Reading that strip made me go and read Ozy and Millie... last time I tried that strip, it was in the middle of the IMHO not-that-good reverse-aging pirate father storyline, and I decided it wasn't worth reading... But, after reading every strip in the archive...
It's a little odd seeing a scarily accurate version of your childhood (if you really could call it that... I remember someone once calling me "the youngest grumpy old man [he'd] ever met", somewhere in middle school... my personality was a bit like ozy and millie's rolled together, with a healthy dose of being seriously pissed off with the world (more accurately, that everyone I met (students, teachers, etc) and everyone on tv was stupid enough to need removing from the gene pool) added.) acted out by adorably cute furballs. :)
Of course, it made me feel bad to see how incredibly much more creative and articulate he is than myself, but allan and half the people in this forum do that, so it's nothing new.
Zavion wrote:The GOP aren't really grounded in reality. At least the ones that's voices will matter. These are people who will seriously look at the election map of the USA, see that most of it is red (because red states tended to be empty and large, like wyoming) but be like "See! There's a whole whole lot more Red! Look at Blue, that little parcel in the northeast, and that little chunk to the west."
The guy in the dorm room next to mine has it as his desktop wallpaper.
Andrick wrote:
Science is a new religion for the masses.
allan_ecker wrote:
But science is NOT a religion.
It should be pointed out that these two statements are not contradictory. While Allan's short description of science is quite good, this in no way invalidates Andrick's point.
The appeal to scienctific authority has replaced the appeal to religous authority. This is dangerous precisely because it ignores the sceptism that is integral to the scientific process. "Science has proven" is used to answer any objections, frequently in situations were science has not proven, but only produced a different, and as yet unproven, new theory to explain the observations.
Indeed, the media's tendency to ignore the inherent uncertainity of scientific theories creates a dangerous false impression. Scientists are protrayed as having access to "divine truth", instead of as people stuck with masses of contradictory data and the need to write up something that the grants committee will believe is worth funding.
It's not that I'm apathetic, it's that I'm ..... um .... OK, it's that I'm apathetic.
Proof is knowing with certainty. Logic can give certainty only to relationships: assuming a is true, b must be true.
Proof doesn't happen in science. What happens in science is a continual increase towards 100% certainty, but never reaching it. No matter how many times I let go of a ball and see it fall, the next time it could shoot straight up, break a hole in the cieling, and leave the solar system at a rapidly increasing fraction of the speed of light.
But as far as we think we know, it probably won't.
Be skeptical of -anyone- who uses the phrase "science has proven".
The media do often appeal to the authority of science, but usually not without good reason. The scientific community is a lot less known for fraud, lies, and bigotry than your average politician.
Sure, there are practitioners of science with personal agendas, even ones who seek to mislead the public at large, but the beauty of science is that it has a built-in system for calling Bullshit.
Also, I have not seen a newscaster say "science has proven", ever. They say "studies now show", or "a new study shows that this may", but never do they claim proof. (Then again, I don't watch a lot of Fox News, so this could be happening all the time for all I know.)
As for the masses using science as a religion, this too is not really accurate. Using bad data is not religion. Using good data with a small error margin and saying it is certainty is not religion either. It can be shorthand, or it can be simple misunderstanding, but it isn't religion until a person refuses to consider the argument against the use of the said data with an open mind.
If a person's mind can be changed about something, that thing is not a part of that person's religion.
Let's take your assumptions that the world is round and that the earth revolves around the sun. I mean everybody knows this, right? Only lunatics and crackpots would even say otherwise. But how do you and I know that this is true? No, really?
The geocentric model of the universe existed prior to the heliocentric one. All of the observences made about celestial and solar bodies could be charted into both models. This is the funny thing: they both worked. The difference between them is that one was massively complicated and the other wasn't. Also, the physics of one was far more complex than the other. It was simplicity which sold the idea of the heliocentric model and shunted aside the geocentric theory. This was prior to the industrial revolution, let alone flight and space flight.
