It think it's the reverse. But that's no surprise.
Serious quesiton for people who deny human involvement in climate change/global warming
- Thread starter HighlandHomie
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It think it's the reverse. But that's no surprise.
jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
I wasn't serioulsy suggesting that rationality is an aberration, but in relative terms to irrationality (under which I place religious beliefs--not necessarily as pejorative term but to suggestion belief in absence of evidence), it is much less the norm, so relatively speaking an aberration. It's hard for me to view anything that is such a common attribute of humanity (religiosity) to be an aberration. To me, an aberration is something outside the norm of what we'd expect, and religiosity IS the norm, not outside the norm.
As for rational choice theory, it only specifies that individuals act to maximize a given utility function, but it says nothing about the source of the utility function nor whether the beliefs embedded therein are rational or irrational (or good or bad). So, say, for a utility function informed by a belief in eternal glory being serviced by a bevy or nubile virgins, blowing oneself up in a crowded market sqaure can be considered a highly rational act.
Oh, duh. Yeah, of course.
Ah, a rational choice based on a irrational, religious foundation. That's my problem with "faith". Unless society rejects faith as a legitimate basis for informing decisions, irrationality is here to stay.
jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
Yep, I have similar problems with 'faith.' One of my pet peeves is the deference US society gives to faith-based beliefs. I understand the history behind this cultural and legal prediliction, but from where I sit, a bad belief is a bad belief regardless of its source. Plus, given the thousands of years of human history, which show to us so clearly the human cost so often imposed by faith-based beliefs, one might argue that they merit even closer and more rigorous scrutiny than beliefs emanating from other sources. (Well, I'd probably expand that a bit to include all beliefs emanating from dogmatic belief or ideology.)
Societies in which rationality is the norm only exists in science fiction.
I'm not advocating that all decisions, policies, etc. should only be made on basis of evidence, but I'd certainly like to see the pendulum swing in that direction a bit more.
Interestingly, however, I've been doing work evaluating policy influence organizations (e.g., think tanks), and you learn quickly doing this that the pathways from evidence to policy decisions is a long and circuitous one, with many permutations. Making decisions based on emotion, gut, etc. is so much damned easier.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
It's actually not that hard. I have a lot of hippie friends and I talk them out of nonsensical beliefs all the time. What people are attracted to(I think this is the evolutionary wiring you are referring to) is a trifecta of knowledge, a sense of belonging or community, and a confirmation of their own uniqueness. As diaspora-tic as those subjects may seem I think they make up the essence of what we call spirituality.
You can have a conversation with a spiritual person, a conversation that challenges their beliefs, without challenging their knowledge, community, or unique identity. You can challenge their beliefs while celebrating those things. The importance of experience to spiritualism lends strictly spiritual people a flexibility to edit their views in light of their own experiences, including conversations with another person.
Religion perverts what is natural for humans by dispossessing a persons experience(their individualism) with dogmatic authority of the omnipotent kind. This replaces knowledge with "truth" and community becomes legalistic and authoritarian. You cannot easily discuss the validity of their beliefs because it is "truth" and to refute the truth is to attack the omnipotent dogma that has replaced so much of their natural experience.
How can you change anyone's beliefs without challenging their knowledge? And my own experiences lead me to believe that talking people out of nonsensical beliefs is very hard. If it was that easy, they wouldn't have formed these beliefs to begin with. I have spent hundreds of hours arguing with conspiracy theorists on this very site, and it made zero difference. It doesn't matter what evidence you give them, because to them, the providers of the evidence are in on the conspiracy.
I also don't think your definition of spirituality and religion are that useful. People tend to define spirituality however they like it seems. But from the many definition I've heard, I think it is best to be thought of as an emotional attachment to an abstract ideal.
Religion is not just a hierarchical system with a final authority. Even mainstream religions don't always follow that structure, let alone a more general definition. The second half of your definition touches on a more general truth, but it's still vague and unconvincing. I think religion is any system of beliefs that cannot be altered by the flow of information. This can be individuals beliefs based on personal experiences, or community beliefs based on group think (like nationalism), with or without spirituality or a higher authority.
Religiosity and irrationality are not identical IMO. Being emotional to some stance is completely separate than worshiping the same.
Like being emotionally attached to being contrary for the sake of it, rather than having any substantial backing at all.
Or trying to sound smart, but coming out like a cheap fortune cookie.
