Differences between research reports and religious scriptures?

viole · Jan 16, 2020

Jim said:
No.

Because the machines that the analogy is based on are all created by people, with specific purposes in mind. If it’s useful to imagine the universe as being like a giant machine, then why not take the analogy to its logical conclusion, and imagine that the machine was created and is being operated with some specific purposes in some mind?

because you are confusing necessary with sufficient conditions. Even if we bite the bullet that the universe is a machine, however we define that.

if agents with purpose create machines, that does not entail that machines can only be created by agents with purpose. That is the mother of all fallacies in natural theology.

But even ignoring the logical flaw, I could make an argument that I am myself a machine, unless you beg the question that I am not. And there is nothing that speaks against machines with purpose. After all, my brain was the product of some process that seems quite mechanical.

ergo, your argument would become: since machines are created by machines, and the universe is a giant machine, then it might have been created by a machine, too.

the burden is now on you to show us that the creator, or anyone else that created machines, is not a machine itself, without begging the question. Good luck with that.

so, your conclusion does not obtain. And this because of two mutually independent defeaters.

Enough to adios it, I am afraid.

ciao

- viole

Valjean · Jan 16, 2020

PruePhillip said:
Depends what you mean by "process"
The basic history of the bible is slowly emerging from the archaeologist's trowel.
The notion that the universe created itself from nothing and for no reason has
more problems than saying something outside of the universe created it.
And the process of "proof" is not a corporate but individual one - the bible says
that if you don't prove its precepts for yourself then you don't understand it.

The religious have already demonstrated that they'll embrace history and archaeological findings only when they match their personal beliefs.

True, cosmogeny isn't currently understood, but inventing a magical designer doesn't explain anything; it doesn't explain how. The question just regresses to "who designed the designer?" Mythologizing when your baffled by something is not reasonable.

The bible's concept of "prove" isn't what's understood in mathematics. The biblical concept seems more like "convince."

Skwim · Jan 16, 2020

Jim said:
Actually, the same thing happens sometimes with religious scriptures when they first appear, except that sometimes it isn’t only the scriptures that get brutally ripped to shreds, it’s also the people who promote them.

Not the same at all. Scientific review looks to establish credibility, whereas religious review looks to establish compatibility.

.

Valjean · Jan 16, 2020

Samantha Rinne said:
Peer review is garbage.

Why would any sane person submit their idea to the opinion of a mob? The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer, is hardly new. Years ago, the idea was that sickness resulted from the body being clogged with gunk, so people were given enemas, or bled out, or sucked by leeches. There was even a fad of using sterilized tapeworms to manage body weight. Honestly, the last one might be good for America's morbid obese, but this is neither here nor there. The point is, this notion was wrong on a fundamental level, and people wasted away from having their vitality literally drained away.

And without empirical research we'd still be using leeches.

Bleeding and enemas were never science, they were not tested.
An untested, untestable claim is opinion, not fact; not science. Putting your idea or discovery out for other experts to criticize and test for themselves is not 'garbage' it's what gave us modern medicine and the computer you're posting from.

Or how about Code films? Some group of people decided that only wholesome films could play, and movies of this era were mostly boring. The thing is, years have passed and if you look at films today, the current market system has made a sort of Code of its own. Can't be politically incorrect (or overly edgy for that matter), while the 70s to mid 90s (Fast Times At Ridgemont High) had full nudity modern films have no breasts or sexual organs even in so-called R films, having phased any real sex into X rated (which never shows). The most interesting films were literally those where society wasn't concerned about eirher public morals or political correctness but producing a cool movie.

And that censorship was the result of "submitting the ideas to the mob." It offended the moral feelings of conventionalists.
Had the harmfulness of nudity or edgy ideas actually been investigated scientifically, we might never have had a Motion Picture Production Code.

When consensus rather than personal opinions reigns, we get stagnation.

