h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

well, I'll call warner on his response to my last post:


I said:

'Of course there's no inherent point [in mankind being in the universe]. We all make up our own point. The religious just pretend that they're not making it up.'

warner responded:

'I agree with post 14519, except substitute 'believe' for 'pretend'.'


So, here is a clear statement of one of warner's contentions:

'Of course there's no inherent point [in mankind being in the universe]. We all make up our own point. The religious just believe that they're not making it up.'

So:

warner agrees that there is no inherent point.
warner agrees that we all make up our own point.
warner agrees that the religious are delusional in their beliefs about the point of mankind's existence in the universe.


Does anyone want to argue with that?

works for me

warner agrees that there is no inherent point.
warner agrees that there is no inherent point.
warner agrees that there is no inherent point.

'warner agrees that there is no inherent point.
warner agrees that there is no inherent point.
warner agrees that there is no inherent point.'



Just a point of clarification, warner:


do you consider yourself religious?

Hang about Warner.

In your two replies to me you seem to have responded to something which don't appear to be my words and only serving to deepen the mystery.

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>> Of course there's no inherent point (mankind being in the universe)<<

I didn't write that - Anhaga did - and you agreed with it!

"I agree with post 14519, except substitute 'believe' for 'pretend'." (Warner, 14520)

For what it's worth: It only ever seems to be the religious with this weird preoccupation for meaning and latent purposiveness. Atheism, of which I am an exponent, is simply the absence of belief in gods. It seems to me what the religious really want to ask is:

"What meaning can there be without God?"

From my point of view; no gods, and a natural universe results in no inherent meaning.
Note this is quiet different from arguing that there is no meaning to be found in life at all. Plainly this would be false. Meaning is everywhere. But it is never objective just as it is not inherent.

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I'm sorry, what comes next is just nonsense on stilts:

>>we see a growing interest in the national lottery, for example, as belief in God in UK society has decreased. <<

And we see an increase in as global warming increases ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FSM_Pirates.png

Your point is?

>>Ie. A move towards materialism<<

Oh I see. I think to preserve the philosophical sense of materialism, such as we have discussed previously, what you mean to describe is materialistic behaviour, and we should distinguish the two. That done: is this a genuine correlation; a clear case of cause and effect? I rather doubt that. By implication if more people believed in god (and your presumably your god not those ridiculous Hindu gods) interest in money would decline? Is that your argument?

How do you figure that or indeed how do you explain the catholic church, surely the most pious, godly and wealthy institution on the planet?


>>On h2g2, I should think there are more people with greater than average IQ. ie. they do believe in SOMETHING.<<

You are too kind.

I might for instance have a deeply held, sincere and personal belief in a celestial being called Kenneth who provides me a degree of comfort in the pit of my self loathing.

Now if I believed this wholeheartedly (I don't) it still wouldn't make it necessarily true because the strength of belief in something in no way attaches to the validity of that belief .

Hi Tal!

Now that we have established the the bible, OT and NT are not the exact word of god, what do you base your beliefs on? If you can only reply *faith* to that question, you have no right to say you are debating, only that you are stating illogical, unsupported belief.

Sorry to jump in there, Clive. Believe it or not it was a six minute simulpost!

And the question was for warner.

Are you dressing as a pirate Zoomer?

Don't you realise how many polar bears you just condemned to death?

For shame, sir!

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Hi Ed,

>Is 'No pandas' vs 'Fewer hungry people' a scientific question?

OK, good point, no it isn't. Who'd want to live in a world with no panda-burgers?

I'm not saying that science *alone* can help us solve ethical issues. I'm saying that science *necessarily contributes* to solving ethical issues. F'rinstance, in the above example, science's role would be to tell us whether pandacide is a likely consequence of GM ham.

Put it this way: in that example, science can tell us the likely consequences of your actions. It doesn't tell us whether those consequences are desireable, but knowing the likely consequences is important in making a moral choice (Kant notwithstanding).

