to_hobbes

No, here's what I'm saying: right and left imply that there is a line -- a dimension if you will -- and wherever you are is the origin, and there is left and right, two logical opposites of the same line.

But what about religion and science? The "dimension" or line that we are talking about here is "ways of thinking" and the origin is the blank slate -- like a child who doesn't know about either. That child could go to the right (faith) or to the left (science), but they are certainly opposites, they are not "one, together" as you put it (not by my definition anyway).

However, religious people can be scientific by maintaining a schizophrenic view of the world: be faithful when you want answers to the impossible questions of the universe, be scientific when you want more practical answers about the universe. Its perfectly OK to do this, but I prefer a more consistent view of the universe so I go with science.

__________________
---

(By the way, it's all in your head.)

Skepticologist

The Bible says (Hebrews 11:1) "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Faith is required only when a person wants to believe something, for one or more of any number of possible reasons, for which there is no substantive evidence. That's as true for Christianity as it is for Islam or any other religion.

But one thing I learned through reading Joseph Cambell was that I can make use of some of the wisdom contained in virtually all religious and mythological texts without having to accept their metaphorical references as being literal, which would require a leap of faith.

If I believed I needed to have answers to all the questions, then I'd need to have faith in some system that purports to possess them because science certainly isn't yet able to provide them.

But I don't think I need all the answers, which makes agnosticism a very comfortable framework for my life.

__________________
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

Og

Science doesn't even try to give you the truth for those questions.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

romansh

hmmmn .... on one level I agree, science is only a model or picture of reality.
So when you tell us about neurons and synapses and ions crossing over junctions.... this is not the truth or at least a good approximation of the truth? Is not force = mass x acceleration a reasonable approximation of the truth at least at the scales humans can relate too?

Now I have a hard time accepting absolute truths, even relative truths to some degree, but does not science try to get a step closer to the truth with every step it takes?

Interesting.

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

Og

That's the point. Science is a process of getting closer and closer to the truth. That's a one sentence description of the scientific method. You NEVER get to the truth though (this would represent a solidification into dogma). There's always another possible explanation. You approach it, you do not attain it. Theories only fail to be disproven.

Science never glances directly at truth and as such can conquer it. Much like the Medusa stories of the Greeks. The "religions" of the world tried to look her in the eyes a long time ago and turned to stone.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

Skepticologist

First of all, I hope you didn't interpret my last post . . . "If I believed I needed to have answers to all the questions, then I'd need to have faith in some system that purports to possess them because science certainly isn't yet able to provide them" . . . as in any way a denigration of science.

I very highly value the rigorous method that true science imposes on itself in order to advance a hypothesis to a theory and finally to a law. I personally consider scientific laws as unassailable, but that wouldn't be the case had they not been subjected to such rigor.

My point was addressed to an operational basis for my daily living, and how I come by it in the absence of established science.

For example, Isaac Newton, through the application of the scientific method, has given us the law of gravity. I readily accept it as a scientific law, as well as an operational basis, because I have never once witnessed a situation in which it was proven false. So I know assuredly that if I jump over the rail of my balcony, which is roughly 170 feet above the ground, the only possible outcome is that my body will reach something close to terminal velocity before encountering an essentially unmoveable object in the form of the ground, and I will suffer the consequences.

But most of the decisions I make and actions I take during the course of a normal day are not informed by such clear and reliable scientific laws. Instead, they are either based on scientific hypotheses and theories that I can provisionally accept because they don't violate my personal requirements of logic and reason, or, in the absence of existing scientific hypotheses and theories, they are based on my own experientially-derived hypotheses and theories which are similarly subject to my personal requirements of logic and reason.

But the application of such laws, theories and hypotheses, while providing me with sufficient information to make it fairly reliably through one day after another, still leaves me without sufficient information to answer more elemental questions such as the meaning of life and what happens after I die.

I would love to have those answers so that I could be much surer than I am now that my daily living is leading me in the right direction. But such information is unfortunately unavailable to me, at least as a result of all attempts to date to achieve it.

Still, I continue to believe very strongly that making my way through this ethereal state we refer to as life in the absence of such answers is by far preferable to making them up, or accepting those made up by others.

__________________
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

Og

There is no meaning. You make your own meaning. Meaning is a thing that our brain cooks up. The notion of an individual with purpose on a cosmic scale is false. There is only the universe and all in it are one process. Meaning to an individual doesn't make sense as an "elemental question."

Your brain stops working. Your senses stop transducing sensory signals. The neurons that held your memories stop functioning and the synapses degrade. Your experience as a sensory organism with memory ends and the memories (as represented in neuronal circuits) dissociate and can no longer be retrieved.

But "you" have not gone anywhere. "You" are an expression of the universe as a flower is from a stem. A table and a flower and a person all lack intrinsic identity. They are entirely defined by extrinsic factors. The notion that you are some limited being is false. The you that is reading this note is a bound form of the cosmos. The true "you" is not going anywhere. The true "you" that is "all of us" puts on and takes off skins and greets itself and kills itself and loves itself and is indifferent to itself.

These are all readily apparent answers to your questions from scientific observations.

Anything else?

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

nakamichi680zx

I would add that by the sheer act of observation, you change what is observed; that the fact that what you observe changes with your perception of it, makes observation self-limiting because you cannot remove the observer influence from affecting the outcome.

From a web article http://reconstruction.eserver.org/021/Observing.htm

It states in part: "According to quantum mechanics, all reality is (to some degree) observer-dependant. "In general," Stephen Hawking writes in A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), "quantum mechanics does not predict a single definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of different possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these is".

The difference in the possible outcomes is observer dependant and as John Gribbon explains in his In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (1984), all vision involves bouncing protons of light off objects and into our eyes. A photon doesn't disturb large objects like a passing semi-truck on the Interstate very much, so we don't expect the tuck to be affected by simply looking at it, though we may wish it was. By looking at the truck, we do change it, though the change infinitesimally small. Observation effects everything we observe and ourselves. An electron, however, is so small that we have to use electromagnetic energy with a short wave-length in order to "see" it at all.... At the particle level, the base for all other observation, observer and observed are intertwined and their paths forever changed by their interaction. Form this starting point in quantum mechanics emerged a theory which eventually had repercussions up the observational scale from the smallest particles to the universe."

So I would conclude that pure observation has its limits. And when I say observation, I'm talking physical observation as discussed.

My point is that if science cannot overcome this basic problem, it is like watching a moving target that will move in a way which it wouldn't if you had not observed it. If this is a fundamental issue, then how will science observe its way into the truth if the "truth" changes with each observation?

__________________
GrassHoppah: The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

romansh

somethings bothering me here.
So a photon bounces off a truck, changes some attribute of the truck infinitesimally, only if I am not blinking at the time. What if I step to the side and the photon is "seen" by a leaf and is used for photosynthesis, (activates a chemical reaction). If the photon strikes my retina, it also activates a chemical reaction?

Either way in quantum mechanics we used observation to observe that at the very small scales observation affects the outcome.

My understanding is that Schrödinger used his thought cat to show the this unreasonableness of the concept. Not sure how we can prove or disprove the cat in the quantum state as the cat has to be isolated from the universe and we are not allowed to look?

To all practical purposes observation is the primary tool we have, it may some limitations at the very small scales, nevertheless it is very powerful. Plus who says quatum theory is the final word, admittedly it is a very powerful predictor but probably not the final one.

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

Og

Collapsing a wave function has nothing to do with your eyes

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are