religion plays a role in scientific process

[Dale]

for this discussion let's say religion is blind faith abstraction

isn't abstraction at least valuable in tooling hypotheses?

in the light of blind faith, aren't religious hypotheses at least
valuable in the philosophical psycho-social sciences?

for instance, to choose a leader, wouldn't you abstract all the unknowns
you could to decide if such a leader would be alpha enough? wouldn't the
question of what the alpha of all alphas , God(s), would do if such
would come into the play at some point?

where can you say science is more than a process? how founded does a
theory have to be before it is fact? statistically? six-sigma
production? ISO-900(0,1,2) production?

where did such an absolute break between science and religion begin?

how can you say that the simple elegance of empiricism started with
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc ... aren't the
forementioned posthumously granted alpha status in their words above
what is obviously written and created in stone millennia before them?

ever watch Ancient Aliens on History and History 2 channels? ...
megalithic constructions in stone all over earth that would be hard to
do today, let alone be funded ...

science and religion have been around for a long time ...

--
Dale
http://www.dalekelly.org

[RonO]

You should first learn something about science.

You may even find the learning interesting. Try "Surely You're Joking,
Mr. Feynman"

http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041

"What do you care what other people think?

http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

You can learn a lot about science reading those books. I had a post on
the subject that made it into the TO archives:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb05.html

What you will find out is that science likely predates religion. In a
way when a bird learns to use a twig as a tool to dig a bug out of a
hole they have done rudimentary science. Just think of the macaques
that learned that if they took the grain that people had thrown into the
sand to the water and dropped the grain and sand into the water you
could separate the sand from the grain. That is all science is. We
have learned better ways to gain scientific knowledge, but all science
is, is learning new things about nature.

You started out as a scientist. You were ignorant, and had to take the
clues from your environment, process the information gained and do
something with it. Just think of how you learned your native language
and how to communicate, or how you learned to interact with nature.
That is all that science does and is. IDiocy is when you make something
up, claim that invisible magic did what you claim and it amounts to
nothing because you can't apply it to anything known and it is all based
on claims that can't be confirmed to have even happened, let alone be
useful for anything. Science is just doing the hard work of making real
observations and applying what you have learned and getting some result
that you can make sense out of.

Religion is a lot of things. It became useful as a unifying cultural
force and supplied rational for things that mere observation could not
explain at the time. Science is hard work and you can't answer a lot of
questions about nature very easily. Religions took the existing science
and put it to good use at times. Calendars were kept, and the
priesthood or shaman could keep track of when to plant or when to move
with the seasons. The shaman could tell you what food was good to eat,
and where to find it next season. Recently (within recorded history)
religion has gotten organized and big enough to try to take the place of
the science. Relatively recently you had the denial that the sun
orbited earth, and religion was powerful enough to stiffle the science
for a while, but it eventually lost out to reality. It turned out that
there are answers about nature that religion didn't have and that
deficiency remains.

Most people accept the fact that religion has that limitation because
religion was never a means to gain new knowledge about nature. It had
always relied on science to produce that knowledge even when we didn't
call it science.

Science can't answer all the questions. Things like what purpose do you
have in the universe, is it OK to stone someone to death for adultery,
or is there some life after death are questions that science cannot
answer. Some religions claim to be able to answer questions like that,
and you can believe them or not, but you can't claim to have a fully
rational reason for doing so.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Instead of "denial" is should be "Relatively recently you had the claim
that the sun..."

Ron Okimoto

[Dale]

On 04/26/2015 08:44 PM, RonO wrote:
> Instead of "denial" is should be "Relatively recently you had the claim
> that the sun..."

I was attempting to say that perhaps the book of Genesis, in regard to
earth-centrism, could be fulfilled by what the Sun does regardless of
where the Sun and Earth are

this leads to a discussion of causality, can anyone really say what
causes what?

wasn't there a formal many cited atheist rebuke of the first cause
argument that said the earth could be the first cause, isn't this
earth-centrism?

please don't take everything I say seriously right away, I may be just
enjoying myself, and I would rather have a well thought reply even if it
has nothing to do with my topic, I have to credit this group for a LOT
of learning, even if just buzz-words and wikipedia/wiktionary, I think I
found out about wikipedia here about 10 years ago

--
Dale
http://www.dalekelly.org

[Leopoldo Perdomo]

El lunes, 27 de abril de 2015, 3:19:54 (UTC+1), Dale escribió:
> On 04/26/2015 08:44 PM, RonO wrote:
> > Instead of "denial" is should be "Relatively recently you had the claim
> > that the sun..."
>
> I was attempting to say that perhaps the book of Genesis, in regard to
> earth-centrism, could be fulfilled by what the Sun does regardless of
> where the Sun and Earth are

What do you mean with this paragraph, Dale?

