Can Science And Religion Coexist Peacefully?

[kowalskil]

Can science and religion coexist peacefully? This is a good question to start an interesting discussion. See how it was answered by many smart people at my website:

 

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/donotmix.html

 

Please share this link with others, when appropriate. Thank you in advance.

 

Ludwik Kowalski (see wikipedia)

Professor Emeritus

Montclair State University, NJ, USA

[Qfwfq]

See how it was answered by many smart people at my website:

I very much agree that it is silly for folks to argue as if it were a matter of either science or religion is true. I myself am agnostic, but there are many people who value both and it would be great if everybody at least respected both.

 

It would be helpful for people to know that even Galileo's case wasn't as simple as often narrated. He was much more up against Peripatetics than against the religious. He himself was religious and believed that those topics are outside the purpose of the Scriptures.

[Boerseun]

I doubt it. Science is empirical, religion is dogmatic. At best, science can view religion as a failed hypothesis. The argument goes that the two operate in different spheres and should each be able to do its thing in peace. But that's exactly where the problem lies, because religion makes claims that interfere in science's domain. Religion makes claims that their god, or gods, are responsible for people recovering from illness, for physical occurrences like rainfall, etc. And to expect a failed hypothesis to be respected for no other reason than the sheer number of people who take it to be the truth, is disingenuous. The Truth is not a democracy, and should not be held as such. It's immaterial if there are 2 billion Christians world-wide, or only five. Without any evidence apart from the self-referential Bible, it is not worthy of any more respect than the notion that the moon is made of cheese. For that same argument, Hogwarts must be a real place, because it is written about in the Harry Potter books.

 

So, to make a long story short, I don't see how religion and science can peacefully co-exist and why religion should expect any respect other than the same passing glance a scientist will give any other failed hypothesis. Why would it be deserving of respect, in any case? Can I demand of you to respect the color green, because I believe that it has magical properties? That's roughly how ridiculous religions' expectation of undeserving respect is to the non-religious.

[Qfwfq]

Can I demand of you to respect the color green, because I believe that it has magical properties?

Of course not, I fully agree. In fact I despise the colour green because it has no magical properties at all; it should be banned. It will be a mammoth effort to genetically re-engineer all vegetaion on Earth with an alternative to chlorophyll, but it should be done in order to elevate us out of ignorance as soon as possible.

[Gordon Freeman]

Before I really get into this, know that I do not 'believe' in any religion, or 'believe' in any field of thought regarding science, I am defined as a nihilist, because I know belief (or really blind faith) leads directly to ignorance (which I define as the perpetuation of falsehood). Blindly believing something will happen, does not change the outcome of an action, in fact believing in something does not change it at all, only your perception of it. If you expand on that, you can realize that while both religion and science are based in good ideas, the practices and beliefs built up around them are wrong, because they lead directly to the perpetuation of ignorance.

 

If you are reading this, you don't 'believe' yourself to be looking at a computer monitor, and you don't 'believe' this text to exist in a form you actively interpret, you KNOW it exists, and you KNOW you're looking at a monitor. Follow this same logic and it sure seems silly to all of a sudden blindly believe that your screen will start flashing bright red. Has it started flashing yet? No? It makes no sense whatsoever for your whole monitor to start uncontrollably, and by what may seem the affects of magic, flashing bright red. Probably a bad example, yet people 'believe' that giving their money to an organization telling you that you have to give them money, or you'll be doomed for all time ("time", which is a dimension) in a place that they can't prove exists, or have had any evidence throughout all humanity to suggest it exists, is perfectly logical.

 

Let's use a revised form of Pure Logic, called 2 Plus 2 Logic (created and defined by Matthew Garon). This logic was made to show that anything that can be proved by it, can be just as easily proved and tested on a five year old (to show how easy a subject is to understand). If I say two plus two equals four, you agree. There is no time in all mathematics that two, added to another two, will not equivocate itself to a summation of four. Your logical mind does not question this (shouldn't* lol). You know it's a fact because you can prove it, there are many well documented theorems and proofs, as well as logical tests you can run or synthesize yourself that support the fact that 2 + 2 = 4.

