Posted on 06/30/2008 4:41:23 PM PDT by Kevmo
The crevo threads typically degenerate into name calling. Recently, the Religion Moderator declared that "science is not religion", and did not publish the criteria for such consideration. My suggestion to the evolutionist community has been to acknowledge that Scientism is a religion and start to utilize the protections offered under the religion tags that are different than other threads (due to the intensity of feelings over religious issues). So this thread is intended to be an ECUMENICAL thread under the tag of SCIENTISM. The intent is to keep discussion civil.
I would like to see a straightforward discussion over the topic of whether scientism should be treated as a religion on FR. I'll try to find the links to the adminlecture series about what the ground rules are on ecumenical threads, and I'll copy some recent interactions that show the need for scientism to be treated as a religion on FR.
Leave the thread.
I used the definition you provided,
***As I stated, you used the reference, not the definition I provided. And also as I stated, I’m done with you on this thread. I see the moderator has started removing posts, so I no longer have confidence that my responses to your antagonisms would survive anyways.
I guess day two of this experiment didn’t go nearly as well as day one. Thanks for having ecumenical threads, I think that with some effort, the cats could get herded.
I have grown so weary of crevo threads that I barely even log onto them any more. If I see a subject on the evo threads that strikes me as particularly interesting, I feel now that it can be opened up as an ecumenical thread and we can at least have some semblance of order to it. Of course, it makes your job all the more difficult.
I’ve been lobbying the Mystery Religion Man for over a month now for an Academic, or else Focused thread format.
Eciumenic does not translate to non-religious settings, first by its very name, but also because it pretends to separate an argument FOR from the argument AGAINST. This is not how logic works. Some things are proven constructively: birds can fly because of the lift vs body weight ratio; other things are proven from the contrary; if square of 2 were a rational number, we’d have a number which is both odd and even. Most arguments employ both techniques. It was very cogently remarked that one particular religious confession, Protestantism, is very much dependent on its critique of Catholicism.
In science, the attitude is that things are objectively provable. It might do some good on a religious thread to argue with the Catholics — We have saints! when the Calvinist side would ecumenically riposte — We have the Founding Fathers! That makes no sense in a scientific discussion. You either have a creator or you don’t; fish either become monkeys or they don’t.
However, the Academic or Focused thread allows for any argument, either contructive or critical. All that is required are rules of academic discourse, — calm tone, factual posts, focus on the topic, academic decorum. It is not hard to police and can be applied anywhere, not just to religion.
Please join me in lobbying the Mystery Man. He is getting very soft on it. Just keep the pressure on.
If square ROOT of 2.
It goes like this. Rational numbers have a form p/q, where p is an integer {1,2,3,...} and so it q, and there is no common factor to p and q.
If square root of 2 is a rational mumber, for some p and q
p2/q2=2
So, p2=2q2, and p is even. So p=2x for an integer number x,
4x2=2q2
or
2x2=q2
So q is even. Voila, both p and q are even, but that violates the definition of rational as having no common factor for p and q.
All this is for math buffs. The point is, some things are wrong because if they are true, something we know to be true has to be wrong, -- reductio ad absurdum. Criticism is a necessary part of reasoning.
In science, the attitude is that things are objectively provable.
***The problem with the evo argument is that it is not objectively provable. We hear all the time about the “preponderance of the evidence” because it is an inductive area rather than deductive. That means there’s still room for error, certainly with the abiogenenesis argument when the probabilities come out to something like 10^-247 chance of polypeptide molecules forming into amino acids and all the way up the chain to a simple one-celled life form (note that 10^-50 is the traditional mathematical cutoff point for something that is impossible).
One reason why we need an ecumenical tag for some crevo threads is that the abiogenesis and evo theories have implications for religious thought. We see it all the time that the evo/abio theory is taken as proven, just like the “theory of gravity” — even though there is no one encompassing theory of gravity. There is a Law of Gravity, but we still don’t know why gravity exists, so there’s no settled theory of gravity.
So, since the evo crowd proceeds forth as if the evo theory is proven, they tend to trample into the realms of philosophy and religion. This trampling is what causes much of the acrimony we see. If we could reasonably expect science geeks to keep mum about religious implications and religious geeks to at least read up on scientific method, then there wouldn’t be this acrimony. I don’t think se can reasonably expect that from either camp, so a separation is in order.
