Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[Abaddon_ire]

Nope. That is not why your argument fails.

Try again.

You're arguing against a designer which is like Plato's Demiurge.

That's not what Klorophyll is defending. 

A lot of modern Christians believe in something like a Demiurge, but not Klorophyll. You are arguing against something he hasn't advocated.

I have not yet presented a counter argument. 

I care not a whit about any imaginary "demiurges".

I have no interest in your covert apologia.

[Belacqua]

Science does indeed demonstrate what's true, while philosophy does not.

This is a philosophical statement. It can't be proven by science.

[Abaddon_ire]

When people use the term god, are they referring to my definition or the one that they have in their own minds ?

Probably they are referring to the idea of God that they have. 

When people use the term "game," are they referring to their own meaning, or mine? Definitions vary. Does this mean that "game" is meaningless?

When I say the word is meaningless, that is exactly what I mean.

But that's not what "meaningless" means. For a term to be meaningless, there has to be no meaning. For theists, it has a meaning. 

There are no values that you can place upon the word because those values cannot be demonstrated.

What do you mean by "values cannot be demonstrated"? Do you mean that the referent of the word has to be proven by science to have a meaning? That would be begging the question.

It's like asking "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin ?"
How many imaginary items that have 0 mass can you put upon a finite space.
Answer - "An infinite number of nothing."

The question about angels on the head of a pin was never used by any theologian. It was made up by people who wanted to tease theologians. 

It is true that some philosophers believe there can be things with no extension. Ideas, for example. 

That is god. An infinite number of zeros that all add up to zero.
That is meaningless.

Aristotle defines God as actus purus. The term actus purus has a meaning. Many Christians agree with the meaning. Therefore, the term God has a meaning.

None of that matters. 

All that matters is the definition of "god" that our protagonist in this thread happens to be using.

Your various definitions of a deity with which you see fit to flood this thread are irrelevant. None of them are his definition.

[Deesse23]

That said, it's interesting to reflect that in several millennia of trying, philosophy has not solved one single problem of human existence (other than giving professional philosophers an income), whereas science has given us things like flush toilets and vaccines.

Boru

I wouldnt go that far with philosophy. I do however think Belaqua is a stereotype *abuser* of philosophy, actually giving it a bad name.

My point however was, Belaqua always drags any conversation down to philosophy, mostly ancient or medieval, then hides behind the statements of those philosophers and the fact that you can turn around arguing in philosophy forever (= he never has to accept he was wrong). As soon as you are going to cricitize any of the philosophies he is bringing to the table, he is going to defer to the original philosopher. He is a (pseudo) intellectual coward.

[Belacqua]

Was there a repeatable empirical test conducted to prove that the results of science are true? In which journal were the results published?

Or is it just that results found through scientific means have proved internally consistent and extremely useful, leading us to define "true" as "internally consistent and extremely useful"?

Is there a scientific (empirical repeatable) test to show that this definition is the best one? Or is it our philosophical commitment that internally consistent and extremely useful results are what we'll call "true"?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Scientism is a buzzword used by philosophers to demean actual attempts at knowledge. While their own field has failed spectacularly.

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That said, it's interesting to reflect that in several millennia of trying, philosophy has not solved one single problem of human existence (other than giving professional philosophers an income), whereas science has given us things like flush toilets and vaccines.

Boru

I wouldnt go that far with philosophy. I do however think Belaqua is a stereotype *abuser* of philosophy, actually giving it a bad name.

My point however was, Belaqua always drags any conversation down to philosophy, mostly ancient or medieval, then hides behind the statements of those philosophers and the fact that you can turn around arguing in philosophy forever (= he never has to accept he was wrong). As soon as you are going to cricitize any of the philosophies he is bringing to the table, he is going to defer to the original philosopher. He is a (pseudo) intellectual coward.

As expected now he's demeaning science .If he thinks it's so useless he should the hell off the computer science made and go find a philosopher who will sit in his armchair and opine one into existence .

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Scientism is a buzzword used by philosophers to demean actual attempts at knowledge. While their own field has failed spectacularly.

I think that’s an oversimplification. Scientism can be boiled down to the statement, ‘Only scientific statements have value.’ This is self-defeating because not only is it patently untrue, it is not a scientific statement. For example, ‘I love my wife’ or ‘I hate bagpipe music’ both have value without being scientific statements.