I call this the milk rule. I don't think it's about rational arguments not working, I think it's about not starting out by putting the person on the defensive. The reason I call it the milk rule is because it's something I learned when I was in fifth grade. I didn't drink milk. Many people thought I should. I told them milk wasn't really all that healthy. They told me that it was just about the healthiest thing ever. We didn't agree. I eventually realized that they felt so strongly about milk because from an early age their parents told them to drink their milk because they needed it to grow strong. By telling them it wasn't really all that healthy I was not making an argument against milk as far as they were concerned, I was calling their parents liars. Once you draw that line in the sand people will not be swayed. I learned to not call people's parents liars when I was trying to persuade them.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
I think the definitions I proposed were fair as spirituality seems to be used to express a set of personal beliefs. I can't imagine a non existential "spiritualist". That is I don't see a distinction between such a thing and a religious person. I think this is helpful because if we can identify an adjective or set of them that makes one concept indistinguishable from another than we have identified what makes them distinct concepts. If you have supernatural beliefs that did not come from the experience of your own existence or from the workings of your own reason where did they come from? They must have come from some authority other than yourself? This source of "truth" is what I would call religion.
I think you are mistaken that religious beliefs aren't changed by the flow of information, it happens all the time. The key seems to be that religion accepts claims to truth as opposed to a clear demonstration of knowledge.
I've lived with, talked to, and listened to scientific materialists all my life. They are irrational and inconsistent in their definitions of everything, including the words "scientific" and "material". I just know they won't accept anything that's not according to their pre-conceived notions of everything. But it's fun to challenge them, even if they always end up throwing out stupid meaningless insults if they can't force me logically to accept their beliefs.
When as an objective observer I see things that defy the normal expectations according to materialistic definitions of the universe and the laws of the universe, I don't have a problem accepting the fact that apparently there's some things I just don't know, or that defy the laws of science as we have conceived them.
you know, like some observations about gravity in the long-range universal scale that apparently don't follow our present equations. . . .
Could it be a misunderstanding of gravity or perhaps a misunderstanding about the effect gravity has on the speed of light?
could be.
and could be some factor in the phenomenon that isn't observable with our present art/equipment at close range, like a whole separate term in the equation that becomes observable only in a macro scale. . . question is, how can we construct an experiment to test it and get a result that will add to our understanding.
TheGobertReport
Active Member
I am new to the message board and I know I haven't participated in this discussion but I coincidentally read this remarkable report this morning https://insideclimatenews.org/news/...confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming It is pertinent to share in this thread.
He's talking about dark matter. It's God of the gaps argument.
excellent link.
In the 1970s I was reading about the coming Ice Age and the need to avert all discussion and rush headlong into vast global programs to save humanity from impending doom. One way or another, it the impetus of big thinkers to fix every hobgoblin on the intellectual horizons. Maybe we could have guvmint solve both extreme predictions and claim they are right whichever way it goes. Climate Change, that's the ticket.
on the face of it, the ability of the earth's oceans to absorb CO2 might seem like an inexhaustible "sink" that can handle all we can burn. Think of it. We have tens of thousands of feet of carbonate rock deposits that were formed under warm shallow seas. All that CO2 came from the atmosphere, and depleted the magnesium and calcium salt content of the oceans, and it recycles as rock is heated by plutonic masses or volcanos, and all that.
But I think both the Sun's energy processes, and the collision of the earth with varying densities of particulates as it sweeps through space, with resulting changes in upper atmospheric temperature and energetic ions are massive enough to have long-cycle impacts that dwarf our carbon emissions. Not much we can do about either, and I think the historical data we have compiled in scientific research of ice cores and sediment cores suggests that most ice ages are preceded by temp spikes of around 10 degrees Celsius, about an order magnitude more than our calculated or measured warming due to our carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, cold fusion is steadily gaining scientific basis and is looking credible to some serious, careful researchers, even while the oil industry scientists have completed hammered it as a "solution" going forward. I am a supporter of nuclear development of thorium resources and other nuclear technologies once we figure out how to use them safely.
No, that's not what I'm talking about.
I love the puny God of the gaps. The one who gets smaller and smaller as humans get bigger and bigger. Now it's dark matter, but like so many millions of phenomena before it, it will be explained. Then you'll have to hide your god under a different rock. Perhaps it will be dark energy, or the probabilistic nature of QM. But no matter how small and far apart the gaps get, I'm sure you'll manage to squeeze him in. And that is why you cannot be swayed by logic or reason, because your god is one of emotional need, and one can't be argued out of an emotional need. Specially after a certain age.
It is. That's why gravitational equations don't hold at long range. Very few scientists think it's actually gravity that's changing. It is the effect of dark matter.
So, to check reality a bit, what I'm actually talking about is in line with, perhaps, the "dark matter" which lacks sufficient objective characterization to fit perfectly with some folk's view of materialism, because it's undefined or not understood clearly, but not necessarily. For fun, here's a little link for the ordinary readers:
https://www.whillyard.com/science-pages/anomalies.html
I don't know everything. Sometimes rhetoric seems like some oriental martial arts idea like "wave hands like clouds", or change positions so fast nobody can pin you down, but for me our understanding of our material and scientific universe is annoyingly uncertain.