The Faith & Religion mega Thread

The science / vaccine tangents in this thread are absolutely related to Faith & religion, and so are totally on target: science is a religion that many folks today put their faith in, so we should be able to discuss it here., except that this interesting topic might be challenging LQ's censorship, i.e, moratorium on the subject. Perhaps enough time has elapsed that Jeremy might reconsider the censorship. People are starting to let me into their homes again. I feel the tension within the topic to be greatly reduced from what it once was a year ago.

On one hand there is this assertion about sars-2 vaccinations from @enorbet: "they work and very well" vs this assertion from @sundialsvcs: "unsafe and ineffective". Both of these esteemed lq colleagues have done some reading and consideration on the subject. The only solution is to dive into and evaluate their source material. I am not going to apologize for bringing it back up, because its interesting and important.

@enorbet provided one of his sources: https://www.wired.com/story/for-mrna...nl&utm_term=P4. I'd be interesting on @sundialsvcs' sources too.

The source provided by @enorbet sounded like it was recruiting investors for fake mRNA factories, but provided little scientific support of the claims; for example, the article has no molecular diagrams. To accept this article, on has to have faith in science, because the evidence was not provided. The article claims that vaccines "have now saved millions of lives." It even reclassifies these vaccines as mRNA technology: "Over the past 18 months, mRNA technology has been injected into billions of arms". The title of the article could be: "Give us more money and we'll save you from HIV too". It sounds exciting, hopeful and promissing: the dawning of a new era of everlasting life for those who can afford it., and though that sounds enticing, where is the "real proof?"

According to the soon to be disclosed sources from @sundialsvcs, we could really rephrase the above claim: In the past 18 months, the lives of billions of people have been risked by the dangers of mRNA technolgy, without informed consent, because information about the risks was intentionally withheld due to a profit motive: in other words, billions of arms were victims of corporate criminal activity, which ought to be punished instead of praised.

Dogmatic belief continues despite all evidence to the contrary. If the scientists who profit from mRNA technology are blatantly and flagrantly disregarding evidence provided by scientists who discovered risks associated with mRNA technology, (i.e., failing to disclose it in the first place), then one can conlude that the mRNA scientists are dogmatically clinging to the most profitable assertions.

While wondering about @sundialsvcs sources, a quick search yielded this article, which suggests that the efficacy of the vaccine should be re-evaluated. It at least discusses some vaccine related deaths, and cites many studies, but it too fails to dive all the way into the science: there are no chemical equations to balance or formulas presented, and ultimately one has to take their assertions on faith that they were good scientists and did their homework.

Scientific method suggests that the same results will occur in any lab, so if we have the knowledge and the lab, we could verify the claims of these groups of scientists. But most folks have neither the knowledge or the access to the lab--so they have to go on trust / faith. They just end up citing from whichever group best fits what they hope. Thus for the majority of people, science might as well be a religion... they don't understand it all the way, and in the end go on faith, or blind obedience to authority: where's the wisdom in that?

It is my conclusion, that without wisdom to guide it, dollar driven science is deadly dangerous--especially since the victors have the dollars to suppress contrary evidence. This allows for the creation of false dollar-driven paradigms, like Western Health/Dollar Care. Is it healthcare? Or is it dollarcare? Neither: It's a religious cult full of dogmatic believers, like all the other religious cults. Not even 1% of the population understands the science. When they follow a scientific recommendation, they are doing so out of faith, following the authorities of their religion, just like a catholic reciting a heil mary when instructed to do so by a priest.

What's the difference? Where's the wisdom? Respect for infinite happenstance is the beginning of all wisdom. These closed canons, by their very closure, fail to respect inifinite happenstance, and thereby bereave themselves of that which they all seek: wisdom.

I couldn't possibly agree more wholeheartedly that "dollar driven science is deadly dangerous" because in fact that ISN'T Science. It's a con job leaning on weakness and ignorance to convince us something is "incontrovertible" usually to bilk us of our wealth.

