Your thoughts on Islam?

[Moontanman]

Belief does not equal knowledge, holy books contain as much bs as they do anything else, I never said the Koran doesn't contain wisdom, but it contains far more "wisdom" that will get you arrested than it does "wisdom" that is useful and the vast majority of what it says is simply wrong.

It contains nothing that is worthwhile enough to make belief in Islam as the source of "wisdom" as written down by a god. The Bible is no better nor is any other so-called holy book. They are all nothing but the favorite myths of primitive people, anything they get right is simply a case of a blind pig finding an acorn. 

Now you guys can equivocate belief and truth all you want but our entire civilization is based on science, belief and faith do not figure into science, in fact science specifically forbids them. I will continue to rely on science and reality and limit my beliefs to those things that have been independently confirmed by science.

Imagine scientific papers being confirmed by belief, yeah, whatever he asserts in this paper is true because I believe it... yeah that's the ticket!

You can continue to believe whatever you want and as long as you live inside your own head I am sure that will be sufficient for walking around but I'm betting when it comes down to a truth that matters you like me will turn to truths that have been confirmed by the scientific method.

Jump off a building and no amount of belief will allow you to sprout wings and the waiting ground will always confirm reality over belief.  

Belief does not equal reality! Science rules... belief drools.  

BTW, the Earth was never flat no matter who believed it was, the people who believed it was flat, exactly like the idiots who still claim its flat, were and are wrong! No amount of belief will make the earth flat, no amount of belief will make the universe heliocentric, demonic possession will never be the cause of disease, neither Yahweh, Jesus, Muhammad, Ahura Mazda, Krishna, Buddha, Adrianna, or any other deity is gonna save you from the ignorance their followers proclaim as truth.    

 

Edited May 22 by Moontanman

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Belief does not equal knowledge

No, but what makes you think that your knowledge is more believable?

 

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

No, but what makes you think that your knowledge is more believable?

 

How believable it is has nothing to do with the reality of it. 

[dimreepr]

Just now, Moontanman said:

How believable it is has nothing to do with the reality of it. 

And we're back to the start FFS... 🙄 

 

25 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

It contains nothing that is worthwhile enough to make belief in Islam as the source of "wisdom" as written down by a god.

If you're a true atheist, then god didn't write anything... 

[Eise]

I completely agree with @TheVat. The idea of 'truth' makes no sense if we do nor relate to an objective reality. Our scientific theories are about something. And they can be wrong, or true, in their (limited) domain. The earth never was flat, we know that. A majority believing that is was (is) may have reasons to think so, but it is, and was never true.

For me the expression 'my truth' makes no sense: the word 'truth' implies that it is claimed to be the case for everybody. We dis-cover reality. Maybe not as it is, but as a map of reality. If we behave according to the map, e.g. find our way to the Eiffel tower, and we get there, then the map was 'true'. There may be much left out from the map, but the map expresses at least some true aspects of reality.

Science is not just a 'narrative', as many post-modernist philosopher liked to say.

[sethoflagos]

39 minutes ago, Eise said:

I completely agree with @TheVat. The idea of 'truth' makes no sense if we do nor relate to an objective reality. Our scientific theories are about something. And they can be wrong, or true, in their (limited) domain.

'True' in the limited sense that certain measurable inputs may lead to certain predictable and measurable outputs without known contradiction.

Perhaps that is enough. 

It says very little about the muddle in the middle though. One only needs to consider the many interpretations of QM. Is one of them true in an absolute sense? For the sake of our sanity, it may be as well to think so. But don't bet the house on it.

Edited May 22 by sethoflagos
sp

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

'True' in the limited sense that certain measurable inputs may lead to certain predictable and measurable outputs without known contradiction.

Perhaps that is enough. 

It says very little about the middle in the middle though. One only needs to consider the many interpretations of QM. Is one of them true in an absolute sense? For the sake of our sanity, it may be as well to think so. But don't bet the house on it.

Never bet with more than you can afford to lose... 😉

[exchemist]

13 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

'True' in the limited sense that certain measurable inputs may lead to certain predictable and measurable outputs without known contradiction.

Perhaps that is enough. 

It says very little about the muddle in the middle though. One only needs to consider the many interpretations of QM. Is one of them true in an absolute sense? For the sake of our sanity, it may be as well to think so. But don't bet the house on it.

