/lit/ - Literature

Pretty much the entire continental tradition in the latter half of the 20th century onwards.

You won't convince anyone, though.

Impossible to argue against it with reason - why even are you trying and putting effort into it?

>>3168635
No, it isn't impossible to argue against blind worshipping of science.

>>3168637
It's not blind, it's taken at face value.

>>3168637
The good thing about science is you don't have to believe it for it to be true

>>3168646
Well I mean that can be said of just about absolutely everything

>>3168630
got any specific names for me?

>>3168635
you can always apply rationality and metaphysics, work your way up to their logical fallacies and confront them. at least that's how i imagine it would be like.

>>3168646
Yes, you want to go for "partially true but irreparably incomplete" or simply "meaningless to human life."

Hume's problem of induction is a good start.

If they bring up Popper tell them to fuck off.

If they bring up Wittgenstein you're kinda fucked, but so are they.

Also, using stuff like evolution to explain phenomena is easy to burst by pointing to the lack of empirical evidence and how it's analytical bullshit and Hume again.

>>3168646
>>3168642
You're fucking morons.
The question is whether science is true. The question isn't whether science is useful, whether it can be verified.
It's whether science is the ultimate epistemological antidote. Google what that means before you post in an adult thread, please.

>>3168628
>Science
>the ultimate epistemological antidote
Well, it is. You are a clueless retard if you think it's not.

>>3168663
isn't whether science is true*************

>>3168660
thanks man

which books by Popper do you recommend?

>>3168663
>Google what that means before you post in an adult thread
You sure showed them

>>3168664
>>>/sci/

>>3168671
>>>/x/

http://www.thenation.com/article/170334/do-you-only-have-brain-thomas-nagel?page=full#
read this OP

>>3168675
have heard good things about Nagel

will read, thanks!

>>3168680
Keep in mind that there was a feud over this review between Nagel and others vs. certain physicists. If you're going to be arguing with intellectuals, they will probably be using arguments similar to those by the physicists, so look it up.

>>3168660
>evolution [...] lack of empirical evidence
>lack of empirical evidence
>empirical evidence

hurr durrr, what is an evidence, what is an experiment, and so on

you shouldn't use science to disprove science

>>3168660
>If they bring up Wittgenstein you're kinda fucked, but so are they.

i like this description of wittgenstein as some sort of MAD clause in philosophical discourse

If it's ethics, Is-Ought problem is the way to go.

>>3168705
thanks

>>3168628
Against Method
Why I am not a Scientists
Reinventing the Sacred
[Spoiler] There is no god [/Spoiler]


8/10 for making lit flip shit.

I tell them I'm an epistemological anarchist. They usually leave me alone.

>>3168674
Good job, anon.

>>3168628
Itt: butthurt christfags

'science' and 'biology' are terms that describe specific approaches to understanding the universe, If you have a better approach or a better understanding, argue from that.

Say that people believe in religion for emotional reasons, and that is better to live a happy religious life than a miserable nihilistic one.

>>3168714
thanks.

>[Spoiler] There is no god [/Spoiler]
Christian God? probably not. absolute consciousness? Hmmm...

Even radical subjectivists would have to agree that the scientific method is there best shot at forming a consistent and reliable view of at least a possible world.

>>3168628
Alternately, you could confront the notion of "justified belief" in itself. This notion would entail assessing how warranted belief-formation without an intellectual basis is. There is no evidence for or against God's existence, so I am warranted in believing or disbelieving in its existence because I have no other choice but to choose a side - and this is less a reflection of my mental, intellectual thought processes, and more of a reflection of my passional nature.

>>3168748
>absolute consciousness

>>3168831
8deep5u?

>>3168846
Stop reading Hegel. Seriously. For your health.

>>3168854
you've got it all figured out, don't ya, boy?

>>3168863
I'm not the one who's claiming retarded shit with 0 evidence. Also, lrn2science. It's not that difficult goddammit.

