Human beings Living or Non-Living?

Discussion in 'The ChitChat Lounge' started by notty_lad, Jan 16, 2007.

  1. Notty & Shak have made good thought provoking contributions to this.
    I fear others are intent in ridiculing it cos they can't or will not tax their brains.
     
  2. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    Well, if you dont get the underlying points in the ridicule, then you'll see it as ridicule only
     
  3. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    OK, back to gay, un elephantly arguements:
    To write something off as being being "beyond" science is naive imo, looking at past examples. Youre predicting the scientific bounds of the future.
    For example, it was said that we couldnt find the personality of a person using science in the 1800's. Then came 1953.

    "Why cant science explain the origin of life?" should be more like "Why cant science explain the origin of life yet?"

    Edit: Check this documentry if youre interested in these varguements.
     
  4. bjr

    bjr Lady of the Evening


    I beg to differ. shsnawada's posts seem to be provoking my thoughts(albeit on a matter that has provoked my thoughts enough in the last few years) a lot more and do hold an underlying point which I couldn't seem to see in notty's and I lost shak the minute he said that religion did not need logic to prove anything (though I suppose he meant to say that religion does not actually attempt to prove?).
     
  5. shak

    shak Harrr!

    to believe science holds answers for (will hold answers to) 'everything' is not very clever either ... i feel science will always have its limits we might never known everything about everything that is to be known ..

    the correction of "why cant science explain the origin of life?" to "why cant science explain the origin of life yet?" is absolutely valid, infact now that you have mentioned it, i agree with you, but! being such a miserably pessismistic
    lowlife i would rephrase it to, "why cant science explain the origin of life yet, and can it ever?"

    this is exactly what i meant in my last post, (the one you've qouted), is it beyond science or is science just incompetent when it comes down to this question? .. the answer i think is, 'time will tell!'

    damn, i feel so gay :(


    @bjr: no i meant precisely that, and i am sorry if you took any offence, what i meant was that sometimes religion offers such concepts that cannot be weighed against human logic,or in other words religious concepts do not need a logical validation ... sometimes! (yes i am being careful *blush*)

    [Edit] just realized i sound too arrogant, and i certainly dont want my name off bjr's bad books so here is a diluted version of what i meant, see, science is knowledge, religion is faith, science is definition, proof and logic, religion deosnt need 'right' or 'wrong', its a spiritual guide that offers answers to questions where science fails, ethics, morals etc. you cant apply logic and science to religion and expect a valid answer sometimes.
     
  6. shak

    shak Harrr!

    as for sir waleeds post, i guess what he meant was that maybe me and notty were sticking to the topic (as silly as it may seem) and actually trying to make sense out of something completly random (and failing pretty shamelessly) ..

    while shs is bringing real issues with real questions so perhaps thats why he sounds a lot more appealing ... (envy of the highest order)
     
  7. bjr

    bjr Lady of the Evening

    So does it not boil down to saying that religion does not attempt to prove anything?

    Off the top of my head, let's take the turning stone to bread example. If you (as you said in an earlier post) believe that religion does not need logic to prove anything, you would essentially be saying it's true just because it's in the bible. Is that what you're saying? What I thought you meant to say was that whether or not it can be proved that this was true is insignificant in the larger picture of religion. Otherwise, what would happen in case of conflicting ideology in religion?

    And why would you be on my bad books in the first place?
     
    shsnawada likes this.
  8. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    Youre saying what Gödel's incompleteness theorems said (but for science). And yes i agree. You cannot have scientific determinism: science does not allow scientific determinism (recipie: Take 100 gms of the uncertanty pricniple/ feynmann's multiple histories theory,
    add the chaos theory , stir for 10 minutes and put it in the microwave)

    But if you make the problem/question to something a lot more specific, chances are higher that in the future, science could find the answers. And theoratically, it is possible to find out the origins of life through science.



    Ever is a very very big word. Maybe you wont look at it so pessimistically after you look at this field from a historical perspective?

    Yes
    Me too, but you need a certain level of gayness not to get into "arguements" like "you believe who you believe, i believe what i believe, lets all stfu."
     