Earlier I had mentioned an example about earthquakes —
If your faith was in something like, say the Vedas that said earthquakes are caused by elephants jumping up & down and it was demonstrated to you what earthquakes are, would you have to wrestle with your faith a bit? The response was
“I suppose I would know from the beginning that the ‘parable’ of elephants jumping up and down was written to convey some sort of spiritual truth (like a universal flood). Obviously no elephant could generate that kind of force, and plate tectonics shows that earthquakes have a non-supernatural origin. “ So there is a tension between the scientist who has extremely strong evidence about the origin of earthquakes and the implications for the Veda scriptures. On the crevo plane, the tension is higher because the scientific evidence is incomplete (certainly where abiogenesis is concerned) and the christian scriptures find a ready audience in a forum that starts out defining itself as “pro-God,...” and also, there is extremely strong textual criticism and archaeological evidence accompanying the christian scriptures.
Judging from the behavior on this thread, I don’t think an academic or Focused thread would work. There are several factors at play in it, some of which were mentioned upthread by the Religion Moderator. First, the mods don’t have the time, energy, nor wherewithal to babysit this monster. Second, the presence of Darwin Central shows that there already is a place for such discussion, and they have basically just as much acrimony as they did when they camped out here. Third, the emotions run very high on this subject — it is more akin to religion than anything else. Fourth, the religion mod claims there isn’t interest — which I think is baloney but since we would be asking the mods to shoulder a burden, they’d have to be shown in no uncertain terms that there is a ton of interest.
Scientists aren’t used to dealing with much on the inductive plane, they prefer the deductive plane. They’re constantly applying deductive logic to an inductive pursuit. They try to tackle a 3-headed dog with a 2-pronged pitchfork, saying such things as “prove that there’s such a thing as big foot”. I just finished reading a book called “Excess Heat” which chronicles the mounting evidence for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, but mainstream science considers this area a pariah because they use deductive logic in the presence of a new, Unknown phenomena and say such things as “show us the Neutrons” or “if you really had those nuclear reactions, you’d be dead”. And yet, the results continue to be replicated in the lab.
In the Low Energy Nuclear Reaction birth of a science, we see that the existing scientific establishment did not follow protocol in dealing with this upstart information and summarily dismissed it. When you say, “All that is required are rules of academic discourse” it’s not enough because scientists won’t follow such rules and the referee system is going to be skewed one way or another, somehow, it’s just human nature.
It is tagged as ecumenical, but it's quite unlike any ecumenical thread I believe I've ever seen. There's something intrinsically wrong about the idea of having ecumenical threads tagged for a religion that there aren't any discernible followers of to post to it.
The first successful “ecumenic” thread was atheist/agnostic.
Your suggestions are noted and will be considered.
I understand. There are people who profess to be atheiists and agnostics. The arguments for "Scientism" appear to be that it is theoretically possible that it could be a religion. There don't appear to be any real-life examples of anyone actually claiming that as their religion.
I thought it had evolved from an originally created religion thread. ;^)
I will review your links and share my thoughts on them after work today. Thank you.
Something to consider would be an [scientific invite only] thread where the poster of the article could post a scientific thread, and then invite people who would not be disruptive.
It would be like a debate in a college where 2 people get up on stage and debate a subject, and then allow questions from audience member if they wish.
Or it could be a 5 way debate if the article poster wanted.
It seems like it would be much easier to police.
Anyway, I don’t remember seeing this idea discussed before so I thought I would mention it.
Just a thought.
Very nice essay. I agree that there is a greater similarity between the crevo debate and religion debates, than between some classic natural science debates and religion debates.
But that militates for what I proposed, academic threads. It does not point to adoption of Religion Forum Ecumenical designation. That is because the underlying idea in ecumenism is that despite confessional differences Christians have more in common than not. You cannot make that assumption in the crevo debate. Worse for your cause, the evolutionists will take the very suggestion thet they, too, are relying on faith as an argument in their disfavor and will sabotage your idea. We’ve seen that on the ecumenis threads quite a bit; someone with a known partizan personality will say somethign like “There is a lot I could say and refute your theory completely, but since you’ve chosen to hide behind the ecumenic label, I will let the absurdity and self contradiction of your position remain unchallenged”. One cannot construct a similar argument about an academic thread.
It is not true that academic threads are harder to police. They are easier to police. There are formal rules in academic debate, that one follow without studying up on the subject.
- impersonal tone
- stay on topic
- source your statements
- answer the question posed to you
- minimize banter and HTML gimmickry
How hard is that?
Naturally, it should be a forum-wide convention, not just one we exclusively burden the Religion Moderator with. FR could benefit from an elevated style of debate in other areas.
Please. Thank you.
I've seen that on one forum. What was happening, the uninvited will start a parallel free-for-all thread to drag the invitees in; the uninvited partizans help the invitees with private mail. It seemed that the pressure was so high on the invited debater that people would avoid the honor, and few such matches actually happened.
