Atheism and agnosticism thread

[Travis B.]

The key thing to remember, though, is that many scientists in the past have come up with results which turned out to be false, but does their ultimate falsehood in and of itself make it any less scientific necessarily?

[Torco]

Traditional religions ("fundamentalisms") offer sets of rituals that claim to make you certain of whatever it is that you want to be certain about.

c'est mauvaise foi, la foi

I like how a discussion of religion ends up being about what is science. for my part, I don't think there's a lot of essence to science: there isn't *a* scientific method. if anything, science is a particular tradition of knowledge (one that's pretty good, tbh, but that has its own limitations) and, if it has defining characteristics, I think it's mostly the philosophy of empiricism, an insistence in mathematical modeling, a rejection of mysticism and authority, openness to revision, peer review and particular institutions like the university, the doctorate, and the scientific publishing industry. ultimately science is what scientists say science is, which may be circular but then again a lot of concepts are circular (insert wittgenstein): scientific racism *was* science back in the day in the sense that if you went to the harvard faculty of biology and asked about which race was superior and why, you would have found classrooms where a dude with a phd was teaching about the inferiority of the executive functions of the negroid due to the shape of their parietal lobe or whatever. past science did contain false things, and present science does too. bigotry, hate, colonialism, capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy etcetera all influence science, good social scientists know this.

a different question is 'scientific'. if we mean by 'scientific' that which science does, then ofc phrenology was scientific, but we rarely use scientific in that way: scientific is a word more like 'democratic' or 'egalitarian': it means something which embodies certain values, at least in part the value of the pursual of truth: in hindsight, we think that science is unscientific when those social forces mentioned above influence the development of science, such as what happened with the food pyramid, or the way in which scientists used their status as such to justify their investments in profitable slave stocks or whatever just like we say things are undemocratic when the democratic process is perverted by, say, coca cola death squads in colombia, or dina boluarte.

[Raphael]

I like how a discussion of religion ends up being about what is science.

Hey, both of these are fitting for a thread on atheism and agnosticism.

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but

it's mostly the philosophy of empiricism,

I'd say it's not so much empiricism as a kind of Hegelian synthesis of empiricism and rationalism.

FWIW, a YA book on the history of science that I read as a teenager and that I still see as one of the books that influenced me the most summed up the philosophy of science in Aristotle's dictum "Truth is the thought that is closest to nature", and limited its discussion of later influences on the philosophy of science to the two Bacons.

[Torco]

true on the rationalist-empiricist synthesis. 'the thought closest to nature' is a great sentiment, until one stops to think 'what do we mean for a thought to be close to nature' ? modern philosophers express this as the correspondence theory of truth, i.e. truth is when something said corresponds to the way things are: excellent notion, until one asks what does it mean for a saying to correpond to reality? my own epistemology here is similar, though, in that truth is an adjective, never a noun: there isn't a truth just like there isn't any platonic redness actually existing in the mystical plane of whatever, only red things: things one can think or say are more or less true though, which means they more or less correspond with reality. what do I mean by correspondence? look! over there! a cool bird! (quietly slips away)

[zompist]

I like how a discussion of religion ends up being about what is science.

A discussion of anything among nerds tends to end up in amateur philosophy.

for my part, I don't think there's a lot of essence to science: there isn't *a* scientific method. if anything, science is a particular tradition of knowledge (one that's pretty good, tbh, but that has its own limitations) and, if it has defining characteristics, I think it's mostly the philosophy of empiricism, an insistence in mathematical modeling, a rejection of mysticism and authority, openness to revision, peer review and particular institutions like the university, the doctorate, and the scientific publishing industry. [...] past science did contain false things, and present science does too. bigotry, hate, colonialism, capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy etcetera all influence science, good social scientists know this.

This is all reasonable, and I'd point out that some of the bad things directly affect the good things. E.g.:

* who are considered "peers" and thus able to review
* what theories are rejected out of hand because they come from the "wrong people"
* where are the universities and who do they let in
* who controls academic publishing and who gets to read the articles

This is not, contra zju's worries, an attack on "science". A lot of scientists are very concerned about these things.

I'd also note that rejecting "mysticism" is fine if you're studying neutrons or neurons, but not so much when you're studying mysticism. That doesn't mean you have to accept what the informants are telling you, but recording it is part of social science. And the Western habit of attributing any ethnic odd behaviors to mental illness is another example of bias. Western scientists got a little more open-minded about this once they tried drugs...

[Torco]

Oh, absolutely. I'm partial to a radical approach to preventing those pitfalls of science *within the social sciences*, which is to try and build concepts de novo as opposed to taking up the concepts that common sense offers, but yeah, often the experiences of your subjects *is* your data, after all. And don't even get me started on the concept of 'mental illness', either, I think it's all bollocks imported (and even worse: calqued) from other more successful sciences. (of course, sometimes problems happen in the mind, and the question of what to do in those cases and how to alleviate suffering is a mega valid field of scientific inquiry: nevertheless you don't have to pretend mood is like the pancreas, and anyway "it's just a brain malfunction" doesn't tell you anything: psychiatry practically stumbled into the use of drugs, and it's still pretty clumsy at them).

