Summary of studies: Religiousity and intelligence

[Elok]

My chief problem is with Occam's Razor as somehow dogmatic; it's always brought up by name, with the weight and pomp to suggest that the Dead Guy has spoken and that's that. We're not talking about E=MC^2 here, nor with some form of Holy Science Scripture, just the rhetorical postulate of a single, admittedly very reasonable, man.

It's better to say, "I think we should not describe reality as any more complicated than it needs/appears to be," maybe credit Occam, and leave it at that. The way things are going, the Razor is acting contrary to the principles of good and open debate IMO. It shouldn't be treated as the Ace of Argument Spades, which has innate virtue to crush opposition by its name alone. That's just not right. That's all I'm saying.

I also don't like "Burden of Proof," whichever side which uses it. What it boils down to is a very pompous version of "is not!" "is too!" "is not!" as practiced and made famous by quarrelling siblings throughout history. It's pretty clear to me at least that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved one way or the other, so claiming the moral high ground in an argument like this just serves to fray tempers. Let's stick to arguments for and against and leave the question of who's a big boy to deities and omniscient supercomputers who are capable of such judgments...

[Drachasor]

Elok as far as the burden of proof goes, it isn't saying "is not!" and "is too!"

You can't believe absolutely everything that might be possible. Invisible, intangible objects out the wazoo are among the things you can't just accept without question (especially since you can pose the existence of two mutually exclusive intangible, invisible objects). As such the guideline of one needs to prove the existence of something before you should believe it is a very valid one. This is especially so in light of the fact there is no evidence of any form for god.

To suggest otherwise is to imply that you should consider the possibility that the President is really an alien with perfect cloaking technology and inneffable motives as just as likely as it not being true, because they both can predict the same behavior.

-Drachasor

[Elok]

I'm not saying it is equally likely. Whether the odds are for or against it, saying "prove the president is an alien in a suit," "prove he isn't," "prove he is," "prove he isn't," etc., back and forth, accomplishes nothing. That's just a set of competing barbed claims of superiority, not an argument. You determine the odds by way of the argument, not before it, or it's not an open discussion. Nobody should be on trial for their beliefs one way or the other. Keeping things civilized and polite is a good thing.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Elok
I'm not saying it is equally likely. Whether the odds are for or against it, saying "prove the president is an alien in a suit," "prove he isn't," "prove he is," "prove he isn't," etc., back and forth, accomplishes nothing. That's just a set of competing barbed claims of superiority, not an argument. You determine the odds by way of the argument, not before it, or it's not an open discussion. Nobody should be on trial for their beliefs one way or the other. Keeping things civilized and polite is a good thing.

And if there is no evidence for him being an alien?

-Drachasor

[Elok]

Then the argument is won. In the case of God, however, the definition of "evidence" is somewhat loose...do you really want to get into the argument of how one proves the existence of the supernatural in terms of naturalistic science? I thought you knew better than that.

And stay out of this, Kuciwalker. One outraged skeptic at a time, please.

[Arrian]

In the case of God, however, the definition of "evidence" is somewhat loose

And that, folks, is all there is to see here (or in any of these debates about God).

-Arrian

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Elok
Then the argument is won. In the case of God, however, the definition of "evidence" is somewhat loose...do you really want to get into the argument of how one proves the existence of the supernatural in terms of naturalistic science? I thought you knew better than that.

My point, as Arrian touched on, is that there is no reason to believe the entire idea of the "supernatural" has any truth to it. By definition it removes itself from having evidence for its existence. That's just like the invisible, intangible elves that are "everywhere".

Defining something so that no evidence in the observable universe can exist to prove it exists does not magically make the rules of what constitutes as evidence looser.

-Drachasor

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Elok
My chief problem is with Occam's Razor as somehow dogmatic; it's always brought up by name, with the weight and pomp to suggest that the Dead Guy has spoken and that's that. We're not talking about E=MC^2 here, nor with some form of Holy Science Scripture, just the rhetorical postulate of a single, admittedly very reasonable, man.

It's better to say, "I think we should not describe reality as any more complicated than it needs/appears to be," maybe credit Occam, and leave it at that. The way things are going, the Razor is acting contrary to the principles of good and open debate IMO. It shouldn't be treated as the Ace of Argument Spades, which has innate virtue to crush opposition by its name alone. That's just not right. That's all I'm saying.

I also don't like "Burden of Proof," whichever side which uses it. What it boils down to is a very pompous version of "is not!" "is too!" "is not!" as practiced and made famous by quarrelling siblings throughout history. It's pretty clear to me at least that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved one way or the other, so claiming the moral high ground in an argument like this just serves to fray tempers. Let's stick to arguments for and against and leave the question of who's a big boy to deities and omniscient supercomputers who are capable of such judgments...

It's also bad science. Things are almost always more complicated than they appear to be.

