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[Nicoletta Mithra]

Okay, question then for you Nico? Where do you draw the line between where reality stops and where beliefs and ideas begin?

It is obvious to me that beliefs and ideas are part of reality. The question is, if it is an idea or belief about something, is there this something they are about really existing and how good do they match it?

You say that something like the scientific method is ill suited to the discussion of something like ethics, but I disagree, using the scientific method we can make all sorts of tests and predictions and experiments that determine how people respond to certain stimuli and such.

Well, I don't say science can't contribute to ethics in some way. But it never hits the truely important part of ethics: Ethics, at it's heart, is dealing with norms, science aims to describe. Descriptions of how things are might be helpful in organizing things how they ought to be, but they do utterly fail in determining how they ought to be.

Can science tell us what is right and wrong? No, because those are subjective human ideas, we created them, so we get to decide what they mean. That said, once we've decided what they mean, we can use science to determine if something falls into one category or another. Science is useful for building the map of reality, in fact, I would argue there is no better way to map reality, because any other way to map reality fails to take that reality into account when making the map.

Well, it is far from obvious that right and wrong are nothing but human ideas, based on convention. I highly doubt it. Even so, if you point out that people have different ideas about what is ethically right and wrong you are right about that. One can easily have different ideas of the very same thing, based on perspective: Like a cylinder that, from one perspective, seems to be a cricle and from the other perspective a square - until you realize it's neither, properly. Also, people can and do err.

So, there are plenty of reasons why people might have in part vastly different ideas about what is ethically right, when those all are in fact based on what actually is ethically right.

If you subscribe to ethical subjectivism your approach might work out. But you will get into trouble at the very first step: With working out what they 'mean'. because, if ethical categories are merely conventional, then there is no obligation to agree on a meaning at all.

Thus, ethical subjectivism seem to be on the one hand kind'a self-defeating to me on the other hand missing the entire point of ethics: that there are categories that have normative power.

Suppose you write on a sheet of paper:  "(1) Everything on this sheet of paper is true, (2) The mass of a helium atom is 20 grams."  If that trick actually worked in real life, you would be able to know the true mass of a helium atom just by believing some circular logic which asserted it.  Which would enable you to arrive at a true map of the universe sitting in your living room with the blinds drawn.  Which would violate the second law of thermodynamics by generating information from nowhere.  Which would not be a plausible story about how your mind could end up believing something true.

Experimental data and observational data are necessary for the construction of an actual map. You can't make an accurate map of a city you've never been in from inside a locked room with nothing but a sheet of paper. How else would you do it that wasn't just pulling the information out of thin air and stating it to be correct? If not by experiential or observational evidence, if not attached to something, then your belief is floating, not connected to anything but itself and other beliefs, without changing your anticipated experiences. How does your anticipated experience change as a result of a certain belief, and if it doesn't, then what purpose does the belief serve to aid you in navigating the world?

Well, this is kind'a true if you deal with the natural world. Yet, in fact, mathematics does things exactly what you suppose in your thought experiment. It starts with axioms, which are simply taken to be true and extends from there on by various mathematical operations. Whatever you get there, there is no need at all that this connects to the natrual world as examined by science. Like, you will probably never, ever find a perfect circle in nature. It's a pure object of thought, if you will. (And of course it doesn't has any impact on the working of the laws of nature, the information isn't coming from 'nowhere', because your body is an open system and it's pulling the energy needed in from out there.)

Yet, you build a map of the mathematical reality. You find mathematical truths. and some of these are even applicable in the natural world. In fact modern science depends on mathematics to work. Which is kind'a funny: You need maths, that couldn't care less for the natural world, to describe the natural world effectively and exactly. Many of the breakthroughs of natural science wouldn't have been possible if mathematicians would have cared to make their theorems match the 'natural world'.

A belief in something like freedom isn't unscientific, a belief in a certain system of ethics isn't necessarily unscientific either. On the contrary science, by telling us more about the world, has a great potential to improve our systems of ethics. We know thanks to science that there's really no difference between races, we know thanks to science that animals aren't so different than us, just as two examples.