>>3168867
>evidence
>learn2science

Get the fuck out my /lit/, dilettante.

>>3168867
>I'm not the one who's claiming retarded shit with 0 evidence.
>claiming
no one claimed anything.

>Also, lrn2science. It's not that difficult goddammit.
now you come off as a prejudicial chappie who struggles to maintain an abstract thought.

>>>/sci/ should suit you wonderfully.

>>3168877
Well, if saying something like "absolute consciousness" could possibly exist without any kind of evidence about it doesn't sound crazy I think we can start pulling shit out of our asses and be happy with it.

>>3168869
Awww, so cute. But don't try to argue rationally, I love you this way.

Read some Chesterton. "Heretics" or preferably "Orthodoxy". Great 'antidote' for atheism, and funny as shit too.

mfw this thread

OP. You can't argue for either. Science doesn't have all of the answers so it can't be used to argue against anything but the most ridiculous claims of most religions. If you aren't a literal interpreter of whatever your holy book is, you have nothing to worry about. If you are a literal interpreter, get with the times.

That being said, religion is arrogant because it claims to have all of the answers. You should seriously consider that statement, OP.

To say that science is a fault to God makes no sense. Religion at its core deals with things like heaven, God, sin, holiness, etc. These are things we cannot touch, they are the metaphysical. Science does not seek to understand the metaphysical. Science tries to understand the material world, and please do not take material as another word for trivial. There is nothing wrong with science. But to say that it disproves God makes little sense. One might argue that we are physical, and that we live on a physical world. Even then, religious people choose to worship the untouchable than to study the touchable.

Say something like that.

>>3168694
Are you retarded?

There is no better way to deconstruct an argument than falsifying the premise.

If empirical science is to be true it has to rely on empirical experience as evidence.

If you talk about things like the soul or transcendence there has to be a lack of empirical evidence because empirical evidence is derived from things and beings and God is supposedly transcendent and non-being.

And by lack I mean there is none, the only way to possibly approach it is phenomenally (Heidegger, Husserll) and that is not science (because it cannot be verified as such).

I.e. claiming that what you experience as 'God' is simply neurons having a feast doesn't cut it, because there is no empirical evidence whatsoever for a 'God' (as pointed out by Hume). The only way to approach the 'God' is phenomenally.

Anything else scientifically about transcendence would have to build upon analytic a priori knowledge, which Hume also points out is built upon empirical experience and as such things and beings and thus not transcendent, for what other axiom would they build upon? Cogito? That shit is outdated and is wish-fulfillment by Descartes.

>>3168668
Popper only proves that science is useful in its approximations (n to infininty is basically infinity), but by doing that he also proves that it is not true in an a priori sense (and thus can't speak about a God).

However bringing Wittgenstein into this in combination with Popper would question the use of true in that context, seeing as that is the 'true' we speak of when we speak of something being true.

I.e. "Is it really TRUE that you so and so, OP?"

Then again the STEM-babbys would not be able to espouse their truth as being some kind of transcendent universal truth as it would depend on the language game.

>>3168920
i'm not religious, i'm taking neither side. just seeking strategic ways of putting narrow-minded fundamentalists to the ground, that reluctantly refuse to reach past their pompous self-repeating keywords of reasoning, such as "muh science", "hurrr evidence", "dawkins", "b-but darwin", "big bang" etc. like >>3168899. and vice versa for theists.

>>3168944
>Popper
>Philosophy of science
>Year Of Our LORD > 1960

>>3168920

You're looking for "Against Method" by Paul Fayerabend.

>ITT

Teenagers who want to look like Teology or Religion scholars copy-pasting real religious scholars arguments instead of making their own, because they think being an atheisth is a pleb attitude due to its nowadays popularity.

>>3168997
>instead of making their own
>their own

if only there was such a thing as "own"...

Late Nietzsche is pretty devastatingly anti-science.