However I equally disagree that "science is a religion" because "Faith != Confidence". They are similar in appearance but fundamentally "Oil and Water". Science accepts, even thrives on change and updates. Religion doesn't... or at the very least, hasn't ever before.

slac is right about one thing. The great majority of people who "believe in science" don't know anything about it. They've never studied science because it doesn't interest them. This is not because they're stupid. They may be passionately interested in 1930's jazz or in football and know a lot about them, but it just so happens that they are not interested in science. And believing in evolution simply because everyone else believes in it and you aren't sufficiently interested to care whether it's true or not is just as much a religious (or more accurately superstitious) attitude as believing in God.

There's a general view among scientists that it's better for people to believe in evolution because everyone else does than not to believe in it at all. But really I doubt if it makes the world much better one way or the other. Those of us who are interested in science study these things because we enjoy them, and we can say with some confidence that existing life forms evolved from earlier ones and that vaccines work. But what is the point of trying to enforce belief in these things on people for whom it could never be anything more than blind faith because they are not sufficiently interested in the subject to consider the evidence?

I have had 4 covid vaccinations (number 4 was last Thursday) and none of them made me ill! I haven't caught covid either unless I was an asymptomatic case. So I have no reason to quarrel with the technology.

I really want this thread to go back to "Faith and Religion," not science and not in the direction which I originally diverted it ... an act I now regret.

Well my friends I seriously doubt this thread can ever get back, if it ever even was, just about religious beliefs because from it's beginning the poll included more than one level of non-believers. It doesn't ask whether we believe in Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Kali, etc etc etc but whether we do or don't believe at all. Obviously since there are mnany actual scientists who are also believers the argument isn't totally binary, but equally obvious and especially from Religion's point of view, the "opposing team" is Science, the requirement for evidence as a prerequisite to confidant conclusions.

While I certainly would prefer to live in a world where Blind Faith and what I see as "magical thinking" is either non-existent or at least at an extreme minimum, if given a more down-to-earth choice between a general populace that not only believes wishing for things and events (praying) makes them happen (and if they don't you didn't pray well enough or are somehow lesser in God's eyes) but believes in a kind of inherent superiority PLUS the concept of "infidels and heretics" that are literally the enemy and deserving of torture and murder, and a populace that is less than educated and skeptical about Applied Science but knows and respects the scientific method based on a recognition of success and progress,,,, well, I''m sure you all know my vote.

Originally Posted by enorbet I equally disagree that "science is a religion" because "Faith != Confidence".

Confidence comes from knowing whatever you did can be done again--from one's internal experience.

So actual scientists, who performed the same experiment in their lab repetitively obtaining the same results, feel confidence in presenting these results to their peers for review, because, so long as the procedure is constant, the same results could be obtained from any lab--although there are some subjective areas to science, such as: "stop stirring once it's a milky caramel color, usually after about 15 seconds"--so there most always will be slight variations in that kind of labwork, hence the repitions and statistics.

But to the uninterested, as Hazel phrased them, who don't care to read the articles that are published about these kind of results that happen in every lab, such the scientists are confident enough to go public--and even to the interested, but unprepared, lacking the foundation to perform and understand the labwork--to this group, compliance with scientific mandates are acts of faith in the science, or acts of submission to the herd, which is kind of a foolhardy faith in majority rule.

These laypeeps get different rewards for their faith: sometimes loved ones come back from the doctor feeling better and healed up from something terrible. Other loved ones don't come back at all. The former family and friends confidence in science goes up, and they require less faith to return to the doctor. The latter family's confidence declines, requiring more faith to return to a doctor.

Faith is helpful when choices and actions are made external to the scope of verifiable repeatable experience--beyond the domain of confidence, and entering the domain of fuzzy symbols; poetic expression, similies... the heart... the spirit...--if it could get pinned down by language, there wouldn't be so many variants.

Schopenhauer was on to something with world as will and representation. Kant awoke from a dogmatic slumber. Hegel inventeds a dialectical bagel. Heidegger is onto his ontology, or was it ontologicity... Gadamer forges on to semiotics. Because of the creative logos in representation, it seems sensible to defend in my represenations: the miraculous.

