Faith and Reason.

[Seraph]

Conscious thought has been shown from neurological studies to come from the brain. Nice dodge but like you said, they haven't found a soul in the body, medically speaking, because it doesn't exist or hasn't been proven to exist in the manner in which it has been religiously taught to have existed.

I can make the observation 'farts come from my asshole', but that doesn't explain in the slightest why they do, or how they are processed, or for what purpose they exist. We do however have a very good understanding of why people fart. We do not have a very good understanding of how people 'generate' conscious thought.

My point is that you cannot seriously come to any conclusion of the absence of a 'soul' when you don't even understand how all the parts in the human system even work. That is jumping to a conclusion.

Another problem is that 'soul' is such a poorly defined concept in the first place. Your 'eternal soul' could essentially just be the imprint that you leave on the Universe after you die, given the fact your body has an electrical charge, and no energy ever really gets destroyed. We can get into energy harmonics and all that other stuff if we really wanted to, but I think that is beside the point. I really think science and religion clash because people want them to. That implies personal motive, that that's completely against what science is all about.

[Demosthenes11]

Are my eyes deceiving me or are we now talking about a poorly defined concept from a non empirical stand point being argued within an empirical framework?

oh you, such eloquent words

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

I can make the observation 'farts come from my asshole', but that doesn't explain in the slightest why they do, or how they are processed, or for what purpose they exist. We do however have a very good understanding of why people fart. We do not have a very good understanding of how people 'generate' conscious thought.

My point is that you cannot seriously come to any conclusion of the absence of a 'soul' when you don't even understand how all the parts in the human system even work. That is jumping to a conclusion.

Another problem is that 'soul' is such a poorly defined concept in the first place. Your 'eternal soul' could essentially just be the imprint that you leave on the Universe after you die, given the fact your body has an electrical charge, and no energy ever really gets destroyed. We can get into energy harmonics and all that other stuff if we really wanted to, but I think that is beside the point. I really think science and religion clash because people want them to. That implies personal motive, that that's completely against what science is all about.

No, we actually know a fair amount about consciousness due to disease and injury through the medical field.

Consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A brain injury can wipe out your entire existence and you can become an entirely new person. This is scientific, this is proven. The idea of a soul perpetuating your existence through time regardless of death or injury is not.

While you're trying to move the topic I'll bring it back to the initial question of

Anyway the big problem for me with the intersection of religion and science is when they conflict, what side do you (personally, I'm not religious, so this is aimed at religious scientists) take? How do you justify taking one position over the other, when they are conflicting?

And your arrogant statement to give an example and you could answer. No personal motive here, unless that's your answer to any example you asked to give which would put it into the realm of your opinion, not scientifically providing doubt with facts or evidence.

Of course the "soul" is a poorly defined concept but moving back to this original question this idea of a soul being a part of the body as identified in religion would provide conflict to someone of a scientific nature or profession with their religious side.

[Seraph]

No, we actually know a fair amount about consciousness due to disease and injury through the medical field.

Consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A brain injury can wipe out your entire existence and you can become an entirely new person. This is scientific, this is proven. The idea of a soul perpetuating your existence through time regardless of death or injury is not.

While you're trying to move the topic I'll bring it back to the initial question of



And your arrogant statement to give an example and you could answer. No personal motive here, unless that's your answer to any example you asked to give which would put it into the realm of your opinion, not scientifically providing doubt with facts or evidence.

Of course the "soul" is a poorly defined concept but moving back to this original question this idea of a soul being a part of the body as identified in religion would provide conflict to someone of a scientific nature or profession with their religious side.

Again, i'll use the fart example. You know the brain is at least directly related to consciousness. How? A black box example doesn't work well when you are trying to figure out how and why things work, or provide a direct opposition to what could be considered a 'religious hypothesis'. You are implying that this is a direct contrast between my scientific understand and my faith, and I gave you a very concrete example why it is not. "I know your shit isn't here, but I haven't checked everywhere yet."

The only reason I asked for an example is because the question is far too broad and unspecific to ever answer, but I feel it is a good question.