>
> this leads to a discussion of causality, can anyone really say what
> causes what?

Causality of what? Are you asking what made the earth to turn around
the sun? A sort of question like who was first, the hen or the egg?

> wasn't there a formal many cited atheist rebuke of the first cause
> argument that said the earth could be the first cause, isn't this
> earth-centrism?

What relation of first cause has the earth with the sun? I mean apart
of the question of gravity, that is a property of masses, or just some
property of the space around some mass?
Both the earth and the sun started top form as the result of some
supernova explosion if our theories of astronomy are correct.

> please don't take everything I say seriously right away, I may be just
> enjoying myself, and I would rather have a well thought reply even if it
> has nothing to do with my topic, I have to credit this group for a LOT
> of learning, even if just buzz-words and wikipedia/wiktionary, I think I
> found out about wikipedia here about 10 years ago

Oh, Dale, you want to see a road that connect religion with science.
Religion is sort of magical thinking; a "cargo cult". You can look in
the wiki what means "cargo cult". Religion has been useful for millennia
as a tool of politics, also in wars. It is told the people that god is
in our side, and our position is just and perfect.
Religion is still politics. In the US religion is mostly the Republican
Party. For the people that still believe in religion is living with their
brain still 300 years in retard.
While science had been developed, and threw out some errors of "cargo"
thinking from the past, religions have barely evolved or changed.

You cannot find a road that communicates god with science. They are
separated by a huge chasm. You need to change your traditional god
by a new one.


Eri

> --
> Dale
> http://www.dalekelly.org

[RonO]

Religion took the cosmology of the time and attributed it to some god or
gods. The Genesis cosmology is a flat earth geocentric cosmology that
the ancients had come up with to explain some of their observations.
The earth was flat and it had a domed firmament above it that had the
sun, moon and stars imbedded in the firmament. The Greeks had already
come up with the notion of a spherical earth and even had a rough
measure of the circumference of the earth at the time the Bible was
being written, but the knowledge had not disseminated to that cultural
group. Do not make more of the Genesis cosmology than that. It should
lead to no scientific discussion of any value.

Beats me why first cause is important. If you learn how science works
you wouldn't care unless you were failing to try to use science where it
wasn't expected to work.

Ron Okimoto

[Burkhard]

That seems a problematic claim to make. The codification of Genesis
happened around the 6th century BC. There were indeed some Greek
philosophers at the time who "might" have supported a spherical earth
(the sources are ambiguous, it is sometimes attributed e.g. to
Pythagoras, but lots of writers of a much later time attributed their
ideas to him - there is no direct textual evidence as far as I know),
But at this early stage they held that model , to the extend that they
did at all, not on the basis of evidence, but their own cosmogonies or
philosophical preferences.For Pythagoras, if it really was him, th
ereason is the "music of the spheres" and his theory of harmonics, e.g.
Even Plato, 200 years later, based his round earth model apparently
more on his theory that there are "ideal shapes" than any empirical data.

It is only with Aristotle that we get clear documentation of proper,
reasoned spherical earth models, and the circumference was first done
with any degree of accuracy by Eratosthenes, around 250 BC

[Chris Thompson]

On 4/26/2015 7:24 PM, Dale wrote:
> for this discussion let's say religion is blind faith abstraction
>
> isn't abstraction at least valuable in tooling hypotheses?
>
> in the light of blind faith, aren't religious hypotheses at least
> valuable in the philosophical psycho-social sciences?
>
> for instance, to choose a leader, wouldn't you abstract all the unknowns
> you could to decide if such a leader would be alpha enough? wouldn't the
> question of what the alpha of all alphas , God(s), would do if such
> would come into the play at some point?
>
> where can you say science is more than a process? how founded does a
> theory have to be before it is fact?

