[LudwigNagasena]

I feel like the author barely learned anything from that experience. One can imagine the irony of reading writings by a devout Christian who gets surprised by sophistication of heretics like Aristotle and Avicenna yet still keeps his absolute conviction in his own beliefs without any doubt or self-reflection as if it is something self-evident.

Have the author ever tried to understand what is science and engineering, and how they are justified? Does he believe in human rights? Have he ever thought where his ethical system originates? The author seems to firmly believe that he lives in “the end of history”; so the biggest insight he could come up with is that scriptures are kind of self-help books and prayers are kind of exercises that treat anxiety.

[beepbooptheory]

Right, this is just Dawkin's-type nonesense with a patronizing mask on.

In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?

Yes, yes, empiricism, method, peer review, the proof is in the technology pudding. All so many things that still produce a mind ultimately indistinguishable from a religious fanatic who is assured in their beliefs, mobilized to tell people they are wrong..

One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something. Putting your belief in an entire enterprise of empirical observation doesn't change the act itself, your not smarter because you happen to live at this time where you can put your belief into this particular enterprise of modern science, its just the cards you were dealt.

[roelschroeven]

> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.

Can you expand a bit on that? Because to me statements like that are not right or wrong because to me they don't really mean anything. Clearly to many people it does mean something, because you are far from the only one to make statements like that. To be clear, I don't mean any of this in a condescending way; I'm truly trying to understand.

For starters, what exactly do you mean by 'faith' and 'to believe in something'? I presume that believing in a god will certainly fit the definition, but what about people who are not religious? Would something like believing in the general goodness of people fit the definition?

The thing is, when I read or hear a statement like 'you have to believe in something' I try to determine whether is applies to myself, and then I have a problem. Do I believe in something? I don't know. I don't believe in a god, that's for sure. I do believe in evolution, for example, in the sense that I believe it exists (or more precisely perhaps, I accept the evidence in favor of the theory). But somehow I feel things like that are not what is generally meant by 'something to believe in'. But then I feel like there's nothing really meaningful left that I believe in. And of course then I start to question why I should have to believe in something. But maybe that's just because of a misunderstanding on my part.

[weard_beard]

“We just don’t know” only gets you so far. In order to participate in modern society constant little assumptions sneak into your thinking. At about the rate videos are uploaded to YouTube. AKA faster than we have the time and capacity to audit them.

We all have faith in the same way we all have spam in our inboxes.

It doesn’t mean we all think a Nigerian prince is going to make us rich.

[trasz3]

Funny you mention human rights, which is something the religion (Catholicism) fought frantically against.

There are different kind of beliefs. The author is quite explicit in that he’s describing one particular kind: religious beliefs. Which, as we now know, are just another kind of fringe theories, like flat earth. But - and that’s what the article is about - they could make sense in some specific circumstances.

[beepbooptheory]

Lots of angles here. For one thing, consider, like a Humean skeptic, small things. You believe if you hit a billiards ball with another, it will roll away at a certain vector. How might we justify this belief? You might say, "well I have seen billiard balls interact before, and this prediction is consistent with my past experiences, I have no reason to believe otherwise." Hume would say: "the belief itself that you can predict a phenomena based on prior analogous observations cannot be justified alone by those observations." That is, there is nothing in your experience alone that proves that things that act one way in the past will continue to act that way in the future, there is something like belief there.

But you are probably smarter than that. You would say, "well the study of physics shows that we can generalize the behavior of bodies in space such that we can predict their behavior. And look! We can make planes and computers and such with these generalized rules, so they must be real." But what fundamentally has changed here? Not only is it ultimately the same act of belief, but now you are at best 1 step removed from actual experience. Not only are you putting some belief into the consistency of the universe, you are putting it into a giant infrastructure of research and peer review and state-interest and grants that you can't possibly be personally a part of entirely. You have in fact contracted out your empirical life to others!

Because it is "better" or "worse" as a story, does not change the fundamental act of belief. Hume, I believe (its been a long time), would say this kind of believing is a habit, which makes sense to me.