Still, here I am a positivist: you do have to reject mysticism as an epistemology: i'm not buying your paper on the origin of mysticism being in psychedelic mushrooms if under methodology if reads "I did some shrooms and the trees told me so maaaaan".

[malloc]

Still, here I am a positivist: you do have to reject mysticism as an epistemology: i'm not buying your paper on the origin of mysticism being in psychedelic mushrooms if under methodology if reads "I did some shrooms and the trees told me so maaaaan".

Indeed. The very fact that psychoactive drugs can induce what seem like mystical experiences seems like a powerful argument against those experiences having supernatural significance. We know the molecular structure of psilocybin and there are no sacred moieties or numinous ions that we can see.

[Torco]

na, while I share your conclusion I don't think the reasoning here is sound: it could be the case that there exist some aspects of reality that the undrugged mind has more trouble perceiving, processing, remembering or comprehending as compared to the drugged mind. drugged minds, after all, work differently than normal minds, and minds what differently think may indeed be able to learn different stuff, or find learning this or that harder or easier. there doesn't need to be any magical ions for that to be the case.

Indeed posit some experiment like this: you come up with six learning tasks and split your 300 subjects into ten groups. you give each group a different drug (tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, grass, molly, clonazepam, coke, three monster energy drinks, LSD and sparkling water as a control) and run them through the different tasks. would you expect all groups to do as well as each other at each of the learning tasks? I'd expect, if the tasks are diverse enough, that people on coke do the best at one, people on LSD do worse than people on monster at another, and so on and so forth. *if* supernatural learning tasks exist, they might be such that some drugs make humans better at them than others.

of course, I don't think supernatural learning tasks exist, i.e. there's no way to learn about the mystical metaphysical spiritual realm or whatever via mystical introspection of the soul because there's no such a thing as the spiritual realm, and because i reject the mystical epistemology: but if I'm wrong drugs could very well help.

[malloc]

Well sure and I never claimed that psilocybin refuted mysticism, only that it seems compelling as an argument against it. Dedicated mystics could undoubtedly find ways to interpret the role of psychoactive compounds differently.

[Torco]

no, I know, but I don't think it is an argument against them. I think neither you or I would give, after all, any more credence to mystical experiences if drugs couldn't cause them, would we?

[keenir]

Still, here I am a positivist: you do have to reject mysticism as an epistemology: i'm not buying your paper on the origin of mysticism being in psychedelic mushrooms if under methodology if reads "I did some shrooms and the trees told me so maaaaan".

I'm very sorry, but I read that, and part of my brain went "Makes sense; though, were the trees repeating purely information that was already in your memories (perhaps from another paper or informant), or were the trees giving you new information, at least in part?"
(i am very very sorry)

Have there been false sciences? Also yes.

Science doesn't mean what you think it means.
Before the scientific method there have just been "natural philosophies".

but the same would be true of gods: they exist outside of humanity, and will outlast us.

Burden of proof is on the claimant. For all we know there are only false gods.

But why is there no burden of proof for that claim?

[Travis B.]

I'm very sorry, but I read that, and part of my brain went "Makes sense; though, were the trees repeating purely information that was already in your memories (perhaps from another paper or informant), or were the trees giving you new information, at least in part?"
(i am very very sorry)

Have there been false sciences? Also yes.

Science doesn't mean what you think it means.
Before the scientific method there have just been "natural philosophies".

but the same would be true of gods: they exist outside of humanity, and will outlast us.

Burden of proof is on the claimant. For all we know there are only false gods.

But why is there no burden of proof for that claim?

Because children have to be told there is a God -- in lieu of that, all people are what are known as implicit atheists. That's what I was when I was growing up before I realized I was an atheist -- I simply did not believe in God because no one told me to believe in God.

[zompist]

Burden of proof is on the claimant. For all we know there are only false gods.

But why is there no burden of proof for that claim?

More philosophy of science: don't posit entities beyond what is necessary. A principle due to a Christian, by the way.

This doesn't mean that new theoretical entities can't be posited. Radioactivity, continental drift, genes, evolution, black holes, viruses, and quantum tunneling were all new and strange once. But the burden of proof was on them (and was met).

On the other hand, negative inductive claims are not more solid than positive ones. "There are no black swans" would have been true to European knowledge in 1696. The next year, black swans were discovered in Australia.

[keenir]

Burden of proof is on the claimant. For all we know there are only false gods.

But why is there no burden of proof for that claim?

Because children have to be told there is a God -- in lieu of that, all people are what are known as implicit atheists. That's what I was when I was growing up before I realized I was an atheist -- I simply did not believe in God because no one told me to believe in God.