Jon Miller

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
It's also bad science. Things are almost always more complicated than they appear to be.

Occam's razor is good for science, for though things might be more complicated than they appear to be, adding needless complications to a theory for no reason is a hindrance to scientific progress.

-Drachasor

Edit: I meant to have "good for science" not "good science"

[Odin]

Originally posted by Drachasor


Occam's razor is good science.

It hasn't been good for Evolutionary Biology, it has led to the dogmatic scourge called Cladistics.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Odin
It hasn't been good for Evolutionary Biology, it has led to the dogmatic scourge called Cladistics.

Umm....I don't think you know what you are talking about.

For one Claudistics is not a scourge.

For another, Occam's Razor has as much to do with creating it as it does with any of the other good classification schemes in evolutionary biology.

Just how do you think such a well-regarded scientific tool that utilizes many different sources of information when implemented is a scourge?

-Drachasor

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
It's also bad science. Things are almost always more complicated than they appear to be.

Jon Miller

Not until you observe that complexity directly.

In fact, that's half of quantum physics. Nothing even exists until it is observed. If you happen to be one light year from an event that happened a month ago, the event hasn't happened.

[Elok]

Okay, you didn't know better than that. My mistake.

Man, where do I begin? First, let's start with what I mean by "natural," as opposed to "supernatural." The conditions for something to be "proven" by science, insofar as science accepts anything as absolutely proven, are something along the general lines of being repeatable in a number of experiments under controlled conditions. Correct me if I'm wrong, and pardon my irritation as this is the billionth time I've gone over this. So that's:

Repeatable-will generally react more or less the same way to the same stimulus as administered by any scientist who chooses to poke it. These particles tend to react to this exact other combination of particles by doing this, or whatever. We'll leave quantum mechanics out of this, as even the greatest scientists on earth aren't supposed to understand what the devil is going on with QM right now...

Experiments under controlled conditions-the vast majority, if not all, things which affect the phenomenon observed are known, and the ways in which they affect it are accounted for.

So that's supposedly applicable to a self-aware, omnipotent being of pure will how? Yes, yes, I know, I'm just redefining it to wriggle out of your brilliant trap and so on. Well, let's assume there's no omnipotent God behind it all then. We know this because the universe has been described for the most part in terms of a set of rules which it obeys. Are there apparent exceptions to these rules? Yes, I've posted examples of the miraculous occuring before. But the standard response I get is that I'm just worshipping a currently unknown naturalistic phenomenon.

How do we know that? Because nobody's ever shown the existence of a God. If there were a God He would obviously show us His existence via a scientifically admissable, consistent, clockwork-regular response to certain actions of ours, or under our observation, as opposed to His stubborn silence while things under the domain of Science like buoyancy and photosynthesis play nicely with us. Buoyancy and photosynthesis obviously aren't God, because they act in a consistent, clockwork-regular way, they're just a part of the known universe as opposed to your silly hocus pocus...and so on. Yawn.

So I say nuts to your circular logic. Your move.

[Arrian]

Elok,

The problem religion faces today is akin to the problem of the boy who cried wolf. For centuries... millenia, even, priests/ministers/rabbis/imans/etc told the people that this, that or the other thing was due to God or gods. Lighting was Zeus being angry. There was a big flood because Yahweh was mad at us! Yadda, yadda, yadda. There have been hundreds of gods, and their priests have historically asserted that they are - of course - the true God/gods and the other religions (who claim the same) are false.

Then, as our understanding of our world grew, more and more things turned out to not be God/gods, and in fact are rather simple natural phenomena that have rational explanations. Religions standard counter has usually been to either: a) try to supress such thought or kill those responsible for it; or b) demand people ignore such things and have faith. For students of history, it is clear that the clergy of the major faiths spent more time grasping for power than they did pondering the mysteries of the universe.

Meh. At this point, the burden of proof is on Religion.

-Arrian

[Odin]

Originally posted by Arrian
Elok,

The problem religion faces today is akin to the problem of the boy who cried wolf. For centuries... millenia, even, priests/ministers/rabbis/imans/etc told the people that this, that or the other thing was due to God or gods. Lighting was Zeus being angry. There was a big flood because Yahweh was mad at us! Yadda, yadda, yadda. There have been hundreds of gods, and their priests have historically asserted that they are - of course - the true God/gods and the other religions (who claim the same) are false.

Then, as our understanding of our world grew, more and more things turned out to not be God/gods, and in fact are rather simple natural phenomena that have rational explanations. Religions standard counter has usually been to either: a) try to supress such thought or kill those responsible for it; or b) demand people ignore such things and have faith. For students of history, it is clear that the clergy of the major faiths spent more time grasping for power than they did pondering the mysteries of the universe.

Meh. At this point, the burden of proof is on Religion.

-Arrian