The attempt not only to stop the teaching of a certain scientific theory as fact, but also insisting that a religiously inspired pseudoscience be given equal time in the classroom, amounts to a suppression of that theory. (Rather than these conditions, IMHO it were far, far better for the interest of science that neither Darwinism nor creationism were taught.)
BTW, in my experience, evolution was always taught as a theory, not as having been established beyond the shadow of a doubt. The present controversy seems to be fueled by a fear that even as a theory, it would undermine the Bible.
Book Review: 101 Myths of the Bible
Ridseard, I agree with you, totally, on this one. "Creation Science", that starts with the a priori premise that the Bible is always right and all evidence to the contrary must be ignored or forced to conform is, in my opinion, an utter and complete intellectual travesty.Ridseard wrote:The attempt not only to stop the teaching of a certain scientific theory as fact, but also insisting that a religiously inspired pseudoscience be given equal time in the classroom, amounts to a suppression of that theory. (Rather than these conditions, IMHO it were far, far better for the interest of science that neither Darwinism nor creationism were taught.)
BTW, in my experience, evolution was always taught as a theory, not as having been established beyond the shadow of a doubt. The present controversy seems to be fueled by a fear that even as a theory, it would undermine the Bible.
However, it's a bit unfair to blame this on "the Church" - this particular bit of lunacy is primarily an artifact of Protestant fundementalists. Many of whom have about as much affection for the "Church of Rome" as they do for you, or me.
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Ridseard
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Yes, you are correct. My bad.DCrom wrote:
Ridseard, I agree with you, totally, on this one. "Creation Science", that starts with the a priori premise that the Bible is always right and all evidence to the contrary must be ignored or forced to conform is, in my opinion, an utter and complete intellectual travesty.
However, it's a bit unfair to blame this on "the Church" - this particular bit of lunacy is primarily an artifact of Protestant fundementalists. Many of whom have about as much affection for the "Church of Rome" as they do for you, or me.
i can't believe people are "bored"! some excellent posts here. i love the "necrohippoflaggelation". 
ridseard: so glad you've forsaken the "asshole" language--it was beneath you. by the way, newton was a follower of the rosey cross--a rosicrucian. a lot of scientists in the early modern period were alchemists, kabbalists, etc. paracelsus was regarded by many scientists as a great man of science himself! many of their discoveries were motivated not by disinterested pursuit of knowledge but from quite ulterior "religious" motives. i think kepler was one of those, too. the history of "science" is full of such stories, as is the history of "religion." (the " " means i hate those words, that i think they lead to misunderstanding, but need to use them nevertheless.) most historians of science (jaki, butterfield, for example) would agree with stoner's assessment that science as we know it really has its origins in the medieval latin west, which certainly goes to show that "the church" is not hostile to science itself but rather to inflated claims of what you might call "scientism". some would maintain that the reason science arose in the west and nowhere else is because the christian doctrine of creation demands that what god created must be intelligible; therefore, there is a point to rational inquiry, there is a reason to believe that the scientific enterprise of rational inquiry into nature will yield positive results, is not futile. islam, buddhism, etc. offer no such reason to believe. interesting, i think.
Dcrom wrote:
earlier i mentioned chesterton's classic, "the everlasting man." i'd like to try to summarize what he has to say on myth, which is where this thread started.
chesterton notes that man has always used stories to "see" a truth. ancient man had myths, we have novels, movies, etc. similarly, aquinas maintains that man can have no knowledge except through the senses. (this is not exactly the straight aristoteleanism some would take it for.) he said this in opposition to the augustinian tradition that held out for "divine illumination" or what malebranche would call "occasionalism," which maintained that god directly infused the intellect with ideas/concepts on the occasion of some sense interaction with "the world" out there. this type of fideism is obviously a recipe for scepticism and led quite directly to nominalism, "modern" philosophy and protestantism, and aquinas, the "common doctor" of the church stoutly opposed all fideistic trends.
it's interesting to see aquinas' and chesterton's insight seconded by a nobel laureate in physics. i believe it was erwin schrodinger, who received the nobel for describing sub-atomic particles in an equation (and ridseard, please note what schrodinger was doing here with numbers). on the occasion of the award he remarked: i still think of them of them as ping pong balls! to which aquinas might say: of course; as a human being you must "see" intelligibility "in" some sense datum--even if you have to imagine a sense datum as the bearer of the intelligibility you're describing in an equation. this is all based on the nature of man as a unity of sense and intellect.