So how do we know one versus the other? I've seen a shuttle launch, too. That doesn't tell me anything other than we heaved a mass of metal into the air not unlike missiles, rockets and other aircraft. I've seen sunrises and sunsets, but that does not preclude the optical effects of things moving into the distance appearing closer to the horizon. I've tracked things through telescopes and spent many hours with my parents in their hobby of stargazing, but the math works both ways. You may not personally like that, but it's true that the math applies to both models.
The only way to prove one over the other, since heliocentric and geocentric models can't both be correct, is to get something up to better see the world and everything else. I don't have such a device and I think you would have mentioned it if you did have one of your own. So you and I must rely on the devices of others and take their word for it. And "they" would happen to be the space-faring governments and the scientists employed by those governments or deriving their livelihoods upon those sciences whom say that this is true.
Personally, I think the idea of the geocentric universe is about as likely as humans abstaining from sex as of tomorrow onward and a teary-eyed Howard Dean exchanging emotional hugs with a simpering Pat Buchanan. But my only conclusive proof of anything is based upon an observation I made, when the Navy sent me to the wonderful country of Australia, which only made sense if the world were spherical in shape. The rest is guesswork and faith in what I've been told/taught by the government and all of it's (in)directly hired representatives.
"I don't know why, but watching 12-year old Japanese girls flinging their school uniforms at each other was wildly entertaining." - Azrael, Japanese Exchange Teacher.
I think in the complexity of my last few posts, an important point got missed:
Ultimately, everyone takes some things as axiomatic.
It's important to know from wence our axioms come.
I tried to make the case that my axioms are not derived from Christian theology (although some are certainly influenced by it), and that one does not have to derive ones axioms from Christian theology (or, indeed, any religious teaching) to be a good and moral person.
And yes, the math works out either way, but it's WAY more useful in the modern world to use the easier stuff.
actully, even with all the fudges in the geocentric model it was never accurate, there were always errors in the system. Now some of them were quite small (an obstruction of mars by the moon starting 10 minutes before it was predicted) and some of them were huge, but no matter how they compicated the model it was never accurate, even by the measureing devices of the day. Also, it couldnt account for anything outside of the known planets... comits were a big enigma and were often written off as "not heavenly bodies" so they didnt have to come up with a whole new set of rules to try to include tem. contrast this with the heliocentric model that can (so far) handle any celistrial object we can throw at it
that is what sold the heliocentric model, not its sympicitiy but its accuracy and vercitility. this model is accurate enough that the first esitmation on the speed of light was based off it (and it was only abou 10% off) and as of yet nothing has been observed that can not fit the current model. admitadly the model has been updated as new data comes in, but these changes are mere additions to the set of rules rather then the outright "this doesnt fit so we have to catagorize it as something else" that plagued the geocentric model
I cant say that things will be better if we change; what I can say is that we must change for them to get better
I will add that evolutionally, altruism actually does make sense. Mutual assistance is more beneficial than each individual attempting to fend solely for themselves and their families, and altruism can allow for more flexbility of exchanges than standard commerce alone. I.e. I help you when you need it and don't have the capabilities for repaying it, you'll be more likely to help me later when I really need it, even when I don't have the means to repay you.
There're some very interesting studies on this (not that this necessarily translates to solid facts, it's just something to think about).
Consider the commonness of values of altruism across many cultural lines, not merely in Christianity-influenced ones. Altruism, I would argue, arose in many parallel cultural evolutions simply because of its usefulness. Religion's just a vehicle for ideas, some good and some bad. No religion created the idea of being nice to others.
I'm very fond of telling the story of the first reccorded value of the speed of light. It was not a terribly accurate measurement, though.
Two men stand on reasonably distant hilltops, each with a lantern. One opens his lantern and starts counting. When the other man sees the light of the first lantern, he opens his. When the first man sees the next light, having not had a chance to say the word "one", he writes in his notebook the very first measured value of the speed of light:
Exceedingly fast.
