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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" Hates Creationism

Saying that evidenced based observation is faith over and over again doesn't make it so.
 
coredeac said:
Still posting 12 pages later. Working your little hearts out to prove Jesus was a fraud.

The next 12 pages should be stellar.
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I feel like it either takes an enormous amount of intellectual stimulation and presupposition to believe (since you can't prove) Jesus is real, or it takes blind, work-free, unthinking faith. Either way, we're all in this together, coredeac, trying to figure shit out or not.
 
ChrisL68 said:
Saying that evidenced based observation is faith over and over again doesn't make it so.
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And not saying it at all doesn't make it so either so I guess we are in agreement. In order for evidence based observation to be predictive, which are laws of nature are, we must rely on a premise for which there cannot be evidence based on observation.

This isn't really that controversial or new, it's been around for a couple hundred of years and is a problem that hasn't been solved and in my opinion doesn't need to be. This fact doesn't undermine science at all. It should make scientists a little more humble and cautious when making comments on things which lay admittedly outside of the realm of science.
 
RChildress107 said:
Faith by definition is not scientific. You may think you have better reasons for your faith in empiricism than others have for faith in a supernatural being. Those reasons however cannot be scientific evidence.

Even if you claim there is no observable evidence of a supernatural being you must accept that there could be valid reasons for having faith in a supernatural being. That is unless you rule out any reasons other than empirical evidence in which case you rule out any reason for having faith in empiricism.
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Religious faith is definitely not scientific. The faith you are trying to pin on science does not equal religious faith.

I most certainly accept that there are valid reasons for having faith in a supernatural being. Do I think those supernatural beings exist? No.
 
TownieDeac said:
I feel like it either takes an enormous amount of intellectual stimulation and presupposition to believe (since you can't prove) Jesus is real, or it takes blind, work-free, unthinking faith. Either way, we're all in this together, coredeac, trying to figure shit out or not.
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Dude Jesus is an historical figure
 
TWDeac said:
Religious faith is definitely not scientific. The faith you are trying to pin on science does not equal religious faith.

I most certainly accept that there are valid reasons for having faith in a supernatural being. Do I think those supernatural beings exist? No.
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The faith in the premise: the future will resemble the past, is definitely not scientific either. No faith is scientific or it wouldn't be faith.

As to your second point fair enough. I think you are wrong but at least you acknowledge the legitimacy of such types of faith.
 
RChildress107 said:
The faith in the premise: the future will resemble the past, is definitely not scientific either. No faith is scientific or it wouldn't be faith.

As to your second point fair enough. I think you are wrong but at least you acknowledge the legitimacy of such types of faith.
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I was only calling it faith because that is what you seemed to be calling it and it helped with the distinction. Call it an assumption based on current and past observations.
 
TWDeac said:
I was only calling it faith because that is what you seemed to be calling it and it helped with the distinction. Call it an assumption based on current and past observations.
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Which is simply begging the question. The premise that the future will resemble the past is necessary in the proof for empiricism. You have to make that assumption before you can use current and past observations to make other claims. Basing that assumption on past observations is assuming the conclusion to prove one of the necessary premises for your conclusion. It is a fallacy.
 
TownieDeac said:
Ok, so I've dipped out for a while on this thread, but this argument comes up time and time again, and honestly, it's not that much of a barrier for science to cross. People who allow this to be their stumbling block should think of time in a less linear fashion, especially when you're talking on a universal scale like this. It's useful for us to think about time as a linear dimension in Cartesian space, but it's almost certainly not an inherent property of the universe. If you have to think about time like that, forwards and backwards, and in a straight line, then the best thing I can tell you is that there was no beginning, there was no nothingness and then somethingness. Our own big bang may be attributable to a date 15 billion years ago, but to try to keep going back to "what came before that" is reductionist. Because we haven't filled in the gaps yet about the precursors or prerequisites to the big bang (materially speaking), this is a facile argument for creationists, but it shouldn't be the backbone for any arguments.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by "all empirical science rests on the premise that the future will resemble the past." Entropy and enthalpy, man. Shit changes and the universe is always different for it.
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I can't remember the last time I agreed with over 80% of a post and still hated the post. So pretentious. Just so pretentious.
 
Milhouse said:
philosophy is such horseshit
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For the most part, I agree.

TownieDeac said:
Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
Martin Heidegger

If you have a good theory, forget about the reality.
Slavoj Žižek

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.
Immanuel Kant

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle
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Proving a point of the adversary. Kant would be happy with how pussified you were. (Kant is my least favorite political philosopher of all time. I hate him. That hack bastard.)




Also, the quest for knowledge isn't really the study of philosophy, is it? Philosophy takes learnings of knowledge then fucks them up with people's own personal views and out comes some sick personal opinions that vary per person for the exact same set of facts.


Machiavelli (who is the greatest person ever) and Kant (who is the worst person ever, that wasn't a mass murderer) could look at the exact same proven facts. The exact same knowledge. And come up with two completely different philosophical points about what that knowledge really means.

Philosophy is bullshit for the soul and nothing else. Love what you love and ridicule what you think is preposterous. Or be passive-aggressive about everything.




TownieDeac said:
I feel like it either takes an enormous amount of intellectual stimulation and presupposition to believe (since you can't prove) Jesus is real, or it takes blind, work-free, unthinking faith. Either way, we're all in this together, coredeac, trying to figure shit out or not.
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Did you just try argue that Jesus of Nazareth didn't actually ever exist?