Infinite happenstance allows for the miraculous. I like science within the scope of its limited confidence: but I would never allow it to destroy magical thinking Since order is a subset of chaos, science is only valid in the subsets of verifiable and repeatable orderly experience--but it has not the capacity for what is beyond its scope: infinite happenstance. That's why it thrives on change -- it's trying to pin down the unpinnable, and will always have to change from one angle to another... but inifinite happenstance is a fish that cannot be angled. Science is a jonah inside its belly.

Ok.. enough of that: schoolbus reality intervening on your behalves. Take it all with a grain of Sartre.

I think that it is when you delve into "the philosophy of science," a.k.a. "scientific philosophy," that the religious adherence sometimes begins to manifest. Everyone wants answers to "the great kahuna questions." They look for those answers in at least one way: some, in more than one. (There are scientists who regularly attend church or synagogue.)

As you know, "scientific philosophy" is focused on those areas of "science" where it is not possible to conduct empirical observation or experiment. An obvious example of this is: "evolution beyond the species level." Another is: "big bang." Scientific philosophy seeks to impose rigor upon explorations of exactly how we come to know what we [think we] do, and what are the limits of that knowledge and why those limits are there. It is, among other things, "thinking about [scientific ...] thinking."

It is tempting to look at believed measures of "a universe that is expanding" and to jump to the conclusion that it "must have" originated in a "singularity." Just as it is to observe the similarity between humans and apes and to jump to other conclusions. And then, to defend those conclusions of yours against all comers. You wanted a "big kahuna answer," and you think you found it. Therefore, you must be "right" and all dissent must be "wrong." Well, that's human nature.

The philosophy of science has yielded one work of significance: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn.

But Karl Popper, the logical positivists, and most of the others read more like poor attempts to rationalize scientific endeavor--like the rationalizations of addicts: a dear friend's son just told her that meth helped him be productive The mind can try so many tricks on itself to justify what it wants to do... and that's how most of the philosophy of science reads, imho, with exception of Kuhn's fanatastic achievement.

In regards to "magical thinking" let me put it this way: there exists, beyond the understanding of science, that which can impact life in ways still inexplicable to science--both postively and negatively--yet most of all, mysteriously. In other words: "magical thinking" = humility; the understanding that the patterns yielded by the scientific method are always that: patterns -- not universal laws.

If the gravitational constant changed from 9.8 m / (* s s) to say half of that tomorrow, because every 13 trillion years, a cosmic event happens that affects gravity, but science had no way to predict it--magical thinking would not be as surprised by the miracle of jumping twice as high as one could the day before... But science would be in a pickle over it...

I think it's important to defend those types of possibilities within any system of beliefs. Magical thinking doesn't depend upon such possibilities and expect salvation from them... it simply knows that the mysterious happens mysteriously, and that our finite pov's cannot ever encompass an infinite pov. If some people believe that chanting ohm at some crystals can bring forth healing energy--I'm not going to try to sceintifically ridicule them; perhaps chanting at crystals does bring forth healing energy.

Is not the Ukraine, currrently a laboratory for dollar driven science of the weapons industry? Science is used in warfare--not just the science of creating destructive devices, but also the psychology: utilizing the scientific method, Nazi psychologists studied the tortures performed at their camps, to learn how to even better pschologically control an adversary, or the population in general. And to be fair, I surmise the same could be happening at Guantanamo, such that it could be unfair to call such behavior "Nazi"... perhaps we should conclude that big government ethics have all degraded to the same extent as Nazi germany, and are using the knowledge gleaned from this insidious science of population control: what should we call this? Nazi is too cliche a term, when this behavior is still pervasive globally in the twenty-first century. Its some kind of industrial-techno complete devaluation of life that must have occurred to those who become professional mercenaries and warrior scientists, like the ones at today's Ukranian War Lab: this is a consequence of everybody collectively looking away, not intervening, and waiting for the trained professionals to step in. Unfortunatley, the trained professionals are trained how to use violence on violence.

