The last time I called you on this stuff, you were just parroting the words you’ve heard others make. That was a lie, but it might not have been your lie.
This time, you are lying. You have produced one single researcher who believes that specific emotions and perceptions are triggered by physical causes. From that you have posted a lie.
First, even if the the phenomena are shown to be “merely” physical, that does not eliminate the possibility of God who could be using such physical phenomena to reach many people.
Second, one single researcher (or even a dozen more examples) cannot be expanded to “science” unless you agree that the existence of Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Ian Paisely, and the Ayatollah Khomeini prove that spiriitual people are haters.
Science allows things to be better, not perfect. The reason I said that Europe used to have famines is because I am well aware that other places still do - but Europe does not anymore. I will happily condemn politicians, dicatators and other scum throughout the world for the things you so rightly describe. But science can’t handle the dictator who stashes aid money into his Swiss bank account. I suppose God could if he cared.
I’m not denying that God could have seen fit to let people starve for reasons of his own. But the contention that depending on God alone, without science, can make humanity healthy and happy has been falsified by the blood of millions. lekatt should possibly consider that God may have been sending us a message that we should get our crap together and learn science for our own good, and not depend on him.
By all reports neither Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov were scared into belief by approaching death. But fear does turn people to religion.
Depression causes the scary thoughts. Chemical imbalances create emotions. Impossible? I have seen three people very close to me become happy again almost instantly thanks to chemicals. No change in life, no therapy even, no prayer - just pills. It is an open question how much therapy helps in addition to pills - certainly it does sometimes. But saying only counseling works is bull.
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve been studying and working around scientists for almost 15 years now, and I’ve known very few who were in any way deeply or devotedly spiritual. Certainly very few who displayed any kind of religiosity. What has often struck me, actually, is what I percieve to be a general lack of concern about spiritual or religious issues one way or another. I’ve spent enough Saturdays and Sundays in the lab to know there aren’t many folks at church, mosque, or shul (except for an old boss and mentor, who put me to good use as her shabbas goy). On the relatively few occasions I’ve had the opportunity to query my peers about their beliefs, the usual response has been something along the lines of “well, I’m not religious or anything, but I figure maybe, who knows?” I’m kind of sorry I wasn’t in school during this resurgence of Creationism in the national debate, as I’m sure it would have generated many (heh) spirited discussions over pizza.
Speaking more quantitatively, the last I heard, the majority of the members of the National Academy of Sciences are overwhelmingly atheist or agnostic. If these folks are at all representative of their less lauded colleagues, then I would say it’s a save bet the field is dominated by non-believers, or, at best, the spiritually lax. My guess is that the more rarified the echelon in terms of prestige and accomplishment, the more prone the scientist will be to outright atheism, given what I’ve seen in the trenches vs. the NAS surveys.
In summary, while I’ve seen enough examples of Scientists of Faith to know such a creature exists and can do good work, they’re apparently a rare breed, and becoming rarer. I’ve my own suspicions about why that is, but, again, that’s a topic for another thread.
I would agree with you it you said comforting to “some of those facing …” For others, however the concept of God is a non-starter going in, and remains so.
Well, I’m not religious in any way, I believe totally in evolution, but I also believe totally that humans are special and more valuable than all other life.
Is that arrogant? Absolutely. It’s also just normal and natural. Every animal has the “arrogance” to believe that it is more valuable than other life. Any animal will defend itself when attacked and kill to prevent itself from being killed. A clear demonstration that the attacked animal “believes” itself to be more valuable than the attacker. Humans are simple aware of this belief, while animals (probably) aren’t. But then, that awareness is part of what truly makes us special and more valuable, isn’t it?
It doesn’t take a religious mindset to hold that humans are special; we clearly are. I don’t see cats building airplanes, or gorillas making nuclear reactors. And I don’t see anything wrong with the “arrogance” of believing that we’re special and more valuable.
I think Loopydude summed it up nicely. There are surveys showing 87% of college professors are atheists. Given time, I could give you a thousand examples. But there would be no point in it. Yes, religious people do hate, mostly what doesn’t agree with their doctrine. Same as, (can’t say that word).
This was a select group of scientists, not all “college professors”, for crying out loud. And even if every single one of them was an atheist, what of it? All this survey reveals is that many accomplished scientists are not spiritual and don’t believe in God. That’s it. In no way can “science* seeks to destroy religion” be read into those numbers.
*As if “science” is some kind of beast that acts of its own volition.
A part of it is simply that people form beliefs, & hate having to change them. Look at all the people who insist that capitalism is good, communism is bad, etc. (or vice versa, if you like).
A lot of it is that evolution appears to remove the need for God, & thus those who seek to serve God are disturbed, scared, insulted, or even threatened by it.