This is really basic stuff, Dale. You should know better. A theory
doesn't grow up to be a fact (not even "statistically"). They're totally
different things. Facts, in science, are data. By themselves, facts are
pretty boring. A theory explains those facts (this distinction is
something Bill cannot seem to fathom). Try this:

- Some pairs of organisms are more similar morphologically to each other
than they are to other organisms.
- Some pairs of organisms are more similar genetically to each other
than they are to other organisms.
- Similar organisms tend to be found relatively near to one another
(Darwin noted this when he saw that despite the similar habitats and
geological history of the Galapagos and Cape Verde Islands, the islands'
organisms were more similar to species found on the near mainland
continents than they were to each other)
- Organisms that are more similar to each other genetically and
morphologically are also more similar to one another as embryos

Those are facts. By themselves, they don't say much. Also, note that
there are a lot of facts (data) underlying those facts: all sorts of
measurements and observations, gathered by thousands of people over the
course of decades, if not centuries.

What can explain those facts? Common descent.

Now there are exceptions to the above facts. This is where things get
really fun. To my mind, the best example is in geographic ranges. Why
are some pairs of organisms that are quite similar embryologically,
morphologically and genetically found on entirely different land masses?
Well, how about continental drift. That's another hallmark of a theory,
by the way: a good theory draws ideas (and facts) from other fields for
support. So now we can explain why there are marsupials on Australia and
on South America, despite those continents being separated by thousands
of kilometers, and there are no flying marsupials.

Chris

[Kalkidas]

"Dale" <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote in message
news:8dghke....@news.alt.net...

> for this discussion let's say religion is blind faith abstraction
>
> isn't abstraction at least valuable in tooling hypotheses?
>
> in the light of blind faith, aren't religious hypotheses at least valuable
> in the philosophical psycho-social sciences?
>
> for instance, to choose a leader, wouldn't you abstract all the unknowns
> you could to decide if such a leader would be alpha enough? wouldn't the
> question of what the alpha of all alphas , God(s), would do if such would
> come into the play at some point?
>
> where can you say science is more than a process? how founded does a
> theory have to be before it is fact? statistically? six-sigma production?
> ISO-900(0,1,2) production?
>
> where did such an absolute break between science and religion begin?

It began when academicians without wisdom and experience started defining
religion as you have: "blind faith abstractions"

Religion was never a "blind faith". Nor was it abstract. It was always a
science based on direct perception and confirmed practice.

[snip]

[rmat...@macomb.com]

Your revisionist religion assertions = nonsense not science.

Assertions are wonderful aren't they.

[Kalkidas]

<rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
news:16535524-de91-4fc3...@googlegroups.com...

Only if they are correct. Yours aren't, as anyone who has actually
participated in spiritual life knows very well.

[rmat...@macomb.com]

I know a lot of people who participate in "spiritual life" and they make no such claims about it being scientific and they are scientists. Many of whom regularly participate in religious activities. So either they are atypical (which I 'm assuming you will assert) or you are full of it (which I assert).

In this post you appear more kooky the you generally are, since in the science disciplines I have seen no report of this asserted phenomena ( I have an active interest in the professional area of the sociology of science where I'm confident this issue would come up). In short, I know of no science being developed or published now, that reports their data, theory, or special insights came from "spiritual life."

If you can document your assertion I will withdraw my "more" kooky assertion.

[RonO]

I don't know why, but for some reason I recalled that Eratosthenes was
8th century BC, but I was obviously wrong.

Ron Okimoto

[John Vreeland]

I know no such thing. You are ridiculous.

[pdblack...@hotmail.co.uk]

No. End of.

[Kalkidas]

<rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
news:e4e93bc7-6d29-41dc...@googlegroups.com...

> On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 12:54:51 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>> <rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
>> news:16535524-de91-4fc3...@googlegroups.com...

[snip]

>> > Your revisionist religion assertions = nonsense not science.
>> >
>> > Assertions are wonderful aren't they.
>>
>> Only if they are correct. Yours aren't, as anyone who has actually
>> participated in spiritual life knows very well.
>
> I know a lot of people who participate in "spiritual life" and they make
> no such claims about it being scientific and they are scientists. Many
> of whom regularly participate in religious activities. So either they
> are atypical (which I 'm assuming you will assert) or you are full of it
> (which I assert).

You do not know anyone who participates in spiritual life, and you certainly
do not participate in it yourself. You do not even know what spirit is.