But I agree with you to the extent that science wins hands down over philosophy when it comes to both utility and the increase of knowledge.

Boru

[Abaddon_ire]

Science does indeed demonstrate what's true, while philosophy does not.

This is a philosophical statement. It can't be proven by science.

Proofs are for mathematics. Science does not deal in proofs of anything. Science deals in observations, hypotheses, demonstrations, evidence, repeatability and so forth, not proof.

It amuses me that you would make such a sophomoric philosophical error.

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Was there a repeatable empirical test conducted to prove that the results of science are true? In which journal were the results published?

Or is it just that results found through scientific means have proved internally consistent and extremely useful, leading us to define "true" as "internally consistent and extremely useful"?

Is there a scientific (empirical repeatable) test to show that this definition is the best one? Or is it our philosophical commitment that internally consistent and extremely useful results are what we'll call "true"?

And that you continue to make the very same error over and over.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's become thoroughly unclear how either of those statements might manage to be unscientific. Though it's also become common to reach for emotional states as presumed counter-factuals. More on that in a second. To produce scientism we would have to go further. Some situation in which you claimed the above, but scientific methods conclude otherwise, and on the basis of that discard your professions of love and hate. Sure, you may say you love this and hate that - but your physiological response says you don't know shit about you.

Scientism is not the rejection of value of any kind, but a preference for one method in the context of a specific value. Truth. It exists as a reaction to what some see as the over-rationalization of western culture. This is why, in error, emotion was cast as foil to reason - as though emotional truth were antithetical to rational truth. Conceptually, there needs to be some area where scientific scrutiny is inappropriate. Some other domain. The broad utility of science in all domains of life argues very persuasively against scientisms principal complaint - but any mention of that will appear to be scientism to those compelled to make that objection. This makes it seem, to those afflicted, that a large number of people positively subscribe to scientism and just don't know it.

Your loves and hates are..in all likelihood, based on repeated observations and expectations. Others could probably divine, by scientific experimentation, that you hated bagpipe music and loved your wife. While the categories of likes and dislikes, what we love and what we hate probably aren't outside of science's domain, the statement made supposing that they are demonstrates that the criticism is incoherent on it's own grounds. A person who can make a statement like your own might not have the right domain in mind - but they obviously accept that there is or might be such a domain.

This is where it gets super meta. The most salient aspect of scientism-as-criticism, applied methodology, has been assumed by the scientific method. The heavy emphasis on falsification is a product of valid criticism. Popper famously argued that it was trivially easy to find evidence in favor of any theory, categorically rejecting induction as the characteristic method of science. Corroboration, then, as he calls it, should only count when it makes a genuinely risky proposition. One that could have conceivably gone pear shaped, lol.

Even in this view, falsification over positivism, our love and hate could be in the domain of science. One could make a risky prediction about how we respond to our wives, or to bagpipe music. We could even arrange for a standard array of observations and predictions, not banking on what we would do if we were in love, but what we would do if we were in hate or indifference. Not what we would do if we hated bagpipe music, but what we would do if we loved it. Popper argued (and I think he was right) that science is problem solving, and that like all other problem solving or biological activity..there was more than one singular applied methodology that it could (or did) use. Insomuch as scientism was defined in this context as the view that "pure observation", positivism and induction, were the appropriate methodology, and truth could only come from that methodology to the exclusion of others - that would be scientism....moot point today and for us, since this is not the view of science or of the layperson.

[Deesse23]

Its a classic and sterteotypye, and it shows how much i was right about his MO. He wont bother to defend his own position, thus he is attacking (what he thinks is) the opponents´position. Too bad that this position is "science works", so he only has one strawman which is scientism and something that makes everyone laugh him out of the room: "You cant prove science works".
Trying to shoehorn in "extremely useful" into the conversation. Its his *get out of jail free* card for sticking to science himself while talking it down in the same instance. Intellectual coward, as i said.

Real philosophers wouldnt stoop down that low. Real philosopers dont hide behind such cheap defenses. Real philosophers own the philosophy they subscribe to and they admit to the assumprtions, prerequisites and possible flaws of it. Belaqua is only here to stroke his ego, and philosophy is the tool he is using.

Still, all of this is not the point. The original point was Rahns post to which Belaqua replied a few pages ago by basically agreeing with Rahn, but turned the conversation into a pseudo philosophical wankfest.