When opinion, individual or collective, rather than objective fact reigns, we get repression. Science attempts to discover objective fact through testing and inviting others to test and investigate for themselves (peer review).

Valjean · Jan 16, 2020

BilliardsBall said:
Academia is great, science is great, except both institutions have left LOVE off their books. Academia talks constantly now about racial and social JUSTICE. Science talks about being without bias. The bias of "let's do science or academia in LOVE" is a HEALTHY bias.

What motivates these academics to support issues like social justice? If they had no compassion, idealism or 'love' I doubt they'd bother with such issues.

Science isn't feel-good psychology. Science discovers and explains facts. What we do with the facts, or how they make us feel is irrelevant.
How would love fit into a mathematical equation or the minerological analysis of a rock?

A Vestigial Mote · Jan 16, 2020

Please juxtapose this part of your post:

Samantha Rinne said:
Why would any sane person submit their idea to the opinion of a mob? The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer, is hardly new.

With this:

Samantha Rinne said:
At the very least, they seem to be in every used book store.

How is this not committing the same "sin" of appealing to some form of consensus? Just because a book appears in every used bookstore it somehow make the book relevant/good? Not only that, but doesn't every author ultimately "submit their idea to the opinion of a mob?" Just because something becomes popular doesn't mean that it was any less scrutinized by "the mob" than any of the thousands of works that get thrown into a corner and forgotten about.

Also this:

Samantha Rinne said:
When consensus rather than personal opinions reigns, we get stagnation.

With this:

Samantha Rinne said:
The Bible would not get published... Nor would the Quran. Nor the Analects, nor the Vedas, nor the Tripitaka... And yet these books receive worldwide acclaim.

So which is it? Is a consensus (for example, many agreeing on the same "answer" or many popularizing a particular book) something causing stagnation? Or is it something to point at as a measure of something's worth?

You are very confusing and inconsistent.

QuestioningMind · Jan 16, 2020

Jim said:
Sometimes when I post about people misusing research reports in the same harmful ways that they use religious scriptures, people promoting and defending science beliefs respond by pointing out differences between science and religion, which I don’t see as relevant to what I’m saying. I’ve started wondering though, about how much and what kinds of differences there actually are, between research reports and religious scriptures. Here are some differences that I see:
- Imagining any aim or purpose behind anything that happens is is stigmatized in the sciences.
- Maybe as a consequence of that, research reports mostly use mechanistic models and metaphors, and sometimes get tangled up in trying to explain how things could happen randomly and accidentally.
- There usually isn’t any doubt about who are the authors of a research report, although actually there have been false claims sometimes.
- Research reports are mostly about what happens, and how it happens, as a result of what happens before that. Religious scriptures are mostly about how to live our lives, to bring out the best possibilities in people, in society and in the world around us.

It seems ironic to me for people to imagine the universe as being like a machine, and at the same time scoff at people for imagining that it was created by someone with some purpose in mind.

This sounds a bit like someone complaining that mathematics doesn't do anything to help us comprehend morality.

The scientific method has by far been the most effective means we've ever come across for determining how the universe functions. It is not nor was it ever designed to tell people how to live their lives or to bring out the best possibilities in people.

And though I agree that religions DO try and tell people how to live their lives... I've rarely seen it actually bring out the best in people.

Audie · Jan 16, 2020

viole said:
because you are confusing necessary with sufficient conditions. Even if we bite the bullet that the universe is a machine, however we define that.

if agents with purpose create machines, that does not entail that machines can only be created by agents with purpose. That is the mother of all fallacies in natural theology.

But even ignoring the logical flaw, I could make an argument that I am myself a machine, unless you beg the question that I am not. And there is nothing that speaks against machines with purpose. After all, my brain was the product of some process that seems quite mechanical.

ergo, your argument would become: since machines are created by machines, and the universe is a giant machine, then it might have been created by a machine, too.

the burden is now on you to show us that the creator, or anyone else that created machines, is not a machine itself, without begging the question. Good luck with that.

so, your conclusion does not obtain. And this because of two mutually independent defeaters.