[Kalkidas]

"John Vreeland" <vreejackat...@spam.hole> wrote in message
news:090uja5v7nrgonbqn...@4ax.com...

Yes, you are ignorant of such things.

>You are ridiculous.

No, you simply enjoy ridiculing others.

[Jimbo]

If you're correct, then there exists an objective means of determining
which religious claims are correct. You've made similar claims before
but haven't responded to requests that you reveal how such
determinations can be made. You repeat the claim but never support it.

[rmat...@macomb.com]

On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
> <rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
> news:e4e93bc7-6d29-41dc...@googlegroups.com...
> > On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 12:54:51 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
> >> <rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
> >> news:16535524-de91-4fc3...@googlegroups.com...
>
> [snip]
>
> >> > Your revisionist religion assertions = nonsense not science.
> >> >
> >> > Assertions are wonderful aren't they.
> >>
> >> Only if they are correct. Yours aren't, as anyone who has actually
> >> participated in spiritual life knows very well.
> >
> > I know a lot of people who participate in "spiritual life" and they make
> > no such claims about it being scientific and they are scientists. Many
> > of whom regularly participate in religious activities. So either they
> > are atypical (which I 'm assuming you will assert) or you are full of it
> > (which I assert).
>
> You do not know anyone who participates in spiritual life, and you certainly
> do not participate in it yourself. You do not even know what spirit is.

Wow. You know my personal spiritual life by what I post. Well, of course, you don't. Empty assertions appears to be all you have.

FYI I was raised in Appalachia as a Southern Baptist (very fundamentalist variety where I was taught to hate Jews, Blacks and the lie of evolution. Was encouraged and loved to go to tent meetings where rattlesnakes, strychnine, laying on of hands and glossolalia were givens. I know what the spiritual life is all about at the fundamentalist level, as well as through academic study varieites as diverse as the Hindu version and how it is viewed by native americans etc. And as a youth I was very active in Church activities and even taught Vacation Bible School classes at thirteen.

My "Dictionary of the Social Sciences" would indicate you could learn from Raymond Firth the Anthropologists whose seminal works on spiritual beliefs, practices and interpretations are central to a good social science understanding of spiritual behavior.

Your willful ignorance about me is duly noted and your forthcoming apology is accepted.

[John Vreeland]

As someone who has actually participated in spiritual life, I can can
say quite conclusively while using your own criteria that your
argument is vapid, absurd and ridiculous.

>If you're correct, then there exists an objective means of determining
>which religious claims are correct. You've made similar claims before
>but haven't responded to requests that you reveal how such
>determinations can be made. You repeat the claim but never support it.
>
>>>You are ridiculous.
>>
>>No, you simply enjoy ridiculing others.

No, you simply annoyed me when you arrogantly claimed to speak for
others who would likely find you full of BS.

[John Vreeland]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 14:35:57 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

That and the fact that anyone who travels on water for any
distance--as the Greeks did--comes to notice the curvature of the
Earth. The ancient Hebrews were not a sea faring people.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:43:29 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by John Vreeland
<vreejackat...@spam.hole>:

The same curvature can be noted anywhere one travels across
flat land with mountains on the horizon, which the Hebrew
tribes did. Admittedly, it's not as noticeable, and the
effect could easily be ascribed to haze and distance, at
least partially. But it *is* visible.

>> Do not
>>> make more of the Genesis cosmology than that. It should lead to no
>>> scientific discussion of any value.
>>>
>>> Beats me why first cause is important. If you learn how science works
>>> you wouldn't care unless you were failing to try to use science where it
>>> wasn't expected to work.
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>

--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Kalkidas]

<rmat...@macomb.com> wrote in message
news:fdf0994b-bc5e-4f51...@googlegroups.com...

You call that "spiritual life"? ROTFL!!

> My "Dictionary of the Social Sciences" would indicate you could learn
> from Raymond Firth the Anthropologists whose seminal works on spiritual
> beliefs, practices and interpretations are central to a good social
> science understanding of spiritual behavior.
>
> Your willful ignorance about me is duly noted and your forthcoming apology
> is accepted.

I had you pegged from the start. It is just as I said.

[Kalkidas]

"Jimbo" <xkl...@npt8t.ops> wrote in message
news:1j10kah7lu8neh50j...@4ax.com...