To get even crazier, consider even perception itself, as Husserl did. You are looking at a table in your room, you can't see the other side of the table, but you "know" its there. But what do you really know? You know that perception itself tends to present a "world" with certain characteristics like extension, where moving around an object will present different parts of it. But that perception "shows" you a world like this does not justify the world itself, only the characteristics and tendencies of your perception.

This is what I mean in principle, perhaps we "know more" but we are certainly not "smarter" than religious people of the past. We just have longer stories for things. Stories that are sometimes, but not always, more fruitful.

And a related but different angle: I think even secular/atheist/agnostic people who aren't even necessarily militant weirdos like Dawkins/Harris unconsciously must contextualize themselves and their life in a world of belief. Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief. You go about the world and live your life based on unconscious assumptions that there is fundamentally a ground you are standing on, whether you are a philosopher or not.

[roelschroeven]

Hm, OK, that's a whole different approach then what I expected. If one calls the expectation that the law of physics work the same tomorrow as they did today and yesterday and all the days before a belief, then yes everyone believes in that. It's so obvious that it doesn't mean anything anymore, at least to me.

> perhaps we "know more" but we are certainly not "smarter" than religious people of the past

Oh, I never said that we are smarter than people of the past. I would leave religious out of it though, since I think being religious is independent from being smart.

> And a related but different angle: I think even secular/atheist/agnostic people who aren't even necessarily militant weirdos like Dawkins/Harris ... By Dawkins I guess you mean Richard Dawkins? I don't know that much about him, but he doesn't really seem like a weirdo to me? I don't know Harris so I can't comment on they being a weirdo or not at all.

> ... unconsciously must contextualize themselves and their life in a world of belief. Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief.

I don't think it's trivial at all to state that not believing in god is necessarily a belief. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but I don't think it's at all trivial. There are infinitely many things that I don't belief in. Surely we can't say that for each and every one of those I actively belief in their absence? Or is there a fundamental difference between god and other things I don't believe in? Or is the distinction between absence of belief and belief of absence a distinction without meaning, just a play with words, not much different from discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[beepbooptheory]

I just meant that my particular argument right there was trivial, not the belief itself. Ie:

Not believing in x === believing in not x.

Thats what we in the biz call "trivial".

If we lived in a world where the idea of god never crossed anybody's mind, then they would neither believe nor not believe. I dont believe in unicorns, but i neither believe nor disbelieve some random microorganism Ive never heard of.

Just consider yourself lucky you are not familiar with Dawson :).

[roelschroeven]

> I just meant that my particular argument right there was trivial, not the belief itself.

Yes, that's what I thought you meant, and I disagree.

> Not believing in x === believing in not x.

Ah, so indeed to you the two are the same. Again, I don't think that's trivial at all.

Let me mention Shigella roterei, a species of bacteria, to you. There, now you have heard of it. But does it exist? Do you believe in it? What if I state that it doesn't exist? Just because I now mentioned it to you, do you necessarily have to believe it doesn't exist. You can't just not believe in it anymore. Fine with me, but I don't think I work that way.

[roelschroeven]

[Sorry, please ignore, I accidentally posted an incomplete comment]

Hm, OK, that's a whole different approach then what I expected. If one calls the expectation that the law of physics work the same tomorrow as they did today and yesterday and all the days before a belief, then yes everyone believes in that. It's so obvious that it doesn't mean anything anymore, at least to me.

Some of the questions philosophers think about are interesting to me in a w

[beepbooptheory]

Well the law is the thing we come up with to explain the phenomena. Its not about the laws changing, but quite literally the world the law is supposed to speak to. But I don't understand how its trivial, its a very deep epistemological assertion. You could imagine another world where experiments yield very different laws, but it would be no less science, and no less a world.

[roelschroeven]

If you say that philosophy tells us that even the smallest observations we make require some belief about how the world looks, yes, that is an interesting assertion (though I feel philosophers make a much bigger deal out of it than what it's worth). I'm not arguing that.

But when you state "Everyone has to belief in something", that is just a trivial consequence of the above. We've defined 'belief' to be something that is inherent in the most trivial things we do in our life every single second of every single day. With that definition of belief, of course everyone necessarily believes.

