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Commentary at Salon!
Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.
[...] Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?
[...] First, if you defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we should conclude that they simply don't care about what's true. We shouldn't conclude that their beliefs are true because they are fervently held.
Another problem is that fideism—basing one's beliefs exclusively on faith—makes belief arbitrary, leaving no way to distinguish one religious belief from another. Fideism allows no reason to favor your preferred beliefs or superstitions over others. If I must accept your beliefs without evidence, then you must accept mine, no matter what absurdity I believe in. But is belief without reason and evidence worthy of rational beings? Doesn't it perpetuate the cycle of superstition and ignorance that has historically enslaved us? I agree with W.K. Clifford. "It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Why? Because your beliefs affect other people, and your false beliefs may harm them.
I am checking to see what the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster has to say about all this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 21 2019, @01:46AM (20 children)
You mean like the Peano axioms [wikipedia.org]?
Actually, I'm pretty sure you don't mean things like the Peano axioms. They are, nonetheless, statements accepted without "evidence and such" at least in terms of rigorous proof. That's the whole point -- the axiomatization of mathematics we accept today depends on our belief in certain statements accepted without proof. And some of those things (e.g., the Axiom of Choice) result in some weird stuff.
Nonetheless, professional mathematicians don't seem to have given up their "ability to observe, evaluate, and reason."
We can argue about whether axioms or accepted postulates in a formal logical system constitute a "Highest" truth, but they must be accepted as a foundational truth in many parts of human knowledge.
My point is this: it's not sufficient to just complain about the lack of "truths" without "evidence and such." The bigger problem with religion is the "highest" element -- that your assumptions and beliefs are taken completely outside the realm of empirical evidence (or even purely logical rationalistic evidence) to the contrary.
Also, many people who believe in the so-called "Highest Truth" have plenty of "evidence and such." It's often just "evidence" in a form that you wouldn't accept. Many people believe miracles happen every day and ascribe supernatural significance to the mundane. That is "evidence" -- it's just not GOOD evidence according to your empiricist (and probably statistical) mindset.
The fundamental issue is the inability to question your beliefs and assumptions (not the lack of evidence) -- and that's a problem shared by religious zealots and many scientists alike. Lots of history and loads of studies show that scientists often have trouble giving up fundamental beliefs about their field or their research, until there's quite a bit of evidence to overcome their assumptions. That's not a criticism -- it's just a fundamental human bias, a bias that we likely couldn't survive without, since learning isn't really possible unless at some point it cements into accepted "truth" (even if that acceptance is technically provisional).
On the other side of things, as pointed out in TFA, the religious folks who are educated often don't share a lot of the same beliefs as the "masses" -- they create systematic theological systems where their beliefs are rigorously worked out within the constraints of some logical system based on some assumptions. If you've ever had a serious discussion with a systematic theologian, you'd note that they often have a great ability to reason -- they just devote such logical energies to systems with different assumptions compared to the average mathematician.
I'm not at all arguing in favor of religion here. Just noting that it's possible to reason within the constraints of all sorts of wacko systems of belief. And that's why smart people aren't immune to this sort of thing either. But it's also incredibly hard to know when it's important to question one's beliefs. If somebody walked up to me tomorrow and told me that the Law of Reflection in optics doesn't actually work and all my mirrors are based on a lie and I shouldn't trust my car mirrors when I'm driving, I'd be pretty skeptical of the person delivering this message -- even if they were very smart and seemingly had logical arguments. To those who believe in religion, some of their assumptions have the same sort of status as a basic scientific "law."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 21 2019, @02:23AM (6 children)
The Peano axioms have been subject to repeated rigorous testing against real-world phenomena: If the axioms were leading to conclusions that didn't match reality, they would have been abandoned a long time ago. You're conflating logical proof (where the conclusions can be demonstrated to be correctly derivable from premises) with empirical proof (that the premises are any good).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @04:07AM (3 children)
Ho-hum! Abandoned long time ago, eh?
How about the 5th euclidian axiom, so much trampled into the ground by Minkovski geometries - which, surprise, are necessary for relativity?
Abandoned or correct as matching the reality?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @12:48PM (1 child)
uhm. the problem there was that Euclid never had reason to treat geometry on the sphere other than intersections of 3D objects with 3D sphere. since you can always embed a curved manifold in a higher dimensional Euclidian space, I consider the axiom true, because I like to think of straight lines as being straight lines.
if you like to think in shortest path terms, then please do so and ignore the axiom.
but the fact that there exist Euclidian spaces in which the relativistic space-time can be embedded is objectively true, as is the fact that within that space there is a unique line parallel to a straight line for any point outside the straight line.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @03:32PM
Depends on the differential structure, but true for models we use all the time. Minkowski-metric manifolds (is what we use in general relativity) should be so embeddable into finite dimensional Minkowski spaces (topologically equivalent to Euclidean spaces), but if relativity should happen to allow for pathological differential structures (say non-metric spaces which happen to still have a speed of light or pathological boundary conditions), then you might still end up with infinite dimensional spaces to represent the model.
And of course, there's quantum mechanics. Then you might not have a relativistic space-time at the quantum level to embed in anything.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Wednesday January 23 2019, @11:01PM
Basically if you try to formulate the axioms in other banal conceptual universes they fail so their value is exactly what you say, in some models for this universe they are shown to predict stuff, which is useful.