But again, that is really not doing anything, directly, in ethics. While we now know that there are no biological races (Science doesn't tell us that there are races, which are not different. It tells us that because there are no really distinguishing inheritable differences, it makes no scientific sense to speak of different human races.) withing the species Homo sapiens, that doesn't really mean that we should treat dark-skinned people the same way as light-skinned people. Only if you add the premise that 'if there are no biological races, then all humans should be treated the same', then anything follows for ethics from those scientific findings. Also, one shouldn't be silent on the fact that ethical considerations had influence on the definitions used for 'race' in biology after WWII. Nowadays biologist rarely, if at all, speak of 'races' because of the baggage of the term. What's used usually instead is the term 'sub-species'.

Similar things are true for the cat example. So, science has at best an auxiliary role in ethics. So, while in a sense all knowledge is ethical, for example it really helps to know that fish need oxygen in the water to breathe and that under certain conditions oxygen gets scarce in a fish bowl, that is really ethically neutral until you add the premise that 'You really should not let your pet fish die!'. And what you should or should not do with your pet fish won't be derivable from scientific knowledge.

Furthermore, scientific knowledge can be used to commit unethical acts. If you do know the conditions that lead to a drainage of oxygen from water and that fish need oxygen, it is quite easy for you to kill the fish, even if you shouldn't do so.

So, scientific knowledge is instrumental, while properly ethical knowledge is not. Ethical knowledge sets ultimate goals.

I can easily believe in freedom, freedom is a particular idea that is generated in the human mind by a particular arrangement of firing neurons, and it might have slightly different connotations to others. I can even believe that freedom is a good thing based on the knowledge that other people are like me, and I don't like having no choices, so they probably don't like having no choices either.

Well, but all that doesn't mean that people should be free. There's nothing normative in this consideration of freedom so far. You're merely describing things. To make it ethical, you need to add a premise of the type: "If people are like me and don't like haveing freedom of choice, they should have freedom of choice."

Also, while I'd would agree that the 'idea of freedom' can be described as being generated in the brain by firing neurons, it is a stretch to come to the conclusion that this is a full description. I highly doubt that it is, because natural science doesn't aim at giving full descriptions. It's aiming at generalized descriptions. Anyhow, even if it would be a full description of how the idea of freedom is generated, it would be a far stretch, again, to say that freedom is nothing but that idea that is generated in the brain.

Science is a tool that is used to increase our understanding of the territory, so that we can have an accurate map by which to navigate. Its clear that having a more accurate map leads to more ways to use the territory as evidenced by our increasingly powerful technology as our map has grown more accurate. Science is the most powerful tool we have, and there is no reason not to apply it to everything we can. There is no special barrier beyond which the scientific method cannot be used.

And yes that does end up requiring science to prove itself, but why would you not attempt to discern the truth using the most powerful tool in your arsenal? There's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. You can't step outside of yourself so you're always limited to using your own mind.

Of course there is! Science has boundaries. It is tailored to examine the natural world. If you examine the history of science and read up on the theory of science you will notice that what is nowadays simply called 'science' was and still is but one field amongst others. The idea that because science has been so successful in examining, explaining and then predicting the field of study it has been it has to be ablke to explain everything is outright absurd.

Let me try to put it into an analogy: Say, for some reason you put really great effort into developing a tool to drive bolts into stuff. No, you don't have just a screwdriver. You really put some effort into it: You applied a clutch to it that slips at a preset torque. It is electrically powered. it comes with a ratchet action. And it looks just badass:

Yeeehaaa! I love that baby. (Actually, I have no idea if it's any good. I just think it looks hot (for a screwdriver)! This is no endorsement of the product!)

Furthermore, let us assume that for whatever reason soever, the guys responsible for getting the nailing done stuck to their simple, manual hammers:

So, arguably and near to certainty without a doubt that screwdriver is the most powerful tool in your toolbag.

Why not using it for everything?

Kind'a obvious. If you have that great screwdriver, every problem might look like driving a screw in. But that doesn't make it so. Use the screwdriver where it is appropriate to use it. Just like the other tools, which you hopefully didn't throw away.

Don't screw around with that thing!

[Saede Riordan]

Okay, question then for you Nico? Where do you draw the line between where reality stops and where beliefs and ideas begin?

It is obvious to me that beliefs and ideas are part of reality. The question is, if it is an idea or belief about something, is there this something they are about really existing and how good do they match it?

That's a great place to start. A good way I like to think of it is, does a belief accurately correspond to reality? If so, we call that belief true, if not, we call it false. A good way I find to distil down truth as a concept is to simply describe it as a belief that accurately maps to reality and allows meaningful predictions about that reality to be made.