At least from my view. From you view, as I now realize, "everyone has to belief in something" is a summary for the theory of knowledge, and thus not trivial at all.

> Its not about the laws changing, but quite literally the world the law is supposed to speak to.

I feel you're playing with the meaning of words like I feel philosophers tend to do, causing all kinds of misunderstandings. The laws of physics don't speak to the world; they try to describe the world. When I say that the laws don't change, what I mean is that the way the world itself works doesn't change.

> You could imagine another world where experiments yield very different laws, but it would be no less science, and no less a world.

I could, but that has nothing to do with the world we live, or what I do and don't believe in. I don't see how this is relevant at all.

[trasz3]

>Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief.

At, the old “_not_ collecting postage stamps is a hobby too” argument.

[teawrecks]

> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain…In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar." - Richard Feynman

The only thing I believe is that what I believe can and should change to fit the data I have available.

[dokem]

An example of this would be the fact that science ultimately provides an approximate truth, really a truth relative to the other accepted scientific truths, as time progress and it can relax itself into the scientific web of understanding. However, many scientific evangelicals will take any current study or hypothesis as immediate truth.

This is blind faith and poor understanding of the process. Essentially, they elevate scientists to priesthood where they have direct communication with the higher power where they have access to ultimate truth.

[DougN7]

That was beautifully said.

[lern_too_spel]

> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.

Dawkins's point is that you don't have to believe in something that is clearly wrong, like horoscopes and Christianity, and you can choose not to make major decisions (like punishing people) over beliefs you have no evidence for and have evidence against.

The problem with the author is that he points out people believing in stupid things like shamans and gods and assumes that they must have a smart reason for it. Horoscopes and Christianity are the modern day equivalent, and there is no smart reason for the people who believe in those to do so today, so there is no reason to suppose that there used to be for their equivalents in the past.

[beepbooptheory]

You pray to the alter of "smartness" and your God is no less vengeful and irrational as all the others!

[TomSwirly]

As I mentioned above, an insult is not actually a form of rational argument.

Science works. Religion doesn't. When I want someone to fix my broken arm or build a bridge, or pretty well anything else I would want to do, I'm going to go with the system that works.

You cannot just brush that part aside!

[beepbooptheory]

If the inner life of a human was simply pure intentionality, this would be a good story, but we are unfortunately concerned with things beyond "I want to do x" whether we like it or not. That is, you don't simply want to build a bridge in a vacuum, you want to build a bridge because you believe it will help you with crossing the river. You want to get to the other side of the river because you believe there will be treasure there, because indeed you found a treasure map and you believe it to be bona fide. You want treasure because you believe it will give you comfort and happiness.

Or whatever. I am just saying you can't help but believe, I am not saying there aren't necessarily good or bad beliefs, but I am saying that one belief or another doesn't make you "smarter."

Is not the idea of intelligence itself a kind of belief? Have we ever seen it in a microscope? How can you definitively answer, e.g. the Chalmer's zombie problem? The general issue of solipsism, of experience itself? Don't you believe that those who you love are full humans who hopefully love you back?

(Also I am sorry you keep feeling insulted, not sure what to do about that. Please know I fully implicate myself in all this as well.)

[dokem]

Religion worked for thousands of years to create society and a shared code of ethics and morals. To say otherwise is an uneducated understanding of human history. It may be outdated in many ways now but to say it doesn't work is not a take that gets you any closer to understanding how the world and people work, it just sounds edgy and spiteful.

[teawrecks]

You've got it backwards. Non-human species develop societies and naturally evolve arbitrary codes of ethics for how they should treat each other based on what keeps the society alive. Humans were no different, then we evolved language, and immediately began retrofitting religion to these arbitrary sets of ethics to justify them.

Brains are glorified pattern matchers, but we hadn't yet figured out how to judge the quality of a perceived pattern, so in a desperate fit of apophenia, religions naturally emerged. Eventually we stepped back and developed systematic ways of distinguishing good patterns from bad. We call this system science.

Edison said, "I didn't fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a lightbulb; I only needed to find one way to make it work." I see the thousands of religions that humans have come up with as those 2,000 non-light bulbs, and science as the one method that works. Now that we have a working light bulb, we can throw out those other attempts.