Yes, scientific theories are models, the map and not the territory, and sometimes we have multiple maps that show different aspects of the territory, or which are sometimes not easy to interpret.

But that does not mean there is no territory, or that we can make up our own ideas about it.

 

[MigL]

1 hour ago, Eise said:

Maybe not as it is, but as a map of reality. If we behave according to the map, e.g. find our way to the Eiffel tower, and we get there, then the map was 'true'.

Ancient peoples had a 'map' which told them the Earth was flat, and as far as they could tell, it was; that was their reality.
We have a map which predicts the way to the Eiffel Tower, yet we know it omits some locations along the way ( or predicts some locations to be at infinity ), yet we get to the Eiffel Tower so it is true.
Tomorrow we have another map, one which shows hidden locations and gives proper distances ( not infinities ) and still gets us to the Eiffel Tower.
Is this second map 'truer' ?
( loose analogy of maps to scientific theories )

Science is never 'true'.
It evolves, and can only ever be falsified in its description of reality, and reality, as Seth states, is very hard to nail down.
Is our 'true' map good enough when it can't tell us the state of a cat in a box?
Or more precisely, if anything is real before we make a measurement ?

My definition of 'true' is absolute, and I know there is no such thing.
Your definition seems to include "good enough, for now', implying that 'true' could change over time as knowledge expands.

@Moontanman I do agree with you about 'holy' books, but why should 'true' apply to them when it doesn't apply to so many other things ?
They are mostly allegorical writings meant to convey the morals of the times they were written in.
Taking them as 'Divine Scripture', historical documents, or a guide for today's moral behaviour is foolish as only some parts are currently applicable ( just like todays 'maps' or scientific theories ), and no one has suggested taking them literally ( not even Dim ).

As this discussion seems to have turned left at Albuquerque on the way to 'thoughts on Islam' maybe one of the mods would be so kind as to split it off at the appropriate point, and move this section to Philosophy.

[sethoflagos]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

Yes, scientific theories are models, the map and not the territory, and sometimes we have multiple maps that show different aspects of the territory, or which are sometimes not easy to interpret.

Quite. We might even extend this to a system of mutually consistent interacting theories forming a coherent body of understanding. 

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

But that does not mean there is no territory, or that we can make up our own ideas about it.

Yes, but here's the rub. If some critical property of the territory is unmeasurable, then the idea runs into falsifiability problems.

Duhem-Quine extend this by questioning whether or not the territory itself is merely an abstraction created by the body of understanding of which the proposed theory is a part. An unstated assumption if you like.

Perhaps this goes too far, but since Duhem was a sound thermodynamicist, I think he's worth a mention.

Edited May 22 by sethoflagos
sp

[exchemist]

25 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Quite. We might even extend this to a system of mutually consistent interacting theories forming a coherent body of understanding. 

Yes, but here's the rub. If some critical property of the territory is unmeasurable, then the idea runs into falsifiability problems.

Duhem-Quine extend this by questioning whether or not the territory itself is merely an abstraction created by the body of understanding of which the proposed theory is a part. An unstated assumption if you like.

Perhaps this goes too far, but since Duhem was a sound thermodynamicist, I think he's worth a mention.

I don’t see how any reproducible phenomenon of nature can fail to be due to something physically and objectively real in nature. You can’t make a model without something for it to be a model of, surely?

[MigL]

8 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I don’t see how any reproducible phenomenon of nature can fail to be due to something physically and objectively real in nature. You can’t make a model without something for it to be a model of, surely?

What if the model itself tells us there is no local reality, simply probability densities, until a measurement is made ?

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, Eise said:

I completely agree with @TheVat. The idea of 'truth' makes no sense if we do nor relate to an objective reality. Our scientific theories are about something. And they can be wrong, or true, in their (limited) domain. The earth never was flat, we know that. A majority believing that is was (is) may have reasons to think so, but it is, and was never true.

For me the expression 'my truth' makes no sense: the word 'truth' implies that it is claimed to be the case for everybody. We dis-cover reality. Maybe not as it is, but as a map of reality. If we behave according to the map, e.g. find our way to the Eiffel tower, and we get there, then the map was 'true'. There may be much left out from the map, but the map expresses at least some true aspects of reality.

Science is not just a 'narrative', as many post-modernist philosopher liked to say.

I appreciate you weighing in on this.  This seems to be a chronic problem, where the definition of truth that has been in common usage in philosophy for centuries gets discarded for some improvised personal definition.  It is impossible to discuss a topic if people can't agree on the basic definitions of terms.  