You say that something like the scientific method is ill suited to the discussion of something like ethics, but I disagree, using the scientific method we can make all sorts of tests and predictions and experiments that determine how people respond to certain stimuli and such.

Well, I don't say science can't contribute to ethics in some way. But it never hits the truely important part of ethics: Ethics, at it's heart, is dealing with norms, science aims to describe. Descriptions of how things are might be helpful in organizing things how they ought to be, but they do utterly fail in determining how they ought to be.

No of course not, its up to us to determine how things ought to be, as rational agents. Its true that science cannot make moral decisions for us, but it can inform our decisions, and lead us to make more intelligent ones, and therein I feel it contributes usefully. How things ought to be is totally subjective, we decide that. I can say 'war is good' and you can say 'war is bad' and that doesn't make either of us right or wrong because good and bad are entirely subjective terms and we could mean entirely different things by them.

Can science tell us what is right and wrong? No, because those are subjective human ideas, we created them, so we get to decide what they mean. That said, once we've decided what they mean, we can use science to determine if something falls into one category or another. Science is useful for building the map of reality, in fact, I would argue there is no better way to map reality, because any other way to map reality fails to take that reality into account when making the map.

Well, it is far from obvious that right and wrong are nothing but human ideas, based on convention. I highly doubt it. Even so, if you point out that people have different ideas about what is ethically right and wrong you are right about that. One can easily have different ideas of the very same thing, based on perspective: Like a cylinder that, from one perspective, seems to be a cricle and from the other perspective a square - until you realize it's neither, properly. Also, people can and do err.

So, there are plenty of reasons why people might have in part vastly different ideas about what is ethically right, when those all are in fact based on what actually is ethically right.

If you subscribe to ethical subjectivism your approach might work out. But you will get into trouble at the very first step: With working out what they 'mean'. because, if ethical categories are merely conventional, then there is no obligation to agree on a meaning at all.

Thus, ethical subjectivism seem to be on the one hand kind'a self-defeating to me on the other hand missing the entire point of ethics: that there are categories that have normative power.

You seem to subscribe to an objective system of ethics, which I can't quite understand. How can ethics be anything other then subjective, given that they are a human creation? Do you think there is some objective ethics embedded into the structure of the universe?

Suppose you write on a sheet of paper:  "(1) Everything on this sheet of paper is true, (2) The mass of a helium atom is 20 grams."  If that trick actually worked in real life, you would be able to know the true mass of a helium atom just by believing some circular logic which asserted it.  Which would enable you to arrive at a true map of the universe sitting in your living room with the blinds drawn.  Which would violate the second law of thermodynamics by generating information from nowhere.  Which would not be a plausible story about how your mind could end up believing something true.

Experimental data and observational data are necessary for the construction of an actual map. You can't make an accurate map of a city you've never been in from inside a locked room with nothing but a sheet of paper. How else would you do it that wasn't just pulling the information out of thin air and stating it to be correct? If not by experiential or observational evidence, if not attached to something, then your belief is floating, not connected to anything but itself and other beliefs, without changing your anticipated experiences. How does your anticipated experience change as a result of a certain belief, and if it doesn't, then what purpose does the belief serve to aid you in navigating the world?

Well, this is kind'a true if you deal with the natural world. Yet, in fact, mathematics does things exactly what you suppose in your thought experiment. It starts with axioms, which are simply taken to be true and extends from there on by various mathematical operations. Whatever you get there, there is no need at all that this connects to the natrual world as examined by science. Like, you will probably never, ever find a perfect circle in nature. It's a pure object of thought, if you will. (And of course it doesn't has any impact on the working of the laws of nature, the information isn't coming from 'nowhere', because your body is an open system and it's pulling the energy needed in from out there.)

Yet, you build a map of the mathematical reality. You find mathematical truths. and some of these are even applicable in the natural world. In fact modern science depends on mathematics to work. Which is kind'a funny: You need maths, that couldn't care less for the natural world, to describe the natural world effectively and exactly. Many of the breakthroughs of natural science wouldn't have been possible if mathematicians would have cared to make their theorems match the 'natural world'.

mathematics as absolutely scientific. You can test for yourself that 2+2=4, all other mathematical proofs are extrapolated from things that can be proven within the human ability to know anything. Having accurate maths also certainly aids your navigation of the world, thinking 2+2=3 will quickly lead you astray.