>I agree that science (including Sociology) can *inform* the answer

So again I think we're violently agreeing.

>What can science tell me about whether I'd prefer soup or a sandwich for lunch?

If you have a nut allergy, you are unlikely to prefer the walnut bread But seriously, yes, science is insufficient to make this choice alone.

>I wonder why you'd bother modelling it, instead of just asking me?

You see, Ed, once again you betray your fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Who'd give grant money to someone to ask you what you want for lunch?

Gif

>>What is the point of having humanity in the universe?

I propose two Atheist Humanist answers which amount to the same thing:
- Dunno? What do you think?
and
- Whatever we want!

Hi 3D (but for the benefit of everyone else),

>There is also the iPM blog where you can go and read the blog entry and further discussion as well as a post from our erstwhile contributor Della.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2009/01/thought_for_the_day_a_genuinel.shtml

Once again, the bizarre theist obsession with spelling, I see...

Gif

Hi Mikey,

>My only complaint is that posting snippets of conversation on Gifopedia as a 'theist's response' does indeed stifle debate.

Let me know what you'd like to see there - here, on my Space or in the Gifopedia page comments. If I can accommodate you without completely discarding the basic idea I will.

Gif

Hi Warner,

>if as you say, it doesn't matter whether there is any fundamental reason for mankind and the universe, then the most obvious direction for anyone to go in, is to live for the present and seek immediate pleasure, which probably includes needing money.

So if God doesn't exist, there's no point planning for the future?

>I think Einstein or other great scientists would not bother to continue communicating with someone who continually derided his 'new theory', because of non-understanding or political reason etc ..

Again, Are you saying that because you won't listen to us, we should stop our pesky talking to you? Why have you subscribed to a debate thread? (NB: Einstein was indeed derided as 'Jewish science' by the Nazis in his home country.)

>we see a growing interest in the national lottery, for example, as belief in God in UK society has decreased.

The National Lottery has been around in this country for 15 years. There has, to the best of my knowledge, not been a catastophic decline in levels of religion over that time. We previously had a lottery in the 1700s iirc, when religious belief was more commonplace. So this is *your perception*, not a statistical truth, right?

>on h2g2, I should think there are more people with greater than average IQ

Ah yes, but you're new here and don't know us well yet

>there are more people with greater than average IQ. ie. they do believe in SOMETHING

Are you saying that IQ is directly linked to religious faith?

>How long was a day. As Einstein proposed, time is something relative,

Since you understand Einstein, you will realise that unless you think that parts of the Earth were moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light compared to other parts of the Earth, relativity has no bearing on the age of rocks or fossils, or the length of a day with a dawn and a dusk.

Gif

Me:
>>"What can science tell me about whether I've made the right choice?"
Ic:
>>Well that depends on what you mean by 'right' - the question is not defined yet.

and

anhaga:
>>Is Edward's question not actually about whether there exists some sort of objective Platonic moral 'Right'?

Actually...what I'm proposing is that there *is* no Platonic Ideal of 'Right'. There's no way even of defining the question so that we know when we have the right answer.

Rather...the right answer turns out to be whatever we decide it is at any given time. We might change our answer over time or as we get more information ('Did you know that sandwich will kill you?')...and our answers may differ between individuals ('But I don't *like* soup').

On modelling...theoretically, be able to build a highly complex model that would predict a single person's preference at any given time (although how the hell can you be sure you've captured all the variables?). But what would be the damned point? All science would be contributing to the question would be adding unnecessary complexity while adding unquantifiable error.

And at the end of the day you're still left with the problem that one person prefers soup and the other sandwiches. Or - to take a less trivial problem - favours or disfavours capital punishment.

So I still contend that science can't even *begin* to model 'ought' problems. The best solution we have is extremely messy:
We have to argue it out amongst ourselves.
(And we'll not necessarily reach a consensus).

Corollary to there being no Platonic ideal of right:
Religion can't give us answers either.