From day one, at nurseries, and preschools, and at home with brothers and sisters: as soon as conflict arises, rather than the adult in charge doing all the intervening (which starts the habbit of depending on professionals) we should teach all those around to stop what they are doing and peacefully intervene by empathy swarming. By the time it reaches Ukraine level its too late.

And this has everything to do with religion and faith... it takes some faith to empathy swarm... science can't tell you when to turn the cheek... or whether or not to obtain food through deception and slaughter of animals, or through nurturing orchards... whether or not to spank your child... These choices of the heart have to take into account posterity and the future, an infinite population beyond the scope of finite statistics, where we still have to chart our own course.

My use of the term was not to denote, "philosophizing about science." I use the term to refer to a rigorous intellectual process for "scientifically" exploring things which cannot be directly observed nor measured. For instance, one section of Darwin's Origin of Species, which I have read and own in hardcover, formally explored what else the readily-observed phenomenon of "species-level evolution" might apply to, and if so what the "parameters" might be. Darwin knew that his intended audience would implicitly understand what he was (and, was not) doing. He chose the title of his work purposely.

Yes, I have read the book that you refer to and I agree that it is well-written and interesting.

As for Ukraine ... "Ukraine is not a very nice place, and it hasn't been a very nice place before the Russian Revolution." Even if you dress Zelenskyy up in kakhis (instead of a "hoodie") and refer to him as a reformed comedian, he isn't a very nice person, either. These are not "Westerners." They are also not honest.

A very good site for learning more about Ukraine is: thepostil.com. An online imprint of St. Augustine Press, this site has recently published several very in-depth and scholarly articles which will probably tell you things that you never knew nor suspected about this region and its checkered history ... stretching back many hundreds of years. It might take you an hour to read just one of them. The authors are qualified experts.

Thanks for the resource, @sundialsvcs.

After all that earlier, I think I'll concur with @enorbet that pure science, at heart, is just a method, and not a religion. And like sundial said... plenty of scientists go to church.

The religion bit, is more a satirical charicature of that kind of elightenement period ideal that science can fix everything, and one day we'll be living without disease or crime with everlasting life to boot... science as manifest destiny; not actual science, just what can be done with the term by those who don't practice it... as well as a satrical charicature of those who lost their connection to and relationships with the living mysteries beyond science, and so bereft of these types of heart beacons, only have the statistics from studies of finite populations to try to make heart choices out of... when science stole the face of their gods, and left them with an empty alliance of dead whirling particles instead: these folks are using science as their metaphysics--but where's the life in it?

Difficult is the decision to remove life from this world. My beloved maremma sheepdog is 16 years and two months old, over 50kg, and she can barely get up. I just want her to go to sleep and chase rabbits forever.

Several times on the farm, I've had to make such decisions: always the animal has let me know. But how exactly I know that they will be at peace and that the time has arrived to help them pass: science hasn't helped--it's created many methods to remove life... but not a method to tell us when its time; vets leave this descision to the owner.

Magical thinking, is just whatever thinking I can come up with that will bring my heart peace after doing what must be done. It doesn't have to be rational; it just needs to work.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs (There are scientists who regularly attend church or synagogue.)

I agree there certainly are... and there are also religious folk who convince themselves (a la Duning-Kruger) or pretend in order to convince others that they are scientific.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs As you know, "scientific philosophy" is focused on those areas of "science" where it is not possible to conduct empirical observation or experiment. An obvious example of this is: "evolution beyond the species level." Another is: "big bang." Scientific philosophy seeks to impose rigor upon explorations of exactly how we come to know what we [think we] do, and what are the limits of that knowledge and why those limits are there. It is, among other things, "thinking about [scientific ...] thinking."

I further and wholeheartedly agree that "scientific philosophy" plays an important part because Science is practiced by humans and it's all too easy to become "full of oneself" and some out-of-the-box thinkers are needed to keep those grounded.

