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A scientist must go where the evidence leads

blogs.scientificamerican.com

101–103 of 103 posts

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, I think it is you the one who's been tricked into the ethereal realm of 'the religious', which you've used often in this thread to get out of the real discussion. The historical debate came about because of specific claims about the physical world. No one is, or was, discussing the derived value of 'the religious', that is not the point of contention most of the time. The heliocentric debate ref…

> With all due respect, I think it is you the one who's been tricked into the ethereal realm of 'the religious', which you've used often in this thread to get out of the real discussion. "real discussion" -- this is exactly the trick. you are laying claim to your domain being the "real discussion" > The historical debate came about because of specific claims about the physical world. No one is, or was, discussing the…

> "The value from "religion" is the resonance of a dynamic, mimetic process played out usually in narratives in historic texts/scriptures."

Says who? Most religious people do not say that. Most christians would claim Moses did in fact split the sea in two, literally, with 0 ambiguity. And just a couple of centuries ago all christians would have claimed that.

This is the trick you've fallen into, you've decoupled religion from the banalities of daily life in order to separate it from "observable" things and fit your narrative, as if nothing in those texts could be related to the mundane routine of for example looking at the objects in the sky. In that almost all religions would disagree with you.

So I say you are wrong not only because you've misrepresented the conflict between science and religion, but because to do so you had to construct a straw-man definition of religion with which almost no religious person in the history of the world would identify with.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adding to it, there are things in life which are ineffable. This means they are (by definition), impossible to model or explain with words. Thus, these things will forever evade scientific scrutiny as science cannot deal with the ineffable. The concept of 'Ineffable things', is a very poetic way of describing something but it does not reflect reality. If a word exists to refer to something it is because is not inef…

What you are saying is that because we have a map then we know the terrain. A description (in this case words), is not the actual thing. Using your example, we can spend days describing love and write millions of pages about it, but that is a very different thing than actually experiencing or feeling love. It is the experience that is ineffable, not the description of the experience. Additionally, we each assign mean…

> What you are saying is that because we have a map then we know the terrain.

No. What I'm saying is that having a map is better, way better than having nothing and resigning to even try because by definition is imposible to attain 100% of the terrain with the same level of detail as the real thing in a piece of paper that you can fold into your pocket.

> This means they are (by definition), impossible to model or explain with words.

> A description (in this case words), is not the actual thing. Using your example, we can spend days describing love and write millions of pages about it, but that is a very different thing than actually experiencing or feeling love.

You started talking about describing something, now you want to switch to talking about "the thing". Obviously describing a thing is not the same as the real thing. Is your argument that the thing is ineffable or is it that the description is ineffable?

> This means they are (by definition), impossible to model or explain with words.

> it just means that it doesn't have a universal "true" meaning for everyone and that it cannot be fully understood unless it is experienced.

So which is it? Or is the definition of ineffable too, ineffable?

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#103
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised disks are still as prevalent as they are for music and movies. Thumb-drives should have replaced them years ago. Perhaps there are copyright-related reasons holding it back?

> Thumb-drives should have replaced them years ago. Perhaps there are copyright-related reasons holding it back? IIRC, thumb drives are far more unreliable and unstable than discs.

Perhaps because manufactures are sloppy. Redundancy perhaps could be added, but consumers don't seem to reward it yet.
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