>It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world explanation; but insofar as it is based on a belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. Eyes and fingers speak in its favor, visual evidence and palpableness do, too: this strikes an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes as fascinating, persuasive, and convincing—after all, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of the eternally popular sensualism. What is clear, what is “explained”? Only what can be seen and felt—every problem has to be pursued to that point. Conversely, the charm of the Platonic way of thinking, which was a noble way of thinking, consisted precisely in resistance to obvious sense-evidence—perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more demanding senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of their senses—and this by means of pale, cold, gray concept nets which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us—and also the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the workers in physiology, with their principle of the “smallest possible force” and the greatest possible stupidity. “Where man cannot find anything to see or to grasp, he has no further business”—that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may be the right imperative for a tough, industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing but rough work to do.

>>3168953
Keywords? I'm trying to argue rationally. We don't you try to criticize my arguments instead of going all ad hominem?

>>3168997
So what does a Teologist study?

>>3169023
You call this devastating?

>>3169030
>why

>>3168628
Why even put a fight against atheists that have a complete misconception of science?
Its basically the same thing as religious people.

The thing about science is that it is always changing. Science DOES NOT prove anything. If someone or, worse, a scientist says they want to prove to you with science stop listening there and then. What science does is remove possibilities, not the absolute truth.

>>3169058
>remove possibilities

It doesn't even completely do that

>>3169058
>remove possibilities
And the most important thing: finds support. With each corroboration a hypothesis gains more and more weight. Why do we believe tomorrow the Sun will rise? Because we've got shit-tons of empirical evidence to support this belief. You're still right about absolute truth. Science cannot find absolute truth because such thing doesn't exist. Truth is just correspondence between our representations and reality. And we only know if our representations match reality a posteriori (and we never can be absolutely sure it wasn't by chance).

Wilfully ignorant lefties are very cute.

Good to see that someone is continuing the role that religion has traditionally held.

Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, Latour will all be right up your alley. They hate logic, science, empiricism in general, and just like you they live in some alternative fantastical dimension.

>>3168660
I don't like the idea of picking a stance then attempting to decieve someone in an argument to "win" by amassing supporting information rather than looking at all of it and letting the side come out naturally.

>>3169068
You don't need to be a leftie to be willfully ignorant: I know right-wing fags who are much more retarded in their claims. But I agree with what you say.

>>3169070
For some reason I find it more acceptable to be a religious loony than whatever the hell those people are.

I think the reason is that the right-wing nuts start out at a point which they admit is fantastical (or at least supernatural): God.

The crazy lefties have no such excuse.

>>3169037

Maybe you're just to dense to understand the import.

You don't have to be a frothing at the mouth Christian to effectively counter scientific supremacy.

>>3169077
I don't really get the Americans conflation of right-wing and religion

They bandy about the Constitution a lot more as reasoning for things such as gun rights - despite the fact that the Constitution is pretty specific about leaving religion out of the politics?

>>3169080
That fragment can be used against logical positivist, but they are already outdated as fuck. Realism has finally proved empiricism as full of shit. But the scientific method is still the best instrument we've got to gain (INDUCTIVE) knowledge.

>>3169083
Protip: nobody actually gives a shit about the constitution, they just pick the parts that confirm their preconceived notions and ignore the rest. This goes all the way to the SCOTUS, which of course makes the entire point of having a constitution in the first place rather moot.

>>3168628
Are you asking how to argue against evidence and logical deductions from agreed premises? I hope this is a joke.

>>3169083
This kind of shit happens with all constitutions. It depends on who's got the economic control. The literal interpretation of some articles is defended to death, while others are subject to loose interpretations when not absolutely ignored.

>>3169087
On the topic of realism, how does realism deal with situations in which two theories provide different descriptions of the world, but identical predictions?

>>3169068
>ignorant
what exactly am i ignorant of, may i ask?

>They hate logic, science, empiricism in general
i don't hate logic, science or empiricism and it's not what i'm getting at at all. i acknowledge the theory of evolution, but i don't go apeshit about it.

>Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, Latour
thanks, will check them out.

>>3169099
>i acknowledge the theory of evolution, but i don't go apeshit about it.

...what does that mean exactly?

>>3169098
Looks for a more complete theory which engulfs both. Like light acting as a particle or a wave. I don't understand why having two explanations for the same phenomena can be an argument against realism. We don't know EVERYTHING about reality, of course. It doesn't mean there isn't a real world with structure outside of our perception.

>>3169100
extreme darwinism / biological fundamentalism? i don't know.

>>3169106
>It doesn't mean there isn't a real world with structure outside of our perception.

That's not what scientific realism claims though. It claims that the world _as modeled by scientific theories_ is real.

A simple thought experiment: imagine a culture which is aware of both Newtonian and Einstein's mechanics. But they are not technologically developed enough to test for the differences. Two mutually exclusive descriptions of reality result in identical testable predictions. So we either reject the law of noncontradiction or realism.

The only way I can see out of this is to suggest that some sort of "ideal" or "perfect" science is assumed when talking about realism. But in that case it's a useless approach for us because we are clearly nowhere near that point yet.

And you didn't use proper capitalization...

Just why?

>>3169117
I was talking about metaphysical realism (against empiricism and other antirealist perspectives). That scientific realism which you talk about is hard to defend in a strict sense... Science gives us descriptions of the world. That world is real, and those descriptions are our best approach to the world's structure. That's all.

>>3169134
I don't see how metaphysical realism is a counter to logical positivism...

In any case if you want to argue against logical positivism I think it's far easier and very convincing to use Quine.

>>3169117
Also, in your thought experiment, it's pointless (from a purely scientific perspective) to reject the law of noncontradiction. We just have 2 theories. Both match reality, but are mutually exclusive. Ok, let's try to find a prediction which corroborates only one of them. Our technical difficulties don't disprove realism.

>>3169140
Quine and logical positivists try not to use metaphysical concepts as substance or reality (fearing to fall on metaphysical unnecessary concepts like rationalist's). They only accept empirical evidence in a blind way. But there is, in fact, a world outside: we live our whole lives as if there was a real world, why should we doubt it? Is there any real reason to do so?

Check out Ted Sider, Sokal or Millikan.

>>3168655
Sounds like the typical butthurt christ-fag.

>>3169144
That's because my thought experiment was shitty and failed to capture all nuances of scientific realism. Realism also suggests that unobservable things implied by scientific theories are also real.

Example: X theory uses an unobservable aether, we have evidence to believe X theory is the correct description of reality, therefore the aether is _actually real_, not just as a description.

>>3169176
What we try to discover with science are Nomic Regularities. We make experiments with particular entities and reach for general conclusions. We can't see atoms. We can't see gravity. We can't see potential energy. But we can see how those things interact with things we can see, and we can find corroboration to hypotheses which predict the effects of the existence of such entities. Metaphysical realism is today's best metaphysical theory.

>>3169268
>Nomic Regularities
That's a little different to stuff like atoms. If all we are looking for or substantiating are Nomic Regularities, things like particles or what have you can just be mnemonic devices

>>3169281
i didn't say those were the same kind of things. Science tries to find Nomic Regularities first, then how the existence of such things determines other aspects of our reality, like the existence of atoms. Knowing further details is helpful to make better predictions. But Nomic Regularities are the most important thing to find, not the only one.

I think most of you are missing the point that OP was making. There are so many dumbass Anti-Theists who blindly suck scientific cock, when they don't understand it anymore than they understand spirituality. Usually they're just spouting stupid bullshit that they heard on Discovery one time. Pop Science.

>>3169290
But what I'm saying is that doesn't mean anything more than atoms being a good mnemonic device to help you remember these different nomic regularities. It doesn't show the actual existence of atoms.

