Scientific Knowledge? If there is no God?

[The Grand Nudger]

Science didn't begin when people broke off from the RCC God. It's been around longer than christianity.

[downbeatplumb]

Science didn't begin when people broke off from the RCC God. It's been around longer than christianity.

I dont believe the scientific method of peer review was. or am I wrong?

[The Grand Nudger]

Science was done before the scientific method was available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales
(could go back further if we wanted)

Science and atheism both predate christianity by a wide margin.
(i wrote a blog post about it, if the blog ever gets off the ground)

The western world was actually a late comer to this party, as eastern tradition had rebelled against the idiocy of their own religious thinking very nearly one thousand years before the birth of christ with the statements
"Fire is hot, water cold, refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning; By whom came this variety? They were born of their own nature"

"If he who departs from the body goes to another world, how is it that he come not back again, restless for love of his kindred? Hence it is only as a means of livelihood that Brahmans have established here all these ceremonies for the dead, — there is no other fruit anywhere."

[downbeatplumb]

Wasnt it 'philosophy' before the scientific method were they tried some wierd and wonderfull ideas that had some wonderfull successes but many falures.
None more wrong than galens ideas of medicine that dominated western treatment for centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen

[The Grand Nudger]

Philosophy, then natural philosophy, then science sure. Postulating "natural causes for natural phenomena" is I think the loosest possible definition for science (as it opposes religion or superstition). It would be unfair to strip early thinkers of their achievements because they did not have the tools or methodologies available to them that we have available to us. Without that simple statement science may never have been born. Some do consider them to be "pre-scientific" though.

I could opine near endlessly about the attempts made within and by religious tradition to explain the world around them. Why are we here? Where did we come from? Why do we die? Why must we suffer? All of these are great questions. It's hardly the sort of conversation about religion that I get the chance to engage in often, but as Ive said before, many times religions contained within them the best "science" of their time. All part of our journey to understanding our surroundings. There is a line though were some of the conclusions drawn were incorrect. I never blame the originators of these faiths for this, because they had no reason to believe otherwise and every reason to believe what they did (given the tools available). Religion was once very much based in empiricism. It just so happens that some of the evidence we once pointed to for god turns out to have a better explanation elsewhere. Recently (especially in the case of the RCC) religious traditions were active in the suppression of the pursuit of knowledge, which is unfortunate, as they were early pioneers in the field. I've found this particular conversation to be dissatisfying to both the religious and the irreligious, like most "shades of grey" arguments.

[downbeatplumb]

They were certainly pioneers and trying to move in the right direction.
My point is that without the methods employed more recently the results were spotty and undirected.
It is only when the full range of scientific method is employed that true progress can be made sustained and be reliable.

[The Grand Nudger]

True enough, and there is most likely room for further refinement in methodology (there obviously being room to improve in breadth of knowledge). One of the greatest strengths of the whole undertaking as opposed to knowledge that is "set in stone" so-to-speak.

[Godnoze]

... Why are we here? Where did we come from? Why do we die? Why must we suffer? All of these are great questions.

Science doesn't really answer these questions either, any more than religion really does. It can tell us the mechanics relating to our existence, can describe the chemistry, etc, etc, etc, but as to why I am I and you are you and others are themselves seems like pretty well unanswerable to me. I'm talking about subjectivity, which seems to operate on a pretty random basis. I mean presumably Gadaffi hiding in a bunker or whatever (they haven't found him yet have they? - I haven't seen any news for hours) feels just as much "I" from his point of view as I do from mine (and you yours, obviously). Yet I've always thought that's a pretty weird phenomenon. Why can't we jump around into each others' IDs? Why is MY consciousness MINE and what happens to IT when I quit this mort... I mean when I DIE?

Well my guess is as good as yours (personally I assume its the same as "going to sleep" under anaesthetic when you have an op, but without the waking up the other end bit), and so is anyone else's, but basically anyone who claims to "know" about that kind of stuff HAS to be talking BS. Because, how come they get the special knowledge denied to everyone else? Only then you come to the "nice" goddists, these really intelligent ones, university and EVERYTHING, know wha' I mean? Right on top of stuff, brains like a Tardis, and then WALLOP you find they are full of the spirit of the lord and that. Wow man, gets me every time that one! Really does my head in.

_____________________________________________________________

Shit!

I really DO ask for it, me!

.

[The Grand Nudger]

You could assume there's more than the chemistry, or the working bits if you like. I don't. Similarly, the question of why my consciousness is my own and why I cant hop into this or that guys probably has to do with my brain being pretty firmly planted in my own head (just a wild fucking guess). Science may not answer these questions to your satisfaction, but that's hardly the same as not having an answer.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Why are you arguing with a Catholic apologist.? Those people live on another planet,with their reactionary pope and paedophile priests.

Who says there is order/purpose/meaning to the universe or that it matters? Not me. I love life itself, and cherish every day. I don't need a crutch to face my death,support my fragile ego,or to give my the illusion that I and other humans are special. We ain't. We are just another species of animals. We are temporary. The planet and every other species will be far better off once we go extinct,.


I don't argue with theist apologists,because we always get stuck right at the beginning. A skeptic. I reject the notion that truth may be discovered by reason alone, I demand evidence. I begin by demanding credible evidence for the existence of god. I tell every apologists I come across show me their evidence or stop wasting my time and bugger off.