OK. since we have to make pictures for ourselves (if need be) so that our intellects can "see" the intelligibility of the world around us, it's also only natural that we should use stories to communicate the intelligibility of the world. after all, we ourselves live within stories of our own making, and participate in the "history" of the world we live in. i'm quite sure this is why biography is such a popular form of literature, and especially among those who have gotten a little older and, sometimes, more reflective.
so chesterton described the good news, the story of jesus of nazareth, as a "true myth," a myth that actually happened. and when you think about it (as anselm did, stoner, when he wrote his "cur deus homo"), what would be more natural than for god to reveal himself to man in a story, a life. what better way for man to "see," to understand, god's love? this method of self revelation was perfectly proportioned to the mode of existence of the intended recipient of the revelation--man, who "sees" truth in pictures, in stories, in his story.
i dunno. i like that.
there were two great chess authorities named lasker. emmanuel was one of the very greatest masters of all time--some might argue that he was, when all is said, the greatest. edward [sp?] wrote one of the famous, classic manuals on chess (dover books still publishes it, i believe). i forget which lasker said this, but when asked what he had learned from a lifetime of chess he replied: that men do not want to know the truth. i think that's worth reflecting on from a number of standpoints.
thanks to all for the great discussion.
ridseard: so glad you've forsaken the "asshole" language--it was beneath you. by the way, newton was a follower of the rosey cross--a rosicrucian. a lot of scientists in the early modern period were alchemists, kabbalists, etc. paracelsus was regarded by many scientists as a great man of science himself! many of their discoveries were motivated not by disinterested pursuit of knowledge but from quite ulterior "religious" motives. i think kepler was one of those, too. the history of "science" is full of such stories, as is the history of "religion." (the " " means i hate those words, that i think they lead to misunderstanding, but need to use them nevertheless.) most historians of science (jaki, butterfield, for example) would agree with stoner's assessment that science as we know it really has its origins in the medieval latin west, which certainly goes to show that "the church" is not hostile to science itself but rather to inflated claims of what you might call "scientism". some would maintain that the reason science arose in the west and nowhere else is because the christian doctrine of creation demands that what god created must be intelligible; therefore, there is a point to rational inquiry, there is a reason to believe that the scientific enterprise of rational inquiry into nature will yield positive results, is not futile. islam, buddhism, etc. offer no such reason to believe. interesting, i think.
Dcrom wrote:
this is emphatically not a catholic understanding of faith. i think if you reflect on your excellent recent posts re science and faith you'll see why that's so. josef pieper has an excellent little book on the subject, "belief and faith." the new testament greek word pistis[, which is what we often translate as "belief" actually means "trust," and you must have reasons to trust. that's why i quoted g.k.chesterton in another thread: his protatgonist fr. brown detects a criminal disguised as a priest and explains how he did so: you attacked reason; that's bad theology. what i call "the church" has time and time again (when not dealing with the galileo's of this world) condemned those who would claim that the truths of faith cannot be proven from reason. to condemn reason in a defensive reflex action would be the easy, but false way, and the church to its credit has opposed that despite the continual pressure to do so.I have trouble accepting *anything* on untestable faith.
earlier i mentioned chesterton's classic, "the everlasting man." i'd like to try to summarize what he has to say on myth, which is where this thread started.
chesterton notes that man has always used stories to "see" a truth. ancient man had myths, we have novels, movies, etc. similarly, aquinas maintains that man can have no knowledge except through the senses. (this is not exactly the straight aristoteleanism some would take it for.) he said this in opposition to the augustinian tradition that held out for "divine illumination" or what malebranche would call "occasionalism," which maintained that god directly infused the intellect with ideas/concepts on the occasion of some sense interaction with "the world" out there. this type of fideism is obviously a recipe for scepticism and led quite directly to nominalism, "modern" philosophy and protestantism, and aquinas, the "common doctor" of the church stoutly opposed all fideistic trends.
it's interesting to see aquinas' and chesterton's insight seconded by a nobel laureate in physics. i believe it was erwin schrodinger, who received the nobel for describing sub-atomic particles in an equation (and ridseard, please note what schrodinger was doing here with numbers). on the occasion of the award he remarked: i still think of them of them as ping pong balls! to which aquinas might say: of course; as a human being you must "see" intelligibility "in" some sense datum--even if you have to imagine a sense datum as the bearer of the intelligibility you're describing in an equation. this is all based on the nature of man as a unity of sense and intellect.