>Evolution and the big bang is "just a theory"
>the human eye is so complex there's no way it just randomly happened
>if evolution is real then why are bananas designed perfectly for human consumption?
>if evolution is real then why do monkeys still exist?
>the creation museum begs to differ with you
>if god doesn't exist then why don't I just kill everyone?
>you can't have morals without religion
>you know who else was an atheist? Hitler.

>>3169303
>actual
well, In those terms I'd say only quarks exist. But in large numbers and organized in a particular way they behave as atoms.

>>3169329
>mfw this kind of people actually exist.

>>3169336
Pick any particle (in the modern physics sense) you like, it doesn't make any difference. Also, no idea why you'd pick quarks without electrons there.

>>3169340
they're called americans

>>3169343
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL YAH MURRKANS SO DUMB LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL UR FUNEE! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

>>3169341
Didn't quarks form electrons? Whatever, I'm not a physician. But everything is just "the most simple particle possible."

>>3169348
electrons are fundamental particles philistine

>>3169341
Well, I think I got what you meant. In general terms: there's the "real world". What we know about it is that it's got a structure. That structure is the only thing that strictly there is. The rest is just our representations, which can approach to the structure of the real world.

>>3169354
ugh, mistook them for protons. As I said I'm not a physicist, and I don't really care about the details.

>>3169348
>Whatever, I'm not a physician
>physician

!!!

>>3169348
>But everything is just "the most simple particle possible."
Doesn't follow, again they're a useful construction for helping you remember stuff and piece everything together. That's not to say they definitely don't exist, but that you have to make a jump of faith to say they do.

>>3169354
When will Phillis Stein learn?

>>3169348
>physician

>ctrl+f "Kuhn" "Feyerabend" "Lakotos"
>0 results

Serfs.

Here, OP:

>Thomas S. Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

>Paul Feyerabend - Against Method

People who praise "science" blindly without understanding what it is are fucking morons; they probably aren't worth your time, OP.

>>3169366
How's that called in english? I don't know.
>"I don't study physics"
Happy now?

>>3169367
If everything isn't formed of the most basic element, then what's formed of?
A jump of faith? lol a jump of faith is much more complex that just believing the most plausible theory according to what you already know/believe.

>>3169399
>If everything isn't formed of the most basic element, then what's formed of?
Who can say? Maybe we'll never know for sure.

>>3169399
>How's that called in english? I don't know.

Physicist

>>3169383
Really don't see how Kuhn or Feyerabend could be considered anti-science. Especially The Structure... is essentially a historical work, not a philosophical one.

>>3169424
>are there any books written by a coherent philosopher "anti-scientist" (or, rather, neutral) or a coherent scientist that didn't think the science is the ultimate epistemological antidote?
Read carefully. This isn't an anti-science books thread.

>>3169336
>But in large numbers and organized in a particular way they behave as atoms.

The question is...is their behaviour as a group fundamentally different from their behaviour individually?

i.e. do objects composed of quarks actually exist or are they simply useful abstractions? I tend toward the latter, but that's basically mereological nihilism which leads to very strange stuff.

Lars Christiansen & Lars Sandbeck published a book called Gudløse Hjerner (Godless Brains) which is basically a critic of new-atheism and Dawkins. It's really great. They are theologians (atheists) and is probably one of the greatest books I've ever read about the subject, but none of you would know that, since you cannot read danish...

>>3169431
Well, I like mereological nihilism. It's the less problematic perspective I know about. I don't think it's very problematic if you discern between fundamental language (language used when talking about science/metaphysics) and natural language. Of course, I won't say "bring me that group of particles organized as a chair" nor I would say "look, there's a vertebrate mammal of the canine species" irl on a regular conversation.

>>3169417
Duh! Ok thnx, me bad.

>>3169404
Maybe, but by the moment, that's the most plausible thing I can believe. probably, in less than 50 years science will discover so many thing that the conjectures we're making now will be regarded as hilarious.

>>3169424

Not anti-science, but their work shows how silly it is to believe (as many atheists and others do) that scientific knowledge progresses in a linear fashion or that scientific methodologies are infallible.

