I also suspect that there might be some causality going in opposite directions than one might think. Like how poor people are more religious but it probably isn't that religion makes people poor, and instead something like that poor people are less educated and more educated people are less religious. Or whatever. In this case - particularly in the US - there is a pretty strong anti intellectual trend, particularly in the Republican Party that is much less prevalent in other countries. It is lamentable, but I don't think the anti intellectualism is necessarily because they are more religious, and if anything causality probably works the other way around here.

Wasn't there a study just released showing that 27% of Americans believes Yahweh literally intervenes in sporting events?

If we consider the many seemingly mundane events of life where Yahweh intervens as documented in the OT/NT, it seems reasonable to extrapolate that Yahweh would intervene in sporting events. I am not saying I believe Yahweh did anything specific in the Superbowl. I am saying that it wouldn't suprise me if Yahweh did intervene in sporting events.

I would go as far as to say it is likely (obv. IMO) that at some point in history Yahweh has intervened in a sporting event of some kind.

I responded to the position, not the poster, so I don't know why I'd treat him differently unless we were talking about genetics, where he clearly is much more educated than I.

I can tell you this: of all the theories out there for making money on sports betting - some of them very complex - the one that doesn't ever quite seem to work out is "god told me this team would win". A silly example, of course, but a predictable one. People widely belief that god manifests, but there can be no discernible pattern to detect that god is indeed manifesting this way. It is only the secular, if you will, theories that have any shot at actually explaining the outcomes of sporting events.

As for the referencing of Dawkings, I think mightyboosh can hold the dawkings examples up to demonstrate that mightyboosh is not saying things outside of new atheist orthodoxy. As in, it shows that his comments are not more extreme or more negative than what new atheists say. But obviously it doesn't mean that mightyboosh and the new atheists are correct necessarily. And if we are questioning validity of a statement, simply giving evidence that somebody else who, while smart, is obviously supremely and openly biased for that vi isn't exactly compelling.

If God was to intervene in sports I highly doubt it would be to an end of helping someone succeed at sports betting. But then again his first miracle was turning water into wine so who am I to judge.

Just because there is no theological justification, doesn't mean people don't believe god isn't on their side helping them win

I dont get this, you are a christian, a theist, not a deist, so you believe in an interventionist god. Isnt it the fact that ALL events come from god, one way or the other. So to say that causal connections to gods agency arent warranted seems a bit strange to me. If its gods will, it happens, if its not gods will it doesnt, right?

This seems like an odd claim to me. I'm curious to see you explain what you think will cause "religion" to "gain." I suspect that you've got a fundamental characterization issue, wherein you define things in a way that makes your position more or less tautological.

Here's the statement you used:

The phrasing "one ... after another" implies a certain level of regularity of occurrence. For example, if I claim to be winning "one award after another" and it's discovered that I've won a half dozen awards in the last millennium, I would be accused of exaggeration.

There you go again. The language implies a regularity.

And you're right that you didn't use the phrase. That was my characterization of the change of the argument. You go from language that suggests an abundance to pointing out that the rarity of the existence of such claims in the first place.

You can say that this is a "counter" and I will simply shrug at you. If your goal is to "win" arguments, we can play that type of game. But if your goal is (as you've stated before) to think through problems and learn more about things, then this is not a good approach.

Intellectual dishonesty doesn't mean advocating a position you don't agree with. Very often in philosophical discussions, one will criticize an argument where the person agrees with the conclusion, but thinks the argument is unsuccessful. Similarly, one can give credit for a solid argument even while disagreeing with the conclusion (meaning that the argument put forth is valid, but there's a disagreement about the truth of the underlying premises).

In this case, I'm claiming that your initial argument appears to be predicated upon a certain amount of regularity of having religious explanations being refuted by science. But then when I pointed out that there aren't really that many religious explanations being refuted by science, you claim that the absence of claims supports your initial argument. And here, you have two contrary ideas (abundance and absence) and you are claiming both are true and that both help your argument.