A belief in something like freedom isn't unscientific, a belief in a certain system of ethics isn't necessarily unscientific either. On the contrary science, by telling us more about the world, has a great potential to improve our systems of ethics. We know thanks to science that there's really no difference between races, we know thanks to science that animals aren't so different than us, just as two examples.

But again, that is really not doing anything, directly, in ethics. While we now know that there are no biological races (Science doesn't tell us that there are races, which are not different. It tells us that because there are no really distinguishing inheritable differences, it makes no scientific sense to speak of different human races.) withing the species Homo sapiens, that doesn't really mean that we should treat dark-skinned people the same way as light-skinned people. Only if you add the premise that 'if there are no biological races, then all humans should be treated the same', then anything follows for ethics from those scientific findings. Also, one shouldn't be silent on the fact that ethical considerations had influence on the definitions used for 'race' in biology after WWII. Nowadays biologist rarely, if at all, speak of 'races' because of the baggage of the term. What's used usually instead is the term 'sub-species'.

Similar things are true for the cat example. So, science has at best an auxiliary role in ethics. So, while in a sense all knowledge is ethical, for example it really helps to know that fish need oxygen in the water to breathe and that under certain conditions oxygen gets scarce in a fish bowl, that is really ethically neutral until you add the premise that 'You really should not let your pet fish die!'. And what you should or should not do with your pet fish won't be derivable from scientific knowledge.

Furthermore, scientific knowledge can be used to commit unethical acts. If you do know the conditions that lead to a drainage of oxygen from water and that fish need oxygen, it is quite easy for you to kill the fish, even if you shouldn't do so.

So, scientific knowledge is instrumental, while properly ethical knowledge is not. Ethical knowledge sets ultimate goals.

Again, ethical knowledge is still rooted in human minds, and thus can still be understood via an understanding of human minds, even predicted by understanding sufficiently. We can ultimately decide whether or not to let the fish die, there is no outside force deciding whether the fish living or dying is right or wrong, that is something for us to decide as humans, when we decide what right and wrong are.

I can easily believe in freedom, freedom is a particular idea that is generated in the human mind by a particular arrangement of firing neurons, and it might have slightly different connotations to others. I can even believe that freedom is a good thing based on the knowledge that other people are like me, and I don't like having no choices, so they probably don't like having no choices either.

Well, but all that doesn't mean that people should be free. There's nothing normative in this consideration of freedom so far. You're merely describing things. To make it ethical, you need to add a premise of the type: "If people are like me and don't like haveing freedom of choice, they should have freedom of choice."

Also, while I'd would agree that the 'idea of freedom' can be described as being generated in the brain by firing neurons, it is a stretch to come to the conclusion that this is a full description. I highly doubt that it is, because natural science doesn't aim at giving full descriptions. It's aiming at generalized descriptions. Anyhow, even if it would be a full description of how the idea of freedom is generated, it would be a far stretch, again, to say that freedom is nothing but that idea that is generated in the brain.

if freedom is more then an idea generated in the brain and constructed within the fabric of culture, then what is it? Is it some force in the universe? If it isn't in our heads then where is it?

Science is a tool that is used to increase our understanding of the territory, so that we can have an accurate map by which to navigate. Its clear that having a more accurate map leads to more ways to use the territory as evidenced by our increasingly powerful technology as our map has grown more accurate. Science is the most powerful tool we have, and there is no reason not to apply it to everything we can. There is no special barrier beyond which the scientific method cannot be used.

And yes that does end up requiring science to prove itself, but why would you not attempt to discern the truth using the most powerful tool in your arsenal? There's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. You can't step outside of yourself so you're always limited to using your own mind.

Of course there is! Science has boundaries. It is tailored to examine the natural world. If you examine the history of science and read up on the theory of science you will notice that what is nowadays simply called 'science' was and still is but one field amongst others. The idea that because science has been so successful in examining, explaining and then predicting the field of study it has been it has to be ablke to explain everything is outright absurd.

I find the idea that not everything has an explanation to be rather far fetched, and what other ways do we have besides science of determining if our map matches the territory? And if you say, 'no not everything is explainable by science then what other system of explanation are you using and how is it coming up with its information? How do you know that information to be correct if not through the scientific method?

[Vikarion]

I am certainly not from the US: I'm from Germany. To me literalism and young-earth creationists are, admittedly, a bunch of far-away guys, which hold weird views on what the bible is talking about. They are, also at odds with christian tradition, which always placed more importance on the spiritual message of the Bible than on it being correct on a literal level.