On the topic of Godless Morality, I've been considering coming up with a moral code from first principles of biological survival; I suspect it wouldn't be as Machievellian as one might think.
just heard on the radio that the Conserverative party (the only one of any size that is opposed to the Same sex marrage bill) has changed their stance somewhat... they now support "the principal" of the bill and feel that it is time to give equal rights to same sex couples but are still trying to push for a "tradional defination of marrage" clause.
sounds like they are trying to get more votes in the east (where this is a very popular bill) and yet not drive away their supporters in the west (where the bill is facing tougher chalanges)
I cant say that things will be better if we change; what I can say is that we must change for them to get better
Both science/logic and religion are important, and morality can be based off of either.
Religion is important, necessary even, to do one thing that science can never, will ever, or should ever do: answer the question why. So simple a wuestion as "why am I alive?" Cannot be answered by science. Sure, it can answer HOW you are alive, how you came to BE alive, what you have to do to contimue in that state, but it cannot tell you WHY. It can tell you what laws run the universe, but it cannot tell you WHY it is there. It can tell you what the gravitational constant is, but it cannot tell you WHY it is that exact figure. Science can only describe, predict, analize, and formulate. It can never explain. This is the domain of religion and faith, whether it comes in the form of an organized spiritual organization, or a personal philosophy.
Science is important because religion can do nothing more then explain. Religion cannot tell you how to make a vaccine, or how to feed a population. It cannot tell you how to coexist with the enviroment, or how to structure a goverment. It cannot predict the future, nor can it catalog the past. It can ONLY explain.
What I jsut said may confuse many of you, and you may start pulling things out of mid-exodus on to point out that the christian religion does many of these things. I would argue that the passages you cite, the books of leviticus, Numbers, and other scriptures containing the "holy law" have NOTHING to do with the judeo-christian-muslim RELIGION. They are the laws of a theocracy, a goverment model based on building laws based upon specific religious tenants. if you remove the theocracy from judeo-christian-muslim entity, you're left with the philosophy, the belief, the faith, the RELIGION of those entities.
I just realized I forgot to talk about morality >_<
Building a morality on religion is quite easy. Part of your religious principles is that all God sees all people as equal: thus, you should treat each other equally. That means not harming one another, whether that harm be in the form or murder, rape, theft, deception, or any number of other means. In the philosophical concept of human equality, you get the entirity of compassion and fair treatment.
You can do it logically as well, and in doing so you actually end up building two seperate moralities, which are somewhat at war within the person. They are the Morality of Self, and Morality of Group.
The Morality of self is quite simple. Whatever will bring yourself the most pleasure, or prevent the most discomfort, is right. If you are horny, its right to yiff something. If you're hungry, it's right to eat something. And so on.
The Morality of Group is the same, only defined as what will cause the most benefit for the group/prevent the most harm is right. killing a group member is wrong, becaus eit hurts the group (unless it is judged that killing that person will help the group more then hurt it). Same for robbery, rape, and so on. Non-group members, however, you can harm with impunity.
Now, Morality of Group usually ends up defining laws, with associated punishments, and thus affect the Morality of Self. After all, killing Jow may make my day better, but going to jail makes it not worth it in the end, and thus I don't. It is upon this base that law is FOUNDED, that by giving power to the Morality of Group, it can overcome the Morality of Self whenever the two are at odds.
The problem is, this doesn't always work, as 1) any one person is part of many, many groups, and 2) not everyone is affected on a logical/emotional level the same by the law and by other Morality of Group forces. Take for example, KKK members in the deep south not long after the American civil war. Their morality of group coming from their friends and other clansmen overpowered the morality of group of the US as a whole, and thus they murdered and felt to be in the right doing so. For another good example, take those with omnivorous diets as opposed to vegetarians. Those vegetarians that feel eating animals is murder puts all animals into the game group, and use the morality of that group to judge eating habits. However, those with omnivorous diets do not consider other animals to be in their primary group, and so they have no moral qualms abotu eating a steak. Note, this is the same difference of grouping that helps to make Iraqi civilian deaths a side story, rather then being murder victems. They do not see the Iraqi people as being part of their Group.
Thus you have morality, from both angles, with the problems from both sides. Religious morality tends to get tied to theocracy, and thus both ages and is derived from a base unintended for such purposes. Secular, logical morality is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and what grouping choises and prioritization one makes.