It's important here (and this addresses some of the other things in this thread) that your argument is specific to science refuting "divine explanations" of things. In the sports case, even if someone claims that "God intervenes" in sports events, in what sense has science proven that God doesn't?

Also, there's something specific to the language here, which is that a "divine explanation" requires a religion that holds a "divine being" in some sense. There are many folk religions and superstitions which do not invoke any form of a deity.

At this point, you need to be quite careful. Your argument is about religions and not religious people. In particular, you talk about "religion" as an organizational entity. If a person makes a claim like "God made him miss the goal" it's often the case that this claim is not "sanctioned" in any way by any religious body, and therefore there is nothing for religion to gain from this (and in fact would reject the claim).

My point here can be made by the fact that there are many examples of theories from the pre-Enlightenment (or pre-Scientific Revolution -- basically 1600s) that were not "Goddidit" theories of the universe.

Indeed. But what does this have to do with science refuting things?

Again, what does this have to do with science refuting things?

Sopatros? Without even looking it up, that name appears to be Greek, and so I'm not sure what relevance this would have with scientific refutation. Upon googling, this is what comes up:

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

Is this who you were referring to?

Thales of Miletus? That predates Christianity, so that can't count for anything.

I don't see the relevance at all. Hypatia? What's the science?

Your point here fails to connect to your original position. This is once again making it sound like you're taking the "anything that even suggests religion is bad is of interest to me" approach (or whatever it was that you said). You've gone completely from making an argument about science to something having nothing to do with science.

Go ahead and soar. But make sure that you connect it back to your original position. So far, you have failed to do this.

A persons understanding of their faith is intended to fit their purpose not yours.

I'm going to amalgamate these points because I think we've both been guilty of some semantic bias. I don't know if that's the correct phrase, it's my way of saying that we've both used terms and phrases that attempted to emphasise or support our own positions. Me with the 'steadily' and 'one after another', and you with the 'rarity' and 'sheer absence'. (Are they Argument Markers?)

To clarify. I think that religion has theories that explain nature. There are less of those theories than there are scientific theories that offer alternative explanations. That might be explained by the 'goddidit' mind set which would implicitly require fewer theories. Some religious theories have been refuted by scientific alternatives and I believe that this reflects a trend.


Surely a point that stands in opposition to another point is a counter, regardless of the intentions behind it? A counterpoint.

Isn't this the Fallacy fallacy?

Ok, let's agree a term. I think that this process has been 'continual', in that it has continues to occur, but without a specific measure of regularity and therefore isn't 'continuous'.

No I didn't, I agreed that there are fewer religious theories when compared to scientific theories.

[/quote]

No, they're two separate arguments. One theory (goddidit) as a possible explanation for why there are fewer divine 'theories' than scientific, and a second argument that those divine theories are being refuted by naturalistic explanations.

I didn't intend to link them and I'm certainly not relying on the former to support the latter.

I don't think that this cam be compared to something like the Heliocentric issue. One is provable through observation and the other isn't.

I'm using 'divine' to cover anything supernatural and involving any kind of deity.


Sure, but didn't organised religion create the bible? The fact that is now used by many people to explain things doesn't mean that I'm blaming ordinary people for that state of affairs, I'm simply offering that as proof that 'goddidit; is a thriving phenomena.

It has to do with the churches response to science refuting things.

It has to do with it because that was the crime that people like Galileo and Copernicus were accused of, as part of the church's response and attempt to prevent contradictory theories having an adverse impact on them.


"In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]" (source)

This discussion isn't limited to Christianity.

She was a philosopher/scientist, executed by Christians for heresy.

All the names I listed have to do with science.