  9. shak

    shak Harrr!

    religion, i feel, is just a set of rules bound by faith, many times it wouldnt actually attempt to prove what it claims, it uses 'faith' to validate the idea.

    aah i think i just cant put into words what i am trying to explain sorry, the best i can think of is >.. its just that sometimes logic cant validate religious concepts outrightly and it dont need to.

    as for your example, well thats something you are not supposed to take literally anyway, by turning blind into of healthy eyes, means to rejuvinate them spiritually, stone into bread, maybe he procurred food from seemingly sterile source (or just did farming, grew food (bread) from stone (earth), not sure about this one, anyway these are the sorts of metaphors that are used extesively in holy books, you cant take them litetally any educated 'religious person' woudl tell you, and thats where logic 'does' apply, stone cannot turn into bread cuz science and logic tells us that they are two entirely different entities, but i agree, some people do take this literally and blind faith validates all this for them.

    a more apt example would be the concept of life after death, why? how? where does one go after death? heavens? where is it? far away? how far? millions of light years away? how would one travel that far through vacuum? .. thats where logic would say, Rubbish! ..

    i can give you a few more examples that how people then turn to what i call 'implied trust' to help them through such questions, let me know if you are willing to go ahead. ..
     
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  10. shak

    shak Harrr!


    1) scientific determinsm itself is flawed to some extent, science has no rival but itself to reject a proven 'fact', you can never guarantee the degree of correctness for a given proof at any time until science itself turns around and says naa .. i was wrong before, the forces of nature started off as 5 (if i remember correctly) now they are down to 4 or 3 i think, all the work done on the basis of the assumption that indeed there are 5 forces of nature has gone straight off the polished tables down in the gutters.
    then there is the fact that science is indeed inapt, the heisenberg uncertainty principle that says you cannot know eveyrthing about a given system at a particular instant, just screams how inapt science really is.
    it is confined to human knowledge, cuz there is a corealation between science and human knowledge, and hence, science is bound by the limited confines of knowledge, thus limited.


    2) i dont know how theoratically it is possible that science will finally nail the origins of life, dunno what sample data has been considered, dunno what benchmark we are using, but ok, lets say it is possible, but will it answer 'why?' it might answer 'how?' .. that too with a certain degree of inaccuracy maybe, but when it comes down to the genesis, 'why?' is equally important as 'how?' and till today science has struggled to answer 'why?' .. yep you can google this theory if you want, i am pretty sure it will be out there ..

    3) history is indeed very impressive, the discovery of dna, the theory of pre mordial soup, the building blocks of body, atrtificial synthesis of amino aicds, its truely remarkable, but there is always this degree fo uncertainty when they talk of something that doesnt exist today, e.g the pre mordial soup, they can conform it to their requirements and produce life in theory but they cant prove if it really was like that? this is where knowledge binds the science and this is why im a little skeptical that if science would ever prove genesis in theory with conviction while standing on such weak foundations... but on the other hand the dna and amino acids are easy to prove cuz they exist .. today and you can compare em ...
    [edit] but i LOVE science!!!! https://www.engadget.com/2007/01/21/researchers-condense-entire-image-into-single-photon/
     
  11. bjr

    bjr Lady of the Evening

    Precisely. So you do agree that religion does not totally eliminate logic or science in it's being and for the people that it does, it turns them into extremists (I'm not talking about any religion in particular here)?

    There is a difference between saying that religion does not need proof to validate what it says and that religion does not prove what it says.
     
  12. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    Yes, it is limited but thats why it is an open ended method of knowing as opposed to faith (which assumes that something is true to prove that it is true).

    Also, because science cannot explain something, it doesnt for a moment strengthen the religious hypothesis on things. see: God of the gaps

    And yes, science is confined to human knowledge and perception. If you go beyond those, my elephant will say hi to you. (twice)

    The main difference between science and religion, is that science uses inductive logic and that religion uses faith (belief without any evidence at all)

    The question of "why" can be termed as metaphysics (not exactly religion). And secondly those questions are answered, the next obvious question will be "why that answer", and again its an open ended method of knowing.

    You could always say "why that?" to something that we dont know. But again, its the god of the gaps then.


    Will respond to this bit later.
    ps: (very) nice link! yo))) !
     
  13. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    Imo, thats what religion thrives on. Youre just cherrypicking the true parts and saying that the rest is metaphorical.[atheisttalk] I'm sure that the true parts might have changed over time, to be in line with scientific advances. [/atheisttalk]
     
  14. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    I repeat: Check this documentry if youre interested in these varguements.
     
  15. shak

    shak Harrr!


