Religion and Science are 1000% Opposite

[TheBeardedDude]

Why do you call them truths? What exactly is a truth? You're the one claiming that they exist without the presence of humans being required, so what  exactly are they?

Tell me how a truth that people should not be enslaved or that a mountainscape is beautiful could continue to exist if all humans were wiped out tomorrow. How does this truth work? How does it have an effect on the universe? How did it come about?

Like the concept of a god or a soul, it's a form of equivocation, something that people believe exists but don't even know what it could possibly be.

Truth = in accordance with fact or reality. 

I never said these truths were independent of humans. The only truths I said were independent (necessarily true--as in could not be otherwise) are math and logic. It is obvious that all truth is not scientific. Examples: it is morally wrong to murder someone. It is true that humans are affected by natural beauty. Freedom is better than slavery.

I can provide you with a paradox where two mutually exclusive statements are simultaneously both true. This would not happen if logic was discovered. If Maths and logic were discovered then why can't we decide if zero is a natural number, or what the result is if you raise it to the power of 1.

How can geometry, a form of Maths, have been discovered if there are no perfect circles, or even shapes, in nature? How can pi have been discovered if it's impossible to completely calculate? It does not exist in nature. How can an imaginary number exist without humans to use it?

You say "They would exist regardless of if humans came around", how would they exist? Explain exactly what form they would exist in without the presence of humans.

If every human and every human record were erased, every one of the concepts you described would still exist. This is illustrated simply by the fact that if a new species evolved with the ability to reason, it would discover these very same things about reality (numbers, Pi ratios, logic, etc.). 

Again explain what an ethic is and how it can have an effect on the universe if there are no humans. Where did it come from? How did it come about? What does it consist of? Where does it get its energy from?

Depends on your view. My view is that most ethical truths are intuited. Others say they are reasoned. Either way, they are still ethical truths. It is wrong to murder, lie and steal. Ethics requires humans. 

Meaningless statement. Meaning is context specific and something needs to assign meaning to something else. Humans apply meaning to things. Meaning does not exist without something intelligent embodied in a specific context for that meaning. You can see this with most forms of artificial intelligence. They may seem intelligent but their inputs have no meaning to them because they are not embodied in the real world.

But we can demonstrate that consciousness is a product of the brain because physical changes to the brain either affect, stop or kill off consciousness, e.g. narcotics, anesthetic, brain damage or neuro-degenerative diseases. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that consciousness continues to exist after death. Nor is there is any example of complex patterns of energy continuing to exist without the use of matter anywhere in nature. So why assume that it happens with the brain?

The first paragraph is all about philosophy. Science cannot provide meaning to anything! It only describes. 

It is a fact that the physical brain is not the same thing as consciousness. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon. 

Why do they?

The goal of philosophy of science is not to answer scientific questions, but to answer questions about science. This means philosophers of science have spent a good bit of time trying to find the line between science and non-science, trying to figure out the logic with which scientific claims are grounded, working to understand the relation between theory and empirical data, and working out the common thread that unites many disparate scientific fields  (from this link)

So you're saying that reality also consists of the unnatural world? How do you define natural? Why can't this 'unnatural reality' be investigated using physical means? If you believe that your god can sense and act within the natural world (if not then your god is not relevant and does not need to be worshiped), or that demons exist, then why should it only work one way? That's special pleading. Why should the beings that you think exist in a 'spiritual' reality be able to sense and act within the natural world but natural things be unable to affect the spirit world?  

The natural world is any physical thing that exists that is subject to our laws of nature. I believe that natural events can have supernatural causes (definition of a miracle). Science is by definition the study of the natural world. Supernatural causes are outside it's ability to investigate or comment on. It can examine the effect--just not the cause. That is not special pleading. You are attempting to apply science beyond its definition. Why would you say that natural things do not affect the supernatural world? How do you know? 

I agree that much of the problem is that we both have very different usages of the same words, such as what a truth is etc.

Yes. But we also disagree on some very critical issues related to the role and abilities of science.

“…it is morally wrong to murder someone…”
 
What about a murderer about to commit murder? You might not call that murder, but preemptively killing someone in a way that would violate the law, is murder. So what does and doesn’t constitute “murder” is and always has been decided by the situation as society perceives of it for each individual offense (this is why we have a judicial system after all). So, trying to simply paint something like “murder” as a strictly black and white issue, is demonstrably erroneous. So much for your moral “truths.”
 
“It is true that humans are affected by natural beauty.”
 