Well, that's not entirely fair to them. Let's say that they are at odds with your Christian tradition. It's true that Augustine didn't take everything literally, but I can find Church fathers who pretty much did.

Also, I don't think that you need to assume interference in the natrual workings of the world, if you believe in a dininity. Nor do I think that 'supernatural experiences' are needed for belief in divinity. I, personally, don't think that one needs 'gaps' in the frame of nature for God to exists. Rather, if someone believes in divinity, I'd rather expect them to not think that the divinity left 'gaps'.

Well, the problem I have here, is that if the divinity exists, but does not interfere, then pretty much by definition, I have no reason to think the divinity exists. Being a giant fan of free speech and free thought, I will never say that someone should not be free to believe anyway, I just find that the application of Occam's Razor excises God rather neatly.

Or, to put it another way, I try not to believe anything that I don't have enough...I don't know if I'm using the right terms here, but...observation and evidence for.

I'm sorry, I've had a stomachache/headache for much of the day, and I feel frustratingly limited in how I want to convey things.

Let's put it this way...I don't believe in the Aztec gods, because I find insufficient evidence for their existence. Now, they could exist, but, frankly, I don't adopt beliefs until they have some evidence for existence. Should I want evidence for beliefs? Well...I mean, if I don't want evidence, I can just invent my own religion here and now.

Anyhow, I indeed do claim that religion and science can co-exist. There is no necessary clash between the two. They deal with different aspects of reality: They might overlap here and there to a degree that's smaller or larger, but basically both try to make sense of reality in their own way. Optimally they are complementing each other.

I think that they can co-exist so long as religion continues to give way before science. That is to say, creationism yields before evolution, demon possession is overruled by our understanding of epilepsy, etc. But that's not what most people who are religious do. I can give you the name of a Muslim scholar who is still arguing that the Earth is flat, because that's his interpretation of the Koran.

Quite frankly, come over here to the U.S., and it's likely that your high and refined Christianity will have most people calling you an atheist. I hate to say this, but you are probably a bit spoiled living in Europe. 

One last point: While I would agree that one shouldn't put credence to a claim that says that freindship has nothing to do with hormones and such, I would give as little credence, honestly, to someone who tells you that there is no such thing as friendship, but just chemical reactions in the brain. So, for me, this goes both ways, therefore I see no reason to ascribe a 'primacy' to science.

By "primacy", I mean, "that which has the deciding vote", or that which we hold to be true regardless of other "ways of knowing". Incidentally, I have an interest in social science, and frankly, anyone who stated that there are "only chemical reactions in the brain" would be violating the principles of science as much as any Creationist. That's a false reductionism, and science is not about that. Now, if someone were to say "the feelings of friendship are caused by the brain", that could be perfectly true, and not diminish the feeling or experience of friendship I have, at all.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Well, that's not entirely fair to them. Let's say that they are at odds with your Christian tradition. It's true that Augustine didn't take everything literally, but I can find Church fathers who pretty much did.

Well, yes. Suffice to say, though, that they are at odds with the reasonable strand of tradition of Christianity.

Well, the problem I have here, is that if the divinity exists, but does not interfere, then pretty much by definition, I have no reason to think the divinity exists. Being a giant fan of free speech and free thought, I will never say that someone should not be free to believe anyway, I just find that the application of Occam's Razor excises God rather neatly.

Or, to put it another way, I try not to believe anything that I don't have enough...I don't know if I'm using the right terms here, but...observation and evidence for.

I'm sorry, I've had a stomachache/headache for much of the day, and I feel frustratingly limited in how I want to convey things.

Let's put it this way...I don't believe in the Aztec gods, because I find insufficient evidence for their existence. Now, they could exist, but, frankly, I don't adopt beliefs until they have some evidence for existence. Should I want evidence for beliefs? Well...I mean, if I don't want evidence, I can just invent my own religion here and now.

Well, I stand with my claim that God doesn't need to 'do' anything, much less 'interfere' to not be superfluos. An easy 'quick and dirty' example would for exaqmple be to say that 'God guarantees the uniformity of nature' or to say that 'God is the reason that there is something rather than nothing'.

I think that they can co-exist so long as religion continues to give way before science. That is to say, creationism yields before evolution, demon possession is overruled by our understanding of epilepsy, etc. But that's not what most people who are religious do. I can give you the name of a Muslim scholar who is still arguing that the Earth is flat, because that's his interpretation of the Koran.

