Technically, you are correct. But words have connotations attached. When someone who is a person of faith hears the word “myth” coming at them from an atheistic type, what enters their brain is "he’s trying to equate my religion and God with Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Circe and Apollo. In reading this over I think it’s the same point you were making. If so, sorry to beat a dead horse.
As far as my encounters with atheists…advertising is filled with them. It’s a VERY liberal profession filled with many bright people.
I am an atheist. I hate modern adverts, especially telly adverts. Not all atheists are equal or same at all. Atheists in the advert industry are obviously evil, at least as evil as non-atheists including god-lovers of all description.
American-minds means those who watch telly. These telly watchers (including non americans) are totally screwed-up by what they see. Therefore watching telly (and films - which can be seen on telly) scews up minds, of all nationalities.
Science is atheistic. That is fact. Science does not allow for the spiritual in anything. I realize that not all scientists are atheists. Some are actually researching spiritual topics like near death experiences. But science in general is atheistic. And it don’t take many radical atheists to stir up the whole population.
Now I know the come-back will be that science follows facts and that facts led science to be atheistic. The only problem with that is it’s not true. Theory led science to be atheistic, and theory is not fact, no matter how “sacred” theories are to scientists.
No, science is not atheistic. That is an absurd claim. It makes as much sense to say that science is atheistic as it does to say a hammer or a calculator is atheistic.
Science is a tool for creating knowledge. Nothing more nothing less. Science creates knowledge by creating models and using those models to make testable predictions. Every scientific model is held on probation; science modifies models or replaces them as models that make better predictions become available.
In so far as religion holds itself up as a testable model it may find science to be a thorn, because religion can make statements that are provably wrong. But as for the greater truths, these are not testable. When a few of the religious try to hold up religious beliefs as the same as science they do a disservice to both. When a few of the scientitific claim that science disproves God they do a similar disservice. The tool has no thoughts about the existence of God either way.
Other people have said the following in more detail, but I think the quick way to make the point is this:
To paraphrase Arthur C, sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. Each area of science has advanced so far that you can only understand the far reaches of the knowledge in that area by years of specialised study. For most of the population, all but very basic science is indistinguishable from magic. Therefore, why have less confidence in magic?
Actually, I was answering magellan01’s claim that atheists hold theism in contempt. You are correct in saying that there is not much public notice of atheism. Why do many people feel all atheists are like this? Because, they are containing the hits and not the misses. Also, I will bet that once they hear the reasons why most atheists believe as they do, they will feel insulted. For example,
Person A: “I was not intellectually satisfied by theism.”
Person B: Are you saying that I am a fool to be satisfied by theism?
Person A: No, I am sure you are quite happy with how you feel but, [sub]adsspdsap[/sub] (Person B stops paying attention to anything A said, due to his feeling insulted.
Aeschines, both you and The Peter Files feel that is a problem. However, you disagree as to the cause. Well, I need to get going, and have no time to break down what you said, but I feel I must say the following, first.
You might be perfectly right. However, if you convince no one, then you have not really done very much. In my two cents, under that criteria, das Peter Files has “won” the debate.
Oh, then please show me. Spiritual beliefs rely heavily on the afterlife as a place of rest, reward, judgement, etc., depending on the beliefs held. Science claims the brain creates consciousness and consciousness will die when the body dies. Now it makes little difference whether God exists or not if there is no afterlife. So, technically speaking you may be correct, but practically science has destroyed spirituality. You may talk about creating models for testing (theories) as if they are not real, but in real life this doesn’t happen. For example, why are they teaching Evolution in school as fact. and then go to court when some state wants to put stickers on the book stating Evolution is theory. The actions don’t measure up to the words, and that’s why the conflict exists.
Great, if you can show me some physical evidence that the brain contains memory, thoughts, consciousness or other elements of personality I will listen. Promise. I believe in truth.
We all seem to accept on its face the fact that science skews atheistically. I’ve seen surveys that support this, so I’m not questioning it, but I’m kind of curious as to what it is that accounts for this correlation. Does science induce faithlessness or do the faithless seek out science? In a discipline with a long tradition of brilliant and religious individuals, how did we come to this point?
In another thread involving you, I linked this study, which shows that electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain evokes memories. A famous neurological case study named H.M. had a chunk of his medial temporal lobe removed and lost the ability to make new memories, though he was functional in most other regards. His is not the only such case study; there are many. CREB is a gene that when knocked out in flies, largely inhibits their ability to make new memories. Overexpressing the gene makes them learn overly fast, responding to a single incident. Interfering with the transmitter norepinephrine interferes with memory. Knocking out or antagonizing the glutamate NMDA receptor interferes with a memory-dependent task.
And that’s just memory. The evidence for its storage in the brain is irrefutable.
nameless, is it possible that you, and other people who believe the science is “atheistic” are among the group I described with the following, or at least close enough for government work?
Nature magazine? I suppose it’s possible that they dislike it when their claims aren’t supported by their research. Seeing as how they are, you know, scientists.
