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Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Tmtoulouse
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Consider that in Islam, your "Sunday School" may well indoctrinate children to become fanatic suicide bombers. Much of the children's television in the Islamic world is seriously unhinged. However, your argument would count this under religion, and therefore harmless and should be respected and tolerated. I do not buy for one moment that just because we arbitrarily put one form of belief under the banner of "religion" that we should protect it and shield it from free and rational inquiry, and mockery if it necessarily flows from that. Should we not also shoehorn any political beliefs - views on taxation, universal health care, abortion and so on - into that protective bubble?

Your attempt to create a distinction that is objective and all-encompassing is noble, but currently it's very half-baked and open to many holes. Currently all you have is "that's different" when faced with some beliefs falling on the wrong side protective scrutiny free zone you're trying make. This is just special pleading and I don't think you will ever get that far without first trying to figure out a full and encompassing definition of the word "religion" first. Once you've done that, the hard part is done.

Right now you seem to be working backwards; trying to say religion is free from rational/irrational labels and trying to justify that. Instead, try to figure out what properties a belief system should have in order to make it fully immune from rational scrutiny, and why that should be so, and then try to find out what fits it. This should avoid any special pleading problems that arise from endless back-and-forth example-counter-example exchanges. You may think that you have already done this, but I think you've been too circular, effectively saying that things exempt from rational scrutiny should be religious, religious are religious, so religions should be exempt from rational scrutiny.

ADK...I'll repair your tuxedo!18:29, 4 July 2011

Rational scrutiny requires objective standards of rationality by which to judge whatever is being scrutinised.

But people disagree on what the basic principles of rationality are. A lot of people will point to, e.g. the laws of logic, yet all of the traditional laws of logic have been questioned. (For example, intuitionistic logic denies the law of the excluded middle, paraconsistent logic denies the law of non-contradiction, etc.)

How do we decide what is the correct standard of rationality? That is like asking, what is the correct standard of morality. If people disagree, there is no obvious way to resolve the disagreement. Is there a test or experiment or observation we could perform to determine whose rationality is the right one?

It seems that a materialist worldview has no room for objective morality; but if not, how does it have room for objective rationality either?

And if rationality is not objective, isn't rationality just whatever each person says it is? In which case the whole concept of "rational scrutiny" is a waste of time.

What about Alvin Plantinga's "reformed epistemology", where he adopts basic doctrines of his religion as basic principles of rationality? What is to stop any religion from doing that? If there are no objective standards of rationality, then each religion can adopt its own ones. But if there are objective standards, how do we know that the right ones are secular rather than religious?

I myself have views on faith similar, but not identical to Plantinga. To me, faith is by definition rational, since for me faith is a basic principle of rationality. However, I do apply various qualifications (which I won't go into here) to that idea, which avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls of that approach (but maybe not all pitfalls.)

(((Zack Martin)))08:10, 5 July 2011

A semantic dispute over "rationality" isn't the issue. As I've said before, I have no emotional attachment to random strings of vowels and consonants so will happily pick a new word if I get to define it myself. So it's pretty irrelevant.

The question is; why would you want to specifically take religions off the menu when it comes to RW trashing them? Why one type of belief and not an other?

Why would you consider faith - that is, acceptance of an idea despite, and increasingly because of, the lack of evidence - a virtue and part of this "rationalism"?

This probably answers the question. Science tends to hold evidence as the highest authority. After all, how can you say something about the universe if you haven't actually looked at the universe? So faith - that is, having an idea without evidence - can be damaged by science. It would be akin to saying "Armondikov has ginger hair" without making any attempt to actually figure out if that statement is actually true. But not only that, but because faith can be damaged by observation, you will start making excuses about why you can't find that out and eventually pushing and pushing and pushing until you've defined it in such a way that you can't make the observation and then try to limit what others can do answer your question. This is exactly what is happening when you try to shield religion from science.

We used to think we could never fly, or go faster than 10 mph, or land on the moon. The thing is, no one can predict the future (I know this because I can't and am pretty convinced no one has mental faculties I don't posses) so once you start making hard-and-fast decisions about what can't be done, someone will throw egg on your face when they do it. So perhaps we will be able to prove there is no God one day, as I don't see that hypothesis as any different to disproving that he made the world 6000 years ago. All the excuses otherwise are just special pleading.

ADK...I'll forsake your lisp!08:39, 5 July 2011

You say you will pick a new word, but I think you miss the point. Rational is a loaded term, it is a value judgement. It comes with the near universal value baggage Rational=Good, Irrational=Bad. Suppose instead of rational/irrational, you substitute Armondikovian/non-Armondikovian. Then you've lost the value baggage, which is a big deal, so it isn't the same thing. "Should I want to be rational?" "Obviously yes". "Should I want to be Armondikovian?" "Why???"

Some faiths can be damaged by science. Others can't be. Suppose I believe by faith the claim "The mind, by its nature, can never cease to exist". Science can't possibly damage that claim. Despite all lack of scientific evidence for the continued existence of the mind after death, it can't disprove the claim "The minds of the dead have gone to another universe". Nor does it appear it ever could be. (Even if we could somehow prove the existence of parallel universes, and somehow access to them to prove the minds of the dead aren't there, how could science prove there aren't yet further universe unaccessible to us in which the minds of the dead are present.)

Certain unproven claims can potentially be refuted by science. Others can't be. This follows from the nature of science. The findings of science will change; its fundamental nature won't. If you put your faith in what science can disprove, science may one day conquer your faith. If you put your faith in what is beyond the inherent abilities of science, science will never conquer it.