Quite frankly, come over here to the U.S., and it's likely that your high and refined Christianity will have most people calling you an atheist. I hate to say this, but you are probably a bit spoiled living in Europe. 

Well, the pope accepts evolution and knows about epilepsy. ;P If I am spoiled by living in Europe, perhaps you have been ruined by living in the US?

By "primacy", I mean, "that which has the deciding vote", or that which we hold to be true regardless of other "ways of knowing". Incidentally, I have an interest in social science, and frankly, anyone who stated that there are "only chemical reactions in the brain" would be violating the principles of science as much as any Creationist. That's a false reductionism, and science is not about that. Now, if someone were to say "the feelings of friendship are caused by the brain", that could be perfectly true, and not diminish the feeling or experience of friendship I have, at all.

Well, that's interesting. What is your take on the humanities (with the execption of religious studies). How do they figure into the 'big picture' in your opinion?

[Vikarion]

Well, yes. Suffice to say, though, that they are at odds with the reasonable strand of tradition of Christianity.

Don't be too sure. The Catholic church burned witches and heretics only four hundred years ago. Christians still are, in Nigeria.

Well, I stand with my claim that God doesn't need to 'do' anything, much less 'interfere' to not be superfluos. An easy 'quick and dirty' example would for exaqmple be to say that 'God guarantees the uniformity of nature' or to say that 'God is the reason that there is something rather than nothing'.

Yes, but how do you know that God guarantees the uniformity of nature? Maybe nature is just like this. Or maybe there are naturalistic reasons we haven't discovered. Maybe "nothing" is unstable, and the reason we have something is because of that. Maybe one day we will have "nothingness" drives, where the instability of nothingness allows for an energy source. Don't you want to know? As in, know, with evidence and experiment?

Well, the pope accepts evolution and knows about epilepsy. ;P If I am spoiled by living in Europe, perhaps you have been ruined by living in the US?

Mmm, sorry. Let me explain the idiom: it means that you have it really good, not that you are rotten.    And, if you are living in Germany, you do. Over here, people want to teach Creationism in schools - public schools - and at least one pastor has suggested putting atheists on an offender list, similar to our sex-offender list.

Well, that's interesting. What is your take on the humanities (with the execption of religious studies). How do they figure into the 'big picture' in your opinion?

I think that the humanities, when properly done, are the study and celebration of what it is to be human. Our hopes, our fears, our dreams, and our failings. That's a wide definition, but it's a wide field. I think that everything can be reduced, in a certain sense, to science. But I have a wider definition of science, perhaps. It's true that sorrow is a chemical reaction in the brain. But it's also true that I can feel sorrow when reading a good poem. Observationally, I can see that this holds true for others, and that I have a connection to them. To me, science is all we observe and try to honestly integrate into a unified field of our observations, and, in the end, this includes the humanities.

I'm sorry, I'm really not in a physical state to respond well. But I've tried. 

[Silas Vitalia]

Just FYI Mithra, one of the reasons you might sometimes find resistance from american non believers here is because for the most part the main American branches of Christianity have a particular history of anti-intellectualism, racism, homophobia, intrusion into politics, and a continued effort to establish essentially an American Taliban fundamentalist state.    I'm not exaggerating, the way our government is structured there are elected officials holding the sorts of anachronistic views that would be a barrier to entry in parts of Europe. 

You can hold rediculous opinions about rape, homosexuals, minorities, keeping women in their proper place, etc and not be laughed out of town, but freely elected into the national law making legislature
  Being an open athiest in some parts of this country is for the most part very, very frowned upon.

Now you aren't that sort of person at all, but I hope you can understand why you might get a more.vocal response from non believers. Here in the states they want us to not exist.

Also can we get a mod split for the surprisingly civil religious debate off from the men's rights whatever stuff?

[Vikarion]

Just FYI Mithra, one of the reasons you might sometimes find resistance from american non believers here is because for the most part the main American branches of Christianity have a particular history of anti-intellectualism, racism, homophobia, intrusion into politics, and a continued effort to establish essentially an American Taliban fundamentalist state.    I'm not exaggerating, the way our government is structured there are elected officials holding the sorts of anachronistic views that would be a barrier to entry in parts of Europe. 

You can hold rediculous opinions about rape, homosexuals, minorities, keeping women in their proper place, etc and not be laughed out of town, but freely elected into the national law making legislature
  Being an open athiest in some parts of this country is for the most part very, very frowned upon.

