[pcunite]

A quote from the article: "You don’t have to be a benighted creationist ..." Can we please keep these type of articles off HN please? I don’t come here to be insulted. I have other sites for that!

Sir Isaac Newton was not a simple nor stupid man and he gave honor to the Creator. Just because science has not figured God out, does not deny His existence.

A whole lot of reasons for what allowed the Internet, HN, science, and technology to be where it is at today came out of a nation (silly apparently to the writer) which put "In God We Trust" on everything.

[Red_Tarsius]

I think you misunderstood the article. American Creationists are believers who reject what science has figured out in favor of biblical literalism. They even built the Creationist Museum, whose exhibits depict "the coexistence of humans and non-avian dinosaurs, say that the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old, and dispute the idea that life evolved into its current forms." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum

[sethrin]

No one else is required to cater to your religious beliefs, no matter what those may be. Also, this is an article about evolutionary biology, not creationism. The part you object to is easily overlooked. I'm sure this issue is very important to you, but I believe the best move here is to simply turn the other cheek.

[lotsofmangos]

I half agree with you. I do think that the language used to describe religious viewpoints includes off the cuff insults far too often. The word benighted was unnecessary in that sentence and does detract from the article. I don't think it was egregious enough to demand the article not be posted, but I do agree that it is a form of philosophical point scoring that serves neither the article, nor the wider discussion.

The first person to derive the Hubble constant and one of the main developers of big-bang theory was Georges Lemaître, a devout Catholic who would later become president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who described the idea as "the Cosmic Egg, exploding at the moment of the creation", though he didn't like the Pope relying on it in proclamations. I think it would be fair to call him a creationist.

Also, Hoyle, who was not a creationist, coined the term 'Big-Bang' to take the piss out of Lemaître's idea and promote the steady-state theory, which he preferred. Hoyle however believed that a god was guiding the fine tuning of the constants to help the evolution of life, so was effectively a proponent of intelligent design, while not being a creationist. Weirdly, the two ideas do not have to go together.

I am not saying this from the article offending myself in any way, I am what most people would think of as strongly athiest, though personally I have come to dislike the label. I just think it is a lazy form of signaling that detracts from the argument and also demonstrates an ignorance of the wide variety of religious and philosophical viewpoints held by those throughout the scientific community.

[Retra]

Ignoring the argument in order to preach "nice makes right" also detracts from the argument...

[lotsofmangos]

I am not sure that describing creationists to be in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance is anything to do with the argument presented by the article.

Also, I was not addressing the article, I was addressing the comment of pcunite and their problem with the language used in one particular sentence, which is something I partly agree with and is nothing whatsoever to do with the accuracy of the article itself.

If someone tries to teach children maths by telling them "listen up idiots, two plus two is four", and I pick them up for their use of language, it has no real bearing on my view of the usefulness of learning addition.

[Retra]

But rhetoric is useful to teaching, and especially to writing popular articles. (I even learned what 'benighted' means today.)

Maybe it's not that useful to creationists. Almost anybody else would be able to see past it and get some real content. I don't think most creationists would be bothered to do that either way.

[lotsofmangos]

Rhetoric is a two way street. It can be just as damaging as it can be beneficial.

Also, the observation that almost anyone other than a creationist would be able to get past a line that specifically insults creationists, is not that surprising.

edit - It is a great article, that for the most part deals with a very complex subject really well. I am just saying that the philosophical point scoring in the introduction added nothing to it and has then had a damaging effect on the discussion of it here, where that sentence has triggered the largest thread, to the detriment of the rest of the actual content.

If creationists are supposed to just get over being insulted, presumably atheists can also get over a single comment by a creationist asking not to be.

[Retra]

Maybe I'm being unfair, but I'm perfectly content to live in a world where people experience an intellectual and social disadvantage for believing in nonsense.

[alexqgb]

While it would certainly be wrong to call children idiots when teaching them basic arithmetic I'm not convinced it's entirely out of place when you're explaining the same thing to grown adults.

[eli_gottlieb]

Except that "[coherent-under-consequential-reflection] nice makes right" is a fairly accurate description of moral affairs, if not of epistemology.

[Retra]

I disagree vehemently.

[eli_gottlieb]

Ok. Could you please disagree in detail?