Thats curious - when I was a child, I believed in...lets just say its a very very active God: put simply, God was the substance of all things, and was also the motion of those things through time (also God)

when my belief got milder, I was a pretty severe causality-ist: every action has an outcome, even if its which side of the manhole you walk on as you dodge the hole in the street - and the result sometimes is what most people would accept as causal for that (whether or not to trip on something in the road) or not (oh look, its the 9/11 attacks - and no, i'm not kidding)

even aside from me, most kids I've encountered, believe or know that there is a God.

to play Devil Advocate, yes, its very very hard for a child to grow up without hearing adults say whether there is a God or gods...just like its hard for a child to grow up without hearing adults use language.

[keenir]

to play Devil Advocate, yes, its very very hard for a child to grow up without hearing adults say whether there is a God or gods...just like its hard for a child to grow up without hearing adults use language.

and yes, I grant that there is a lot of wiggle room in the phrase "to be told"...a child can be told "do not touch the hot stove" and can be told "dogs are fluffy" and can be told "I love you"...yet each of these are different, yes?

[Travis B.]

In my family when I was a little kid, what I knew of religion was that other families went to church and like but my immediate family did not. But I was practically never told that there is no God - my parents only mentioned that they were atheists when I was an adult, and they said that they wanted to let me and my sister to find our own beliefs. And indeed - my sister would go to church on Sundays with one of her friends when she was a teenager, while I had realized in middle school that I didn't believe in any god or gods, and not because of anyone telling me so.

[Torco]

But why is there no burden of proof for that claim?

there certainly is! but it's one that can easily be met: of all the mythology that makes actually falsifiable claims (we can't say a lot about the claims that are not falsifiable, but prima facie they shouldn't be more or less true) those claims are, to a certain degree, false. I think that certain degree is very high indeed, probably like 99% ? the heavenly emperor is not, in fact, in the west etcetera. some of the claims are true, like, I don't know, there was a troy, life began in the waters, the gods did come from beyond the sea with terrible and wonderful gifts - except they weren't gods, they were marines. but, for the most part, here the formalized structure of the argument:

the contents of myths are generally not real
gods are contents of myths
gods are generally not real

I can improve my odds a bit, though perhaps what follows is less solid an argument: myths are diverse in the degree of verosimilitude of their claims: if a myth says something like "invaders from the north came and burned our fields", well... we know that kind of thing happens in general, so yeah, sure, maybe that content of that myth is true. but when myths say stuff like "and the waters of the river black were magical and cured all illness" well... we know of no such river, and it doesn't resemble what we do know about rivers: what kind of medicine could cure *all* illness anyway? so, we're justified in giving more credence to verosimile myths.

less verosimile myths are less true
gods are, as far as myths go, pretty inverosimile
gods are less true than your average myth

... which is pretty low likelyhood indeed!

_

also yes, to imagine there is such a thing as education without indoctrination is naive, but the political bit of this is more important than the abstract: I say let people tell each other whatever stories about gods or whatever else that they want... just don't make me subsidize it too much, and aaaaaaa they're trying to make me play along! help!

and travis makes an excellent point: most kids one encounters are theists because most humans one encounters are theist, not telling stories about gods to children they probably won't come up with them on their own. not that many of em anyway. I haven't found one person who believes in gods who didn't get the idea from someone else.

[zompist]

gods are contents of myths

Not really. Myths come later, often far later, and they are often not terribly important in the religion itself, as opposed to culture and literature.

According to John Scheid, performances based on myths were sometimes offered to the gods... because, like human civic patrons, the gods would enjoy them. The actual practice of the religion was based on sacrifices and divination.

Premodern people didn't have our ironclad boundary between fact and fiction; most people probably accepted the myths because hey, why not. But those who thought about it specifically, like the Greek philosophers, tended to dismiss them. Besides, people were perfectly aware that other people had different myths, and they don't seem to have cared very much.

I haven't found one person who believes in gods who didn't get the idea from someone else.

Then you've never met a shaman.

Use some logic here: if everyone cribbed the idea of god from somewhere else, where did it start? Time travelers?

[Travis B.]

I haven't found one person who believes in gods who didn't get the idea from someone else.

Then you've never met a shaman.

Use some logic here: if everyone cribbed the idea of god from somewhere else, where did it start? Time travelers?

The de novo development of the concept of God is something that extends sufficiently back into prehistory that do we frankly know? While one could posit people who are either high or mentally ill as a source of God, can we actually rule out that they may have heard of the idea of God from someone, somewhere?

[zompist]

Use some logic here: if everyone cribbed the idea of god from somewhere else, where did it start? Time travelers?

The de novo development of the concept of God is something that extends sufficiently back into prehistory that do we frankly know? While one could posit people who are either high or mentally ill as a source of God, can we actually rule out that they may have heard of the idea of God from someone, somewhere?

Um what? Is it that hard to understand that "idea X always comes from someone else" simply doesn't work? Who did that someone else get idea X from?

Also, is it that hard to understand that a human being coming up with an idea is absolutely normal and not mysterious? Do you posit an infinite regression for every human statement, or only for the idea of gods?