Now you aren't that sort of person at all, but I hope you can understand why you might get a more.vocal response from non believers. Here in the states they want us to not exist.

Silas, I lub you. 

Anyway, seriously, this. I'll be honest - I don't "feel" for a lot of these things. I could live in a Christian theocracy - by Christian standards, I'm more moral than most Christians. But I don't want to. I oppose the theocrats because it's wrong (well, irrational) to use a religion as a means for determining public policy.

That's not necessarily why I oppose ALL belief, but, trust me, I'd much rather have Christians of Mithra's stripe all around me than the ones I do have. Hell, I'm not sure I'd even be an anti-theist if everyone around me was adhering to Mithra's sort of religion.

[Lyn Farel]

Still loling at that tbh

Being more serious though, I think there is indeed a very big gap between all the american branches that i'm not myself even sure if they still belong to Christianity or Protestantism... Or the Reformed Church ? I am honestly clueless about those.

But they surely do not sound and look very much like what we have in Europe under papal law, and even less similar to protestant temples and entities. I may not be very fond IRL of monotheistic religions (the most intolerant and invasive of all religions imo), but I can agree that the orthodox Catholic Church, the Protestant Church and even the Islamic institutions we got around are perfectly moderated and definitely far from nut-jobs like the Westboro...

But I still have a huge issue when religion starts to get mixed up with ethics. Invoking God to justify ethics, as much as believers may have perfectly valid or at least, opinions they have the freedom to have, I can't accept to have a discussion if they start to introduce God into the equation.

Also Nico, while I definitely agree with your views on science vs ethics, I am still struggling with the concept of objective ethics as well to be honest. I guess that's where belief starts to get into the equation, and the same way I don't believe in any divinity, I don't believe either in objective ethics. I may believe in things like objective truths and facts, but let's face it, we will not live even long enough to see that someday, if that is even possible to begin with...

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Heya.

Now... first, Vikarion, I'm quite sympathetic to your wide definition of science. Over here in Germany, we have "Wissenschaft" which includes both science and all humanities (thought there is sometimes debate about whether it includes theology or not). Wissenschaft, or science is then not limited to the experimental method. Introspection, as observation of your inner emotional and thought processes, is then, for example, a valid source of data for 'science in a wide sense'. Mathematical theorems and formulas, which are obtained by logical dreivations based on axiomatic systems, rather than the combination of empirical observation and logical reasoning are then easily seen as 'scientific in the wide sense'. Explanations are then testable by other things then experiments. For example reasoned argument.

Yet we have a - I think - strong current in Germany, which aims at narrowing the term 'Wissenschaft' down to meaning exclusively 'Naturwissenschaft', that is 'science in a wide sense' they want to supplant with 'science in a narrow sense', like 'science' has been used - at least according to the sources I read - in the anglophone world to mean primarily the natrual, 'exact' sciences. But the don't want to keep the 'humanities' to complement 'science in the narrow sense'.

They do so because they are opposed to the humanities, don't accept their value, don't accept that they produce knoweldge and generally uphold a - strong! - primacy of the 'scientific method': One where all other modes of producing knowledge are not only inferior, but also invalid.

As most of those people are biologists (in the wake of most prominently Dawkins, but also Hitchens, Dennet and Harris - or scientific 'laity', for the matter), I had to suffer through this a lot (approximately one half) of my studies at University (which I did in biology and philosophy). And while this might sound 'spoiled', this is where I encountered the worst discrimination I actually ever directly encountered: A professor telling me in a small discussion about Dawkins' 'God delusion' that she will never, ever take in religious people for a PhD, because religious people can't possibly be scientists.

So, as a philosopher, I'm more interested, really, in problems, then solutions and I like to make things more complicated, rather than simplyfing them. Of course, as a biologist and natural scientist, I'm more interested in solutions to problems and also see the value in simplifying things.

But through my studies of the theory of science I have come to the conclusion that there is no inherent value in 'evidence' and 'experiment', but that the value of the two lies in giving additional data for our faculty of reason to work with. Therefore I'm against a primacy of method (i.e. 'the scientific method'). I personally am for a primacy of reason (in a fairly broad sense of critical thinking, cognition and intellect). (And alas, you find unreasonable people all over the place. In the US they seem to be found in religion, over here I found some of the most unreasonable people I know working as scientists.)

