Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Science and Technology => Topic started by: SusanDoris on June 08, 2019, 06:37:36 PM
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this afternoon I went with a fellow atheist friend to the Dorset Humanist Group's monthly meeting. The speaker was Prof Peter atkins, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Lincoln College, Oxford* who spoke about how Science does and will provide the answers to what are called the 'big'questions, and pointing out clealy why religion never has or never will. It was a most interesting afternoon. Not only did he speak clearly and unhesitatingly, but the audience, about 100 of us, were keenly attentive to what he had to say.
* I think that is correct info I it's all on his Wikipedia page.
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Religion can't answer any questions because there is no way of testing religion's answers except within the framework of science. For example, Christians say they have an answer to "what is the purpose of life?". But their answer is completely unverifiable.
Science also has an answer which is "none, as far as we can tell at the moment". The only problem with it is that people can't seem to accept it for some reason.
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Religion can't answer any questions because there is no way of testing religion's answers except within the framework of science. For example, Christians say they have an answer to "what is the purpose of life?". But their answer is completely unverifiable.
Science also has an answer which is "none, as far as we can tell at the moment". The only problem with it is that people can't seem to accept it for some reason.
Perhaps because it's unverifiable? I don't think science deals in questions such as the purpose of life.
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Perhaps because it's unverifiable? I don't think science deals in questions such as the purpose of life.
Steve H
The purpose of human life is to worship The Creator because after creating the universe he still wasn't feeling sufficiently proud of himself . Then he thought ' I know ill make some humans and instruct them to worship me or risk being burnt forever when they die ' that should do it 8)
I don't know why he made the animals though , probably to give Noah something to do I suppose .
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Perhaps because it's unverifiable? I don't think science deals in questions such as the purpose of life.
Please see JeremyP's post.
Do you know why you, it would seem, are one of those who cannot accept that there is no given purpose or meaning, and that all purpose and meaning is thought up by humans/?
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Please see JeremyP's post.
Do you know why you, it would seem, are one of those who cannot accept that there is no given purpose or meaning, and that all purpose and meaning is thought up by humans/?
That is fine by me ... but they don't seem to be that good at thinking at all.
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Steve H
The purpose of human life is to worship The Creator because after creating the universe he still wasn't feeling sufficiently proud of himself . Then he thought ' I know ill make some humans and instruct them to worship me or risk being burnt forever when they die ' that should do it 8)
I don't know why he made the animals though , probably to give Noah something to do I suppose .
No thread in this forum ever lasts more than a page or two before some smart-arse atheist weighs in with the laboured sarcasm. It does get rather tiresome.
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Please see JeremyP's post.
Do you know why you, it would seem, are one of those who cannot accept that there is no given purpose or meaning, and that all purpose and meaning is thought up by humans/?
I was replying to Jeremy's post, and I agree with you about meaning being a human invention! I choose to give life, the universe, and everything a roughly Christian meaning, but I don't pretend that Christianity is objectively true (probably not, anyway) - I am a non-realist, or at least a Tillichian (which amounts to much the same thing), Christian.
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No thread in this forum ever lasts more than a page or two before some smart-arse atheist weighs in with the laboured sarcasm. It does get rather tiresome.
other forums are available!
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I was replying to Jeremy's post, and I agree with you about meaning being a human invention! I choose to give life, the universe, and everything a roughly Christian meaning, but I don't pretend that Christianity is objectively true (probably not, anyway) - I am a non-realist, or at least a Tillichian (which amounts to much the same thing), Christian.
Thank you for reply. What do you see as the difference between giving life a Christian meaninge or an an atheist, or a humanist, or just plain no-belief meaning to life?
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Perhaps because it's unverifiable?
It's not unverifiable. We've looked into how we came to be here and it turns out the mechanism is a completely natural process. The evidence for the thetry of evolution is pretty strong. There's no need to presume a purpose to explain our existence, so Occam's razors says no.
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No thread in this forum ever lasts more than a page or two before some smart-arse atheist weighs in with the laboured sarcasm. It does get rather tiresome.
