about faith. As I see it used, faith is a belief not based on evidence. Faith is, in itself, being closed-minded about other possibilities (e.g. that god does not exist).
So am I open-minded about closed-mindedness? Ummmm... pass.
Cloud Seeker Very very awesome description of what it means to be open-minded. As someone who has a very strong policy of hearing everyone's opinions, it's intensely frustrating to be viewed as stubborn and close-minded when people aren't telling me anything I haven't heard or considered before.
Asha2820
"I'm not sure how to deal with the idea of being open-minded about faith. As I see it used, faith is a belief not based on evidence. Faith is, in itself, being closed-minded about other possibilities (e.g. that god does not exist)."
You are exactly correct! An open mind considers the idea, sees that there is no evidence, and rejects the idea until valid evidence is brought back. Faith takes the idea, gives it special, non-merit-based privilege, and accepts or rejects on that basis without considering the actual idea at any point.
Hi Cloud Seeker
An excellent, tight explanation of open-mindedness; I can sign up to that. Three things that I would note
1. You say that '[being] open-minded [has] got nothing to do with possibilities'. When I use the word possibility, I am talking about statements that people put forward for testing. You call them 'new ideas'
2. 'I treat religions in the same way I treat pseudoscience like homeopathy'. I find it better not to label a claim as pseudo-scientific before testing that claim. Once it has been tested, by all means call it pseudo-science, but don't approach a claim to test it's veracity with a bias already in place. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean this, but I thought it worth pointing out.
3. I tend to think of scepticism and open-mindedness as two sides of the same coin. If you have a claim 'A', we must be open-minded enough not to accept 'NOT A' without testing, but sceptical enough to not to accept 'A' without testing. At the heart of both lies the curiosity to look for new ideas and evidence, the respect for the robust testing of these ideas, and the humility to change our minds if the evidence suggests.
To even consider the possibility of faith rather than science... fuck you. Just fuck you.
Hi Cloud Seeker,
Do you see the irony of saying that you don't need to test a claim, and then propose a list of tests (some heuristic, some more scientific) with which to judge the likelihood of a claim?
As for scepticism and open-mindedness being two sides of the same coin: Although our knowledge needs to be reviewed when we come across new evidence, scepticism and open-mindedness are mainly used for new ideas, when we are ignorant about some matter. The reason I don't apply open-mindedness when considering the claim of hobgoblin bridge-builders is that I already know that hobgoblins are fictional.
If your claim was that the Golden gate bridge was build by Irish immigrants... I would have to claim ignorance. I would have to do some research, look at sources, read accounts and judge the claim by the available evidence using both open-mindedness (not rejecting the claim out of hand) and scepticism (not accepting the claim out of hand).
The difference between our definitions is that you equate knowledge with closed-mindedness, whereas I only use the terms closed- or open-mindedness with reference to new claims that are being investigated.
Where there is no evidence that can be brought to bear on a claim (as with gods), we must sometimes resort to Ockham, and judge a claim by its simplicity (No more things can be assumed to exist than necessary) and specificity (More specific claims are less likely to be true than less specific claims).
Love the thumbnail!! It looked like Albert Einstein was about to go Super Saiyan!! LOL!!
Faith, in a spiritual sense, doesn't mean trust. It's a justification for knowledge not grounded in evidence or logic. So... I disagree.
Gotta say I've really enjoyed these episodes. As someone who has wrestled with faith, religion, and science their whole life and continues to do so I appreciated the opinion that they all naturally intersect. It gives me hope.
In my senior year one of my professors (electrical engineering department) went off on a long tangent that may have been one of the best lectures of my life. Science's goal is to achieve accurate "models." Note, models are NOT statements of absolute truth, they are just our best representations of truth. No one should have absolute faith in models because that is not the purpose of models. It would be like believing my car will perform cpr in an emergency.
As an engineer, I get a kick out of humanities majors trying to tell me how science has somehow debunked my faith. It's all rather ironic. Without a doubt, you can both embrace science and have deep religious faith.
Ancile in philosophy, we call it the best defensible position. Not the truth, just the opinion/belief that we accept as a result of hard work and earnesty.
ah finally logical people. Welcome to the “thinking people” club!
And if you look below my comment you will find further heated, knee-jerk debate because you cannot use reason to shake someone from a conclusion that was not reached with reason. There are unreasonable people on either side of this whole thing, and those are the ones that fight, they will never admit that the other side has any ground to stand on, regardless of any actual evidence or logical reasoning because both sides fail to properly take logic into account.
Nonetheless, excellent video, by far the most balanced I've seen, thank you for that, just don't expect much reasonable discourse over it...
I agree, I think it's an identity issue, some people who don't have a clear identity cling to these problems, they like to pick sides to feel they belong, and they will fight the opposite side no matter what. So you will never really achieve an open minded debate with them because in their mind they're not willing to listen. These are just some random thoughts i could be wrong but it really is sad seeing people reacting so defensive and over sensitive about it
I do not have faith in anything, not even my own existence or free will. What I have is different levels of doubt.
and, as a starting point, that is an excellent way to live. Doubt (in the case of accepting what you think you know) is the first step towards more knowledge, regardless of its outcome (speaking as a christian with full faith in science and its possibilites.)
Before scrolling through all of these and/or posting comments, please keep in mind that the video's definition of faith.
An immediate Google search of 'faith' is "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" (at least, my search result was that). Please keep in mind that definition throughout the video.