    1) why are we back to science vs. faith? yes fine! if you look at the comparison from that point of view then science kicks faith's right through the stratosphere and into orbit .. rejects God, rejects ethics vis religion, rejects the teddy bear comforts and gives us 'the reality' ..
    that universe wasnt created by a God, it just happened, dont ask how.. yet, God didnt create us!, we just sorta kinda somehow came into existance cuz conditions were right .. and the you shouldnt worry about how this huge system works .. cuz its physics and dont listen to einstein when he says god dont play dice ... (if you ask me, i see pink elephants without ears, tails and all sorts of vital organs missing .. )

    why cant faith and science co-exist in harmony?

    2) thankyou, there we go, science is bound and limited but unpredictable and highly dependant on humans.

    3) metaphysics, yes, i will be honest i dont know much about metaphysics but i guess its all philosophy and theory as well .. that need not to be in accord with scienctific reasoning? am i right? .. gotta do some search on this ..
    the 'why?' .. not as in 'why that answer?' but like .. 'why humans in the first place?' .. 'why this universe?' .. 'why water need to be 2 part hydrogen and 1 part oxygen?' .. "why atoms? why not strings? why fundamental particles?' ... not even why's but even how's! . 'how is this system so perfect? surely it cant be put down to chance!' ...
    (please note, i am not reffering to science vs. faith in any way, the reason i am typing these long posts is to see how deep does science really goes)
     
  16. shak

    shak Harrr!


    extremism comes from lack of tolerance and misnterpretations of religious commandments by the followers themselves, religion itself cannot preach extremism, it may offer hardlined ideas, logically impossible concepts but i wouldnt call it extremism
     
  17. shak

    shak Harrr!

    umm ... not really .. thats what i thought as well .. but take for example koran, and when it explain creation of unicellular organisms, moves on to explicitly explaining the pre mordial soup, the genesis, then evolution of human beings and the creation of universe, explains atom and the fundamental forces .. it seems like early 70's adulteration, but carbon dated 500 year old koranic scripts prove it other wise ..

    it is pretty fascinating but i wont go in detail, as for cherry picking, naa .. i did give an example thats not metaphoric, neither logical ... so i was being quite neutral.
     
  18. notty_lad

    notty_lad sudo undress

    Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. ~ Sir Albert Einstein

    I think the very topic "science v/s religion" is non-debatable. There has to be an influence of both science and religion in explaining hazy ideas like life,etc.
     
  19. shsnawada

    shsnawada Cyborgs & Pasta

    This is exactly the god of the gaps.

    Because, one is belief with evidence while the other is belief without evidence. Because, one is non circular method of knowing, while the other is a circular method of knowing.

    You said the same thing three times. And i will only answer twice.
    *brutally decapitates two rabbits*
    Well, the human subjective fallacies can be seen when you call it a perfect system. Not only is perfection, a very subjective thing, but this again is linking low probability events to purpose.

    Lets say that you are the third northern most stone of tibet. You weigh 27gms and have an aerodynamic dc of 0.64. A strong wind blows that rock downhill from the plateau and causes just enough aerodynamic turbulence to blow a guy's newly built tent in a way that if there was no stone, the tent wouldnt have blown out. The guy gets extremely angry and shouts at his already depressed wife out of anger. She commits suicide.

    work out the probabilities of the stone being at exactly that place and time, having exactly those weights and adc's, the guy building the tents in exactly those positions, time...etc.

    So god killed the guy's wife?

    And also, i want to ask you if you believe in the mutliverse theories. Because that would clear up a lot of stuff.
     
  20. shak

    shak Harrr!

    ^
    1) one can pro'ly call it a god of the gaps, but that wasnt my intent, i was tryin to see how complete science is (yeah going around in circles) and God was certainly not invited to fill in the gaps.

    2) other than that, both offer 'satisfaction' to the loyals (loyals) .. and maybe that is a point where both can co-exist ... might need a little flexibility though ..

    3)thankyou, there we go, science is bound and limited but unpredictable and highly dependant on humans.

    4) universe is not as robust as one might think, it stands on a very delicate equilibrium, the balance of fundamental forces and the distribution of energy is very precise, it wont run as well if it was anything less than perfection .. for me the 'perfection' loses its subjectiveness (<if thats a word) when applied to the universe.

    linking to purpose? i answered that in my last line of previous post, there is no need to drag everything over to the God's end.


    the stone killing the women, haha, i am not laughing at the question, i'm barely having a laugh at the irony of asking your 'religious person' if God is responsible for someone's death. ..


    ok jokes aside, two choices, leave it to 'the chance' or 'blame the God'
    .
    .

    if i say God, i get the stick, if i say chance, damn its pushing it too far ..

    (i am open to multiverse theories though my knowledge in that subject is pretty minimal)
     

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