OK. since we have to make pictures for ourselves (if need be) so that our intellects can "see" the intelligibility of the world around us, it's also only natural that we should use stories to communicate the intelligibility of the world. after all, we ourselves live within stories of our own making, and participate in the "history" of the world we live in. i'm quite sure this is why biography is such a popular form of literature, and especially among those who have gotten a little older and, sometimes, more reflective.
so chesterton described the good news, the story of jesus of nazareth, as a "true myth," a myth that actually happened. and when you think about it (as anselm did, stoner, when he wrote his "cur deus homo"), what would be more natural than for god to reveal himself to man in a story, a life. what better way for man to "see," to understand, god's love? this method of self revelation was perfectly proportioned to the mode of existence of the intended recipient of the revelation--man, who "sees" truth in pictures, in stories, in his story.
i dunno. i like that.
there were two great chess authorities named lasker. emmanuel was one of the very greatest masters of all time--some might argue that he was, when all is said, the greatest. edward [sp?] wrote one of the famous, classic manuals on chess (dover books still publishes it, i believe). i forget which lasker said this, but when asked what he had learned from a lifetime of chess he replied: that men do not want to know the truth. i think that's worth reflecting on from a number of standpoints.
thanks to all for the great discussion.
elendil
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Ridseard
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I hope you haven't gotten the impression that I am anti-church or anti-religion. Nor do I have a problem with Rosicrucianism, alchemy, or any (harmless) form of occultism, as long as it does not attempt to hinder the pursuit of truth. In fact, my favorite writer/thinker, Goethe, was a Rosicrucian.elendil wrote:ridseard: so glad you've forsaken the "asshole" language--it was beneath you. by the way, newton was a follower of the rosey cross--a rosicrucian. a lot of scientists in the early modern period were alchemists, kabbalists, etc. paracelsus was regarded by many scientists as a great man of science himself! many of their discoveries were motivated not by disinterested pursuit of knowledge but from quite ulterior "religious" motives. i think kepler was one of those, too.
Whether or not he thought of sub-atomic particles as ping-pong balls, Schrödinger's equation for the hydrogen atom sparked my interest in partial differential equations, which became the the subject of my doctoral thesis.
ridseard wrote:
i guess one of the points i was trying to make was that words like "science" "religion" "philosophy" "common sense" "literature" "music" etc. too often become handy ways to pigeon hole thought that we just don't want to deal with, to avoid reality. emmanuel lasker spent much of his life sitting across from people who didn't want to face up to the obvious truth of his solutions.
it's interesting that so many world class physicists decide to dabble in philosphy. schrodinger, heisenberg and others all published books of what most people would call philosophy. mostly very mediocre books, based on warmed over schoolbook kantianism from their undergraduate days, but it shows that they felt a need to further draw out the implications of their scientific work. well, that's one way of looking at it...
one philosophical book by a mathematician/physicist i did find fairly original was "the quantum enigma," by wolfgang smith. he understood the deep affinities between einstein's theories, quantum mechanics, and thomism. oh well.
cheers.
well, i have to admit that i did form that impression. funny how these sorts of misunderstandings arise.I hope you haven't gotten the impression that I am anti-church or anti-religion.
i guess one of the points i was trying to make was that words like "science" "religion" "philosophy" "common sense" "literature" "music" etc. too often become handy ways to pigeon hole thought that we just don't want to deal with, to avoid reality. emmanuel lasker spent much of his life sitting across from people who didn't want to face up to the obvious truth of his solutions.
it's interesting that so many world class physicists decide to dabble in philosphy. schrodinger, heisenberg and others all published books of what most people would call philosophy. mostly very mediocre books, based on warmed over schoolbook kantianism from their undergraduate days, but it shows that they felt a need to further draw out the implications of their scientific work. well, that's one way of looking at it...
one philosophical book by a mathematician/physicist i did find fairly original was "the quantum enigma," by wolfgang smith. he understood the deep affinities between einstein's theories, quantum mechanics, and thomism. oh well.
cheers.
elendil
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mjacob
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--OK, this post might offend someone, maybe not, but I apologize in advance if it does--
Ridseard, are there really any western religions that care about the pursuit of truth?
I'm drawing a blank, I donno, maybe its just me. Maybe pursuing truth takes strength, so weaker people resent truth because it hurts, and create artificial compassion to all as a form of revenge on the truth.
This makes me think the concept of "sin" is so silly, if its really just a way of demonising all the painful realities of life, making them more manageable, more organised for people that cannot discern good and bad, by way of giving them a funny name. So I suspect that a strong person has no need for any of this.
It reminds me of the medicalization of deviant behavior occuring more and more these days.
Ridseard, are there really any western religions that care about the pursuit of truth?