(((Zack Martin)))09:17, 5 July 2011

How do you know what the limits of science are to make such a grandiose claim?

We used to have gods to make life happen. Now we know that isn't the case.

We used to have gods to make the sun rise. Now we know that isn't the case.

We used to have gods to heal the sick. Now we know that isn't the case.

We now have gods to create the universe...

See a pattern here? These beliefs are only beyond science that is possible now. You can only comprehend what actual observation of the universe can discover now. The world is like a giant ice sheet of ignorance. We constantly chip away at this with observation, reason, theory and prediction, learning new things as we progress. Meanwhile this vast icy sheet of ignorance is where God hides, and it's shrinking. Can it keep hiding forever? Yes, there'll always be that one last piece to chip away at. But by doing this you diminish your belief so much as to make it pathetic. Why call it God if it's so weak that it has to constantly run away from observation?

Now, back to the original point, what makes this different to other beliefs? Homeopathy originally was invented in the 17th century and appeared to work - though only because it was less harmful than the prevailing medicine of the time. Medicine since overtook it in effectiveness by stopping killing patients long enough to treat them properly. But the alternative medicine still exists, but now retreats back into the ice wall of ignorance, hiding itself from observation. The claim that active ingredients were infinitely diluted was blown apart and then replaced by less falsifiable means.

This is absolutely no different to a religion, which does the same thing but tries to invent things like metaphyiscal realms to hide in. The only option is to admit it's meaningless or shrink it down until it becomes pointless.

Consider the claim "When we die, we go to another universe, inaccessible from this one, except through death." How could science possibly disprove this claim? Isn't, the grandiose claim, the claim that science will one day be able to disprove this claim? You have absolutely no idea how science could even begin to disprove that claim. It is inherently untestable by science. To claim science will one day be able to disprove it is grandiose, putting an excessive and irrational faith in the power of science.

The fact that other supposedly similar beliefs have been disproven by science, is no evidence against this belief. Science can't disprove it. Science will never be able to disprove it. You have absolutely no evidence to the contrary, just analogies to radically different kinds of claims which science can disprove.

Homeopathy is disprovable by science because homeopathy claims "X is an effective remedy for Y". By a double blind trial, we can compare X to a placebo. If X really was an effective remedy for Y, we would expect to a statistically significant result that patients with Y given X have better outcomes than patients given a placebo. In the absence of such a result, we can conclude X is not an effective remedy after all. Thus, science can disprove homeopathy.

Science can't disprove the claim "When we die, we go to another universe, inaccessible from this one except by death". What kind of statistical test can we perform for this claim? There is none. So this is a radically different claim from "Homeopathic remedies are effective". Science can disprove claims that homeopathy works, it can't disprove this claim.

If science disproves homeopathy, and homeopathists refuse to accept the findings of science, then so much the worse for them; but that is irrelevant to the question of those who accept a claim which by definition science cannot disprove.

(((Zack Martin)))09:48, 5 July 2011
 

The question what science can and can't (dis)prove is interesting. I don't think science can prove anything if we are exact. Why? If we say "science proved that X exists" what we are actually say is "science has - by it's own standard - proven that - by it's own standards - X exists". We can continue that game all day long: "evidence" has it's defintion in science, "method" has one, and so on. Now it may happen that these definitions do not match everybodies definitions of these words and concepts. The normal go-to reaction of scientists (amateur or pro) for that case is "You are stupid for not accepting my definitions", which I always thought was a dick move. Of course we can define a proposed existence in ways which would be not provable for science - simply through the remark "…and behaves so that science can't prove it", and while that claim is valid in the normal world, in science (read branches that use the scientific method) it is invalid (why should be clear). Science and the scientific method are by some taken as the end-all-be-all of thought, but it's fundementals are a question of faith into a concept which can be quite favored looking at the empiric evidence. By scientific standards the scientific method is a valid method and in fact the best system. But that is the minimum requirement of all theories, methods and ideologies. It is presicely why so many scientists scratch your face out when somebody brings up a postmodern concept of steady uncertainty that one of it's fundementals even exists. One attacks the very basement of their nicely build house and they go ballistic, because if that ain't true anymore what is?

Now as I said before, I think that there are several types of rationility (personal, philosophic, scientific) which all have different areas of validity and my personal atheism was reached with the second one, but I'd like to see my atheistic non-believes proven by science, but I can go without it quite nicely.

uhm, t!10:28, 5 July 2011

A couple of things science cannot prove/disprove:

  1. Claims about other universes. Science can only deal with this universe, and maybe other universes somehow "accessible" from this one. If there are other universes with no or very limited accessibility from this one, science can't prove/disprove claims about those universes. The other universe I have proposed, one where all the dead go, but which can only be accessed by dying, is beyond the power of pre mortem science to evaluate.
  2. Suppose there is a perfect(i.e. error-free, never makes a mistake), omniscient, omnipotent, intelligent agent intervening in the universe. Suppose furthermore this agent does not wish for their intervention to be proveable scientifically. Then, science will not be able to detect the intervention of that agent. It may intervene heavily in times/places where there is little scientific ability; but as the ability of science to detect its intervention increases, it simultaneously decreases its intervention. As a result, science can never prove or disprove its intervention, since it only intervenes under circumstances when it knows science will not be able to detect it, and refuses to intervene otherwise.

The second claim is a bit like a Gödel sentence for science. It is a theory which makes the prediction "science cannot prove or disprove the truth of this theory". So it is self-referential (a theory referring to science and its abilities to prove/disprove itself), a bit like a Gödel sentence (I'm not claiming it is exactly like a Gödel sentence though.)

(((Zack Martin)))19:39, 5 July 2011