Warner: How long was a day. As Einstein proposed, time is something relative,

Gif: Since you understand Einstein, you will realise that unless you think that parts of the Earth were moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light compared to other parts of the Earth, relativity has no bearing on the age of rocks or fossils, or the length of a day with a dawn and a dusk.


Surely warner's point would be that, for any half decent god, a "day" might be a couple of million of our light years? I did have a discussion the other day with a guy who informed me that the Biblical story of creation corresponds rather spookily with how evolution is presumed to have happened (ie light = big bang, then there was water, then fish, then animals, then people) but that where people went wrong was assuming that one of God's "days" = one of our days (which is fair enough considering that at the start for God there was no sun for the earth to be revolving round - or indeed earth to do the spinning so days and years would be a difficult concept!

Ed: what I'm proposing is that there *is* no Platonic Ideal of 'Right'.

That's something I sort of can see the logic of but find it difficult to fully sign up to. Only because of stuff like I would agree with eg the statement "racism is wrong" as a truth irrespective of prevaling ideas/cultural norms. So I kind of think there are some objective right/wrong codes - but that's probably just because of the cultural norms I've grown up with

>>a guy who informed me that the Biblical story of creation corresponds rather spookily with how evolution is presumed to have happened (ie light = big bang, then there was water, then fish, then animals, then people)<<

That's another hoary old classic.

For example Genesis 1:14 the sun appears, 1:17 then the stars. these are precede by the creation of light 1:3. and the creation of day and night 1:5. Can you see what is wrong with this picture?

The Bible, the record of Gods creation, obviously doesn;t know the sun is a star.

The atmosphere 1:6 - 1:7 occurs before Vegetation 1:11 so no photsynthesis and not a single mention of Volcanoes.


Genesis doesn't stack up with how we think the world formed through scientific investigation at all!

ah, I think I see now ed.

So if there is no platonic right then the reason we cannot investigate it using the scientific method is that it doesn't exist!
So asking whether something is objectively right or wrong is a nonsense question.

In a subjective sense though there is a right and wrong providing we define the parameters and we can use the scientific method to answer that as already outlined.

Indeed!

But it's the 'subjective' part that's important. Drawing in pp's "racism is wrong" as an example...Imagine there were a group who thought it deeply moral to round up and kill the members of another race. Painful though this might be to contemplate - but maybe our argument against them is purely subjective - one opinion against another?

Except...not quite. My argument against would boil down to something like:
'We will all be happier and life would be more tolerable for all if we didn't behave that way.'
That's maybe edging towards objectivity - although I wouldn't pretend to be able to prove it.

But for all I know, I as an Aryan would be deeply happy in a Judenfrei society and, in the wider scheme of things needn't lose any sleep over the slaughter of millions.

"Imagine there were a group who thought it deeply moral to round up and kill the members of another race. Painful though this might be to contemplate - but maybe our argument against them is purely subjective - one opinion against another?"

It is purely subjective. We live in a society that considers such a thing to be wrong and this is informed by our sense of commonality with other humans as well as the ideas around reciprocal altruism.

It's the same with eugenics. On the face of it eradicating certain genetic strains is good for the species as it makes it stronger and fitter. The argument against it is that it is wrong because everyone has as much worth as everyone else. But that depends on the world view of the observer. If you considered the human species and its future then genetic diversity is important and thus one could well argue against eugenics - one never knows which genotype is going to succeed and it could be one which doesn;t appear to be adaptive right now.

On the other hand society invests (both centrally and through the private actions of individuals) a lot in the care and support of other humans who are adaptive genotypes and removing them would free up those parts of society and enable them to work elsewhere.

So yes, it is all subjective. But that doesn't mean all arguments are equally as persuasive or that we can choose any we want and get the same outcome. If we had removed a particular genetic strain from the human pool we would have drastically reduce the genetic diversity and thus, as a species, be unprepared for some future event and thus end up becoming extinct.