[Dragaera] agnosticism (no flame) (was, long ago: (no spoilers) The 17 [Great Weapons])

[Alain Feeny]

I think you need to be careful and distinguish between what are  
generally refered to as "soft" sciences vs "hard" sciences. Physics  
and chemistry are "hard sciences with a very rigourous set of  
theories and Laws that are well understood, where observed results  
are repeatable, and the underlying mechanism fairly well understood,  
etc.  Sociology and psychiatry are still largely "soft" sciences,  
relying on statistics as evidence to generate theories and  
predictions.  The understanding of the fundamental underlying  
mechanisms simply lacks the rigour of the hard sciences.  On a side  
note Biology and the science of Evolutionary theory have "evloved"  
from a soft science, back in Darwin's day to a very hard science  
where the principles and mechanisms are well understood. (Those who  
preach intelligent design simply haven't bothered to check their  
facts before dismissing the hard reality of evolutionary theory.)  
Your example of Judith Harris' findings (that science has not  
demonstrated the value or clarified the mechanism of parental  
influence on their children) is weak because a) socialism as a whole  
isn't that hard of a science yet, b) Ethical concerns aside, one  
could fairly easily design experiments that would conclusively answer  
that question.  I think the scientific world as a whole is waiting  
for an experiement that would answer the question "is there a God?".  
The answer of course being that the nature of God is to be unknowable.

Science and faith/religion should be seen as the boundary between  
what is understood and what is not. "Miracles of Science" are man  
pushing the boundary forward, demonstrating his understanding of the  
nature of things and forcing faith to recede.  Ultimately, the  
rational person wishing to believe is forced to believe in Spinoza's  
God, (or some variation thereof) one that is quite unlike the  
Christian God celebrated in the Bible.

slight topic variation: The world is and apparently has been for as  
long as we've bothered to record history just full of people who hear  
"God" or "voices" every day. Most of the time these people are  
considered delusional and (hopefully) treated for mental illness.   
Why a select few such individuals are celebrated as prophets or  
messiahs relates more to a desire/need at the time for people to  
believe in some higher power to feel fullfilment in their existence.   
It seems some are all too willing to exploit such human weakness.  
Relying on 2000-4000 year old oral accounts that have been written  
down then re-hashed and sanitized countless times for mass  
consumption as "proof" lacks any riguor whatsoever and is simply  
feeding on whatever idea some editor along the line thought would be  
appropriate for his motives. Faith indeed.

Religion, like so many other human endeavors can only truly be  
appreciated when one has a suitable appreciation of the original  
context and history that follows given writings. No discussion on  
religion should ever take place without a suitable study of the  
facts, and certainly never be limited to one source (the Bible, say).  
Go read the Dead Sea scrolls and similar accounts, or better yet ask  
your preacher why the majority of the scrolls were never made public,  
their contents hidden by the catholic church since they were first  
discovered...  Then go read some alternative sources:  I found the  
writings of Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas particularly  
interesting in offering alternatives or perhaps complementing the  
officially accepted religious texts. If trudging through their  
several books is more time then one is willing to devote, then "the  
Book of Hiram" is a nice synopsis of their findings.  Historical  
accounts from non-religious sources round out an informed debator's  
background and suitably prepare them for enlightened discussion on  
the merrit of this or that tenet of science/religion :)

But what does all this have to do with Dragaera?

AMF

On 22-May-07, at 2:16 PM, Maximilian Wilson wrote:

> This is probably a tangent, but I'm not ready to concede that the  
> scientific
> method does not imply a philosophical position, namely a confidence  
> in the
> repeatability of phenomena and that the past is a good guide to the  
> future.
> There's no intrinsic reason this should be true--it's a conscious  
> bias. In
> fact, there's a proven result from learning theory that says no  
> learning
> algorithm is better than any other; if A is better than B on  
> problem X, Y,
> Z, there exist problems S, T, V on which B outperforms A. Nevertheless
> humans seem to learn successfully in the real world, which must  
> mean that
> their bias somehow matches up with the bias of the problems they  
> actually
> face, and a lot of people suspect that this involves repeatability.  
> (Or does
> this just mean we ignore the large class of problems that we're not  
> good at
> solving? Hard to say.)
>
> Or to put it another way, it's obviously futile to not believe in the
> scientific method. It's another thing entirely to refuse to believe  
> anything
> which isn't proven by the scientific method. Judith Harris has done a
> convincing job of showing that there exists no credible scientific  
> evidence
> that human parents can influence the adult personalities of their  
> children
> (outside of the family context), but there are scientists within  
> her field
> who nevertheless work hard at teaching their children certain  
> principles,
> while struggling with the philosophical dilemma that science says  
> what they
> do with their kids doesn't matter. I feel a certain amount of  
> sympathy for
> those people, but I'm not going to wait until I have a
> statistically-validated longitudinal study with 2000 children over  
> 20 years
> to teach my kids about kindness and hard work, and I'm not going to  
> abandon
> them and their mother just because Judith Harris hasn't found  
> convincing
> evidence that dads matter. The evidence will come someday, would  
> come faster
> if someone were looking for it in the right way (the studies that  
> have been
> discredited usually involve looking for correlations with  
> *personality*
> rather than the things parents consciously teach), but I'm not  
> going to wait
> for it because I have to act in the present. That's a kind of  
> faith, and I'm
> glad so many people feel similarly and DO love their children without
> scientific evidence because being human would be so much less  
> enjoyable
> otherwise.
>
> -Max
>
> -- 
> Be pretty if you are, be witty if you can,
> But be cheerful if it kills you.
>
> Everything in Windows is very simple, but the simplest thing is  
> difficult.
>     -Clausewitz
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