[lern_too_spel]

Tom didn't say otherwise. You're arguing against a straw man.

To say there are smarter options now is different from saying it didn't work then. Getting illiterate people to gather for a sermon where they could be told to avoid shellfish that could kill them and to avoid harming other people (because an invisible wrathful being would catch them even if the society they lived in did not) served a purpose then that we have developed better systems for since.

[lern_too_spel]

That cognitive dissonance you're feeling comes from justifying horoscopes and jihad in order to try to avoid feeling silly about your unjustified beliefs.

Being smart is the opposite of irrational. Vengefulness is orthogonal to correctness. If the punishment serves to increase the length of your life, it is rational (equivalently, smart). If not, it is stupid.

[beepbooptheory]

Nobody should feel silly! These are good conversations to have.

Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality? This is important because rationality is something I assume we agree is a characteristic of humans. Humans can't help but be rational, which is why irrational behavior can be the exception that proves the rule. To say "being smart" is the opposite suddenly creates a a somewhat unscientific rift among human animals, doesn't it? But I do get why you want to say that for your argument, but you should be a little more nuanced in order to get one over on me. Not that I am particularly smart or anything, but just because I am listening to what you are saying.

But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you? That is a somewhat novel argument in this context.

[lern_too_spel]

> Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality?

If you are smart, you must be rational. The contrapositive must also be true. If you are irrational, you cannot be smart. My comment points out that your argument that worshipping at the altar of smartness is irrational makes no sense.

> But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you?

This is self-evident. If you die, all other rewards lose their utility.

[feoren]

> In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?

In literally hundreds of ways; if you took the effort to read almost any atheist forum you'd find them. I'll give you what I think is most important one:

Scientific secularism is obsessed with proving itself wrong; religion is obsessed with proving itself right.

[beepbooptheory]

I dont understand how this is an argument for what we are talking about? We aren't talking about scientific secularism or religion in themselves, but how a person can relate to either of them. Science itself isnt walking around trying to prove themselves wrong, people do science and have a belief of what its supposed to be.

[feoren]

Some people have a belief that they have five fingers on their right hand. Some people have a belief that 1 + 1 = 2. Some people have a belief that the world is flat and worldwide governments are conspiring, for shits and giggles apparently, to deceive you. Are all these beliefs equal?

I can count the fingers on my hand. I can understand the definitions of "1", "+", "2", and "=", and verify to my own satisfaction why that statement is true. I, and anyone else, can challenge these beliefs, and I personally commit to changing them if the challenge is successful.

That's not what happens when flat-earthers or the religious have their beliefs challenged. It's completely the opposite. They refuse to change their beliefs even when their own experiments prove them wrong. They usually refuse to challenge their beliefs at all.

You're choosing to use this word "belief" in very different ways, and then pretending it means the same thing. It doesn't.

[beepbooptheory]

I dont understand. I have found that when you argue with a flat earther or an atheist, they typically argue the same way. Flat-earthers have tons of "scientific evidence" they want to show you, same for conspiracy theory people, they always have lots of evidence and painstakingly construct rational arguments around possibly faulty assumptions. Athiests are not special in this way! Even in particular I find conspiracy theory people and athiests share a lot of rhetorical devices.

And further, I have never ever ever met an "athiest" in the world that would even think about questioning their own beliefs, why would they? Wouldnt it be irrational for them too? What could ever make an atheist change their mind? God could come down and tell everyone in the world she is real, and I bet atheists would pick it apart, going over the footage, proving how it wasn't really God. How could they not, it would mean throwing away so much of their work and existential commitments (I would be like this I think).

It is you that are not telling me how these beliefs are different, im not trying to ambiguate, I'm being serious each time I say "belief."

Edit: Also think about the math one a little more. That is a good one! The belief in "1+1=2" involves understanding things like cardinality or summation, or you can just remember from school. But either way what you believe about it is that it is self-evident insofar as there is a shared understanding of the rules for those symbols. That "1" is a certain kind of thing, and so is "+" and "=". But in reality there is nothing about this situation that precludes that someone else could understand "1+1=2" differently. They could have been taught for some terrible reason that there is an exception in the rule of addition which means whenever you add 768 to 406, you get "potato". And yet, you wholly agree that 1+1=2. How could we verify our shared understanding without going through all the rules and making sure we are the same. But there is nothing in experience or in science that can justify that we are on the same page, so to speak, as those we communicate with. Its a belief because we always find ourselves among people and we strive for agreement, or already find ourselves in agreement.