[Retra]

I was trying to think of a way to do so without writing several thousand words on the subject. But basically, it comes down to this:

Conflict avoidance is not conflict resolution.

[solipsism]

Just because science has not figured God out, does not deny His existence.

Science isn't trying to figure god out any more than it's trying to figure fairies out. Science focuses its efforts on understanding reality.

[Red_Tarsius]

Science describes reliable models of reality. Its language is mathematics.

Religion wonders about the ultimate meaning of such models. Its language is philosophy.

The first religions bundled model and meaning out of necessity. However, post-Roman Christians were keen logicians and experimenters who laid the foundation of the modern sciences. They would be ashamed of creationists' shallowness.

[Houshalter]

The separation between science and religion is a relatively recent phenomenon. At one time people actually believed religion. http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprova...

>The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works. In not one single passage of the Old Testament will you find anyone talking about a transcendent wonder at the complexity of the universe. But you will find plenty of scientific claims, like the universe being created in six days (which is a metaphor for the Big Bang), or rabbits chewing their cud. (Which is a metaphor for...)

>Back in the old days, saying the local religion "could not be proven" would have gotten you burned at the stake. One of the core beliefs of Orthodox Judaism is that God appeared at Mount Sinai and said in a thundering voice, "Yeah, it's all true." From a Bayesian perspective that's some darned unambiguous evidence of a superhumanly powerful entity... The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened. The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept. The people who wrote the original scriptures didn't even know the difference.

[javert]

> Science describes reliable models of reality. Its language is mathematics.

That's not right. It's language is... well, language. Including, but not limited to, mathematics.

> Religion wonders about the ultimate meaning of such models. Its language is philosophy.

I don't think this is really being fair to philosophy. I do view religion as a kind of proto-philosophy. Philosophy is what religion should have been.

[Red_Tarsius]

Sorry for the late reply. I like your choice of words, proto-philosophy. I think of religions of the past as proto-philosophy and proto-science (the world is flat and at the center of the universe, Heaven is structured so and so, ...). But you're right, my framework does not fully reflect the complexity of modern faith. Unlike trained priests, the overwhelming majority of believers don't learn philosophy to challenge their own beliefs.

imho too many people consume religion like painkillers for the big questions. Without a critical eye, faith becomes anti-philosophy.

[Retra]

The problem with religion is that it describes facets of human mental, cultural, and emotional processes (as all fictions do,) but attributes them to non-human parts of reality. Thus it is, in any rational sense, a terrible model of anything.

Your mistake is in claiming that religion is about 'meaning' where science and mathematics aren't. Anywhere you use language, you study meaning. Meaning is a feature of language, and religion tends to use the least reliable and most inconsistent language of any of those subjects. If religion is a search for meaning, it is an incredibly stupid way of doing so.

So the one thing you've claimed it is useful for is something that it is demonstrably bad at.

[Retric]

Religions evolve to self propagate, that's about all they have in common. Ex: The shakers died out for fairly obvious reasons.

Ps: The have been a lot of tiny or dead religions some of which where vary odd by modern standards. But, if you limit yourself to religions with say 20,000,000+ followers today then clearly there going to need to be able to spread.

[dropit_sphere]

That's not the important distinction. Religion is also trying to figure out reality. If science thought it could detect fairies, then science would study fairies. The distinction is rather in method; science uses (hopefully) well-designed experiments and peer review; religion uses...other methods.

[louthy]

This is an important point which I think many miss. I'm not remotely religious, and I see the errors in the so called truths of each religion. I used to consider people of faith to be either stupid or brainwashed, but then I watched The Day The Universe Changed[1], a beautifully written BBC documentary by James Burke from 1985. It's much easier to watch it[2] than me try to replicate everything said on there. But the essence is the point that dropit_sphere made, and that is both religion and science are trying to figure out the truth. But use different methods to acquire it.

The difference is that the scientific truth is always changing. The scientific truth today is different from the truth 300 years ago. And will be different again in 300 years time. So how true is that 'truth'? If the things we believe to be true today are untrue tomorrow, then how can people of science be so hostile to the 'truths' of religion? And what's the end-game? When will we finally know the truth?

People of faith get their absolute unchanging truths from their religion, not that the religions themselves are truth seeking in the same way as science.