One more thing: I'm not a Christian. I'm not baptized and nothing. I believe in a God of philosophers. I'm much in agreement with Aristotle, there, and through that alone with Thomas Aquinas. And as I am with Thomas: Yes, there hasn't always been a distictively organized movement of 'reasonable Christians'. But there always have been reasonable Christians and if you look at the history of theology, you will find an unbroken line of theologians within the Christian community who were dedicated to reason and God equally, because they saw little, if any, distinction between the two.

So, yes, 'the Catholics' haven't always been the reasonable faction, and they probably aren't quite identical with it now (as we see by the problems of Francis to get it through to his ecclesiastic machinations that it is OK to have a gay ambassador at the Vatican. But then, they oftentimes are unreasonable for political reasons, rather than religious ones, I'd claim.).
But, none the less, in Christian theology there always has been a strong current of reason: Which is no wonder, as theology - as a field of study - is the systematic and rational study of concepts of God and of the nature of religious ideas.

[purple]

I've never been so relieved to see a thread derailed into an arguement about atheism in my life.

Six pages long, and meaning few people saw a least a minute or two of the vid.   Points scored for the good guys.

[purple]

I stand for equality, fairness, reason, logic, science and freedom.   I hate bigotry, prejeduce, dogma and censorship.  Let me explain why.

While living with my mother, my brothers and I experienced abject poverty.  We were often homeless and when we had a home it was may or may not have had running water or electriticty.   The food budget for the five of us was about $80 a month.   Those were the good times.   

The bad times were when every so often my father would decide to have a custody battle - and often win.  He didn't do this because he loved his children, but because he liked to hurt my mother.   If he couldn't break her bones, then he could at least use the court system to steal her children.  He'd give us back eventually, but only so he'd have the pleasure of doing it again later.

Many of the non US readers here probably aren't familiar with Appalachian culture, moonshiners, the ku klux klan or southern baptist snake handlers...but let just say the bad times included things like being tortured, being forced to torture others (if we didn't do it, then the adults would and it would be much worse.  Having your own gentleness used a weapon to make you hurt others is a huge head fuck), not being allowed to sleep for days while we're preached at and brainwashed etc. 

I made it a life's mission to be the polar opposite of my father.   I value kindness, equality and fairness but I DON'T seek those things with dogma and ideology.   I  use the Socratic method, reason and logic to dispassionately determine what is the best way to achieve them. 

But I look around my country and I see the masses being turned against one another by fear and greed.   The are being made weak by being divided along every possible axis:  Race, Gender, Sexuality, Religion, Wealth.   We're taught to hate and fear the 'others' so that we let big government get bigger to protect us and then we're given a welfare check and food stamps to keep us content.   The irony is the messages of hate and fear are spread under a banner of 'diversity and equality' and anyone who tries fight back with actual facts and logic gets accused of hate mongering.   

[purple]

There is a Norwegian documentary that takes a close look Third wave Feminism.   I've thought for a while that 3rd wave feminism now feels more like a religion, eerily similar to the sermons of my youth, that values faith more than facts and that's why I now call myself an equalist or humanist instead of a feminist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

Hjernevask (Brainwash) is a Norwegian popular science documentary series that aired on Norwegian television in 2010. The Nordic Council of Ministers closed the Nordic Gender Institute following the broadcast of Hjernevask.  The question of whether the series influenced that decision is disputed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE&list=PLBgaE8_tapyjb5PPQ6xoBeovrwKqA2a-5

[ValentinaDLM]

Not sure exactly what you are getting at here purple. I spent many years of my youth in crushing poverty in the Appalachian Mountains
and it certainly didn't make me against feminism. If anything I would consider myself a feminist, and I am keenly aware how exactly I am treated differently being a woman.

[purple]

Not sure exactly what you are getting at here purple. I spent many years of my youth in crushing poverty in the Appalachian Mountains
and it certainly didn't make me against feminism. If anything I would consider myself a feminist, and I am keenly aware how exactly I am treated differently being a woman.

Did you bother to read my post?  I hate to be pithy here, but it feels like you really missed the point.   I believe believe in gender equality because of my past (or in spite of it), but 3rd wave feminism is not about gender equality.   It's a new form of ignorance and bigotry.   

An enlightened ideology is one open to discussion, not one that censors conversation (like Gwen tried here), denies scientific evidence or labels anyone who points out illogical dogma as 'misogynist shitlords.'

[Jace]

For anyone confused by his point, it can be summarized easily by the fact that his signature has a FEE video in it.