I think I've achieved it quite easily. I've provided names of people who's theories, that contradicted divine theory, got them killed by religions. This was never limited to science anyway, it's simply that scientific research has yielded the majority of the theories that the religions would prefer were suppressed and it's a useful term to describe the concept. Methodological naturalism was what I started with I think.

from my POV it is the difference between God's natural laws taking place or God's direction intervention:

For example:

My aunt recently had Cancer, then she received chemo treatment, now she is fine.

Well lets be real, that aint no miracle.

That is just a combination of medicine and the human bodies natural ability to heal itself.

Should my aunt be thankful to God? - absolutely.
Is it a miracle? - I would say no.

So maybe from a non Christian perspective this is splitting hairs.
Nonetheless I think it is dishonest in a way.

Another example:

Lets say I am walking through the park and I see a blade of grass.
I say, "wow what a beautiful blade of grass, look what God did".

I am of course correct for praising God for his Creation, But it wasn't a miracle. God did not intervene in a way that suspended natural laws.

In a macro sense though God created everything and is sovereign over everything so I could in fact just be wrong in my perspective.

For letting her get cancer? Wow, I would bitch slap that mofo upside his everlasting bearded head and go find another religion. I hear Zeus is making a comeback.

If you are thankful to god when someone is saved by modern medicine, what emotional reaction do you have towards god when someone is not saved by modern medicine?

I see death more as a transition rather than a final end.
I am kind of apathetic about death. I can't change it and it is inevitable for everyone.

Of course I still grieve like anyone, but overall I just don't think it is that big of a deal. I feel more just sad about losing someone if they do actually die.

Sometimes people living is more sad than people dying. For example people who live for years sick and feeble.

In many cases, the use of the word "explain" here is a conflation of terms. You probably need to separate out a metaphysical "explanation" from a physical explanation. An "alternative" explanation suggests some sort of inherent disagreement between the two sides which may or may not exist (depending on what specifically you are referring to).

It's more a question of the success of your counterpoint. But your updated language is significantly better than where you started, so there's nothing more to say here.

This is a different conversation, but the short answer is no.

I would still like for you to be more specific. Quantification seems central to your argument.

This is another reason for me to ask you to elaborate on the above. It appears that your argument loses focus when you lose specificity.

This is a very awkward line for you to use (because of your admitted inability to quantify as above). Maybe we'll come back to this later.

The purpose of that observation was to point out the inherent difficulty in claiming that science refutes "divine explanations." It wasn't really directed at you (since you weren't the one who chose that example). But rather, it makes a clear point that if you're claiming that "science" is doing something, then it had better be clear that it's really scientific.

You should be very careful about lumping "supernatural" in with "divine." Notice that your definition implicitly separates out acts of deity from other supernatural events. There's a reason for this. If someone claims that "a ghost knocked my books off the table" they would very likely disagree that it was "divine activity." The word "divine" carries very clear connotations that "supernatural" does not. The problem is exacerbated by your explicit usage of "Goddidit" as your example of "a divine explanation." It's quite clear that if one attributes an activity to ghosts, it's not a Goddidit. Neither are superstitions.

What do you mean by this?

Again, you've got to be clear about the types of phenomena that are being Goddidit-ized and then be clear about whether it fits in your argument. Let's go back to the beginning and follow the conversation to fit this into context:

Your basic claim: People accepted "Goddidit" as an explanation for everything, thus reducing the level of curiosity about the universe.

My point: That's not really how people understood the world. Even if they did think that God was responsible for creating the universe, it does not mean that they saw the world in a "Goddidit" manner. That is, they did not take "Goddidit" as a conversation stopper when thinking about the world around them.

Now you're telling me that "Goddidit" is a "thriving phenomenon" but it fails to connect with the idea of "Goddidit" as a dominant theory and hence a stopper for other theories. You're claiming MORE THAN just that people attribute events in human history (big or small) to God. I have no qualm with that claim. But you're pushing this further to claiming that this perspective PREVENTS other perspectives from being put forth. This has not been effectively demonstrated as a widespread phenomenon.