Anyway, it's definitely worth a watch and very thought provoking. He also predicts the potential totalitarian use of the internet, along with the ideas of global communities sharing knowledge and ultimately each person's own truths.

I have since stopped being quite so brutal in my opinions about people of faith.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgNpYg0IOU

[janvidar]

Well, religion tells you the answer, so there is no point in looking.

[Rexxar]

Just because science has not figured God out, does not deny His existence.

The big question of science is "How ... ?"

The big question of religion is "Why ... ?"

The two solve different problems and could coexist without so many animosity on each side.

[shasta]

The big question of science is "Why...?"

The big question of religion is "Who...?"

[Rexxar]

I disagree here. For example, relativity and quantum mechanics explain how our world behave but we have no idea why these theories are true or even why can the universe be described with mathematical equations ?

[zornthewise]

What kind of answer would satisfy your questions of why these theories are true anyway. I am not sure I can even imagine an ideal answer and this might be a clue that we are asking the completely wrong question.

[Rexxar]

I don't have answer on the "Why". I think that this question is not a scientific question because the answer could no be proved/invalidated by experiments. It's a philosophical question and some people find the answer in religion or philosophy, some just admit they don't know and others just don't care.

[Retra]

I suppose religion will tell you why those things are true?

[Rexxar]

Personally, religion didn't tell me anything. But they are giving an explanation to non-scientific question to a lot of people.

[Dewie3]

I don't know. Some religions don't seem so hung up on prime movers and anthropomorphizing any "higher being(s)". Buddhism, for instance (just my impression).

[Retra]

There are not two different problems.

And more importantly, religion has never actually answered a "why" question in a reasonable manner. So it is objectively useless. It is not how you answer "why" questions.

Assuming your distinction is actually meaningful, here's a question for you: "How do you properly answer 'why' questions?"

[Rexxar]

"How do you properly answer 'why' questions?"

Maybe the answer is that there is no scientific answer to a "why" question ? The question has no scientific answer. In maths, some equations have no solution, some proposition are not provable with common axioms. The "why questions" are just question without scientific answer.

[Retra]

Every question you ask is going to be manifest in relationships between subsets of observable states of reality. Even if you ask a nonsensical question, it is possible to determine that the question is nonsense by observing the context of the question. There is nothing here that prevents science from working to answer the question.

If you have a question with no possible scientific answer, then it has no answer at all. You do not get better results by refusing to use the best tools.

[dang]

> [Religion] is objectively useless.

Religious flamewars aren't ok on HN. Please don't.

[alexqgb]

Slapping "In God We Trust" on everything was not only a fairly recent development, it was a cynically calculated response by a chastened business class that found itself coming under extraordinary scrutiny in the wake of the Great Depression.

The redemption of capitalism by Christianity demanded a heavily modified version of the religion that basically abandoned all the parts about people looking after each other and created a new ethos in which getting rich was both a duty and a reward.

Given a bunch of plutocrats who would pay well for effective propaganda and some creative but unscrupulous preachers willing to do their dirty work, a distinctly American (and conspicuously un-Christian) version of Christianity was born. It's been polarizing our politics and supporting the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands ever since.

A couple of recent books by Nicole Aschoff and Kevin Kruse have done a good job unpacking this reprehensible hustle. If you have any interest in finding out just how much bullshit has gone into shaping your world view, Elizabeth Bruenig has reviewed both of them here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121564/gods-and-profits-h...

You can also read Kruse himself, who has summarized his effort (How Corporate America Invented Christian America) here: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-ame...

On a separate note, Newton's total disregard of evolutionary theory is not a product of any disagreements he had with the theory itself. Rather, it's due to the fact that died more that 130 years before "On the Origin of Species" was first published. Class dismissed.

[dang]

> If you have any interest in finding out just how much bullshit has gone into shaping your world view

Personal attacks and acerbic swipes are not welcome on Hacker News. Please don't do this.

[Dewie3]

> A whole lot of reasons for what allowed the Internet, HN, science, and technology to be where it is at today came out of a nation (silly apparently to the writer) which put "In God We Trust" on everything.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day - imagine then how often a collective of 300 million of those are correct! :)

(Just kidding - Americans aren't more broken than any other group. Of course)

[x3n0ph3n3]

Are you crediting the cultural consequences of McCarthyism and anti-Communism in the 1940's and 50's with most major technological improvements since then?