If he's looking for works that are more strictly opposed to modern science, he could try traditionalist school stuff like Guénon's "Crisis of the Modern World" and "Reign of Quantity" or maybe something by Nasr, but his atheist friends will be more dismissive of this perspective since it's predicated on traditional metaphysics.

>>3169431
>which leads to very strange stuff
Talking about anything on that scale is weird anyway. Also, does it necessarily lead to mereological nihilism? We can't separate individual quarks, and so there are other dimensions to the question of whether protons etc are formed from quarks to my mind

>>3169456
>how silly it is to believe (as many atheists and others do) that scientific knowledge progresses in a linear fashion or that scientific methodologies are infallible.

Don't see how that addresses OP's issue. The method is irrelevant the the epistemological status of scientific knowledge.

>>3169457
>We can't separate individual quarks
That's the point of nihilism. When we look at elemental particles we see they don't work like our scale objects at all. What we call objects aren't simple, they don't maintain the same number of elemental particles all the time, thus in a strict way, we can say objects are something for themselves (as objects) other than groups of elemental particles. Objects are just what our perception interprets when it interacts with those groups of elemental particles. I'm not sure if I explained myself properly, English isn't my first language.

>>3169575
>we can say objects are something for themselves
CAN'T, sorry.

Jesus isn't coming back

I used to be an atheist but then it became too mainstream

>2012
>not being a theological noncognitivist

GET ON MY LEVEL BITCHES

Why do you fags always get so butthurt over religion? It's just a bunch of tricks for predicting the future. Yes, the language and tone is usually one of declaratives and explanations but that's just a linguistic quirk adopted by scientists to make discussions less cumbersome.

No, none of us actually think you can "prove" something with an experiment, even though we will do an experiment and say it has been proven - we all know "proven" actually means "we have found supporting evidence for it and contradictory evidence for the alternatives".

Neither do we have illusions of "explaining" the universe. You'll hear scientists talk about "explaining" or "understanding" cancer for instance, what they really mean is "when I know protein X and Y are going up, how can I tell if the patient will get cancer eventually?".

Where do you even get the retarded idea that science somehow conflicts with religion or philosophy? They have nothing to do with each other.

Oh, except if your religion or philosophy is one of those retarded ones which makes blatantly wrong claims ("Pi is 3.14!" "A dude walked on water!" "There's like this cosmic power which will make you rich if you pray to it really nice!") or has stupid justification ("Hey man, where did all these animals come from? Wow, no one knows! Must be magic!" - it's not fucking magic, it's a very straightforward everyday process).

Three atheists walk into a bar.

The bar is filled with people but there is no bartender.

Who built the bar?

>>3169650
I don't like this question. Raze the bar.

Quine

>>3169650
wow watchmaker argument? are you fucking kidding me

>>3169668
It's a relativist argument.

>>3169645
Also, here's an example from http://www.thenation.com/article/170334/do-you-only-have-brain-thomas-nagel?page=full#
>Nagel tried to demonstrate the implausibility of the notion that, even if one knew all the relevant physical facts about the brains of bats, one could have any idea what it felt like to be a bat.

I don't know who the fuck this idiot is who goes around saying you can use science to understand "what it *feels* like to be a bat" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), but no, there is literally no self-respecting scientist who would claim that.

Yes, if you find a biologist and ask him what it's like to be a bat, he will compare a bat's senses to yours, and say, unlike you the bat does this and probably perceives that, but if you ask him "have you really given me a deep understanding of what being a bat feels like?" he will laugh and say no. Because the question is useless, so when you ask it he assumes you wanted to ask the closest useful one, which is something like "how might a bat's perceptions differ from mine?".

This "assuming you really wanted something else" is perfectly transparent to scientists but laymen sometimes get confused.

