I agree, but because science does that it becomes less useful. For instance, Darwin made a lot of observations regarding different species and their development. Suppose you didn’t agree with some of those observations, are you going to spend the rest of your life double-checking his observations. Probably not, at some point you are going to have to come to some of your own conclusions.
Couldn’t you simply be learning and observing, or attempting to maximize value just in specific situations without taking it to some kind of obsessive extreme?
At what point in your life do you have to come up with your own conclusions about speciation and evolution?
You must also had missed people like Jonathan Wells (and he did go to Berkeley), as an Intelligent Designer proponent, he never gets to any useful conclusions.
Call me cynical, but I believe that after we become adults our basic beliefs don’t change. What people do, and I will include myself in this group is what we do is rationalize our actions so that the belief stays intact.
So if you agreed with Darwin at the age of 21, you are probably not going to double-check his experiments makes sure his observations were accurate. You would only double-check his observations if you disagreed.
It should be obvious, but clearly it is not by you, scientists still double checked Darwin.
Disagreement is only one factor in science, many times there is curiosity to see if new technologies will find some unexpected items in old and already checked by others ideas. Some times it leads to even new branches of science and usually the old observations are not rejected, but they are just modified.
And what, exactly, are “basic beliefs”?
Yeah, but so what? All you’ve proven is that extremists are idiots.
We already knew that.
In practice, atheists have emotions, loyalty, etc, because those things are useful in a social context and religious people do some things empirically (you don’t pray about the amount of washing powder to put in the machine, I imagine).
This curiosity and modification of old observations…I consider it similar to rationalizing…so as a consequence the basic belief does not change.
This utterly contradicts everything you said earlier about empiricists. So scientists are all *trustful *now?
Well…the scientist Gigobuster is talking about is more trustworthy because even though he agrees with Darwin he is willing to examine his observations more closely to see if he can elaborate on the findings…but I still see it as a process of rationalizing.
Yours did.
Not true at all. Scientists who agreed with Darwin about the basic concept of evolution have double checked and revised his theories.
I suppose you’re talking about rejecting religion at 21 or so and then embracing it 30 years later.
I did not reject a basic belief of mine. When I’m talking about basic beliefs, I’m really talking about worldview or philosophy. If the findings of Darwin are part of your worldview then it is a basic belief.
For me my basic belief was I believed in a rational universe at the age 21 and I’ve modified that view (rationalized) so that now God exists in my rational universe.
Yes.
And the existence of an omnipotent god and the teachings of Christ have nothing to do with your worldview or philosophy?
I don’t know how else to put this, but I don’t believe you. Belief in god is a basic belief by any standard. Like I said earlier, it certainly underpins a lot of other beliefs. You’re calling it something else because you believe it suits your rhetorical point, which it really doesn’t.
Nope, what you are saying here is just a “mega fail” point. Double checking does also get science to topple down ideas that are wrong, even if the ideas are cherished as beneficial, just ask Fleischmann and Pons.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
Darwin’s theory of evolution has largely survived the tests of time, genetics only came later to confirm it.
But you’ve double-checked Darwin, because you disagree, right? What form did this check take, and what were your results?
Well, I belonged to a church before I became a “lefty” so it’s possible I didn’t really reject God at 21. Could have been youthful rebellion who knows? But I do believe that God is part of my rational universe right now.
You say you did. Am I supposed to know better?
That would still count.
Right. And given how much you talk about it, it’s obviously a basic belief.
(bolding mine)It didn’t bother me before, but since you’ve shown a complete inadequacy when it comes to defining words, I’m going to have to insist that you give us your definition of “lefty” so that we can get a better sense of what you were.
On second thought this comment is kind of telling. Do you think you can determine who is really an atheist and who isn’t, and do you think you are in a position to figure out which reasons for rejecting religion are valid and which are not?
When I was an undergrad at Cal Berkeley, it was towards the end of the Free Speech Movement and the radical left. My girlfriend actually thought there was a possibility of a communist revolution in the U.S. that’s how far to the left she was. I wasn’t that far to the left but I was getting there. However, I knew that if I mentioned that I believed in God.
She would have said “are you kidding me” and end the relationship right there. God was a joke to us “leftys.” It kept people believing that they would get their reward in heaven instead of acting in the present and making the world better.