Edit: A better question would have been 'How does a man directly turn water into wine?' or something similar. Assuming it is true, unless Jesus had a very fast particle smasher and a really big curtain, I got nothing on that one.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Again, i'll use the fart example. You know the brain is at least directly related to consciousness. How? A black box example doesn't work well when you are trying to figure out how and why things work, or provide a direct opposition to what could be considered a 'religious hypothesis'. You are implying that this is a direct contrast between my scientific understand and my faith, and I gave you a very concrete example why it is not. "I know your shit isn't here, but I haven't checked everywhere yet."

The only reason I asked for an example is because the question is far too broad and unspecific to ever answer, but I feel it is a good question.

Again, we know a lot more than just "the brain is at least directly related to consciousness." There is substantiating evidence of specific elements of the brain that control and relate to each other ranging from decision making to motor function. Things that are and aren't related to consciousness.

So in relation to a soul and its location, medically speaking, you have no answer and yes this would provide conflict and does to people of this mindset that I have spoken with.

You can speak for yourself just don't try to simplify neurological science so you can dodge a question you set yourself up to answer.

[Seraph]

So in relation to a soul and its location, medically speaking, you have no answer and yes this would provide conflict and does to people of this mindset that I have spoken with.

You can speak for yourself just don't try to simplify neurological science so you can dodge a question you set yourself up to answer.

I guess then my answer is 'Pick a better question.' If neither of us actually knows what a soul is, how do you expect a serious answer? "Haha, you don't know!" is the exact opposite intention of what you are trying to accomplish. My ignorance about a specific topic prevents absolute conflict with what I know is true, and what I believe religiously.

Edit: My counter question is that are your friends more upset that they haven't found their souls, or that they don't even really know what they are looking for?

[Neosutra]

I guess then my answer is 'Pick a better question.' If neither of us actually knows what a soul is, how do you expect a serious answer? "Haha, you don't know!" is the exact opposite intention of what you are trying to accomplish. My ignorance about a specific topic prevents absolute conflict with what I know is true, and what I believe religiously.

Edit: My counter question is that are your friends more upset that they haven't found their souls, or that they don't even really know what they are looking for?

Thats the same argument for/against god. People avoid logical analysis of their dieties by holding them as undefinable. "You cant disprove my god because I havent told you what my god is exactly". Same thing with a soul. "I cant exactly say what a soul is, so you cant tell me it doesnt exist". By that definition, god could be a 2009 porsche caymen S. Then again if god was a 2009 porsche caymen S, I would be a very spiritual man.

[Seraph]

Thats the same argument for/against god. People avoid logical analysis of their dieties by holding them as undefinable. "You cant disprove my god because I havent told you what my god is exactly". Same thing with a soul. "I cant exactly say what a soul is, so you cant tell me it doesnt exist". By that definition, god could be a 2009 porsche caymen S. Then again if god was a 2009 porsche caymen S, I would be a very spiritual man.

Then asking 'What does one do when their faith and science clash?' is a loaded question if that is the intent.

[Tristam]

Then asking 'What does one do when their faith and science clash?' is a loaded question if that is the intent.

I think a better question is "Do you think the world is 6000 years old, or ~4.5 billion years old?"

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

I guess then my answer is 'Pick a better question.' If neither of us actually knows what a soul is, how do you expect a serious answer? "Haha, you don't know!" is the exact opposite intention of what you are trying to accomplish. My ignorance about a specific topic prevents absolute conflict with what I know is true, and what I believe religiously.

Edit: My counter question is that are your friends more upset that they haven't found their souls, or that they don't even really know what they are looking for?

No they're actually quite content it appears despite these questions but there are two factors regarding that;

a) No one man can measure anothers internal conflict. I won't presume they're content or discontent but they seem to me to be ok with it.

b) People of faith tend to take the path of least resistance. "No soul in the body? It's invisible, problem solved."