 

Now I say two plus two equals eighty three. You know this is wrong. You're mind is so logically strong, that you don't even have to think about it, to know it is wrong. Yet when told a flying bearded man, who sent Baraqijal (according to christian mythos, in the book of Enoch) down to Earth because he was kicked out of a place which cannot be proven exists, and bred with humans (suggesting he wasn't human) to make a super-human race that was then taken off Earth and sent back into the sky, most people passively accept the belief, without question.

 

This is ****ing disappointing to me (pardon my realism). I'm not only applying this to Christians, because all major religions today are based off the same root, which is the Sumerian faith (read the Necronomicon if you don't have any idea what the Sumerians believed in lol). So I'm spreading the former statement to all religion. Saying anything exists, or does not exist, without a logical proof that can self-actuate it's existence, means it has no logical or philosophical backing. That is not an opinion, it is a widely accepted fact. You have the right to deny anything I've said, but if you do, I want you to realize that it doesn't follow suit with any form of Pure Logic, and is considered, by all forms of logic, to be defined as "wrong".

 

I will make one more statement about religious fallacies before moving onto scientific fallacies.

 

In accordance with 2 Plus 2 Logic, I look to the Bible. In it, as many of you may be aware, it states that when Christ Jesus was hanged on the cross to be crucified, there were others present, being crucified with him. Christ said unto one of them, "Today you will be with me in Paradise". Christ then when to hell for three days...

 

Now, by all means of logic, if religion is intrinsically good, and the beliefs they are based and controlled by, are logically sound, how in the ****, is the Bible a logical proof? It does not follow logical proof, and again it is your right to accept that, but it is also your right to accept that it does not follow logic, or any proof that gives it a rationale.

 

"That aside, religion is balls deep unto the chin of money and politics. In every country all over the world, there is not a single government that is not directly influenced by religion. This is due to the fact that government is ran by a small percent of the people in a society, rather than the whole society. A small percent of society, with a similar religion, will not accurately represent the whole society, who may not share any of the beliefs at all. The people in a society wipe their scrotums off on the face value of money, creaming their fillies every time they have some, and the government running these societies blows its load of ignorance at the sheer power generated from the control over the use of money, and if you think religious leaders (and enforcers of said religions) don't pop their glock into the chest of the monetary system, then you are not part of a structured religion, and have never experienced it's rape of mankind through lowly systems of monetary seduction."

- Matthew R. Garon

 

As far as most people who are "scientifically based" goes, I say unto thee: Saying God can't exist because 'Science' says he doesn't, is as stupid as saying the universe was created by God because the Bible says so.

 

I will now list a series of proven scientific facts, evidence gathered and researched by yours truly, all correlated in logical fashion to prove a point. There is no 'suggestion' in this list, it is merely factual evidence presented to you, any interpretations you have will be at the will of your own consciousness.

 

A. There is an active kinetic energy that is spawned by means of certain dimensions in this universe. We know it exists because without it, all matter would be at Absolute Zero. This same active kinetic energy is the same energy that sustains the vibrational forces used to coalesce the interactions between the atoms that make up the matter in our bodies. This active kinetic energy is the same active kinetic energy that sustains our existence, and therefore our life. To deny having a force that sustains your life, is to deny your existence.

 

B. When you die, that active kinetic energy that was being used and consumed by the matter in your body is released into different faucets of nature and the universe to be re-used. We know this is true because matter and energy cannot be destroyed (which is still technically in debate, but it doesn't happen unless synthetically forced, so we'll disregard quant for this one).

 

C. The whole universe, which is the container and identity of the source of the active kinetic energy, not only spawned the energy, but gives way in which the energy to be re-absorbed, a re-united affect of universe and separate identity, into one giant collective.

 

Now lets call proof A your "life force". Lets call proof B the death of your body, and the passage of your life force. Lets call proof C an "after life".

 

Do these scientific proofs not fulfill the basis of all religions ever?

 

 

 

I now leave you with the philosopher's question: what can you truly define as religion, and what can you truly define as science, if they are the same thing in ideology?