No one in science would say "Saturn is farther from the sun than Mars, but that's just my truth.  You may have some other truth."  Once we were able to measure planetary distances, it was clear that the statement was true, and holds true so long as those planets remain in their stable orbits.  Past statements held to be true that were proved false were usually statements arising from the inability to make a crucial measurement or have a longterm collection of data to reveal slower trends.  Someone invented lenses that allowed a person onshore to observe the mast of a ship several miles away drop over the horizon as it sailed away.  Every time our limited perceptions are augmented, our maps of reality get better.  Of course, the skeptical stance is that we could all be mistaken, having a mass hallucination or living in a Matrix where our environment is just code, but that stance is just to keep us humble.  

Which is why empirical truth (or synthetic truth, as it's also known) can usually be viewed as high-probability statements and not absolutes.  And Duhem-Quine, as @sethoflagos mentions, reminds us that most truths are predicated on a bundle of other proven hypotheses.  My earlier-exampled  Saturn- Mars relationship depends on background assumptions about how astronomical obervations are made and the reliability of telescopes, how planets move in regular orbits and maintain a fairly constant orbital velocity, that an eccentric ellipse orbit tends to maintain its present degree of eccentricity, etc.  

 

 

46 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

An unstated assumption if you like.

I think Duhem Quine allows that background assumptions can be teased out and made explicit.  They don't have to remain unstated.  It is just saying that it is always possible that some background assumption was overlooked and therefore a perfect falsification is not possible in the real world.  I could make an exhaustive list of all the hypotheses behind saying that the Earth is not flat, and still overlook some hidden reality.  We had this lovely strong web of beliefs, strongly supported by empirical evidence, but somehow missed that giant array of mirrors and force fields that the Alien OverLords set up to convey the illusion that we live in a solar system.  Ockham suggests we ignore this, but it does always keep us a few cents away from proof or absolute truth statements.

(this is sort of what fundamentalist Christians do when they suggest that all the fossil evidence for evolution was actually fake evidence that God, for some reason, placed in the Earth  to mess with our heads or whatever...)

 

 

 

[exchemist]

26 minutes ago, MigL said:

What if the model itself tells us there is no local reality, simply probability densities, until a measurement is made ?

Then reality may not be local. That does not make it less real.

[MigL]

6 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Then reality may not be local.

You believe in non-locality; I, and many others ( even Eise ), believe in the absence of local reality, and we had a long discussion about it several months back.

 

33 minutes ago, TheVat said:

No one in science would say "Saturn is farther from the sun than Mars, but that's just my truth.  You may have some other truth."  Once we were able to measure planetary distances, it was clear that the statement was true, and holds true so long as those planets remain in their stable orbits. 

I'm sure Mr. Anderson ( Neo's simulation in the Matrix ) thought the same thing, until he swallowed that red pill.
What if it turns out Elon Musk's idea is 'true', and we are living in a simulation.
Will you then claim your new 'truth'  is the real truth, and the current one ( which you now claim is real ) was false ?
Your 'truth' would need to have quite a bit of malleability, just like those sailors who had no lenses to see the horizon with.

[sethoflagos]

59 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I don’t see how any reproducible phenomenon of nature can fail to be due to something physically and objectively real in nature. You can’t make a model without something for it to be a model of, surely?

At time of writing, I was thinking of 'the ether'. We may be on a surer footing with space-time (when we get around to understanding what space and time really are).

55 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Duhem-Quine, as @sethoflagos mentions, reminds us that most truths are predicated on a bundle of other proven hypotheses...

I think Duhem Quine allows that background assumptions can be teased out and made explicit.  They don't have to remain unstated.  It is just saying that it is always possible that some background assumption was overlooked and therefore a perfect falsification is not possible in the real world.  

It helps keep a foot on the ground perhaps. These days I find myself drawn more to an instrumental point of view even outside of the work environment. 'Shut up and calculate' is maybe the ultimate Ockham.