Does anyone have a link to their survey? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
Is it Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? (I was raised in a secular household, and can probably count the number of times I’ve attended services on one hand.)
I watched Contact again last night. Ellie Arroway is the scientist who says we cannot prove the existence or non-existence of God. Palmer Joss is a leading religious figure. I’m going to use a spoiler box in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet.
Ellie uses the Machine to travel by wormhole to a distant place, where she meets an alien in the guise of her father. When she returns to Earth, only a fraction of a second has passed; yet she insists in front of a congressional hearing that she really did make the trip. Her own Occam’s Razor arguement is used against her. In the end, she believes what she knows to be true even though she has no evidence. Palmer Joss says he believes her. Ellie had been arguing that It doesn’t make sense to believe in a god when there is no evidence to do so; yet the shoe ended up on the other foot. She knows what she knows from personal experience, much as religious people ‘know what they know’ through their own experiences.
Which doesn’t prove that God exists or doesn’t. But I think it does illustrate that belief is not necessarily incompatible with science. (Incidentally, this is a just-out-of-bed pre-coffee post and my bladder is full; so forgive me if I’ve left something out or haven’t been clear.)
One more thing about Contact. There’s a scene after the Message is made known to the Public where thousands of people gather in the desert near the VLA. There are people dressed as ‘aliens’, an Elvis, neo-Nazis, people trying to hear the transmission by sitting with headphones on top of their RVs with TV satellite dishes, and so on. Really wacky. I’ve seen footage of UFO Conventions from the 1950s that show similar people. It seems to me that many people treat science as a religion. They lose the message in favour of the ceremony. Christ said we should love each other. But the Religious Right seems to practice hatred. A scientist might say, ‘There may be aliens.’ The people depicted in the film, and the people who attend UFO conventions, jump to the conclusion that A) aliens are visiting the Earth, and B) that they must be wise and generally benevolent. The possible existence of extraterrestrials in and of itself does not lead to those conclusions. Yet people believe it.
Ok, scientist (doctorate in immunology, if it matters) checking in.
The issue of science being atheist is silly, unless the word “atheist” encompasses those who simply don’t concern themselves with the issue of god. I can honestly say that the issue of god and religion has NEVER come up in any scientific discussion with other scientists. My boss is decidedly Christian, and it still has never come up. Science ignores religion completely. The goal of my experiments is to figure out how a biological system works, if that information encroaches on god somehow, blame the biological system, not me! I just design the experiments and collect the data!
Generally scientists are non-political type people who don’t get involved into heated discussions on topics that don’t involve phosphorylation sites on proteins. When you see these “science vs. religion” debates going on, the “scientist” side is generally being played by a local science teacher or a medical doctor or concerned parents, not the people actually doing the science. Dawkins might be the only scientist I’ve seen who gets involved in this debate, and I would doubt that a significant portion of the population has ever heard of him (though they should, as his books are fantastic reads).
Science’s real problem is this nonchalance about politics. We don’t have a champion anymore. Carl Sagan’s death (and to some extent Gould’s death) removed the scientist from the public eye. Now “science” is this giant faceless monster that is encroaching on belief systems. And this is the fault of scientists who need to stop being so pretentious and above the public. Going to a conference in my field is infuriating because the goal of the speaker always seems to be to sound really smart rather than to convey information.
Ask a person on the street to name a living scientist. How many could name two? How many dopers here could name five? We are faceless, and a few of us should step up and stop being so. I don’t mean that in the militant, “let’s take back the debate” stance, but in the “hey look! Science isn’t a monolith! Real people, some of them ‘people of faith’ are running real experiments and collecting real unbiased data”.
Sorry for the long post. I’ll go back to lurking now!
While I understand that science cannot offer a mathematical proof that 1+1=2, it seems very simple to me to construct experiments that offer a scientific proof of this hypothesis, given definitions of 1 and 2, an understanding of the relation between referent and word, adequate caveats (e.g., that the 1 and 1 being added together must be disjoint sets), and an adequate sample size. Scientific proofs are far laxer than mathematical proofs, naturally.
If folks more educated on the subject than I am have denied that a scientific proof of this hypothesis is possible, can someone point me toward an article on the topic?
Scott, it would be a really, really, good idea for you to simply refrain from indicating your impressions of who “won” (or “lost”) any debates, here.
It contributes nothing to the discussion and calls attention to the fact that some very large number of posters do not consider you to be a reliable witness to such an assessment, even in humor.
You are misusing the word, atheistic, here. For most readers, (including you), the word atheistic implies a position that is opposed to theism or deism. (Discussions of weak vs strong atheist positions can be taken up in another thread.) Science is simply neutral on the subject of a transcendant god for the clear fact that a transcendant god has no material form to be investigated by science. If you wish to describe science as “a-theistic,” you would have a claim, but your statement attempts to imply a hostility to belief that science simply does not demonstrate. So your claim “That is fact” is dishonest.