 

 

-

[Boerseun]

Equating your religious examples of A, B and C with science is disingenuous, because religion implies an undying soul to go through the processes of A, B and C. There is a continuity of consciousness there (in the religious sense) that is completely absent in the scientific take on things.

 

Also, your final "philosopher's question" is wrong, because they are simply not the same in ideology. Firstly, Religion is dogmatic. Science is empirical, self-questioning and self-correcting. The last two attributes will be heresy in the religious milieu, punishable by death only a few short centuries ago (or even today, still, if you have the misfortune to be a Muslim).

[HydrogenBond]

Religion has much wisdom, one just needs to learn to interpret properly. Let me give an interesting example. In modern times, language is associated with thinking and is often viewed by many as being necessary for thought. In the bible, it says "in the beginning was the word and the word was God. Relative to thinking, when the ancient mind reached an unknown, they would attribute this to God. Because of that one do-all word, used to explain many things, this one word provided a platform for thinking, even if the word was redundant.

 

Although not the best example, the F-word can be used to convey a lot of different meanings. Some people can communicate a very wide range of things saying the f-word word, every other word, since each change in inflection and body language gives it a new meaning. If language is indeed needed to convey meaning, one word can do a lot.

 

With the word God, all types of unknown observation can take form via language using the G-word. To explain a new phenomena, one could point and say the G-word every other word to transfer a very wide range of meaning. The word association fixes the image in the mind, so one can start to see the details. I look at Genesis as the first human theories in physics and biology. I don't nag about Newton not be exactly right, even though Einstein advanced his theory. It was part of the process of humans of trying to explain reality. It makes use of that very ancient G-word.

 

Science can get rather long winded, especially in biology, but the generation of words helps to fix observation in the mind. The G-word was often there first, pointing the way. The gods were in the heavens, so people look at the sky to see them and discover stars. God is in the forest. Some one goes to the forest and finds something new, that is one of god's creatures. We will call him, bear.

 

I

[Gordon Freeman]

Equating your religious examples of A, B and C with science is disingenuous, because religion implies an undying soul to go through the processes of A, B and C. There is a continuity of consciousness there (in the religious sense) that is completely absent in the scientific take on things.

 

Also, your final "philosopher's question" is wrong, because they are simply not the same in ideology. Firstly, Religion is dogmatic. Science is empirical, self-questioning and self-correcting. The last two attributes will be heresy in the religious milieu, punishable by death only a few short centuries ago (or even today, still, if you have the misfortune to be a Muslim).

 

Since when does science disallow a discontinuity of consciousness? In fact there's something called the closest continuer theory that covers this exact problem. Read Nozick, he'll give the philosophical explanation for it (and don't tell me philosophy isn't a science).

 

And sure, religion is very dogmatic, but only the practices built on beliefs, that are built off the original idea (which in most cases is essentially "love" [oxytocin]). When I gave the question, I was implying that the base ideas are the same, and that is that the universe is a positive energy (which religion deems as "love").

 

I was extremely drunk when I wrote the passage above, so I hope you all forgive the grammar and lucidness of my inebriated writings. If my points are still unclear, I'll try to clarify as we go...

 

One other thing everyone might find interesting is an acute idea-

 

"This is how you test whether or not your religion is strong enough to not only be factually based, but rationally and spiritually sound: take whatever religious text you follow, say the Bible, and replace every holy word for 'God' or 'creator' with "Flying Spaghetti Monster". If you can read through the whole thing, and it still doesn't seem completely ****ing retarded to you, then it's very logically sound. However, if you tell me that at the age of 13, the Flying Spaghetti Monster was at a banging party yo, and that he turned water into wine, and that's still logical to you, then I am very willing to reject your existence and substitute it for one that actually takes use of it's cognitive facets."

- Matthew Garon

[HydrogenBond]

I did research to investigate the firmware aspects of the human personality. This firmware can be seen as evolving programs in the brain, which make human behavior more or less uniform, yet which will nevertheless progress with age and experience. The urge for love and sex is fairly uniform. Much of the inflated feeling and compulsion is via unconscious firmware, progressing with time.