Let me quote what I was responding to:

At this point, you seem to be speaking quite broadly about all reasons for persecution. But then in this most recent post, you're talking narrowly about "the church's response to science refuting things." (*) The back and forth here is inconsistent.

Sure, I've granted you this one. What you've failed to demonstrate is that this is some type of systematic behavior.

Okay... but what does this philosopher have to do with science?

This is contrary to the context:

...

That's not good enough. You're talking about suppression as a result of science refuting things. Just talking about heresy really isn't enough. See (*) above.

Not really. In the context of your argument, you need to show that the names are listed as a result of specific scientific advancements.

No, you haven't. You've listed no specific theories and no evidence that there was something given in contrary to a divine theory (specifically a "Goddidit").

This would be a gigantic departure from your original argument.

You really don't want to go down this path. It's a real loser for you. Just like you can't change "heresy" for "the church's response to science refuting things" you can''t use "science" for things that aren't science.

The good thing about having the conversation in writing is that you can look it up yourself (though I've done it here for you):

As stated, it's vague. However, my first reading is that "an increased naturalistic understanding" is not actually talking about methodological naturalism (an assumption applied to scientific endeavors), but rather the result of having naturalistic explanations of the universe (which stand in contrast to whatever it is you mean by "divine explanations").

I'd like to backtrack and summarise because I'm not sure if I'm confusing terms or not. I continually attempt to improve my terminology and argument and I think that can sometimes cause problems with the understanding of my position, plus I'm clarifying my position to myself as I go along anyway since this level of objection is new to me, it necessarily involves my position evolving - but - the core of it remains the same even if the detail may change.

My premise (reworked as a result of your objections) is that Methodological naturalism**, as an approach to developing theories that explain our universe, and where it hasn't overlapped, integrated or stimulated dialogue between religions and 'science', has resulted in theories that conflict with, challenge or cause to be rejected explanations offered by various religions (and that I have been referring to as 'Divine explanations'). That there has historically been conflict between the religions and those who would offer 'other' explanations for the universe and that conflict has impeded the progress of our understanding of the universe.

You've accepted that contradictory theories may have an adverse impact on religions and that they have an incentive to prevent this from occurring, and that their response has been, on occasion, to suppress the knowledge to prevent it damaging both their credibility and authority. Our disagreement seems to have become one of how often this has happened with me believing it frequent and you opposed to that position. Hence the focus on quantification?

Can we agree this summary before proceeding?

Sure. There's no problem with hitting the rest button here.

The first sentence sounds like you're setting up a weird dichotomoy. Whenever there's not peace between science and religion, there's conflict. That's true, but trivially so.

In the second question, I challenge the frequency with which these conflict actually arise, though I agree that when such conflicts have arisen, religious dogmatic views have generally impeded the progress of science.

Yes. I believe that you're neglecting the huge amount of productive work that religions and religious institutions have contributed to the increase of scientific knowledge (intellectually and financially, not just Christian scholarship but also medieval Islamic scholarship), and focusing on incredibly rare cases in which conflicts have arisen. Furthermore, I believe that you have not accurately characterized the actual conflicts correctly, as evidenced by your list of names which mostly have little to do with the conflict under consideration.

I was actually discounting the objection you raise in your bottom paragraph in that I was trying to acknowledge the classifications of the types of relationship between religion and science so as not to appear to be ignoring everything except the conflicts. I did mention earlier ITT about how religions had contributed to advances in understanding.

...but...

It's my belief that progress has been made in academic fields by religions whilst they tried to understand their gods, i.e. within and limited to the paradigm that their god is responsible for everything, and not as a result of a desire to find other explanations for the universe than it being the work of their deity. They're not actively seeking to disprove their theories as science does. So where science dovetailed, or appeared to support the claims of religions, it was tolerated and even advanced. But when it contradicted, it was suppressed or discouraged.