It could be a lot of fun and not hard to police, I agree.
Regarding new thread designations, I have an additional suggestion. I just posted this to the RM on another thread:
***Actually, I’d like to see a no-holds barred Caucus type designation that allows folks from within a particular confession/denomination/theology to discuss freely, to include bashing whomever they wish AND with no outside interference permitted....the same as in a regular Caucus.
The truth is that behind the doors of every church, they have open discussions and if, for example, the RCs feel like cold-cocking Martin Luther, then they just go ahead and do it. And they do it without some gang of Lutherans rushing in from off the street to argue with them over it.
I’d call this variety of thread “Closed Caucus.”
Will you try this for a while, RM. I think it would solve a lot of your inter-denominational squabbles.****
I disagree, and offer this as my reason:
The Pathetic Last Children of Nietzsche's Pitiable Last Men
Excerpted from item linked above:
"Naturally, "Wimps make worthless watchdogs. But their failure as watchdogs or guardians has nothing to do with size or physique.... Many of today's young men seem to have no fight in them at all. Not for them to rescue damsels in distress from the barbarians. Furthermore, wimps vote. As Aristotle pointed out, to the cowardly, bravery will seem more like rashness and foolhardiness than what it really is. Hence political and social issues that require bravery for their solution elicit only hand-wringing and half-measures from the wimps. Wimps are always looking for the easy way out." ~ Gagdad Bob
Excerpted from comment section in above link:
"A very interesting but highly troubling post. It's difficult even to imagine how this widespread situation in America could be changed.
I'd like to ask a question that is kind of a tangent to the thrust of your post, but I thought you might have some insight into this. My attention was caught by Moore's definition of thumos.
"...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world."
Reading this, I was struck by the fact that many authentic religious traditions attack thumos as a barrier to enlightenment. I have in mind Buddhism in particular, which as I understand it seeks not to sublimate the thumotic passions but to extirpate them entirely. Anger in particular is the great taboo, and one must become entirely free of it.
This sort of thing is not limited to Buddhism, however. One may compare Jesus' exhortations to "resist not evil" or to "turn the other cheek," which I have actually heard quoted as a reason that Saddam Hussein should have been left in power, as well as his advice on how to deal with sexual desire ("If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee," etc....).
Clearly, you must not agree with these traditions since you made this post, and I suspect your reasons must be related to the criticisms you made earlier of the Buddhist and Hindu emphasis on elimination of the ego. But I was wondering if you would comment more on whether or not or to what extent you believe that thumotic passions are a barrier to spiritual growth." ~ Bryan 1/27/2006 09:51:00 AM
Gagdad replies:
"In the classical ideal, the thumotic passions of the "chest" mediate between the animal appetites of the belly and the abstract intellectual reasoning of the mind. It is a matter of the proper balance.
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral.
Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
Buddhism and Christianity arose at a time when people were much more bloody, cruel and barbarous than today, so perhaps renouncing all anger was a sign of spiritual advancement and refinement. It was a very novel idea at the time to have any checks at all on one's violent tendencies.
We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?
What is the interior meaning of "turning the other cheek?" I suggest that it means not acting on impulse. It means operating from a center within, where we do not simply react in a reptilian way to the constant slings and arrows of day to day life. That we rise above our tendency to lash back in kind. He's talking about a spiritual program, not about a political philosophy.
For example, I might tell you to "watch your thoughts pass by like clouds in a wide blue sky. Identify with the sky, not the clouds." But I would not recommend that you try this if you are a surgeon operating on a patient, or a lawyer arguing an important case in court, or a police officer chasing after a rapist.
You can be a naive pacifist like the Dalai Lama, but then you have no country because you've given it to barbarians. And then you must depend upon the kindness of those who will Kick Righteous Butt in order for you to have your oblivious little safe space, where you can turn any cheek you please without being turned into a corpse." ~ Gagdad Bob 1/27/2006 10:24:00 AM
[At the link above, you may find other accurate comments on what the "turn the other cheek" teaching meant to those living in the ancient world.]
You wrote: "I don’t see how an orthodox Christian, particularly an orthodox, could see what he wrote as anything other than an intellectual curiosity either. Oh well."
I think you misunderstood me. I spell "orthodox" with a small "o". I'm not referring to the "O"rthodox Church. When I say that I'm an "o"rthodox Christian, I'm referring to the fact that I don't embrace doctrine that the historic Christian Church has defined as heretical or UNorthodox.
And with that, I think we're getting far afield from the subject of "scientism" - the religion of scientists like Dawkins, Dennet, et.al. :)
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