 

Most religions are very conscious of these firmware, although often projected. The religious fanatic uses command line to trigger the compelling firmware. Religion have a better handle on command lines for a wider range of firmware, allowing one to gain internal access for data collection. Science is still at the infant stage and tends to stay at instinctive firmware. The other layers of firmware are more subtle and the best data only be obtained by going inside the mind. Second hand data does not tell you enough and therefore draws a limited conclusion.

 

For example, falling in love is different than watching someone else do it. The former will experience nuances, that will not show upon the surface. There may be so much going on in terms of ups and downs and mixed feelings this data may not be easy to transfer via language in real time. Say we based our theory of falling in love on just watching, since there is a limitation to the data, the theory will fall short. Religious wisdom is often the summation of careful internal observations and reflections over many generations concerned with the paradoxes of human nature and therefore the firmware. They are closer than science when it comes to the firmware which define human behavior. Science can learn form this.

 

Let me give a example of ancient wisdom based on firmware activity. The tree of good and evil or knowledge of good and evil, uses law to separate an action into two sets of data. In other words, say the law says, thou shall not steal. There is the good path which brings social well being and the bad path connected to the enforced fear. Although one law, it will program two firmware. Religion shows this by projecting the good and evil of moral law into two separate personifications, such as Christ and Satan, heaven and hell. One side of the same law reflects calm/peaceful and side of the same law, fear. When law is just, the separation is distinct.

 

The lesson of the tree of knowledge of good and evil also shows a type of law called prohibitions, which create temptation. These are laws of good and evil, but unlike certain laws which create a sharp dividing firmware line, these tend to confuse the dark side and the good side. A law like a speed limit will have a different unconscious impact than an alcohol prohibition, since the first creates a cleaner divide, while the second tends to confuse the separation of the law's dual data set.

 

With prohibitions it is not a clean separation into good and evil, since the lawful side can get very mean, while the poor woman who now called a witch, can be a nice person. The way the special effect works is the same two firmware are active, such as in moral law, but the data gets irrationally swapped, until the firmware unconsciously switches sides. Temptation is one of the artifacts of the switch. The switch is now using different firmware than one consciously thinks. Science has been useful to point out that certain laws of manmade religion, don't always create the proper division. But the lack of firmware knowledge also prevents them from seeing and pointing out the same thing in secular society since it is not considered religion.

[Boerseun]

Since when does science disallow a discontinuity of consciousness?

Since forever. Science says dat when you kicka da bucket, you kicka da bucket. And that's about it. There's no continuity of consciousness, unless you can prove life after death.

In fact there's something called the closest continuer theory that covers this exact problem. Read Nozick' date=' he'll give the philosophical explanation for it (and don't tell me philosophy isn't a science).[/quote']

...okaaaaay, but then this might come as a shock to you: Philosophy isn't science. Not by a looooooong shot.

[CraigD]

The recent evolution of philosophical concepts of consciousness and identity

Since when does science disallow a discontinuity of consciousness? In fact there's something called the closest continuer theory that covers this exact problem. Read Nozick, he'll give the philosophical explanation for it (and don't tell me philosophy isn't a science).

Thanks for the introduction to Robert Nozick and his “Closest Continuer Schema”, Gordon! It appears to have similarities to ideas from cognitive/computer scientists/philosophers like Douglas Hofstadter, though I don’t find a reference to Nozick in his recent book I Am a Strange Loop.

 

I must assert, though, that worse than judge “continuity (I believe you mean this, not ‘discontinuity’, in your post) of consciousness” false, science, considers it “not even wrong”, because no scientific definition of consciousness allows it to meaningfully be assigned objectively real qualities such as continuity. Though an important philosophical concept, “continuity of consciousness” is not, at present, a scientific one, because (despite your insistence that you not be told, Gordon), philosophy is not a science in the modern sense. Science must, ultimately, involve objectively verifiable events – a conclusion of the 1922 Vienna Circle mentioned in the wikipedia article on Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations.

 

Like Hofstadter, Nozick appears to discard the idea of a metaphysically real “consciousness”, personal identity, or “the I”, treating it instead as an identifiable phenomena arising from neurology able to categorize and predict in a way that the self, the I, is a central feature.