It is true that SOME humans are affected by natural beauty. And in addition to this, you don’t know about past humans, which include other species of humans. Another blanket generalization that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
 
“Freedom is better than slavery.”
 
Only if you define freedom as “not slavery.” And only if you hold a definition of slavery that basically boils down to the traditional slave and slave-master roles. Poor people still being trapped in what is effectively indentured servitude, probably don’t think as highly of their “freedom” as you do of yours since “freedom” isn’t universally applied even to “free” peoples.
 
And in any event, you probably shouldn’t comment on the moral nature of slavery given the Bible’s views on it.
 
“If every human and every human record were erased, every one of the concepts you described would still exist. This is illustrated simply by the fact that if a new species evolved with the ability to reason, it would discover these very same things about reality (numbers, Pi ratios, logic, etc.).”
 
And all the religions of the world would be forgotten.
 
“Depends on your view. My view is that most ethical truths are intuited. Others say they are reasoned. Either way, they are still ethical truths. It is wrong to murder, lie and steal. Ethics requires humans.”
 
And morality requires a social species because it (like ethics) doesn’t exist independent of humanity. Because morality isn’t objective.
 
“Science cannot provide meaning to anything! It only describes.”
 
Science itself is a process and a method. It has no capacity to generate meaning. That does NOT mean that humans can’t derive meaning from a scientific understanding of the world.
 
“The goal of philosophy of science is not to answer scientific questions, but to answer questions about science.”
 
Bull and shit. The philosophy of science is about pushing the boundaries of science to ask and attempt to answer scientific questions. That is what the essence of a PhD in science is.
 
“The natural world is any physical thing that exists that is subject to our laws of nature.”
 
The natural world is the universe we live in as we understand it. The laws of nature are our attempts at describing our understanding of it. Trying to manipulate the definition of “nature” and “natural” to invoke supernature is a flaccid tactic.
 
“Yes. But we also disagree on some very critical issues related to the role and abilities of science.”
 
Probably because you don’t understand science.

[Losty]

1000%

[brewer]

1000%

New math?

[Neo-Scholastic]

What I am reading sounds to me like question begging on a massive scale. The statements "People use mathematics to describe reality" and "Mathematical objects are not real" are incompatible statements.

Maybe they're real human constructs that map to the empirical world real well.  Those don't seem like mutually exclusive choices.

If a human construct actually maps onto the empirical real world, then there is some real object in or feature of the empirical world capable of being mapped. Otherwise you have an invented set of symbols that only accidentally reflects phenomenal experience, i.e. there is no essential reason for their correspondence. Now that could indeed be the case, but that is the stance that the world is unintelligible.

[Ravenshire]

Has already been proven that when a brain is destroyed the consciousness live on.

Evidence or shut the fuck up. Not you blabbering on in pshchobabblespeak, but actual studies, real evidence.

NDE's have been thoroughly debunked, and even if they hadn't, they're not evidence of life after death, so don't go there either.

---

Wrong again Mat.
Has already been proven that when a brain is destroyed the consciousness live on.
You can't destroy energy and consciousness.
They are the two sides of the same sheet.
NDEs already proved that.  

Provide peer reviewed publication of reproducible, falsifiable evidence obtained using lab conditions published in a reputable journal otherwise admit that you're wrong. Because if what you are saying really was correct and that proof of NDEs had been achieved then the above would be easy to obtain.

Consciousness is easy to destroy.

(emphasis is mine)

Perhaps more important to the discussion, consciousness can be modified by head trauma.

[Whateverist]

Maybe they're real human constructs that map to the empirical world real well.  Those don't seem like mutually exclusive choices.

If a human construct actually maps onto the empirical real world, then there is some real object in or feature of the empirical world capable of being mapped. Otherwise you have an invented set of symbols that only accidentally reflects phenomenal experience, i.e. there is no essential reason for their correspondence. Now that could indeed be the case, but that is the stance that the world is unintelligible.

But those real objects for which our mathematics map so well are not mathematical objects.  The symbol is not the object.

---

Maybe they're real human constructs that map to the empirical world real well.  Those don't seem like mutually exclusive choices.

If a human construct actually maps onto the empirical real world, then there is some real object in or feature of the empirical world capable of being mapped. Otherwise you have an invented set of symbols that only accidentally reflects phenomenal experience, i.e. there is no essential reason for their correspondence. Now that could indeed be the case, but that is the stance that the world is unintelligible.