Nice crazy conspiracy theory, sir. I, for one, don't think we landed on the moon. Care to join forces and promote both our insane ideas?
 
I took Townie to mean the whole of Jesus of Christian theology...not just the man that lived back then.

Anyhow...


I don’t think science and religion are the same. But one can use them seek to understand the same world/universe. And they are not absolutely unrelated apart from this basic subject of inquiry.

To believe that we understand something about the universe, we have to first assume that there is something to be understood and that we can understand it. Even if we can't prove why this is or should be so. To believe that we, in our tiny corner of all that may be, can with our very limited materials, perceptions, and cogitations understand the nature and properties of the entirety of whatever is requires assumptions we’ve no hope anytime soon to validate.

But just taking what we can perceive…science can aid us in the observation and understanding of the physical nature of what we can reasonably study. But it can’t well explain why there is anything for us to study in the first place. Or if it/we are really real. Or even what that might mean. Or what, if any, meaning there is to us and what we can perceive. Or what is or might be beyond our perception. Or why there should or shouldn’t be such things.

Now, I think the whole concept of “supernatural” is kind of confusing. And may be unnecessary for even a theist. And yet there’s no reason to insist that there is nothing out there that is beyond our nature (or what seems or is natural to us).
 
Whew, some of you guys are freaking well-versed on the scientific theories regarding the universe. Blown away.

Question for TWDeac (and others): With wholly scientific answers to explain the universe/big bang/creation/etc and thus disprove the idea of a supernatural creation, how do you feel about things like emotion (love and conscience) and morality?

This is just where I always get tripped up when I progress down the scientific path. People claim that there is "Zero Zilch Nada" evidence of a creator Being and some of it is very convincing and I find myself almost ready to commit. But then, with science being the only "rational" explanation for everything since time began, I get confused when I contemplate the ideas from the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the crazy love (non sexual) for a woman, and this weird heaviness in my heart when I see something despicable and awful. Where do these things come from?

I can't get science to tell me the details of WHY I think and feel certain things and why inalienable rights do exist. Science can tell me HOW (nerves, synapses, etc), but not HOW/WHY they exist.

Help?
 
inalienable rights are a construct of man. The only true inalienable right we have is the right to attempt to survive.

As to why emotions exist, they are part and parcel with our cognizance. [h=1][/h]
 
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RChildress107 said:
Which is simply begging the question. The premise that the future will resemble the past is necessary in the proof for empiricism. You have to make that assumption before you can use current and past observations to make other claims. Basing that assumption on past observations is assuming the conclusion to prove one of the necessary premises for your conclusion. It is a fallacy.
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Ahhhh, I just realized. Hume's problem of induction is what you've been using for your arguments.

Empiricism is the belief that we can only gain knowledge from sensory experience, and speaks to how we gain knowledge rather than how we apply it (reasoning).

I will take my scientific assumptions, based on billions of years of past evidence, that something will happen with a high probability. Induction is axiomatic.

In my earlier example, the hammer has been observed and it's action taken in spacetime recorded. A probability can be calculated from this event. As such, the Bayesian Probability that it will fall again approaches 1. The probability that I will observe or be acted upon by a supernatural being tomorrow is essentially 0.
 
RChildress, you'll have to forgive me but your argument about faith runs counter to any logical process I can think of. Is your belief in God based on the possibility that he could exist until proven that he doesn't? It's impossible to prove God doesn't exist and that's how many low-road spiritual arguments end. It's also impossible, it would seem (although I'm not an expert in the matter), to prove that the future won't resemble the past. In both cases you're saying yeah, God may not seem to exist 99.999...% of the time but if he presents himself only once then it will prove he exists. Same as saying the future may resemble the past 99.999...% of the time but the one time it doesn't will prove that we can't make that assumption.

The question most non-believers would ask most believers is why they'd swim against the tide like that. Why they'd persist in their efforts to believe something so unlikely to ever be empirically proved true. The basis of philosophy and religious thought sprung from humanity and you're using the errant nature of humans' perception of reality to prove that we can't rule out spiritual faith? I think a lot of us get stuck there.

For the first 4,500,000,000 years of the Earth's existence, nothing believed in God and the future resembled the past.
 
:laugh:

Why am I not surprised in the least that Dv7 hates Kant and loves Machiavelli. "Get that moral imperative bullshit out of here"
 
The problem you run into with blending modern science and the bible is that you inevitably begin choosing which things you're ok with in the bible and which ones you're not.

Most religions view this along the lines of CS Lewis in Mere Christianity - the idea being that you can't just say "Jesus was a great teacher but I don't necessarily believe he was the Son of God." Because he was either a total lunatic or he was the real deal, there's no in-between based on historic accounts of his teachings.

The Bible as the Word of God is a sacred cornerstone of Christianity. Once you admit it has shortcomings or flat-out fallacies, (as opposed to just stories meant to be taken as allegory), you're on the short trip to classic anti-Christian theologies like Pelagianism or having everyone creating their own personalized religion.

At the very least, it is absolutely inappropriate that the followers that should be making such decisions instead of the leadership of the Church.

I think the intense effort of most popular religions to ostracize (or even persecute) those who question religious doctrine and exalt those who do not is extremely dangerous. Especially when combined with the fact that a scientific community will readily give up a position when it is proven incorrect, whereas a reasonable person dedicated to religious dogma will deny something as simple as the age of the earth until the day they die.

To argue that this doesn't impact the progress of our country when a Mormon who believes in the literal translation of the bible has a legitimate shot at being President is completely laughable.
 
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