Now I'm sure educated people don't reconcile their differences of faith and reason in exactly that way but you get the point; people will make an excuse and blow it off or they will scrutinize the hell out of it until they come to the conclusion they realize it doesn't make sense or they make their own sense out of it. Then the people who realize it doesn't make sense have to decide whether to discard particular portions of their faith to tailor it to their world or abandon it all together.

[Linliel]

I guess I was thinking more those who think the Bible/Koran/etc. is the literal word of God vs. things that science show us to be true or at least extremely likely (and more likely than the religious story). e.g. the world is ancient, the animals weren't "created" as they are now, evolution vs. God making things "perfect", etc.

These are possibly easy arguments to dismiss if you don't take the Bible literally, but what if something came up that challenged some part of your religion that you were absolutely sure of, like, that there was a "delusion gene" that meant that people who had it were subject to believing in a higher power or something. Anyway, what then? Would you go with the science, which conflicts with your beliefs, or what?

If that's too convoluted an idea, what about if you discovered that, say, women who didn't have at least one abortion before having a living child were more likely to have children who were mentally disabled or deformed in some way?

[Eratosthenes]

I guess I was thinking more those who think the Bible/Koran/etc. is the literal word of God vs. things that science show us to be true or at least extremely likely (and more likely than the religious story). e.g. the world is ancient, the animals weren't "created" as they are now, evolution vs. God making things "perfect", etc.

I had to deal with this, having been brought up in a YEC church, watching Bill Nye as a kid, and finally taking AP Biology in high school. I once believed that God had created the world in an old state a few thousand years ago, while also accepting evolution as a natural process. That was back when I still thought dogma was worth something.

[Kaylia]

It will be the last post I make about scientific method, because it's getting old. If you still think you don't need beliefs to make the whole thing work, just draw a boolean graphic of the statement you need, and you will realize that somewhere, there is something you assume to be true (a belief).

Exactly, you cannot use the scientific method to prove the validity of itself.

You can only seek disproofs, and if you are unable to conclusively show something is wrong, you can then claim it is right until further notice.

That's what Einstein said. No amount of experiments will prove me right, but only one can prove me wrong.

I've no problem with this, because that's exactly what the method is about. If it can predict something reliably, then it is right until further notice.

[Melchiah]

It will be the last post I make about scientific method, because it's getting old. If you still think you don't need beliefs to make the whole thing work, just draw a boolean graphic of the statement you need, and you will realize that somewhere, there is something you assume to be true (a belief).





That's what Einstein said. No amount of experiments will prove me right, but only one can prove me wrong.

I've no problem with this, because that's exactly what the method is about. If it can predict something reliably, then it is right until further notice.

You really need to just concede this point, because you are losing ground the more you keep going.

The only way anyone is going to agree with you is to take the position that a postulate or theorem is a "belief" until it is subjected to the scientific method for analysis, and you can only call it a belief because it is the next step the mind takes after making an observation and attempting to understand it.

The difference between this type of belief and faith is that one is subjected to analysis and then discarded if proven false either outright or by overwhelming statistical improbability whereas "faith" sets itself up as the one truth, and protects itself from falsehood by defining itself so as to make analysis and testing irrelevant.

I don't "believe" that 1+1 = 2, I think it does and I subsequently prove that it does through analysis and observation, and my results will be duplicated, 100% of the time by any person who performs my experiment correctly under the same parameters that I did. Faith cannot make this boast, and I defy you to demonstrate otherwise.

Stop being obtuse Kaylia, you're smarter than that.

[Kuya]

Can we stop the debating over the scientific method? I've read enough debates over the philosophy of science to know that these kinds of things never end, because it never matters how logical and reasonable both sides are, they're always going to disagree. It is simply irrelevant, considering that all humans possess ideas that are assumed true, most of the time without even any thought, and any human whose life is completely logical, is not a human at all. It follows that some tenants of science, as a human creation, require ideas to be assumed true with little to no questioning to actually function.

[Linliel]

It seems here you're trying to appeal to the "knowledge is justified true beliefs" theory, which is widely disagreed upon by philosophers (thanks to the Gettier problem).