Well, that's a large part of what I'm saying but I think it's more than just something that occurs infrequently or is limited to isolated incidents, I think it represents a thought process and a mind set that has had a much greater impact on our progress than an occasional scientist being burned at the stake.

It's not possible to know how may people have been discouraged from seeking non-divine explanations for the universe but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that in a climate of fear (Fear of being convicted of Heresy), study and research may have been stifled and impeded.

One example of this is the 219 condemnations of Pope John XXI that included the 'Laws of nature' in the 13th Century) since they were contradictory to the Divine explanation for the universe as posited by the Catholic church. When the most powerful church in the world says 'don't question our version of events' and backs that up with executions, how can it not impede scientific progress?

See above for my answer to the charge of 'neglect'.

It's interesting that you should mention Islamic scholarship because I read recently that, in part, advances in mathematics in Islam were due to Islam forbidding the use of human imagery in art so there was a move towards geometric design and that required the calculation of angles etc etc. I think this sort of thing represents what I've said in the first part of my response.

This list of examples doesn't inspire confidence. So, first, definitely Galileo, Servetus, and Bruno are all examples where religious leaders killed or repressed scientific (of a kind) thinkers for their beliefs (although I'm not sure that in all three cases it was specifically their scientific beliefs that were at issue).

However, your other examples don't show much. So, Thales is considered by many the first philosopher of the Western tradition. I'm not aware of any special repression he suffered by religious people. He is supposed to have lived to a ripe old age (plausibly Socrates issues a better example here).

Hypatia was murdered by a mob of Christians over a political dispute, not executed for heresy (as a pagan, she wouldn't have been a great candidate for heresy anyway.).

Sopatros I have never heard of before, so I am doubtful of his significance as a thinker. That being said, him being executed by a Christian emperor is not enough to show anything about science and religion.

Copernicus was not persecuted by the church for his heliocentrism (at least I'm not aware of any serious thing here). Arguably, the church made it easier for him to develop his views by providing him with a sinecure that gave him the opportunity to do his astronomical work.

So, you are left with three examples of thinkers, all of whom lived within the same time period and roughly the same area. Do you really think that is adequate to show much about the nature of religion more generally?

You're welcome to your beliefs, but the question is whether your belief is informed by and grounded in reality.

Do you believe that scientists are actively seeking to disprove the existence of gravity? Or that the periodic table of elements does not accurately represent the basic building blocks of chemicals? I think your characterization of science is inaccurate.

Let's turn this around.

Now it sounds precisely like your basic position. So what you seem to be describing is just the nature of conflict itself, and nothing in particular with religion being a "limited paradigm" (unless you want to classify science as a limited paradigm -- which would be an accurate characterization because the methods of science do create clear types of limitations to information that can be known).

Again, you're making a claim that does not appear to be informed by or grounded in reality.

What you're saying here is that you're making an unverifiable claim, and expecting others to accept it. It's almost conspiratorial in nature, which should be raising flags.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/condemnation/

What specifically are you accusing the 219 condemnations of doing, and is it grounded in historical data?

I believe that it is. What language would you have me use that avoids unreasonable certainty?

Whether you're looking for evidence that would prove or disprove a theory, you're accepting that the theory may be disproved are you not. Scientific theories, amongst other things, are progressive and corrective where religions would prefer not to be but have been forced to be on occasion. e.g. the Catholic church reversing it's official policy view on Evolution in the 1980s.

I don't see what turning it around achieves. Science can be used to support religious doctrine, there are plenty of groups attempting to do just that as a counter to the knowledge that science has revealed to us that contradicts religious doctrine but where science is prepared to accept any answer, religions aren't. When a religion discovers something that counters one of it's own doctrines and voluntarily reverses it's policy, then perhaps you could argue that religions use the scientific approach in a non-restrictive way.

It doesn't appear that way to you, it does to me. I don't see how it progresses any discussion to continually point that out. If you agreed with me we wouldn't be having the discussion, since you don't it's obvious to me that you think my beliefs are not grounded in reality. I don't think that your beliefs are grounded in reality but I never say so, there being little point IMO.