Enough to adios it, I am afraid.

ciao

- viole

You usually write such short posts, but this one
was worth writing in more detail. good one

blü 2 · Jan 16, 2020

Jim said:
- Imagining any aim or purpose behind anything that happens is is stigmatized in the sciences.

The rule is that you have to demonstrate your conclusion by reasoning from evidence. So far there's no evidence ─ indeed, no coherent hypothesis that I'm aware of ─ that anything incapable of evolution is capable of intention, meaning that intention / aim / purpose is limited to the biological. (Though, of course, there's ongoing debate about the Anthropic Principle.)

Jim said:
It seems ironic to me for people to imagine the universe as being like a machine, and at the same time scoff at people for imagining that it was created by someone with some purpose in mind.

Again it's a question of evidence, isn't it? There's plenty of evidence that living things, including us, are biological machines, just multipurpose ones generated by evolution.

But when it comes to attributing the existence of the universe to some or other superbeing, well, who, from where, why, and if life is the intention, why such apparent inefficiency in taking 14 billion years and many septillions of stars just to produce H sap sap?

Maybe we'll understand the answer better when we get round to creating universes for ourselves.

But the question will remain: where did the first universe come from, in which the first superbeing evolved?

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

Nowhere Man said:
Whatever happens to people will have nothing to do with the validity or dismissal of the subject in question.

I’m not saying that it does.

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

blü 2 said:
The rule is that you have to demonstrate your conclusion by reasoning from evidence. So far there's no evidence ─ indeed, no coherent hypothesis that I'm aware of ─ that anything incapable of evolution is capable of intention, meaning that intention / aim / purpose is limited to the biological. (Though, of course, there's ongoing debate about the Anthropic Principle.)
Again it's a question of evidence, isn't it? There's plenty of evidence that living things, including us, are biological machines, just multipurpose ones generated by evolution.

But when it comes to attributing the existence of the universe to some or other superbeing, well, who, from where, why, and if life is the intention, why such apparent inefficiency in taking 14 billion years and many septillions of stars just to produce H sap sap?

Maybe we'll understand the answer better when we get round to creating universes for ourselves.

But the question will remain: where did the first universe come from, in which the first superbeing evolved?

You might have read a lot more into what I said than what I meant. I wasn’t talking about conclusions, and I’m not saying that there really is any such being as a creator of the universe with a purpose.

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

If anyone would like to try to understand what I’m really thinking, let me know.

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

viole said:
because you are confusing necessary with sufficient conditions. Even if we bite the bullet that the universe is a machine, however we define that.

if agents with purpose create machines, that does not entail that machines can only be created by agents with purpose. That is the mother of all fallacies in natural theology.

But even ignoring the logical flaw, I could make an argument that I am myself a machine, unless you beg the question that I am not. And there is nothing that speaks against machines with purpose. After all, my brain was the product of some process that seems quite mechanical.

ergo, your argument would become: since machines are created by machines, and the universe is a giant machine, then it might have been created by a machine, too.

the burden is now on you to show us that the creator, or anyone else that created machines, is not a machine itself, without begging the question. Good luck with that.

so, your conclusion does not obtain. And this because of two mutually independent defeaters.

Enough to adios it, I am afraid.

ciao

- viole

I’m not talking about conditions or conclusions. I’m talking about metaphors.

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

Skwim said:
Not the same at all. Scientific review looks to establish credibility, whereas religious review looks to establish compatibility.

You might have missed my point. Anyway, I don’t think that establishing credibility is the only reason, or even the best reason, for academic review.

blü 2 · Jan 16, 2020

Jim said:
You might have read a lot more into what I said than what I meant. I wasn’t talking about conclusions, and I’m not saying that there really is any such being as a creator of the universe with a purpose.

My apologies if I've misunderstood.