Most epistemologists of religion now discuss this problem in religion as a debate about evidentialism, and whether it applies to the belief system of religion. Evidentialism is the idea that a belief is justified if it's proportioned to the evidence, i.e. it's not justified to have a belief unless there is hard evidence for it.

There's a great write up here but it's pretty hardcore: The Epistemology of Religion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

tl;dr (and I haven't studied this area, but I have done other philosophy, mostly ethics so I may have misinterpreted this from a brief reading) is that there are a few types of evidence that can be accepted: beliefs that are "evident to the senses" (direct sense-experience evidence, such as touching something), or beliefs that are "self-evident" (obvious when you think about it). But in this way, then, no beliefs asserting the contents of religious experience counts as evidence.

There's a lot more detail about what counts as evidence, but the general conclusion is this:

"... the only way of deciding whether the religious beliefs are justified would be to examine various arguments with the non-religious beliefs as premisses and the religious beliefs as conclusions."

And therefore:

"According to evidentialism it follows that if the known arguments for there being a God, including any arguments from religious experience, are at best probable ones, no one would be justified in having full belief that there is a God. And the same holds for other religious beliefs, such as the Christian belief that Jesus was God incarnate. Likewise, it would not be justified to believe even partially (i.e., with less than full confidence) if there is not a balance of evidence for belief."

Of course there are problems with this view which are argued forward and back about in that link, but this is generally what epistemologists of religion discuss with regard to whether religious beliefs are justified.

I'm not going to make any particular claims about what I think in this debate, because I don't know enough about the background epistemology, and as a theoretical professional philosopher (well, when I hand in this PhD and get a job, lol) I know that it's not a good idea to make particular statements about philosophical arguments until I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about But there's a bit of the history of this debate anyway.

[Kaylia]

You really need to just concede this point, because you are losing ground the more you keep going.

The only way anyone is going to agree with you is to take the position that a postulate or theorem is a "belief" until it is subjected to the scientific method for analysis, and you can only call it a belief because it is the next step the mind takes after making an observation and attempting to understand it.

The difference between this type of belief and faith is that one is subjected to analysis and then discarded if proven false either outright or by overwhelming statistical improbability whereas "faith" sets itself up as the one truth, and protects itself from falsehood by defining itself so as to make analysis and testing irrelevant.

I don't "believe" that 1+1 = 2, I think it does and I subsequently prove that it does through analysis and observation, and my results will be duplicated, 100% of the time by any person who performs my experiment correctly under the same parameters that I did. Faith cannot make this boast, and I defy you to demonstrate otherwise.

Stop being obtuse Kaylia, you're smarter than that.

1+1 = 2 is a definition, it will obviously be true. There is no proof or belief needed.

I'm not losing any ground, and I won't concede anything because there is nothing to concede here. That's how the method was established, and that's what we are using. I'm not drawing parallele with religion here, but it's something important to mention when people are waving the "truth" around, thinking it's something absolute. Talking about truth without defining every axioms just make you an hypocrite.

In this case, the only axioms I need is one that set my observation as "true"...if you can do it with less axioms or differents axioms, good for you, but which one?


The difference between Faith and belief?
Faith: confidence that a truth is true
Belief: Something you assume to be true.

Or did you mean the difference between postulate and beliefs? Anyway, can you answer this question if you can. "I think therefore I am" is a postulate or a belief?

[Neosutra]

Last post huh kaylia.

And no, we dont assume aspects of science are true. We prove them true, or discard them. If they ever fail the test, they are discarded. How is this a hard concept for you?

[Kaylia]

Just too hard to pass on faulty logic. You know it's faulty when there is no axioms defined.

Last post huh kaylia.

And no, we dont assume aspects of science are true. We prove them true, or discard them. If they ever fail the test, they are discarded. How is this a hard concept for you?

True in reference to?






And obvious proof that God exists

Spoiler: show

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ron-galaxy.jpg


Except not really, but chaos still make good picture.

[Melchiah]

"I think therefore I am" is philosophical nonsense. You cannot define existence by the ability to think, otherwise a tree stump wouldn't exist and we know very well that they do.