If I suggest that living in the Soviet Union during the early 20th Century was to be subject to a social context that impeded democratic thought and development of doctrine contrary to Communism, would I also be making an unverified claim? There' is no difference between that and what I'm saying. The crime of Heresy was intended to discourage contrary thought, and to a large (but unmeasurable) extent it worked.

I think that (as a specific example) the Catholic church's attitude toward contrary theory, as evidenced by the Inquisition and the Condemnations during the period that we call the Dark Ages, created an impediment to the search for truth. It impeded our progress toward real learning.

Of being an example of how a religion has attempted to suppress theory that contradicted it's own doctrine. What else? Yes, I think it's grounded in historical data, where else would I have got it?

It's not a language thing, it's an evidence thing. Your first attempted case fell quite flat. You may believe in your thesis, but that doesn't mean you've made a reasonable argument for it.

You're making an argument about the inflexibility of various dogmas, but then you note that dogmas aren't inflexible. You don't think that scientific progress runs into a power struggle any time there are significant shifts in knowledge? What you've described really isn't that different from any other power struggle.

It simply notes that the advancement of science has happened with the exact same process that you're saying creates limitations for science.

I have noted the philosophical, financial, and intellectual contributions religions have had to the pursuit of science. You've given me a short list of names, most of which have nothing to do with the conversation. One side has evidence, the other side is factually erroneous. I'll let you figure out which side is grounded in reality.

There's a significant difference between the two. Among other things, you keep ignoring the fact that scientific and intellectual progress happened. You can keep talking about things like "the crime of heresy" but yet you have failed to produce much evidence that "the crime of heresy" was commonly applied in a way that stood against intellectual progress. Again, your examples fall quite flat.

What specifically do you believe that the Inquisition did to science?

It seems that your analysis doesn't actually fit the data.

I think you're creating a straw man here by again introducing words that I didn't use and then using them to defeat a position I haven't taken. I didn't say that the various dogmas were 'inflexible' only to then contradict myself by pointing out how they 'flex' which is the impression that you're giving. I said they would 'prefer' not to have to change, for obvious reasons, and that they aren't corrective and progressive in that they don't want to change, where science always wants to be as correct as possible.

That power struggles occur with significant shifts in knowledge also doesn't refute, or justify, that religious persecution occurred in order to suppress anti-doctrinal thinking. You're probably committing another fallacy there that I don't know the name of.

Then how do you explain that where science is prepared to accept any answer for how the universe came to be, religions are only prepared to accept that their deity was responsible and are not prepared to accept any answer that is in conflict with their own beliefs? Their paradigm restricts what questions are relevant and what answers are meaningful to them.

That's just one example of how religious thinking limits and impedes our progress.

The various versions of the Inquisition which were all charged specifically with 'suppressing Heresy' created a period of several hundred years, that officially started in the 12th Century (Heretics had already been executed by burning at the stake for hundreds of years prior to that) and didn't finish until the 19th Century, during which the entire sphere of influence of the catholic church was subject to a social pressure that didn't encourage, and in fact actively punished, any anti-doctrinal behaviour.

A Papal bull of 1184 instructed that "shielded or succored heretics would be liable to the same punishment as the heretics themselves", that's as an example of how much pressure they brought to bear and how pervasive it was. This wasn't some remote edict from on high. The Inquisition was everywhere, in every town and village, enforced by local authorities.

To suggest that the catholic church, the most powerful religious body of the last 1000 years, actively encouraged open minded science and genuinely unbiased research, that it was willing and actively seeking to correct it's own explanations for the universe, is to deny, fail to be informed by, and fail to be grounded in reality, when it's quite clear that the opposite was true. Any 'progress' achieved during that period was self serving but deliberately limited in scope and I don't think can be used as evidence to refute what I've said above.