I just wanted to note that asking "Why" can always be considered one of two things.
Why can either always be anwsered with an appropriete 'How'. (Why is the sky blue can be anwsered more spproprietly with 'How is the sky blue')
Or
Why is used in a situation that involves causuality. These sistuations can either be anwsered by a series of 'How' like statements (Why do I exist can be linked back to several how statements involving sex) or they can be given a meaning. (I exist because I want to, sucka foo'!) However giving it a meaning like that, no matter how pretty the meaning is to you, is not a real anwser to the question, as meanings are a human concept, and like all human concepts exist purely in your noodle, and die when you die.
So, basically, my summary is, before you go and ask a bunch of 'Why' questions, ask yourself, "Should I be really asking "How" or, is this a casual relationship that can be figured out better with a string of "How" questions?"
It's human nature to ask "Why" over how. How's boring, and hard to figure out. Why's really easy. You just stick your imagination together and you get a pretty meaning that fits best with you.
Thing is, that, these meanings, in the end don't really mean anything past you. And, cause, last time I checked, I, nor you, were a God, your own little meanings don't really effect reality.
Basically, you got to look at everything. And I mean Everything from the point of view that you, nor your loved ones or friends, don't never have and never will exist.
Oh, and ehtics is decided, and always has been decided, by three factors. Biological and Cultural and Self Interpertation. It's never been 'God' because even groups that have the same God have different laws. There is no superimposed moral system. There's only human made ones. Good and Evil are mearly perceptions. Now the trick is, to define 'Good' and 'Evil' while knowing they don't exist. When you That's how a decent set of ethics can arise. You don't get all high and mighty, and you don't put your own personal spin on every single thing (Leveticus). Knowing you're making them up is the only time you can be fair to everyone else. ("I know I'm bullshitting some laws up, so I'm going to make them as fair for everyone including myself, after all because I'm bullshitting them up in the dark, my personal preferences aren't any better than yours" as opposed to "God told me I'm better than you, so all of you can go to hell and bite me, everything you do that I don't do is against the law now because I don't like it personally") These scenarios sound familiar? They should.
It just irritates me to no end when people think the only way to be a 'decent' person is to have to have a specific religion or one at all.
Really, do some research on people in jail. If everyone without a religion was some psychotic murderous fiend off a leash, you'd expect the jails to be filled with an unproportionitally large amount of atheists.
Here. Other people speak more eloquently than I do:
[quote="Frank Zindler"]by Frank R. Zindler
The Probing Mind, February 1985
One of the first questions Atheists are asked by true believers and doubters alike is,
Zavion wrote:I just wanted to note that asking "Why" can always be considered one of two things... Why can either always be anwsered with an appropriete 'How'.... Or Why is used in a situation that involves causuality...
Zavion, why did you do that?
"I don't know why, but watching 12-year old Japanese girls flinging their school uniforms at each other was wildly entertaining." - Azrael, Japanese Exchange Teacher.
That would be anwsered by about 200 How questions. You're asking a causuality how question, that, I don't know exactly the anwser to.
But again, not knowing the anwser to something isn't the same as there not being an anwser. After all, if everything someone didn't readily understand had no anwser, then the world would be reduced to the simplist mind's meaning.
I can start by thinking of the hows that I came to my conclusion that I responded with.
But that would be a giagantic and repetitive topic that would span pages, and would be a somewhat autobiography.
I can step back, and give the hows that my brain took the information I was given and deduced such an anwser. I'm not a medical biologist, but again, just because I don't understand something doesn't mean that fairy dust causes it.
I have limitations to my exact knowledge of the mechanical workings of things. But because I don't know how a car engine works doesn't mean that my having faith in it being run on the power of love or my insisting that if I talk to the engine it'll work better.
If we're going even farther back, on how my fingers work, it's something about a series of muscles bones and ligiments.
If we're going farther back to the how I existed to do that, we'll need to have a talk about conception.