However, the only fruitful discussion that involves science, bats, and feelings is one grounded in empiricism. Quantum physics and the non-determinism aside, if you knew every particle of the bat and every principle, yes you *would* know what it feels like to be a bat, in the sense that you would know how the bat would react to anything and what it would think (brain stimulus patterns) and that's the extent of it. But of course, the original problem posed capitalizes "be" so it's clearly some wishy-washy nonsense which, while might make for interesting discussions to some, is absolutely irrelevant to science and literally lacking any practical benefit.

>>3169690
And lastly, another annoying point from the article: It claims that eg, biology hasn't become just chemistry, and chemistry hasn't become just physics, and blah blah blah welcome to freshman natural science.

The truth is that:

1) Chemistry DID become physics: It's called molecular dynamics simulations. It so happens that MD is very laborious, so people worked out some shortcuts to avoid the computations, those shortcuts are called "chemistry" nowadays. This applies to biology, genetics, psychology, etc.
2) The "building up from physics" hasn't progressed so far yet as to model whole human beings. We just don't have computers fast enough, so some of psychology might be "hanging in the air". It is still assumed that it should not contradict the "lower rungs". It doesn't mean "theoretical reductionism" doesn't work, it just takes time to try it for everything, and for some things, we haven't tried yet.

Recapitulating higher level, abstracted theories from "basic" principles (chemistry from physics, biology from chemistry) is taken quite seriously in the actual natural science community. If your theory doesn't seem to follow from the basics, it will already be suspect unless the empirical evidence is *very* good.

I think the problem is that there are certain things scientists do, but they don't walk around screaming "hey everybody, we are doing this thing" because to any scientist it is intuitively obvious that this thing should be done, so they instead scream more interesting things. To laymen, however, it is not obvious, and they assume because the scientists don't parade it, that they don't do it. And we get all these weird misconceptions about what science can't explain and what it is in conflict with.

>>3169031
D'aaww.

>>3168920
>That being said, religion is arrogant because it claims to have all of the answers.
But.. that's not true.

>>3169281
>things like particles or what have you can just be mnemonic devices

Science is a verb now.

>>3169383
Against Method was cited twice douchecano. Kuhn sucks and Lakatos comes up pretty quickly in any study of Feyerabend. You caught us bro.

>>3169431
>strange stuff
Like what?

Also, what's wrong with mereological agnosticism?

>>3169452
History ended like ten years ago.
Newfags can't into capitalist ideological hegemony.

>>3169720
>simulations
>shortcuts
>"building up from physics" hasn't progressed so far yet

Fully, I was under the impression a lot of these questions lead to literally unsolvable differential equations. Read some Prigogine, but also, like basic shit too because you're wrong as fuck.

>>3170128
>Funny

How to destroy a scientific theocrat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJrMFv6QoX0

i don't know why you would argue either side on the topic of whether or not an infinite, unknowable, incomprehensible, completely intangible being exists

like if you're 'arguing' with someone about religion your very first logical assumption is flawed (the axiom being that it could be productively discussed in the constraints of logic) so you may as well just give up from the get-go

you might say "well i'm not arguing if a god exists i'm arguing that it does(n't) make sense to believe in one despite the uncertainty" but that's honestly such a ridiculous thing to argue about on the simple premise that belief despite uncertainty is implicit in most faith that you should probably just hang up your fedora before you embarrass yourself any more

in the words of our late friend deepthroat:

proof can't prove itself

/science

OP I hate to break it to you but science sort of is.

>>3170192

You don't belong here.

>>3170156
>that's honestly such a ridiculous thing to argue about on the simple premise that: belief despite uncertainty is implicit in most faith
But science and mathematics are based upon assumptions as well. A = A, A + B = B + A, et cetera. We still talk about science and mathematics.

Also, it isn't that there is an infinite, intangible, incomprehensible being.
It's more that one looks to the infinite, the intangible, the incomprehensible, and forms this into a being He can understand.

>>3170206
To add to the last part:
We can't calculate the entirety of Pi. And we never will, by virtue of it being Pi. We have to estimate, we have to generalize-- but does this mean that mathematics is wrong? Of course not. So much of mathematics is based upon approximations, but that doesn't diminish its truth in any way.