 

In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter suggests that a critical flaw in the predominant philosophical ideas about consciousness/self identity, Descartes’s Res Cogitans (“substance of thought”) is what he calls the “one body, one I/soul/person dogma”. Rather, as all that is a person is the model of that person in one or more “programs” – the best, at present, “running” in human brains – a single person, while mostly modeled running in the brain of the body conventionally associated with that person, is distributed somewhat among the brains of every human brain, and to a smaller extent, maybe, in the brains of non-human animals or even some computers. Thus, person/soul immortality depends, essentially, on the persistence of models of a person after that person’s body’s physical death. Famous people – Hofstadter mentions classical music composers, such as Beethoven – may in a sense be more present now, long after their physical deaths, because so many brains are running models of them.

 

IMHO, this shift in the philosophical concept of consciousness/personal identity, with its requirement of testable objective observables, suggest that a scientific theory of this concept is possible and important , but that the concept as expressed in such a theory will little resemble its pre-scientific, philosophical roots.

[HydrogenBond]

The challenge that science faces is that the frontier data for defining consciousness comes from inside not outside. For example, we can observe a lion in its natural habitat and draw many conclusions based on external observations of behavior. But we can't know what is actually going within its mind, in terms of the details of how the lion processes information before and during action.

 

We might scan its brain to see which areas are active, but this also does not give us all the information needed to extrapolate exactly how its consciousness is working. People might try to project human characteristics into the lion saying he feels emotion or it logically judges distances when hunting, etc. However, since this can't be proven from the outside, it comes down to the prestige of opinion based on an extrapolation of outward behavior and what we wish to assume the process is.

 

The same is true for the human mind, but with the difference, we can go inside our own human minds to gain the extra data that is often left out. An analogy is using a unknown computer program. We can use the mouse and click to see what the program does on the monitor. Then we come up with a theory for how such a program might be written. But unless you look at the actual code, this is just opinion. We can even write a new program that can get the same output and assume this is how the original is written. Science recognizes, thereby not recognizing theories of consciousness as science.

 

I saw that problem and solution many years back. The way I began this was via reading the works of Carl Jung. He theory was about collective human nature based on archetypes, which in modern terms would be analogous to brain firmware, which has form for growth but is empty at birth and progress with age and experience. Jung used the second hand data science approach presenting thousands of data points which helped to narrow down firmware output into trends until there a basic set of firmware layering was inferred. I recognized that this was all well and good, but lacked hard data that would make it irrefutable. I saw this as an opportunity to prove his theory to myself.

 

The main reason Jung is not the mainstream of psychology research, even though it was way ahead of the others, was that much of the good firmware data came from the symbolism of religion, mythology, alchemy, art, literature, etc. These are collective and therefore reflected the collective nature of the firmware. Because Jung would not just take the atheist pledge to discount all that is religion, but saw value within the symbolism, mainstream science shunned him in favor of rational polytheism.

 

I like to challenge science with common sense, but nevertheless like both religion and science, especially in this frontier area, with religion having better data but science helping to keep it all objective. If science had a better handle on the firmware, it would be able to classify atheism and religion in terms of the type of firmware associated with the induction. One might be surprised by what they both have in common.

[Gordon Freeman]

Since forever. Science says dat when you kicka da bucket, you kicka da bucket. And that's about it. There's no continuity of consciousness, unless you can prove life after death.

 

After I die, life will continue to exist... is that not life after death? Not to mention, the energy my body used will still exist, and will be used in other instances, most likely involved with matter of sorts, possibly with matter existing on Earth. Which is again to mention that my physical matter will still exist and that it will be moved for other purposes on Earth in in the universe. If my physical being is my identity, and my identity is split up, is it not still my identity? All of us, all human beings, are composed of atoms that were created by stars. Our physical material has been proven to exist in stars long before it did on Earth of any planet. We are the composition of dead stars, yet we can still call them stars. This shows that after I die, the people made up of me can still be called parts of me, if not me in totale.