Religions can have an axiom too, simply formulated as "if our world can generate abstractions, our world can be itself the abstraction (or a similar relation) for something meta we call the supernatural/God and consider aware". They can predict stuff, but you get to verify/disprove it only too late.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 21 2019, @04:25AM
I replied to another post below -- but logical proof has to meet empirical proof somewhere if one believes that "applied math" is real and that math has some relevance to how we use it to derive conclusions about the real world.
I'm not conflating them, but rather noting that the kind of abstract system of logical proof is closer to how I think many religious believers treat their assumptions. My very point is that these are quite different from empirically derived data.
As for "testing" of the Peano axioms... I'm really not sure how you can "test" them in a rigorous way. That's why they need to be accepted without proof. And there frankly is a lot of handwaving in real analysis when it comes to establishing "real numbers" (that's ironic, isn't it, given this discussion?) in a formal definition, how such numbers interact, etc. In fact, there is debate about issues coming out of those axioms when it comes to stuff that is impossible to test, like the existence and properties of non-computable numbers for example.
Anyhow, this is getting off-topic. My overall point was simply that there are a lot of assumptions made and used well in mathematical and scientific endeavors. I wasn't actually disagreeing that much with you as much as emphasizing that the problem is the "Highest Truth" categorization, where some assumptions supersede any others and become immune to questioning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:07PM
BULLSHIT.
These axioms cannot be tested without making a circular argument.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday January 21 2019, @02:34AM (6 children)
The Peano axioms are not accepted as truths by mathematicians, but rather as a framework for constructing proofs that will hold wherever these axioms hold. (Actually, you also need to assume consistency and a rule or two of inference...but formal presentations include that.)
Truths require being embedded in an external world. Math doesn't. Math has proofs, but the proofs (if solid) specify under what conditions they can be asserted, and are always subject to being shown invalid. The closest math gets to "truth" is "Q.E.D.".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 21 2019, @04:15AM (1 child)
So I assume you don't believe that there is anything called "applied mathematics" then?
Most people -- including basically all scientists, engineers, etc. -- believe that math actually applies to the real world... somehow. The Peano axioms are one method for building up the basis for a system of math, but they also need to be paired with other assumptions (usually discussed in philosophy of math) about how math then actually might mean something in the real empirical world.
Unless you want to deny that "objective reality" doesn't exist, that science can't measure it with math or understand it with math, etc. Is that what you're saying?
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday January 21 2019, @04:40PM
To the extent that it's applied, it's not mathematics (to paraphrase Einstein).
When you apply mathematics you're turning it into physics or chemistry or ... well, whatever. Even statistics is not math, though it's even more heavily dependent upon math than is physics.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 21 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
They say, in a nutshell: Zero exists, it is possible to count things, and you can use proof by induction. That's led to a lot of useful conclusions and operations. Ergo, unless you're saying that it isn't possible to count things, then those axioms are accepted as true by mathematicians.
And, as a sibling poster points out, applied math exists.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 21 2019, @04:58PM
No. They are excepted as consistent, and useful in appropriate contexts. They are not accepted as true by mathematicians. (Although I'll admit that lots of mathematics teachers seem to think they are true.)
If you embed them in an inconsistent framework you can use them to derive conflicting results. So they aren't true. They're self-consistent. (I.e., if you don't embed them in a larger framework, it is accepted that there can be no inconsistent derivations which do not contain a flaw in the proof.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @06:11PM (1 child)
Well said. Pure math is The Tautology Club. It is beautiful and sophisticated elaborations of "If these premises are true then the conclusions from them are true".
I feel a sense of wonder that it ever applies to the real world.
(Score: 2) by Demena on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:48AM
It does not apply in the real world, it is useful in the real world. No two apples are the same but we still count apples.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 21 2019, @07:34AM (1 child)
I shouldn't trust my car mirrors when I'm driving
Well, the warning says right there: "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear". Not only that, the brain has to flip the image produced by its optical inputs.
"Religion"? Just shows how creative we can be.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday January 22 2019, @01:58AM
When I first read that, I thought you meant it has to flip the image that it sees in the mirror (it clearly doesn't), but no--you obviously were talking about the image being upside-down on the retina.
The mirror thing reminds me of the crappy riddle asking why mirrors reverse left-to-right and not top-to-bottom. They do reverse top-to-bottom if you imagine the object being viewed was tilted forwards 180 degrees into that position rather than being rotated 180 degrees on the yaw axis. But I digress...
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @08:44AM (3 children)
I've known a lot of people like that. And, God knows, they get under my skin. It's almost like they believe they are surrounded by miraculous events, 24/7 - that they are so very important that God personally chaperones them every moment of their lives.
I see that as childish. We adults must get on with our lives without that omnipotent chaperone watching over us.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @04:26AM (2 children)
Stupid Democrats
Is there another kind?
And, God knows...
Who is God, compared to Kronsteen?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 22 2019, @04:02PM (1 child)
I dunno - there are some less-stupid Democrats. There may even be some not-stupid Democrats. It's even remotely possible that there are some intelligent Democrats. Those would be very rare, indeed. And, as time passes, there will be fewer and fewer of those - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJL0JyVMcD8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @06:28AM
there are some less-stupid Democrats. There may even be some not-stupid Democrats. It's even remotely possible that there are some intelligent Democrats.
Not amongst the voters. They're either idiots, or they are corrupt. The same can be said for the republicans, but the democrats have to be more deceitful to keep the "liberal" idiots and their money from drifting off.
Clearly the person that moderated me above is a democrat. They cannot look at themselves in the mirror. The iron mask is impenetrable.