Kripke does a better job of explaining this than me :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Pr...

[feoren]

It honestly just sounds like you're not very steeped in the subject. You're re-hashing very simple arguments that have been covered many many times by prominent atheists, if you're interested. If you're not interested, that's fine, but I'd stop arguing about it online.

> I have found that when you argue with a flat earther or an atheist, they typically argue the same way. Flat-earthers have tons of "scientific evidence" they want to show you.

Sure, lots of people argue by presenting evidence. Evaluating the quality of that evidence is something humanity has gotten much better at in general, but it does take some work. The fact that scientists and crackpots both claim to present evidence doesn't mean that the act of presenting evidence is flawed.

> I have never ever ever met an "athiest" in the world that would even think about questioning their own beliefs. Wouldnt it be irrational for them too?

It sounds to me like you've literally never met an atheist. Talk to one. And no, questioning your own beliefs is almost the defintion of rationality. Why would it be irrational to question your own beliefs?

> What could ever make an atheist change their mind?

Evidence.

> God could come down and tell everyone in the world she is real, and I bet atheists would pick it apart, going over the footage, proving how it wasn't really God.

"Footage?" It's not clear whether your hypothetical is "Clouds open and God appears before you, speaking in a divine voice" -- evidence! -- or "someone comes out with grainy footage of something that could maybe kinda look a bit God-ish". Details matter!

> How could they not, it would mean throwing away so much of their work and existential commitments (I would be like this I think).

I have done literally no work being an atheist. It takes none of my time, except for the occasional pointless online discussion like this. I have literally no "existential commitments". It's not an important part of my identity. It's literally the lack of all of those things.

How much work has it been for you not believing in Zeus?

Honestly, we're trodding the same exact path that has been trodden a million times. Literally read any prominent atheist and you will have the answers to most of your questions.

[olddustytrail]

It rather obviously isn't or you wouldn't have competing factions within religions (and I think you'll accept you often do).

[TomSwirly]

> In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?

> Yes, yes, empiricism, method, peer review, the proof is in the technology pudding.

That is the correct answer! How will you refute it?

> All so many things that still produce a mind ultimately indistinguishable from a religious fanatic who is assured in their beliefs, mobilized to tell people they are wrong..

Oh. Big disappointment: you have no refutation, just a lot of insults.

[beepbooptheory]

It is simply a claim, it is one that I would probably attribute to myself sometimes if I'm being honest! I am forced into the act of secular belief like all of you after all, I'm no better.

You can feel secure in your beliefs without feeling superior because of them, and you can understand the specificity of our modern scientific framework without sacrificing the force of the scientific story.

If you really really think the scientific method or whatever is the end all of human belief, that is precisely a reason to try and stay humbled in that belief, not the opposite. That is just being a good scientist.

If you feel insulted by what I said, that is quite telling of your own insecurties and another reason you should pause and breath and listen to others, instead of telling yourself over and over again how smart you are.

[Dalewyn]

>I feel like the author barely learned anything from that experience.

The author very likely did learn nothing, he unfortunately doesn't have a sense for appreciation and learning:

"... when you visit a museum everything is kind of broken, so nothing is really that impressive."

You have to have a certain level of historical, scientific, and cultural apathy and arrogance to be able to say something like that with a straight face. Being in a museum is a humbling experience.

[cturner]

He is explaining an experience. Usually museums have no effect on him, he cannot appreciate, for reasons stated. This he did appreciate, and he explains it.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Yeah, I agree. It starts out all "Woah, I was arrogant as hell to believe that everyone who lived in the past was very dumb" and moves right on into "these ignorant backwards spiritualists believe in nonsense, but purely by coincidence that nonsense happens to actually be effective and if I reframe it in the clearly superior terms of secular western society it can make sense".