A fine choice for the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology

[Sasaki Kojiro]

So all lefties look to Science for values and moral guidance? I contest.

Me too.

They look to a secular culture that believes in a certain way of determining values. It inherited many ideas from christianity. Many of them still have religion in some form. But it seems like pseudo-science about the effect of buddhist meditation on the mind is a-ok with the supposedly pro-science people...

Let this be a major point of contention between us. There is no such "understanding" concerning religion in America.

There is enough of an understanding.

What are these questions? Anyway, this sounds like platitudinous pop pablum to me.

Sure. It's a platitude because it would be very difficult to really describe in words. That's part of the point.

History is by definition a narrative. Do you stomach only chronologies? "Tell me everything or tell me nothing"?

That's not true about history. It's too complex to simplify into a narrative (define roughly as a story simple enough for you to explain it verbally and have someone understand it). That's why historical narratives end up saying things like "and then Rome fell, and Europe was plunged into the dark ages".

It is no less simplistic to say that the most ancient thinkers are the best.

I don't say that. Seneca is good but so is Eric Hoffer.

A large part of what such thinkers have to deal with was the same then as it is now. There hasn't been fundamental progress in understanding, say, when should we be selfless, how selfless to be, and how to cultivate it as a virtue.

Other questions are circumstantial to the times and involve the adaptations people have had to make to changes in the world. So there is an important place for modern thinkers, but older thinkers are crucial as well--not only because there is a very limited number of great thinkers, but because they dealt with some things honestly that we lie about, and they had some things right that we have wrong.

If you're going to quote Bentham from wikipedia, why did you leave out the rest?
See above.

As for the actual loons who oppose experimentation on animals and feel they should be given equal rights, I'll quote you. Is this science? Certainly not. Then why bring it up?

That people might not understand, not appreciate or misuse the knowledge of science doesn't detract from the validity of science itself. You can name as many people as you like who don't understand evolution yet refer to it discussions, or people who use evolution to justify social darwinism etc., but you still won't have an argument not to teach the theory of evolution in schools, much less against the theory itself.

Yes, and I could say the same about religion--people who misuse it etc.

But the validity of science is restricted to a very small area.

We are arguing about the misuse of it--one case is equal rights for animals, which you rightly call loony, but there are many others.

Are you a creationist?

If no, then why do you go to such lengths to defend it?

Defense can be a good method of offense.

So, short version. Some people need the safety of religion to feel safe in their moral compass. True. Some can't even comprehend something else.

Some people need to feel like their moral compass is rational and logically cohesive, and can't comprehend anything else. You don't think this is bad, it's something you'd praise about a moral compass?

Now, the problem is the following. Do the same defense for Hinduism and it's caste system as you're doing with Christianity. Not even Christianity can fully agree on what's right.

Philosophy isn't science. They've been contradicting eachother for centuries for example (why Aristoteles was the big man for centuries, despite being testably wrong), but it does touch the thing you're after. It's a lot about values. Basically if I read you right, you're blaming science for the loss of a coherant belief system about values, aka religion, causing confusion for many people. Some points there, but the determinism in Calvinism and the chosen one attitude in Jehova's vitness are examples of different value systems within the same religion.

So religions can't protect values either (the Bible was used to justify slavery and also to abolish it). So instead you're stuck with several ethical frameworks to work from. How to determine which one to use?

I wouldn't say that science has done that, it's more like a secular culture that need not have existed at the same time as secular advances. But I'm not talking about loss of religion in slums.

Religious people have adjusted and changed their beliefs practically continuously, for all they are accused of being dogmatic. God and inspiration have usually been seen as a higher authority than bible doctrine--when you bring up the different sects you support that.

The bible was used to justify slavery, as was science, but it was largely evangelism that ended slavery (in the us/uk).

If you want to justify a vice, it's easy to rationalize or misuse science. You can take some theory as true, or some absurd premise as true, and be confident that you have built logically on top of that. People who want to justify vice don't usually become satanists.

Moral and other big questions are usually deeply passionate. But science is supposed to be dispassionate. To science nothing is sacred. But imagine a moral philosophy which didn't consider human life to be sacred.

First, establish the goal (not science), then use experience and data (aka science) to see how to come closest to the goal by using reasonable methods and working from what you got (humans are different and flawed, that needs to be taken into account).

Certainly. The problem shows up in the experience of others (and yourself, but that's another matter). Very few will meet and fully experience enough people to be well rounded on the "big questions", so you have to take that short cut of reading words and data. The comprehension is less than the full experince, but it will still be helpful.

It will only be helpful if it's right. And if there isn't widespread comprehension, how will the truth spread over society?

Using science or a data driven approach to find the answer to the big questions doesn't work. Neither does the overly rational and logical approach. As an analogy, think of the people who try to use science or logic to figure out something social like dating.


If it's very difficult to truly grasp the big questions then we should avoid everything that tends to fool us into thinking we have the answers. It's absurd to pick out creationists as a special kind of dogmatic and then (essentially) praise college kids going off of what their professor tells them about the latest psychology study. I don't know how it is in Sweden, but in America the people who don't go off of tradition or religion simply turn to some other authority--they are the ones who quote from newspapers admiringly, who speak the names of 20th century philosophers and artists reverently, the ones who say "studies show that people...".