That said the Theory of Evolution did not stop with Darwin nor Big Bang with Georges LeMaitre. Darwin did not have available what would come later so he got some things wrong much like Newton did. The fundamentals of both still work and are bona fide breakthroughs but have been massively refined. "Evolution beyond species level" is the age old religious argument of MicroEvolution vs/ MacroEvolution and there is no "versus" as they are different aspects of the same thing. MacroEvolution, or Speciation, has not only been observed many hundreds of times, it has 4 different means by which it is observed to occur.

Part of the fallacy of the whole "versus" concept is that Evolution does not take place at the individual level but at the level of populations. This is why observations so far, have primarily been noted in species with rapid gestation and the tendency to produce large numbers of offspring over fairly long periods of time, especially if from different mates. One example is Kaibab and Abert's squirrels that have a common ancestors but populations were separated when the Grand Canyon formed.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs It is tempting to look at believed measures of "a universe that is expanding" and to jump to the conclusion that it "must have" originated in a "singularity." Just as it is to observe the similarity between humans and apes and to jump to other conclusions. And then, to defend those conclusions of yours against all comers. You wanted a "big kahuna answer," and you think you found it. Therefore, you must be "right" and all dissent must be "wrong." Well, that's human nature.

This is somewhat more interesting and also a cause for recognition of overdue maturation. In an around the Victorian Era so many previous mysteries were properly researched and understood, even manipulated, that events like Patent Offices considering closing "because everything had surely been invented already" occurred. This is similar to adolescence hilariously noted by Samuel Clemens in the Mark Twain Meme of ...

Originally Posted by Samuel Clemens When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years

Some people, even scientists, of the early 20th Century went beyond the scope of "singularity" which literally means "We don't know because all our objective tools break down in that environment" and "concluded" that Big Bang was The Beginning. These days scientists have learned to be more humble and careful and not "jump the gun". There was a time roughly 13.8 billion years ago that all of the Universe, even that which has passed beyond our ability to ever see, was in an unimaginably hot (energetic), dense state. We don't know that it was literally a point, just that it was incredibly compact.

WE have no idea if it was The Beginning or just A Beginning but it did happen and we can recreate that state in colliders. The James Webb Space Telescope will push back even further in time with direct observation that we can compare to refine what we already know and shine light a little deeper into the darkness, refining that edge were certainty diffuses into speculation. It's all just odds of probability, but it is only probable we will see the Sun "come up" tomorrow. Progress is real even if our language still reflects old wrong views.

Thank you, slac-in-the-box, for reminding me of Thomas Kuhn. I hadn't thought about him in a long time and he deserves being remembered.

@slac-in-the-box: I grieve with you. My wife and I are deeply involved in pet rescue and we have found ourselves now often helping the "hospice cases." Usually the animals pass over on their own time, but sometimes we must intervene. Even though these are cats that we have actually barely met, it is still painful. We know that we have given them a little time when they're no longer in an animal shelter in a metal cage, or in the hands of an owner who couldn't take it.

@enorbet: You are probably the most religious science-advocate I have ever had the pleasure to "meet."

I once again repeat that my meaning of – let's use a different phrase, "the philosophy of science" – is narrow. It is not "philosophizing." It is a strategy of applying as much "scientific rigor" as possible to inquiries that cannot be directly observed. In situations like these, it is necessary to resort to conjecture. (Even "logical reasoning" is more-or-less useless because there's really nothing to base [formal ...] "logic" on.) We see this being applied in a number of recent subjects: above-species evolution, "the Big Bang," and the microstructure of matter ("atoms" and smaller). While we can use these conjectures to construct experiments – and we certainly do that – we base these experimental explorations along pathways that begin with conjecture.

We literally cannot(!) know if those conjectures are, in fact, correct. And the progress of science has regularly shown us that they, while not necessarily "wrong," usually were at least "incomplete."

Philosophy is really, "thinking about thinking." In this case, exploring things that would otherwise be "unknowable," while carefully studying the piece of guide-string that we are holding in our hands. This guide-string and its apparent path being a principal subject of our inquiries.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs @enorbet: You are probably the most religious science-advocate I have ever had the pleasure to "meet."

Have I given you cause to insult me?