[Moontanman]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Ancient peoples had a 'map' which told them the Earth was flat, and as far as they could tell, it was; that was their reality.
We have a map which predicts the way to the Eiffel Tower, yet we know it omits some locations along the way ( or predicts some locations to be at infinity ), yet we get to the Eiffel Tower so it is true.
Tomorrow we have another map, one which shows hidden locations and gives proper distances ( not infinities ) and still gets us to the Eiffel Tower.
Is this second map 'truer' ?
( loose analogy of maps to scientific theories )

Science is never 'true'.
It evolves, and can only ever be falsified in its description of reality, and reality, as Seth states, is very hard to nail down.
Is our 'true' map good enough when it can't tell us the state of a cat in a box?
Or more precisely, if anything is real before we make a measurement ?

My definition of 'true' is absolute, and I know there is no such thing.
Your definition seems to include "good enough, for now', implying that 'true' could change over time as knowledge expands.

@Moontanman I do agree with you about 'holy' books, but why should 'true' apply to them when it doesn't apply to so many other things ?
They are mostly allegorical writings meant to convey the morals of the times they were written in.
Taking them as 'Divine Scripture', historical documents, or a guide for today's moral behaviour is foolish as only some parts are currently applicable ( just like todays 'maps' or scientific theories ), and no one has suggested taking them literally ( not even Dim ).

As this discussion seems to have turned left at Albuquerque on the way to 'thoughts on Islam' maybe one of the mods would be so kind as to split it off at the appropriate point, and move this section to Philosophy.

I guess UFOs are alien spacecraft must be true since so many people believe it? 

[TheVat]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

I'm sure Mr. Anderson ( Neo's simulation in the Matrix ) thought the same thing, until he swallowed that red pill.
What if it turns out Elon Musk's idea is 'true', and we are living in a simulation.
Will you then claim your new 'truth'  is the real truth, and the current one ( which you now claim is real ) was false ?
Your 'truth' would need to have quite a bit of malleability, just like those sailors who had no lenses to see the horizon with.

The second half of my previous post addressed that, I hope.  Truth claims are revised, as more data is available, no one disputes that.  This doesn't alter basic word definitions.  Just the degree of correspondence between our statements and reality.  

If I say "the morning star and the evening star are both the planet Venus," there is always the chance, however remote, that aliens are just projecting an image there, hacking the signals from space probes we sent, etc.  Per Quine et al, we have a web of beliefs based on empirical data, that lead us to assign that scenario a low probability.  If we reach the point of colonizing Venus, that will certainly strengthen the probability of the Venus as planet assertion, with a flood of new data and first-hand experience.

The semantic point, as I understand the philosophers of science, is that "Venus is a planet" will be as true as it ever was, because it is either true or it is false.  The truth value of statements, WRT to physical reality, doesn't change.  It is our expectations that may change.  An ancient Egyptian would assert "Venus is a planet" has low truth value.  We assert that it's high.  

 

[Eise]

16 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

'True' in the limited sense that certain measurable inputs may lead to certain predictable and measurable outputs without known contradiction.

Yes, as a minimum. I think it is also important that world views or scientific theories are consistent, in themselves and between each other. Another important criterion is explanatory power: the more phenomena we can subsume under only a few basic laws of nature, the better. All this does not lead to 'absolute truth', but a better match between our theories and the reality these theories describe. But the theory never becomes reality itself! I think it is this idea of absolute truth that bothers @MigL, no?

16 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

It says very little about the muddle in the middle though. One only needs to consider the many interpretations of QM. Is one of them true in an absolute sense?

But that are interpretations, not scientific theories, unless somebody discovers experiments that can show which interpretation is correct (or wrong). We already had such a surprise (Bell's theorem). Either that, or until an experiment is designed these are speculations, or when we never find discriminative experiments, the interpretations will be meta-physics. 

15 hours ago, MigL said:

Ancient peoples had a 'map' which told them the Earth was flat, and as far as they could tell, it was; that was their reality.

So what changed since this antiquity? Reality or our ideas about reality? Was the earth flat once, and not anymore? It is so simple: some empirical claims are flat out wrong, independent on what people believe. As said above, it seems to me you think 'absolute truth', in the sense that we know we have 'caught' reality exactly as it is. That, surely enough, lies beyond our reach. But a map that locates the Eiffel tower in Paris, near the Seine, is definitely 'truer' than a map that locates it in Wall Street in New York. 

15 hours ago, MigL said:

My definition of 'true' is absolute, and I know there is no such thing.

Ah, there it is. I would say there is truth, but as a heuristic principle. It shows a direction where to go, but not something that can be reached, as a the ultimate endpoint of our quest to understand the world.