I just came from an argument with a guy who said that philosophy is worthless because science has just discovered the higgs boson and put the rover on the surface of Mars, but what has philosophy done lately?

I notice this thing all the time, I don't know what the proper term for it is; where people lump together all that is good and true and pure and worth fighting for in this world under the banner of one term and then champion that thing alone, and anything worth anything belongs to it in a sense. I suppose it's like ideology but more concrete and conscious and less of a phantom.

I wonder where I would go to to read more about this.

>>3170215
Linguistics, studies of Categories, perhaps.
I concur with that sentiment though, I laugh at people who don't understand that Science is the Philosophy's child.

>>3170215
>lump all that is good into one term, all that is bad doesn't belong there

That would be a great word to know. Does it exist?

>>3170226
All true scotsman?

>>3168628

(1/2) (Sorry for long post)

Basically, don't you think that the people who use science(/emiprical evidence exclusively) in every aspect of their reasoning just don't understand what metaphysics is or at least don't accept its legitimacy?

In my opinion, the kind of people OP is talking about just need to familiarize themselves with metaphysics and understand why serious people still do it. Like, after the scientific revolution it's not like every intellectual who wasn't "already under the spell of religion" (or something like that) only did science. People still did philosophy. Really it seems to me that the kind of people OP is talking about tend to dismiss philosophy in general, you know? What's worst is when they just never give it a chance because they're already convinced that science is the ultimate source of knowledge.

So yeah, just as an example, one of the most basic metaphysical problems is the mind-body problem. The thing is that if you don't already understand it, I feel like it's kind of hard to just teach yourself in a few minutes (like the time it would take to accept that OP's question is actually a legitimate one). But yeah, the point is we have direct experience of something that isn't explained by science and it's difficult to even imagine a scientific answer to. Namely our subjective experience. This is when people talk about what it _feels_ like, or like what it actually is to you to see something blue, besides light hitting the eye, information transferred to the brain via the optic nerve, etc. (Maybe look up the article on "qualia" on wikipedia?) I think it is Nagel who mentions if you actually cut into the brain, where would a neuroscientist actually find _blue_ or _blueness_ or whatever? It's basically the same argument as Leibniz's mill argument.

>>3170235

(2/2)

But yeah, a lot of philosophers (or whoever) have been convinced that this line of thinking leads us to be able to rationally or legitimately entertain that there at least could be something else that makes up reality besides an empirically observable universe.

So yeah, people aren't arguing necessarily that this leads you to have to accept any kind of religious doctrine. In fact a lot of the people arguing against scientific supremacy in this thread are probably atheists or agnostic anyway. And personally I don't see how this provides any support to any kind of specific religious claim, so I don't think it puts Christian apologists or others in a much better position to argue in favor of religion over atheism.

But it is super exciting, right? Like, there is good reason, easily accessible to anyone, to think that there could be or even _is_ more to the world than just the material universe. Also I think it's important to consider these things in order to see that science is just one phenomenon of human experience and that philosophy is another legitimate pursuit for "serious people" or whatever.

>>3170221

Yes. I didn't really know how to respond so I just went with the simple troll of "Science can teach u robots but it can never teach u how 2 love. Ur wrong."

>this thread

>>3170056
I have many kitties
>>3169655
I approve of this pun

>>3170103
"Mereological nihilism" was some kind of pejorative used to criticize theories against parthood. There's no such thing as agnosticism about that subject, it would be called nihilism too.

>>3170109
>dat Hegel/Kojève/Fukuyama
I still expect the new tinfoil-hat claiming "b-but they were almost correct, history hasn't ended but it will do so this century!"

>>3170194
go back to >>>/x/

>>3168920
>it can't be used to argue against anything but the most ridiculous claims of most religions

Actually, science should never be used to argue against the most "ridiculous" claims a religion makes. Those are the ones you should be most careful with.