Some of it is this: A lot of Christian philosophy stops making sense in the world described by Stephen Jay Gould. Christianity tends to believe two things that evolutionary thought tends to reject: One, that human beings are special & above other life, being godlike in ourselves (actually, this is Cartesian/Kantian, not from Jesus himself, but it infuses our society). Two, that there will be an apocalypse, with a day of judgement. The first thing is shot all to hell by macroevolution, the second is rejected by uniformitarian theories of Deep Time (of course, science seems to pointing toward cataclysm & massive change over long-term uniformity, but a lot of the opposition has historically been over that).
Some Christians even see the world of men as the entire world. That anything existed for eons before us is insulting to them.
I think of the philosopher Daniel Quinn, who has pointed out that while we now look at the fossil record & say we believe in macroevolution & deep prehistory, our society still behaves as if man is the unique child of God, we were created a few thousand years ago, & the whole world will end soon. Creationists, sometimes, are trying to hold onto a belief that the facts support this worldview, instead of surrendering to facts that would render laughable both the Christian religion & the humanistic theory underlying our laws. There is a real fear of what the Darwinian worldview implies.
I can find essentially nothing of quantitative value to augment or update the findings described in the Nature article regarding the poll. All I could really dig up was another article that expands a bit on the Nature poll.
It certainly is. But that’s no reason to take the extreme opposite position and merely reverse the elements of the fallacy. It is possible that both A and B are true without either implying the other.
Well, hold on a minute. What do you mean science can’t handle the dishonest dictator? It certainly can. Forensic science has never been more advanced. Neither has military science or economic science. No dictator is any more safe today than Noriega was many years ago. It isn’t a matter of either science or God, but of human will.
I certainly agree with that. Science is a wonderful gift. We have decided to squander it.
It also shows something about the fundie/loony-fringe crowd (since lekatt is definitely on the loonier end of the scale.) His disbelief in evolution can’t be couched in terms of the statements of evolutionary theory; he can’t address the issue on its merits and the actual truth of the matter is actually irrelevant to him. He isn’t addressing any sort of genuine fault with evolution because he feels that there are some sort of dangerous social implications (these notions in themselves based upon silly, irrational beliefs that the world is somehow collapsing around us). lekatt’s statement demonstrates it clearly - he doesn’t care what’s true or not, only what supports his own prior decisions - it’s just a matter of competing ideologies for him and he wants his own to win. He doesn’t care if promoting his loony beliefs (evolution is destroying religion, near-death experiences are real, etc. etc. etc.) actually constitutes lying, because the search for truth is meaningless for him.
In some cases, people don’t understand evolution well enough to see why it’s true. In other cases people really believe so hard in the inerrancy of the Bible that they think that no matter how convincing the evidence to the contrary, it must somehow be an illusion and will be revealed in time. But in the case of lekatt, and I think a very large number of these people, there’s a social goal in promoting a viewpoint that’s entirely separate from the matter of actual truth. The truth doesn’t matter when you’re pushing some viewpoint. It’s a mistake to assume that those who disagree with you are necessarily motivated by honest or pure intentions; lekatt is demonstration of the fact that in some cases, they’re not.
Not that your hijacks are relevant to a discussion of evolution, but the plain fact is that God doesn’t heal. When science isn’t enough, people die. Or else explain to me why my older sister died a few hours after birth - shouldn’t God have healed the brain hemorrhage that killed her? If God heals people instead of callously letting them die, then why do people die? Why do people die, in pain, when they haven’t had the opportunity to live out full lives? Why do people die, and routinely, and what does this say about God? If God heals, then he must not love us very much, because he doesn’t step in very often to heal us. Frankly, the idea of your vague love God who callously ignores suffering is incomprehensible and self-contradictory. The Christian God is at least self-consistent. Yours is a God who loves us but almost always ignores us when we’re most in need. Science is limited in its capacities; your shadow-deity is not, but he chooses to neglect us all.
But you do. Making you a prophet, then? A spiritual leader who will guide us to discovery through the use of pseudoscience and invocation of a shadowy love-God who is indifferent to our suffering? Nice.
Up until the point that they get torn apart by shrapnel, I guess.
Your God sounds like a drug that provides temporary, meaningless comfort and does nothing to actually resolve suffering whatsoever. Why isn’t your love-God turning people’s hearts and preventing the battle in the first place? The knowledge that there’s a God out there who clearly doesn’t give a crap about my suffering would be very little comfort to me.
No, you plainly didn’t, or you would have realized that this article that seems to confirm many of your preconceived notions doesn’t do so. Why would you have posted an humor article that - obviously - doesn’t support your point? This demonstrates what has always been your style, though. Develop some wacko, false belief, and then find anything - anything at all - that seems to support it, glance at it without even the slightest critical eye - and then post it, and expect others to accept it just as blindly.
It should be telling that the only other people who agree with your beliefs are joking about it.