 

CraigD delved a little deeper into Nozick above, and he gives a good axium for how to question identity. He gives a Greek example: You have a boat made of many planks of wood. After your first day at sea, you realize a plank is squeaky, so when you come back on shore, you replace the plank with a new piece of wood. Even though a plank has been replaced, there is no question that it's not still your boat, right? Lets say every day after that, you also replaced another plank, one plank each day, until you've replaced every single plank on the entire boat. Is it still your boat? Lets go even further to say that you kept all the planks you replace, and reassembled them in the exact place they were- in coordination with their original placement on the ship. Which boat is YOUR boat? How could you define it as the 'original'?

 

If I, a human being, am split into parts, are those parts not many to a whole? Don't try to tell me no life exists after a death. Death is not the end of life, in fact it feeds more life to come.

 

A side note I'd like to mention- if you want a truly 'spiritual' representation and actuation of life after death, try astral projection or self-hallucination techniques DURING sensory deprivation. If you can get that DMT going in your brain, I guarantee you, you will realize things that are normally told to be secret. (I have done both the aforementioned activities).

 

 

...okaaaaay, but then this might come as a shock to you: Philosophy isn't science. Not by a looooooong shot.

 

Then how come there's mathematical philosophy? As if that one statement mattered, but it seems fair to argue your point, since you argued a seemingly worthless one of mine.

 

Since it doesn't matter, like I said, why question what falls into science, when we know that modern science is intrinsically flawed?

 

inb4 shitstorm of gasping pasty white people spewing links to useless articles trying to prove that statement wrong.

[Boerseun]

Gordon, your consciousness is not the matter your brain is made of. Your consciousness is the pattern in which the matter in your brain is organised. Once you die, that pattern is broken, and that's the end of you. Obviously there's life after death, if you mean other people and animals and plants, but that's not what we're discussing, is it?

 

As to your point about maths and science, maths isn't science, either. Maths is a language. Science is a methodology. Philosophy is, well, philosophy.

 

As to the rest of your post, I think you need to get of the chems.

[Qfwfq]

Philosophy is, well, philosophy.

Philosophy is a word that comes from the Greek, meaning quest for knowledge. Science is a word that comes from the Latin meaning knowledge. Therefore philosophy is the quest for science.

 

Nowadays the average Joe calls philosophy science and he, well, he calls bullcrap philosophy. :doh:

[modest]

Can science and religion coexist peacefully?

 

I think it depends on the definition of science and religion, but given the usual meaning of the words I'd say the answer is most definitely, yes. As an example, many scientists who excel in their field are religious.

 

More at odds, I think, are the religious and scientific methods.

 

Before I really get into this, know that I do not 'believe' in any religion, or 'believe' in any field of thought regarding science, I am defined as a nihilist, because I know belief (or really blind faith) leads directly to ignorance (which I define as the perpetuation of falsehood)...

 

...If you are reading this, you don't 'believe' yourself to be looking at a computer monitor, and you don't 'believe' this text to exist in a form you actively interpret, you KNOW it exists, and you KNOW you're looking at a monitor.

 

It jumps out at me that you call yourself a nihilist, but the description that follows is the opposite of nihilism. Compare, for example, your statement:

 

"you KNOW it exists, and you KNOW you're looking at a monitor"

 

to the Oxford English dictionary definition of philosophical nihilism:

 

"the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence"

 

or wikipedia's description of epistemological nihilism:

 

Nihilism of an epistemological form can be seen as an extreme form of skepticism in which all knowledge is denied.

 

It may avoid confusion if you used a different label. Your statements about 2 plus 2 logic...

 

Let's use a revised form of Pure Logic, called 2 Plus 2 Logic (created and defined by Matthew Garon). This logic was made to show that anything that can be proved by it, can be just as easily proved and tested on a five year old (to show how easy a subject is to understand). If I say two plus two equals four, you agree. There is no time in all mathematics that two, added to another two, will not equivocate itself to a summation of four. Your logical mind does not question this (shouldn't* lol). You know it's a fact because you can prove it, there are many well documented theorems and proofs, as well as logical tests you can run or synthesize yourself that support the fact that 2 + 2 = 4.

 

...look rather like strict or pure rationalism to me—put concisely, that all knowledge can be proven by logic alone. This was the most popular worldview amongst philosophers in the Platonic tradition until Kant's publication of a 'critique of pure reason' toward the end of the scientific revolution.