In the OP you said:

- Imagining any aim or purpose behind anything that happens is is stigmatized in the sciences.

and I took your use of 'stigmatized' to indicate criticism of that.

And also

It seems ironic to me for people to imagine the universe as being like a machine, and at the same time scoff at people for imagining that it was created by someone with some purpose in mind.

I read that as, Some think the universe is (a) machinelike (b) not created for a purpose.

I took the 'machine' analogy to mean that the universe runs on the rules of physics, so I missed the irony.

Rather than guess, I'll ask: what did you intend by the machine analogy?

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

blü 2 said:
My apologies if I've misunderstood.

My apologies also. I thought that what I’ve been thinking about metaphors in the sciences was common knowledge and obvious to everyone, but now I see that it is not. In order to understand what I’ve been saying, you would need to understand my thinking about why and how metaphors are used in the sciences.

Jim · Jan 16, 2020

QuestioningMind said:
This sounds a bit like someone complaining that mathematics doesn't do anything to help us comprehend morality.

The scientific method has by far been the most effective means we've ever come across for determining how the universe functions. It is not nor was it ever designed to tell people how to live their lives or to bring out the best possibilities in people.

And though I agree that religions DO try and tell people how to live their lives... I've rarely seen it actually bring out the best in people.

I wasn’t complaining about anything. I was asking for examples of differences between research reports and religious scriptures, and I gave some examples of my own, to start the conversation.

halbhh · Jan 16, 2020

Nowhere Man said:
A good research report gets put foreward to be brutally ripped to shreds through the crucible of peer review.

The Bible won't survive that process.

I put that process against the instructions on how to live in the gospels, trying to find any that backfire or work poorly, so I could eliminate them from a list of hypothetical ways to live. What happened: in spite of very varied testing, each instruction I could find a way to test produced far better outcomes than other popular ways to live I'd been trying out. So, instead of being dismantled by the testing, the instructions on how to live became more credible by far than I had imagined possible: the things the Christ says about how to live are powerfully supported by actual testing was my conclusion, and it took me a lot of years, because I often wondered if I'd only been lucky, so I need to see repeated outcomes.

PruePhillip · Jan 16, 2020

Audie said:
Ha. More of it is being buried by archaeology or other
research than is being "uncovered".
People used to think exodus and the flood were real history.

Your facile analysis of theoretical astrophysics convinces
nobody but yourself.

The bible proves itself? All "sacred writings" have
self promoting passages.

Seems to me t hat among those who have read it,
the "believers" are the ones who understand
the bible the least.

I can illustrate that with easy concrete examples,
while I think it would be quite a trick to show that
those who have "proved it to themselves" have
any actual insights.

When you read the story of the Jews appearing in the
archaeological record of Palestine, the account of the
united monarchy, the house of David, the prophet Isaiah,
the temple mount, the Jews scattered over the face of the
earth etc --- take on board this: you are seeing the bible
lived before you, right now.
For centuries Christian believing people couldn't imagine
a time when the churches would fall or the Jews would
go back to their ancient homeland and resurrect the old
language and culture. The rise of anti-Semitism in the
West will help bring about the prophecy that ALL the
Jews will one day be back in Israel again.
There is no longer any Phillistines, or Edomites, or
Moabites, or Babylonians, or Amalakites - but the Jew
will remain as a symbol of God's people and God's plan.
And the bible says God will do to the Gentile what once
He did to the Jew.

PruePhillip · Jan 16, 2020

Aupmanyav said:
Tell me the problems. Is science hiding anything? OTH, what can you say other than 'Goddidit'. You may have proven it to yourself, but do not expect others to ditto your line. We find infinite holes there.

How does a universe create itself? And by universe I mean EVERYTHING
THAT IS. Not just planets and stars but matter, energy, space, time, numbers
and physical laws. Something EXTERNAL to this had to create it, otherwise
in science language it's simply a "MIRACLE."

Differences between research reports and religious scriptures?

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