For example, here is a "religious claim", made by God Himself:

"Engage your mind always in thinking of Me, become My devotee, offer
obeisances to Me and worship Me. Being completely absorbed in Me, surely you
will come to Me." (Bhagavad-gita 9.34)

The objective test of this claim is the outcome of doing what Krishna says
to do: one either goes to Krishna or not.

The problem, of course, is that fanatical skeptics who blindly doubt
"religious claims" are not willing to take the trouble to verify the claim
by following the instructions of Krishna. Unless you are willing to undergo
the process, you really have no business claiming that there are no

"objective means of determining which religious claims are correct".

The famous Cardinal who refused to look through Galileo's telescope was of a
similar character.

[Jimbo]

Christians make the same claim about Jesus. Are you saying that Jesus
and Krishna are one and the same?

>The famous Cardinal who refused to look through Galileo's telescope was of a
>similar character.

Everyone with average vision can see the moon. It's a fact that it's
there. There's no squabbling between those who claim it has a smooth
polished surface and those who say it has craters and mountains.
Telescopes settled that question objectively. No such test exists to
settle the question of whether Jesus or Allah or Krishna is 'the one
true God.'

Creationist Muslims and Christians assert that their own sacred books
are 'scientific,' and yours is Satanically inspired delusion. They say
their claims are verified by following the instructions presented in
their own religious texts. There are plenty of other religious belief
systems with their own tests - which always involve a commitment to
some particular faith. And every group comes to a different
conclusion.

So you share a common approach with lots of other people who would
vehemently disagree with your own conclusions. We can objectively
determine that you can't all be right, but how does one objectively
determine if any of you are? You sure haven't presented any such
method. We *can* determine that none of you came to your beliefs
through scientific means.

[Nick Roberts]

In message <mhr5n6$dk6$1...@dont-email.me>

Ah, the old

"I know that my holy text is the ultimate truth because it says so and
because it's the ultimate truth it wouldn't lie to me"

ploy.

--
Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[Kalkidas]

"Jimbo" <xkl...@npt8t.ops> wrote in message

news:mre2ka1q18g0tddkm...@4ax.com...

Don't change the subject. I have presented an objective means of determining
whether or not a particular religious claim is correct. What are you going
to do about it? My guess is, nothing. My guess is you will pretend you never
saw it and keep on insisting that there is no "objective means of

determining which religious claims are correct".

[snip]

[rmat...@macomb.com]

You know a thirteen year old to 20 year old can not have a spiritual life based on fundamentalist beliefs. Pray tell how you know this and exactly what you mean by spiritual life.

I await your empty assertion about what a spiritual life is and how you know I never had one.

Space below for a clear and unambiguous definition of your spiritual life:

>
> > My "Dictionary of the Social Sciences" would indicate you could learn
> > from Raymond Firth the Anthropologists whose seminal works on spiritual
> > beliefs, practices and interpretations are central to a good social
> > science understanding of spiritual behavior.
> >
> > Your willful ignorance about me is duly noted and your forthcoming apology
> > is accepted.
>
> I had you pegged from the start. It is just as I said.

You must have a stereotype of hillbillies as incapable if a "spiritual life." Why is that?

Since you have no idea of my religious experiences: how is it possible for you make such a declaration above?

Again your willful ignorance about me is duly noted and your forthcoming apology will be evaluate for spiritual integrity.

[Jimbo]

I definitely saw it. I'm seeing it again as you repeat it. I've seen
it other times when you've made the same claim. But I have never seen
you support it with any kind of objective evidence. It looks like a
completely subjective assertion on your part.

*You* are the one who needs to do something about it. You are the one
who made the claim. If you seriously believe that you have some
objective means of demonstrating that your own religious claim is
correct, then why did you snip my question asking how your own method
is any different from all the similar claims made by people of other
religions? That was a highly pertinent question. It gets right to the
heart of the matter. They all say that *they* have the one true
method. Yet it's all the same underlying method. You make a religious
commitment and then follow the instructions in the particular document
or set of oral teachings that your particular group holds sacred.

I'm asking you in a straightforward manner to support your claim. If
you're seriously asserting that your own method is different and
better, and can be objectively determined to be so, then you have an
obligation to say *how* it's different. You need to answer my question
about why Christians and Muslims are wrong when they apply what seems
to be the same method of following the instructions in their sacred
texts. Don't just snip the question away and pretend you didn't see
it.


>
>[snip]
>