It is a bit like I am giving up to be a morally good person, because becoming a saint (or boddhisatva) lies beyond my reach. 

15 hours ago, MigL said:

Your definition seems to include "good enough, for now', implying that 'true' could change over time as knowledge expands.

NO! Exactly the opposite! Our ideas about reality improve, they become more encompassing, explain more phenomena than older theories, we can base more and more technology on it: in short, they become 'truer'. More and more about reality is dis-covered.

14 hours ago, MigL said:

What if it turns out Elon Musk's idea is 'true', and we are living in a simulation.

That would be a huge discovery. But in the meantime we have learned a lot about the inner perspective of this simulation. Unless the operator of the simulation starts to change parameters, e.g. the speed of light, all our knowledge of the inner workings of the universe created by the simulation stays valid.

15 hours ago, MigL said:

As this discussion seems to have turned left at Albuquerque on the way to 'thoughts on Islam' maybe one of the mods would be so kind as to split it off at the appropriate point, and move this section to Philosophy.

I support that.

[MigL]

4 hours ago, Eise said:

It is a bit like I am giving up to be a morally good person, because becoming a saint (or boddhisatva) lies beyond my reach. 

Thank you for taking the time to actually try to understand my position.

You've hit the nail on the head, 'truth' is variable; we can constantly improve on it, but never quite reach it.
It is the journey, not the destination.

But, using your analogy, a person who has 'good enough' morals may be on his way to sainthood, but he/she isn't quite there yet, so we don't use the 'saint' descriptor for him/her.
Similarly for 'truth'; if absolute truth is unattainable, it makes no sense to use that descriptor for our current knowledge base as it is in a constant state of flux.

Other members definition of 'truth' fit the criteria of prehistoric man as well as modern man, but they are not the same, so saying prehistoric man did not have the truth, implies we do not have the truth compared to a future human.
Sort of renders the term meaningless, doesn't it ?

[Moontanman]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Thank you for taking the time to actually try to understand my position.

You've hit the nail on the head, 'truth' is variable; we can constantly improve on it, but never quite reach it.
It is the journey, not the destination.

But, using your analogy, a person who has 'good enough' morals may be on his way to sainthood, but he/she isn't quite there yet, so we don't use the 'saint' descriptor for him/her.
Similarly for 'truth'; if absolute truth is unattainable, it makes no sense to use that descriptor for our current knowledge base as it is in a constant state of flux.

Other members definition of 'truth' fit the criteria of prehistoric man as well as modern man, but they are not the same, so saying prehistoric man did not have the truth, implies we do not have the truth compared to a future human.
Sort of renders the term meaningless, doesn't it ?

As I said... A bit pedantic don't you think?

They way you define truth can be used to deny reality, or even more troubling device to not take e a vaccine because you can't prove absolutely the vaccine is 100% effective. Just because we can't prove something absolutely doesn't mean it's not true and it definitely doesn't mean bs beliefs are valid just because someone believes them. 

Belief does not equal knowledge and in fact belief often prevents knowledge from being accepted. 

"Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box, religion is a smile on a dog"  

Edited May 23 by Moontanman

[iNow]

54 minutes ago, MigL said:

Sort of renders the term meaningless, doesn't it ?

We use it for convenience because saying “best currently accepted internally and externally consistent provisionally validated model” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. 

Things can be true within certain context and parameters, but much like proofs are for maths, truths tend to be for tyrants. 

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, MigL said:

Ancient peoples had a 'map' which told them the Earth was flat, and as far as they could tell, it was; that was their reality.

No they didn't, there's nothing in historical record's that suggests that idea, while there's plenty of evidence to suggest they thought it was a globe. The map they did have was a social one, how to get along with their fellow's and how to defend against their aggressor etc. the truth of that map is still true today.

There's a reason why the death of god scared Neitzche so much and why he spent so much time trying to think of a replacement.

My point is, it doesn't matter what the facts are today, bc they will change tomorrow.

22 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Never bet with more than you can afford to lose... 😉

My apologies @sethoflagos, it was intended as a joke but I was drunk at the time. 🙄

Edited May 23 by dimreepr

[sethoflagos]

12 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

My apologies @sethoflagos, it was intended as a joke but I was drunk at the time. 

I had no issues with your post. Guess I must have missed something.

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, sethoflagos said:

I had no issues with your post. Guess I must have missed something.

So did I then, I guess a couple of people were offended on your behalf; go figure...