Science has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the Board.
Let me take another shot at this while avoiding ridicule as a weapon…
Consider the following religious assertions:
Kohelepelepe is the imprint left by Kapo’s detachable vagina/labia, which she flung to lure Kama-pua’a away from raping Pele,
Giant white virgins with big firm tits, hairless perineums and appetizingly tight child-free vaginas will be pleasured eternally by firm erections from dead Muslims, and
It’s turtles all the way down.
OK…as a science advisor to the Straight Dope it’s your position that I have it incredibly wrong for asserting these claims are bullshit and that science falsifies them?
:dubious:
Am I permitted within the rules to assume there is some kind of at least minimal understanding of science as a qualification for the Science Advisory position?
So, then: What is your excuse for getting it so incredibly wrong?
It appears John Mace is correct, and science will not be making Islam go away–at least as long as ignorance like this is being promulgated even by a message board which has long prided itself on the straight dope.
I did not think I would see the day when a member of the SDMB mod group would defend as compatible with science post-mortem giant white women with appetizing vaginas and dingleberry-free perineums as reward for the permanent hard-ons of the religious dead. :rolleyes:
And worse, for the SDMB mod to suggest that science claims as bullshit the idea that said virgins are bullshit.
I remain embarrassed for you.
Such a notion, obviously generated whole cloth from some religious kook’s sexual fantasy is completely incompatible with scientific thinking. It is incompatible with every known principle science has uncovered about the natural world. It is completely baseless scientifically. It is completely, provably false that a dead human has any consciousness at all.
As I’ve tried to explain earlier, you are getting all confused by linguistic machinations.
FWIW, “There is no God” is not a religious claim, although a deity that interacts with nature would not be compatible with science.
It is not that every claim made by every religion is false. A religion might claim that being generous to one’s neighbor creates a better world.
Science is able to speak to the idea that the post-dead have permanent erections which they use to pleasure giant white virgins with tight vaginas and no dingleberries.
Science says such a claim is completely, demonstrably false, even if tomndebb defends it as not necessarily being bullshit.
It is demonstrably false in this case because it depends upon consciousness, and science has worked out that consciousness is demonstrably dependent on a living brain. Also, after you die your penis rots away. (I think I mentioned that earlier, but perhaps it bears repeating.)
So…in summary: No giant white virgins with dingleberry-free tight vaginas being pleasured by post-mortem erections (makes me laugh every time), according to science.
Science simply does not address the issue of your mischaracterization of various Muslim religious beliefs. If you want to claim that science has demonstrated that the stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not factual, you are fine. When you wander away from that to make silly claims about what science has stated on matters that are not physical, then you are demonstrating your own (religiously held) personal beliefs about science.
You can be as embarrassed as you wish, but you are simply wrong.
You are fine with your first assertion that you believe some claims are bullshit, but science does not even address the issues as you then wrongly assert. That you have trouble recognizing the difference between things science has proven or disproven and things science does not address says rather more about your beliefs than about science.
Science has never made any religion “go away”, so there is no reason to expect it to do so in the future. The only thing that has ever made any religion “go away” is another religion taking its place.
I frankly can’t believe we’re even having this discussion.
What is your explanation for the almost complete irrelevance of religion in the public sphere in most of the developed world outside of the USA(and even within the USA, the fast growth of non belief among the younger generations)?
There is a narrow sense in which science “does not address” the trivially banal imaginations of the masses. It does not waste time nullifying each specific piece of bullshit thrown out there. One doubts a scientist has addressed Kapo’s detachable vagina/labia as the reason for Kohelepelepe’s shape.
This does not mean that science does not falsify these assertions. It does. In fact, even in the thread above you will see a recognition these silly imaginations are nonsense, in the ordinary sense of the word, “nonsense.”
Science examines the way the world works. Consciousness, for example, does not work when the brain is dead. The idea that science can’t address that is a marked confusion on your part, and the implication that it’s OK from a scientific viewpoint to cling to the notion that post-mortem our permanent erections will satisfy 90 foot tall white virgins with hairless perineums and large firm breasts (still makes me laugh) is wrong.
It’s not that science can’t address that silliness. It’s that it already has. It has already concluded that magical interventions don’t happen and that imagination is not the mechanism by which we arrive at what is correct. With that simple but broad brush, all supernatural silliness is relegated to a status of “uninteresting.” And not because it is “outside” science, but because it is bullshit.