I thought it was quite amusing and the emoticon signals that the post was tongue in cheek.
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... the emoticon signals that the post was tongue in cheek.
A bit like saying something offensive, then adding "no offence", as though that makes it ok. (Not that I'm offended by sarcasm, I hasten to add: that's just an analogy. I just find it a bit tiresome.) https://youtu.be/jY4tD2Hbg_A
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Not that I'm offended by sarcasm, I hasten to add
I should hope not, that would require a level of hypocrisy only previously achieved by Michael Gove :P
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I should hope not, that would require a level of hypocrisy only previously achieved by Michael Gove :P
Yes, I can be sarcastic too, on occasion. It's a matter of degree. Walter's sarcasm on this thread wasn't even in reply to anyone else's theistic comment.
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Perhaps because it's unverifiable? I don't think science deals in questions such as the purpose of life.
Ah, but the RC catechism does just that:
Who made me? God made me.
Why did God make me? God made me to love him and serve him in this world and to be happy with him for ever after in the next.
[/size]
Just what Walter said!
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Yes, I can be sarcastic too, on occasion. It's a matter of degree. Walter's sarcasm on this thread wasn't even in reply to anyone else's theistic comment.
it was out of the blue and completely random and had no connection to the OP or any subsequent comments. Oh! wait...…..
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I suppose the small question before any decision about whether science can answer the big questions is 'What are the big questions?' For me they are all about what we should do, and since you cannot get an ought from an is, my take is that they are outside the purview of science. Others may have different 'big' questions.
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since you cannot get an ought from an is
People keep saying that. What does it mean? Is it really true?
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People keep saying that. What does it mean? Is it really true?
Yes. You can get an ought from an is IF you assume a basic ought. But you cannot get that basic value from any is.
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Yes. You can get an ought from an is IF you assume a basic ought. But you cannot get that basic value from any is.
Like JeremyP, I have wondered what it means! However, I generally ignore that point, so some examples would help.
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Like JeremyP, I have wondered what it means! However, I generally ignore that point, so some examples would help.
It's not really a question of examples rather about understanding that no matter how many facts you have to hand it doesn't tell you what you should do unless you have a goal or axiom of what you should do in order to make the decision, However, Alien, once of this parish, used an example when he was trying to illustrate that there was such a thing as objective morality that might be useful here since it posits something that he thought no one could disagree with,
The example was torturing a child to death just for fun, which was talked of so much that we shortened it to TACTDJFF. Unsurprisingly when people were asked whether they thought it was moral to do so, everyone who replied on the board said they didn't. Now Alien tried to use this apparent unanimity to argue for objective morality, a view denied buy most - but given that was a mega thread not the point here. Rather we have something where we have a child being murdered just because someone wants to have a bit of fun, That's the fact of the situation. From those facts alone can we say that is wrong? I don't see how.
However, if we have a base axiom that we should treat others like ourselves, and as an additional fact we wouldn't want to TTDJFF -then we can rationally argue that we should not TACTDJFF. Some person might however have the axiom that they should do whatever they want to feel good and could therefore if in addition to that they wanted to TACTDJFF, rationally decide to do that based on theit accepted axiom.
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NS
Thank you. Hmmm. I think I've got it, but having to listen to Synthetic Dave reading it, instead of being able to read it visually, it is probably something I shall think about but avoid trying to bring it into a discussion.
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NS
Thank you. Hmmm. I think I've got it, but having to listen to Synthetic Dave reading it, instead of being able to read it visually, it is probably something I shall think about but avoid trying to bring it into a discussion.
The wiki entry on it is pretty good. It also has a section on the responses which not surprisingly I disagree with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem
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The wiki entry on it is pretty good. It also has a section on the responses which not surprisingly I disagree with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem
Your url is bust. Here it is again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem Don't know what all the gobbledgook in mine is, nor do I know why your version isn't working, but at least my link works.
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Your url is bust. Here it is again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem Don't know what all the gobbledgook in mine is, nor do I know why your version isn't working, but at least my link works.
Ta!