I'm drawing a blank, I donno, maybe its just me. Maybe pursuing truth takes strength, so weaker people resent truth because it hurts, and create artificial compassion to all as a form of revenge on the truth.
This makes me think the concept of "sin" is so silly, if its really just a way of demonising all the painful realities of life, making them more manageable, more organised for people that cannot discern good and bad, by way of giving them a funny name. So I suspect that a strong person has no need for any of this.
It reminds me of the medicalization of deviant behavior occuring more and more these days.
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Ridseard
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Spiritual truth maybe. Scientific truth is not really their thing, is it?Ridseard, are there really any western religions that care about the pursuit of truth?
Sounds very Nietzschean. No doubt you're objectively correct, but sin and guilt are subjective realities, and most of us ain't very strong.I'm drawing a blank, I donno, maybe its just me. Maybe pursuing truth takes strength, so weaker people resent truth because it hurts, and create artificial compassion to all as a form of revenge on the truth.
This makes me think the concept of "sin" is so silly, if its really just a way of demonising all the painful realities of life, making them more manageable, more organised for people that cannot discern good and bad, by way of giving them a funny name. So I suspect that a strong person has no need for any of this.
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Jack
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Quote @ antstastegood
And not all of us drink rum (or are legal to).
The dead horse has cried ENOUGH ALREADY.
Who's bringing the rum??
It's obviously alive. If you don't want this thread to continue, don't try to close it, even if you're doing it psuedo-jokingly. Just stop reading it. Yes, I realise how difficult that can be. I, for one, think this thread is a great discussion and very fun to read.Lets clog it with spam until it dies!!!
And not all of us drink rum (or are legal to).
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TelegramSam
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Take a chill pill, cran. He was joking around.
And McJacob - I can't speak for the christian church at large nor do I care to, but there are many many christian scientists in the world. I personally am christian and I find the pursuit of truth and knowlege a very serious and worthwhile undertaking (otherwise, why the hell would I be sitting in this university dorm replying to this ridiculous thread at 7:30 in the morning?).
I agree with ridseard, pull your head out of Nietze's ass and quit blanketing all of us christians as soggy-headed fundamentalist twits, because we aren't all like that.
And McJacob - I can't speak for the christian church at large nor do I care to, but there are many many christian scientists in the world. I personally am christian and I find the pursuit of truth and knowlege a very serious and worthwhile undertaking (otherwise, why the hell would I be sitting in this university dorm replying to this ridiculous thread at 7:30 in the morning?).
I agree with ridseard, pull your head out of Nietze's ass and quit blanketing all of us christians as soggy-headed fundamentalist twits, because we aren't all like that.
<i>The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.</i>
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Jack
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Quote @ TelegramSam
P.S. Using the term "christian scientists" can misleading unless you capitalise one or both words. Christian scientists (scientists who are Christians) and Christian Scientists (members of the Church of Christ, Scientist) can be two very different things.
Accuse me of nitpicking.
Oh. I didn't think he was joking around at all because the quotes came from two different posts. That's the nature of the Internet, though.Take a chill pill, cran. He was joking around.
P.S. Using the term "christian scientists" can misleading unless you capitalise one or both words. Christian scientists (scientists who are Christians) and Christian Scientists (members of the Church of Christ, Scientist) can be two very different things.
Accuse me of nitpicking.
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peeplj
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I think it's pretty much a given in mainstream Western religion that truth isn't something you pursue...truth is something handed to you (via revelation), which you are expected to then believe without question or reservation.Ridseard, are there really any western religions that care about the pursuit of truth?
In fact, it often seems that this mindset places more value on believing the impossible without reason, then it does for believing something for a reason or reasons.
To me, the question of "is a religion true?" isn't the appropriate question, because to date I've not found any that are true, or even that are interested in becoming true or moving their position closer to actual reality.
I think a better question is "does a religion work?" Does it improve or enoble your life? Does it provide you a way to deal with life's disasters, and does it lift you up in times of trouble? Is it like a wall behind you that you can lean back on and feel support?
I view religion as software and science as the hardware--science has the real answers but is difficult to understand and utilize. I view religion as the software, particularly the operating system. It has no relationship to actual reality or truth-of-concept; it merely gives you an interface which allows you to function and survive without having to master the more difficult and seemingly less rewarding truths of science and reality.
--James
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TelegramSam
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antstastegood
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Well, I was. I sincerely apologize if anyone took offense.Cranberry wrote:Quote @ TelegramSamOh. I didn't think he was joking around at all because the quotes came from two different posts. That's the nature of the Internet, though.Take a chill pill, cran. He was joking around.
Unreasonable person,
ants
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