It would be trivially easy to conclude scientifically that giant white women with hairless perineums are a product of pure imagination and as such can confidently be discarded as wrong. Put a thousand Islamic leaders in separate rooms and ask them to describe sex in Paradise. (This is, in effect, what did happen over time, and how religions in general create their teachings and evolve.) The guy disgusted with vaginal flaccidity is going to invent a child-free virgin with a nice, tight, appetizing vagina. Another hates dingleberries and gets rid of hair. Another wants big tits (perhaps all of them). Another is sick of saggy boobs. Another has always fantasized about making love to a giant woman. Another loves them white girls. And so on…
What comes out of the experiments is one obvious result: No Grand Wizard on the other side of the curtain is transmitting to these medieval mullahs some sort of transcendent truth. Each mullah, when separated from the whole, comes up with a completely different “truth” from Allah. In such an experiment it becomes obvious they are just making shit up as their imagination runs wild and leverages their sexual fantasies to drive tall tales.
The notion that we need to “falsify” imaginations not based on scientific principles in order to discard them outright is a silly, philosophic argument based wholly in linguistic confusion, and driven wholly by a desperation to give some sort of credence to religious imaginations.
Scientifically, bullshit is bullshit, whether it’s superstition firmly ensconced in religious tradition or the output of a 5 year-old hoping the tooth fairy can cure his leukemia.
To think otherwise is to have been conned by the verbally great and scientifically terrible wizards in the pulpit.
The Chinese were reasonably successful mandating it away, and my own observation is in line with bldysabba.
It appears the Straight Dope mods are doing their best to keep it alive, though.
I personally find myself in complete agreement with Boko Haram that western education is the enemy of religious premises, and I guess I see a general trend in providing that sort of education more broadly.
As I said earlier, religion exposed to western education evolves into holiday (and maybe marriage or burial) traditions. The superstitious part gets slowly eroded.
Less than six hours after I told you to cool it you returned to the same offensive well.
I could warn you for multiple posts since the warning. I’ll go choose one now. But if you want to keep posting here you’d better get your act together right away.
“Mischaracterization”?
Where did I get “Muslim religious beliefs” wrong? Would you like to offer a correction on the white virgin thing, so I can make sure it’s still bullshit?
I am betting you won’t even be able to bring yourself to state the belief, because when you see yourself defending it in print, you’ll be too embarrassed to continue. You’ll just handwave around some generalization without actually coming right out to say what the exact belief for post-mortem virgin boinking is.
Say it, tomndebb. Say it. Give it to me straight:
What is the “Muslim religious belief” for virgins in the afterlife?
I need help on what I did this time to violate the rules.
But, in general, I recognize that SDMB and not I, own the Board.
Do whatever you think is appropriate.
I’m not so arrogant that I think I get to do or say whatever I want in someone else’s sandbox.
I just literally have no idea how I violated the rules this time.
“What is your explanation for the almost complete irrelevance of religion in the public sphere in most of the developed world outside of the USA(and even within the USA, the fast growth of non belief among the younger generations)?”
Do you disagree that religion has become almost completely irrelevant in the public sphere in most of the developed world? That younger generations in the US are becoming increasingly less religious? What is your disagreement with the premise of my question?
Not that any of us at the Dope would split hairs over word usage, but surely it is “going away” even where it is not gone.
In the western world there are certainly isolated pockets where religion is growing–at least as a cultural or social event.
But as a rule of thumb, the exercise of religion is becoming the stuff of social gathering, even for the devout, and is far less invasive in the daily beliefs and lives of all but the most fervent.
It is in the middle of a transition from being worn on the sleeve to being a background theme at most for public consumption.
And for the most part, private consumption of religion is in a transition from narrow dictums to ever-broader inclusiveness. Witness the impact in even the conservative protestant movements of books like Rob Bell’s “Love Wins,” which advances universal reconciliation over the spectre of hell for unbelievers.
The slope down which modern religion is sliding, under pressure from science and multiculturalism both, takes every religion exposed to the western world away from its rigid tenets of yore and delivers it down to a destination where its entire character changes. The change is from “Believe this or be outcast,” to “Truth is truth, wherever it’s found. By the way, we have some neat social customs we’d like to welcome you to.”
Ironically, lost in this transition of religion from plenary tenet to cultural tradition will be all the crapola which science dissipates because it’s basically bullshit. Whether superstition (virgins, again ) or just bad science (creationism; miracles)–all these things that science so readily falsifies will be going away for all except a remnant devout.
As bldysabba notes, do you not see this happening already under your nose in the vast majority of western countries?
For “religion” to survive in the western world at all, it must compromise its non-scientific tenets. Coins stopped ringing in the coffer for purgatoried souls some time ago (I think), and young-earth creationism is slinking away. That sort of trend will continue as one by one leaders and followers in the western world align their religion with science and inclusiveness.