If you're talking about genetic/chemcial predispositions to behaviors, which may be the cause behind how I had the urge to respond to the forum in the first place, I couldn't really help you there either as I'm not a geneticist or chemotheropist. Because if I was slightly more of a pacifist I might not bother anwsering.
So what how are you exactly looking for?
How did I come to the reasoning?
How does my brain work causing me to think?
How does my aggressive/passive chemcicals work causing me to bother responding?
How does my environment effect how I responded?
I'm not sure.
Sorry I couldn't anwser your question too well, but at least I could give you the correct questions to ask, some of them anyways.
I'm going to assume, and I might be wrong in the assumption, that you were trying to ask me a 'Why' question about myself personally, hoping that I would feel bad about my lack of believing that I'm somehow special or supernatural and that I might give in to such doubtful or negitive feelings and be like "I guess I have to anwser this as a why, or else *gasp* face the idea that I might not have a supernatural spectral entitiy inside me", but, if that was the case, I don't really have such an arrogance to feel that I need to be magical and special to be happy.
You also disregarded, possibly, the fact that, whenever I think of anything in such a subject I do so on the pretense as if I, everyone I cared about, don't, never have, and never will exist.
It puts a distance of my self (and my natural inborn tendancies to defend 'self' against anything 'offensive') away from subjects that, do not care about me.
And it disallows me from making a bad judgement on the grounds of 'Well, it's me I'm tossing around, so I wouldn't want that to happen to me, so it I won't think of it."
When in truth, reality, physics, math, all of it, doesn't care about you, your plight, your hopes or dreams.
Math might seem elegent on paper, but a 300 lbs. bolder falling on you will kill you, and it won't stop and consider your feelings.
Reality doesn't feel. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate either.
There is no such thing as miracles.
Luck doesn't exist. There are only numerous variables that were failed to be calculated.
Every action always has a consequence. And no action is, in itself, an action.
Hope and Despair are nothing more than delusional feelings, meanings made by human brains trying to defend themselves from a reality they cannot control through will alone.
I realise by admitting this, that I admit that I'm no more significant than a rock, except to other humans, whom give me meaning.
I accept this, and I don't shy away from it because it sounds mean or painful.
I don't waste time on hoping that in reality I'm some magical being from another land, and I don't spend time despairing about not one. It's somewhat fruitless to try to get me to worry about myself in such a way. Because me worrying or crying about bad things won't make them go away. The task afterwards, is to go "Well, if I don't have that, what do I have? What can I do to make this life a better experience?"
I think, personally, by making my friends happier that makes my life a better experience. Do I think this is some kind of mission or destiny? No. Not really. It's a self imposed goal, a self imposed meaning. But the trick is, I realise it's a self imposed meaning. And I work for it realistically.
Zavion, the "innumerable how" questions to reach an answer, as you provided, is inadequate. The manner in which you dismiss a "why" question precludes your technique to reaching an answer for you do exactly the same for what you deride the "why" questions - work from an assumed understanding. So unless you begin with the very first "how question" which ever existed and build from that point to our present situation, you can drop the exercise in intellectual self-masturbation.
More importantly, "why" questions are directed for an answer to have a specific point. Your "multiple how" answer rambled before failing to actually answer my question. Basically, I had to sift through your "everything is pre-ordained" suppositions to piece together your answer as "it was a stimulus response". Most "why" answers unconsciously assume that the universe exists and the intended audience is aware of what has come before, instead addressing the divurgence of the understanding of the inquired from the inquiring. Let's say you witnessed the event of a daisy being crushed and someone else came along and asked you why thier daisy is dead. Would you launch into a "multiple how" answer which explains how a rock came to be on a ledge over the doomed plant and the physics involved? Or would you say "Peter pushed that rock on it from up there", thusly informing the inquirer of the information between the gap of your knowledge and his/hers (as you perceive of it)?
So let's set shelve the "multiple hows" as all it does is change the text without changing the content. I'd also like to cut through a lot of the highbrowed junk and just ask you, Zavion, if you believe in free will?
"I don't know why, but watching 12-year old Japanese girls flinging their school uniforms at each other was wildly entertaining." - Azrael, Japanese Exchange Teacher.