 

According to Kant, "2 + 2 = 4" is similar to metaphysical propositions in that they are synthetic a priori judgments. There is a good analysis of the issue here: Wikipedia -- analytic–synthetic distinction

 

I, like Kant, believe that such propositions cannot be proven by logic alone. Take, for example, these two statements:

 

1. The three interior angles of a triangle added together yield 180º.
   
2. The three interior angles of a triangle added together yield less than 180º.
   

Which proposition is correct?

 

Logically, they are both correct. According to Euclidean geometry #1 is correct and according to hyperbolic geometry #2 is correct, and, as the famous saying goes, one geometry cannot be more true than another—it can only be more convenient. So, logic alone doesn't get us to the truth of the world when it comes to certain types of propositions. As thinking beings, we also rely on experience and metaphysical beliefs.

 

People are born with a host of metaphysical beliefs. An understanding of spatial extent, movement, causality, and other concepts are hardwired into our brain. Logical analysis does not offer a sufficient means of proving these concepts true or false as much as experience offers a means of confirming their usefulness.

 

As far as most people who are "scientifically based" goes, I say unto thee: Saying God can't exist because 'Science' says he doesn't, is as stupid as saying the universe was created by God because the Bible says so.

 

Are you familiar with the scientific method? I don't understand how you could think "God can't exist because 'Science' says he doesn't" is a "scientific bias". A bias toward science is a bias toward experimental confirmation which is the opposite of "Science says so". If 'Science' were a persona declaring things to be so, scientists would no doubt be very skeptical of whatever he was claiming.

 

~modest

[Gordon Freeman]

It jumps out at me that you call yourself a nihilist

 

I did not.

 

It may avoid confusion if you used a different label.

 

I would if I knew of any other label that accurately describes my system of ideology.

 

Logically, they are both correct. According to Euclidean geometry #1 is correct and according to hyperbolic geometry #2 is correct, and, as the famous saying goes, one geometry cannot be more true than another—it can only be more convenient. So, logic alone doesn't get us to the truth of the world when it comes to certain types of propositions. As thinking beings, we also rely on experience and metaphysical beliefs.

 

I don't except a conclusion to exeunt the use of logic as the basis of reasoning when logic was necessary to come about the conclusion. Another thing you did wrong in that last quote is that you only gave two options for a large field of view, when there are many, many ways to look at mathematics, geometry, and triangles. One closed example on a specific topic in that view will not accurately account for all possible outcomes and means to the outcomes available which may or may not be along the line of your original proof. Saying that two things that SEEM to conflict, yet are both accepted, is proof that logic is flawed in some sense, is not a conclusive argument. You say that the two forms of geometric view can hold either 1 or 2 to be true, granted. You say the one being used is for convenience, granted. Then how was there a problem to begin with? There is no flaw in logic for that proof, because there was no disclaiming proof to be held.

 

I understand where you were going with it, but it's a bad example because it leaves a hole open as to what we can define as 'conflicting evidence'.

 

Are you familiar with the scientific method? I don't understand how you could think "God can't exist because 'Science' says he doesn't" is a "scientific bias". A bias toward science is a bias toward experimental confirmation which is the opposite of "Science says so". If 'Science' were a persona declaring things to be so, scientists would no doubt be very skeptical of whatever he was claiming.

 

I figured it would be interpreted this way, but that's not how my diction was supposed to play out. Notice that the words "Scientifically based" are quoted in the original text. This was done for a reason. I am very familiar with the scientific method and all its available faucets of exploration, but it has nothing to do with the people I mentioned. I was describing the people that will blindly say something isn't possible because they simply heard it from somewhere else, but haven't actually researched or explored the information themselves, nor are granted with the ability to say their opinion is verified, and thus, matters.

 

I know that was not explained, my apologies, but diction is lost somewhat over text and the original intent wasn't clear due to my lack of conveying it properly. Should it have been understood normally, verbally, I doubt that was have been such a huge misconception on both our parts.

 

tl;dr The images are all I really care to discuss after this post, for the sustenance of this post I fear will be wasted.