You have claimed that women get one companion while men get 72. That is false. There is no limit placed on the number of companions to a woman. And the “72” number comes from one hadith in one tradition that is not held by all Muslims. (Rather as if you had claimed that “Christians” believed that they would all handle venomous snakes without danger or “Christians” believed that Jesus was physically present in the Eucharist. Some hold those beliefs; many do not.)
Beyond that, you have mischaracterized the the beliefs that you came closer to getting correct when you described the hypothetical virgins in lurid ways that do not actually match they way they are described in Muslim texts. You can claim that the descriptions you posted are simply synonyms for the words in the actual texts, but that is pretty uch the nature of mischaracterizing something as opposed to outright lying about something–something of which I did not accuse you.
[ Moderating aside ]
I have not taken issue with the lurid descriptions that you have employed on the grounds that smart-assed swipes at religion are par for the course, here. However, your persistent repetition of those descriptions that are not really pertinent to the discussion on the realm of what science can address is clearly an attempt to troll the thread, which is why Jonathan Chance issued the Warning.
[ /Moderating ]
[/quote]
There are many, of course. The one that you want me to defend refers to those who die in the graces of God being attended by female companions. Those companions are described as being fair skinned, having beautiful eyes, having no hair not on the head, having no need for food, (and, thus, no need to defecate), being of a corresponding age to the person to who they are companions, and being full breasted.
I am hardly persuaded by the Qur’an or Hadiths that such companions exist. You are free to calls such speculation bullshit without offending me. I note that nothing in science addresses the issue and that your religious belief in science does nothing to force science to address the reality of houris. (So your attempt to pretend that I have been led astray by religion would apply much more accurately to your own repeated claims.)
Well, but the point of being smart-assed about it (a point with which I fully concur) is that dressing up a religious belief to make it more palatable does not take away from it the ridiculousness of it. It’s not fair to call a synonym a “mischaracterization” just because it avoids the floof. I think was mostly right on point.
Here’s the belief in reasonably neutral terms,including hadith descriptions and laying aside for the moment whethermany Muslims trust the hadith:
*A man gets multiple houris, (as well as a number of other servants, including a bunch of eternally young boys).
Houris are:
Virgins (I’m unclear if they get remade into virgins after penetration by the dead).
For intercourse, made easier by permanent erections of the deceased.
90 feet tall.
Hairless except head.
Full breasted.
Chaste toward other men.
Beautiful.
White (at least; pale).
Do not menstruate.
Do not defecate.
Do not urinate.
Do not become pregnant.
Sometimes former wives, made virgins again.
On the number of 72
by Al-Tirmidhi:
"Muhammad was heard say: “The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy two wives…
She is of white color, and free from the routine physical disabilities of an ordinary woman such as menstruation, menopause, urinal and offal discharge, child bearing and the related pollution.”*
As long as you don’t actually think I have fundamentally mischaracterized the position itself, we can get back to whether or not science falsifies them. It does. Science ignores these kinds of silly fantasies not because it cannot address them, but because they are fantasies. They do not need any proof for falsehood beyond being demonstrably fantasies without basis in scientific reality.
And I laid out a strategy earlier by which it would be drop dead simple to prove that fantasies of this type are not secret truths conveyed from an almighty who is somehow outside of science’s reach. It’s child’s play to demonstrate that the humans who generate them have absolutely no conduit to absolute truth.
You seem to hold a bizarre position that, if science does not “address” a fantasy, it has not falsified it. In effect science batch address all fantasies by describing the construct of the world around us. Science can, and does, consider make-believe to be just that: make-believe. As such it is not “unaddressed.” It is placed into the bin of bullshit that has no basis whatsoever in reality and is demonstrably the stuff of imagination–not an alternate path to truth outside the grasp of science to reject.
I am reasonably confident without even knowing you that your hesitation to be persuaded of the existence of giant white houris with…well; you know the rest ) is precisely because you have a scientific education. Were you born an uneducated peasant to Islamic parents 1200 years ago, they might seem very real indeed. But alas; science has falsified them for you.
And you’re welcome, even if you don’t want to credit it for doing so.
So…in your opinion then: Religion is, or is not, in the process of going away in western countries?
And for the two point conversion: Science is, or is not, the major driver in the loss of traditional religious beliefs (assuming you think there is such a diminution) wrt the supernatural?
) is precisely because you have a scientific education. Were you born an uneducated peasant to Islamic parents 1200 years ago, they might seem very real indeed. But alas; science has falsified them for you.