That the existence of gods is so far an unprovable and unfalsifiable question is not my problem. It simply means I'm unable to believe and am unable to claim to 'know'. This position is called 'agnostic atheism'

A recovering Catholic for over 40 years, I admit I may be ever-so-slightly biased against the Catholic Church, seeing it as deeply corrupt at an institutional level and a carbuncle on the arse of civilisation.


Thought for today:

If you can't be a good example, ,be an horrific warning (Stephen Fry,QI)

999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
Current reference: 'The Case Of The Pope" Geoffrey Roberston QC,international jurist and expert on International law. (also knows a lot about Canon law)


Review: (The Guardian,UK)

The first child sex scandal in the Catholic church took place in AD153, long before there was a "gay culture" or Jewish journalists for bishops to blame it on. By the 1960s, the problem had become so dire that a cleric responsible for the care of "erring" priests wrote to the Vatican suggesting that it acquire a Caribbean island to put them on.



What has made a bad situation worse, as the eminent QC Geoffrey Robertson argues in this coolly devastating inquiry, is canon law – the church's own arcane, highly secretive legal system, which deals with alleged child abusers in a dismayingly mild manner rather than handing them over to the police. Its "penalties" for raping children include such draconian measures as warnings, rebukes, extra prayers, counselling and a few months on retreat. It is even possible to interpret canon law as claiming that a valid defence for paedophile offences is paedophilia. Since child abusers are supposedly incapable of controlling their sexual urges, this can be used in their defence. It is rather like pleading not guilty to stealing from Tesco's on the grounds that one is a shoplifter. One blindingly simple reason for the huge amount of child abuse in the Catholic church (on one estimate, up to 9% of clerics are implicated) is that the perpetrators know they will almost certainly get away with it.

For almost a quarter of a century, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man who is now Pope, was in supreme command of this parallel system of justice – a system deliberately hidden from the public, police and parliaments and run, so Robertson maintains, in defiance of international law. Those who imagine that the Vatican has recently agreed to cooperate with the police, he points out, have simply fallen for one of its cynical public relations exercises. In the so-called "New Norms" published by Pope Benedict this year, there is still no instruction to report suspected offenders to the civil authorities, and attempting to ordain a woman is deemed to be as serious an offence as sodomising a child. There have, however, been some changes: victims of child abuse are now allowed to report the matter up to the age of 38 rather than 28. If you happen to be 39, that's just tough luck. As Robertson wryly comments, Jesus declares that child molesters deserve to be drowned in the depths of the sea, not hidden in the depths of the Holy See.

How can Ratzinger get away with it? One mightily important reason, examined in detail in this book, is because he is supposedly a head of state. The Vatican describes itself on its website as an "absolute monarchy", which means that the Pope is immune from being sued or prosecuted. It also means that as the only body in the world with "non-member state" status at the UN, the Catholic church has a global platform for pursuing its goals of diminishing women, demonising homosexuals, obstructing the use of condoms to prevent Aids and refusing to allow abortion even to save the life of the mother. For these purposes, it is sometimes to be found in unholy alliance with states such as Libya and Iran. Neither is it slow to use veiled threats of excommunication to bend Catholic politicians throughout the world to its will. If Pope Benedict were to air some of his troglodytic views with full public force, Robertson suggests, the Home Office would have been forced to refuse him entry into Britain.

In fact, he argues, the Vatican's claim to statehood is bogus. It dates from a treaty established between Mussolini and the Holy See, which Robertson believes has no basis in international law. The Vatican has no permanent population, which is a legal requirement of being a state. In fact, since almost all its inhabitants are celibate, it cannot propagate citizens at all other than by unfortunate accident. It is not really a territory, has no jurisdiction over crimes committed in its precincts and depends for all its essential services on the neighbouring nation of Italy. Nor does it field a team in the World Cup, surely the most convincing sign of its phoniness.

"Petty gossip" is how the Pope has described irrefutable evidence of serious crimes. His time as the Vatican official in charge of overseeing priestly discipline was the period when, in Robertson's furiously eloquent words, "tens of thousands of children were bewitched, buggered and bewildered by Catholic priests whilst [Ratzinger's] attention was fixated on 'evil' homosexuals, sinful divorcees, deviate liberation theologians, planners of families and wearers of condoms".

Can he be brought to book for this? As a widespread and systematic practice, clerical sexual abuse could be considered a crime against humanity, such crimes not being confined to times of war; and though Ratzinger may claim immunity as a head of state, he is also a German citizen. The book comes to no firm conclusion here, but the possibility of convicting the supreme pontiff of aiding and abetting the international crime of systemic child abuse seems not out of the question. The Vatican, in any case, is unlikely to escape such a fate by arguing, as it has done already, that the relations between the Pope and his bishops are of such unfathomable theological complexity that no mere human court could ever hope to grasp them.

This is a book that combines moral passion with steely forensic precision, enlivened with the odd flash of dry wit. With admirable judiciousness, it even finds it in its heart to praise the charitable work of the Catholic church, as well as reminding us that paedophiles (whom Robertson has defended in court) can be kindly men. It is one of the most formidable demolition jobs one could imagine on a man who has done more to discredit the cause of religion than Rasputin and Pat Robertson put together.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep...-robertson