Better answer: this goes back to all the other 'fortuitous' results of evolution.  The poor mappers have bit the dust.  We are the winner's inheritors.

[Succubus]

1000%

I thought that odd, 1000% and science in the same sentence?

---

Maybe they're real human constructs that map to the empirical world real well.  Those don't seem like mutually exclusive choices.

If a human construct actually maps onto the empirical real world, then there is some real object in or feature of the empirical world capable of being mapped. Otherwise you have an invented set of symbols that only accidentally reflects phenomenal experience, i.e. there is no essential reason for their correspondence. Now that could indeed be the case, but that is the stance that the world is unintelligible.

What dressing would like with that salad?

[Neo-Scholastic]

NDE's have been thoroughly debunked, and even if they hadn't, they're not evidence of life after death, so don't go there either.

In order for that to be true, there would be a definite known reason for why they occur. A debunker would have to have an adequate explanation and currently, no one knows the necessary and sufficient causes for an NDE.

---

What dressing would like with that salad?

You must be really stupid if you cannot parse such simple sentences.

If a human construct actually maps onto the empirical real world, then there is some real object in or feature of the empirical world capable of being mapped. Otherwise you have an invented set of symbols that only accidentally reflects phenomenal experience, i.e. there is no essential reason for their correspondence. Now that could indeed be the case, but that is the stance that the world is unintelligible.

But those real objects for which our mathematics map so well are not mathematical objects.  The symbol is not the object.

No one is saying that the symbols are objects. Only that there is an essential relationship between mathematical symbols and what those symbols signify.

Better answer: this goes back to all the other 'fortuitous' results of evolution.  The poor mappers have bit the dust.  We are the winner's inheritors.

You say that as if there wasn't a reason why some mapping strategies are better than others. What is the difference between a good map and a bad one if not the degree to which it corresponds to real features and objects in reality?

[Whateverist]

But those real objects for which our mathematics map so well are not mathematical objects.  The symbol is not the object.

No one is saying that the symbols are objects. Only that there is an essential relationship between mathematical symbols and what those symbols signify.

But numbers aren't about "what", they're about "how many" or at least "how much". That is pretty independent of what they may be.

Better answer: this goes back to all the other 'fortuitous' results of evolution.  The poor mappers have bit the dust.  We are the winner's inheritors.

You say that as if there wasn't a reason why some mapping strategies are better than others. What is the difference between a good map and a bad one if not the degree to which it corresponds to real features and objects in reality?

But what difference would that make if we weren't being selected for our mapping abilities? Those who continually get lost aren't going to make it.

Numbers don't directly map to the real world, it is always an amount or quantity of something. That is pretty general, just like our mathematics. That's actually an important part of why it is so useful.

I'm not really feeling what it is which is animating your objection here. Can you break it down for me?

[I_am_not_mafia]

You are the one who said that the consciousness is a product of the brain.
Bring the evidence that what you say is true.
After that we can continue the conversation.
OK?  

And after that please bring also the evidence that.......the consciousness is easy to destroy.  

This is obviously said by someone who has never been under general anesthetic. If you were still conscious under anesthetic you would certainly know about it while being cut up on the operating table. If consciousness is not a product of the brain then it should not matter what happens to the brain. But it does. The food you eat, or don't eat will affect your mental disposition. So will drugs. There are many documented cases in the scientific literature of people undergoing massive personality changes because of the brain damage that they have suffered. The most famous example being that of Phineas Gage.

Many people suffer fro neurodegenerative diseases. I myself suffer from Multiple Sclerosis and one of the most typical symptoms is optic neuritis. If you could see without the use of eyes, as people who believe in NDEs claim as they imagine floating off to place where their eyes are not present, then people suffering from MS would not suffer double vision when lesions occur in their optic nerves.

If the brain was not solely responsible for who and what we are, how we think and act and process sensory stimuli, then people with Alzheimers would not suffer from memory loss.

Scientists discover the on-off switch for human consciousness deep within the brain

Researchers at George Washington University are reporting that they’ve discovered the human consciousness on-off switch, deep within the brain. When this region of the brain, called the claustrum, is electrically stimulated, consciousness — self-awareness, sentience, whatever you want to call it — appears to turn off completely. When the stimulation is removed, consciousness returns. The claustrum seems to bind together all of our senses, perceptions, and computations into single, cohesive experience. This could have massive repercussions for people currently in a minimally conscious state (i.e. a coma), and for deciding once and for all which organisms are actually conscious.