[Luis Dias]

But if you like to think that a science fiction writer can become a self-made prophet of a very succcessful religion, I think I don't need to name an example of exactly that which isn't exactly a heaven to "skepticism" and freedom overall.

What does this have to do with the scenario proposed?

The arbitrarity of it. It's just as likely for a religion to be created by a scifi writer who gives a damn about science and therefore creating "Battutism" (be it social creation or authoral), just like it is likely for a religion being created for the sole purpose of acquiring money.

There is no incentive for religions to be created with glamorous goals in mind. The only pressures they feel is to survive, not to serve mankind.

Of course, conceptually the never increasing tautology never ends, but in actuality, it does end. There is a point of diminishing returns where people simply stop believing in thunder god given the overwhelmingly better knowledge about weather that we ended up possessing.

How does this address the point at hand?

It does address if the criteria of dismissing a myth is to create a better alternative explanation. As I said, paranoid explanations are *always* possible. But I'd say that the thunder god is either contradicting science or he is reduced to literally white noise in the weather graphics.

Exactly. There. Thank you. It is *meaningless drivel*. So you see that science *can* talk about it, it can say it *is* meaningless drivel.

We do not; try reading it again more carefully.

I did. You conceded it without wanting to. I do not apologize for your choice of words .

You pile your sins over christ and eat his blood and flesh. Then you are rendered absolved of your sins. I see nothing here that is moral. Even CS Lewis agrees with me, ffs.

Did you miss which religion we were discussing?

We were discussing a caricature of christianity. I just skipped the shenanigans and went for the real deal.

The exp.... Wow. Really? You think that the church is a force for good?

Did you miss which church we were discussing? It's a very bad sign if you begin to lose track of these things in favor of monolithic homogeneity.

Ah, sorry. We were discussing another wet dream of yours, where everything was superb and no harm was ever made by your invented religion.

There's a loophole in there. Can't you see it? It's when they, in all their science investigations, actually find out that you invented all the ninja ****. It's inevitable, since it is knowledge to be made, just like we know today the mish mash that the Bible actually is all about.

There was no such condition in the scenario; the religion arose socially in the distant past. Do you need additional clarification on the scenario?

No, I just call it rubbish. Even Christianity and Islam are clearly traceable by the word to which author certain parts of their holy books are related to. We *know* the chronology of the books, the creation of certain beliefs, and how mistranslations from the original to the greek created mythologies around them (the most famous is of course the "virgin birth" one). We even know *why* they were written the way they were, for there were clear political reasons for them.

Why wouldn't a similar thing be possible within "Battutism"? Sure it could be. Some day one would find out the writings of a certain "General Battuta" and they would try to pin down where this idea was first formulated.

And then what? This you did not answer. Much easier just to wipe the mess under the carpet I guess.

Are there any other imprecisions I can help correct? I'm not getting paid any more so I'm just doing this for the benefit of the audience.

Oh my, I'm so sorry to waste your precious time. And here I was thinking that you were indeed getting paid for the giganormous glamour you were providing us all with. Should I knee before thee now?

It should be clarified for Luis Dias' benefit, in case he's working from one of the classic formulations of strong positivism, that those philosophies are as dead as they come. I'm working from something a bit more post-Popper here.

A clarification is required here. While I really enjoy the quotation I have provided you with, with no extra charge mind you, it has an historical incorrection. The philosophy to which the dear respected physicist aspires to was not defended by Popper himself, who denied assertively and repeatedly that he wasn't a positivist. There is usually some confusion to this, since falsificationism is one of positivistic tools of science.

In that regard, I don't understand what you are saying about "post-Popper", and if you mean post-falsificationism, then sure, I am also "post-popper". If, however you mean something other then Idk exactly what.

This insight shared by Hawking is not, however, anything new of course. It has been common knowledge for the past 200 years for those who pay enough attention to these matters. Kant was almost there, but the one who really stands like a collossus in the proclamation of these self-evident post-religious truths is, of course, Nietzsche.

Here is a small concise work of him, which I think rather neatly encapsulates what I'm talking about. Free of charge!

1. The true world -- unattainable but for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.

(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")

2. The true world -- unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents").

(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible -- it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)

3. The true world -- unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it -- a consolidation, an obligation, an imperative.

(At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Konigsbergian)

4. The true world -- unattainable? At any rate, unattained, and being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us?

(Gray morning, The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism)

5. The "true" world -- an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating -- an idea which has become useless and superfluous -- consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it!

(Bright day; breakfast: return of bon sens and cheer-fulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6. The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we also have abolished the apparent one.

(Noon: moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.')

You're still apparently in step 4. Keep up with the times, for ****'s sake, you're 200 years late!! 

[Ghostavo]

Wait, what?

Proof to back up that claim?

None of them possess sufficient powers to prevent me from climbing Mount Olympus and looking around for their house (and seeing it's not there), or using satellite imagery to do so, or searching for the entrance to Hades in its specified location and not finding it, or soforth. The problem of the Greco-Roman pantheon is that it really, really liked to interact with people, and it wasn't very good at hiding because of this; none of them have the sort of masterful powers of illusion required to conceal themselves from prying eyes, as evidenced by the supposed poor bastards who saw some of them bathing and suffered horribly for it.

One can make the claim that their home in Olympus is hidden from sight, and they've had no wish to interact with mortals from... whenever. Also, greek mythology doesn't state the exact powers its gods have. The fact is that one cannot make the claim that greek mythology is any less rational than say, hindu, or christian mythology.

So, which is this rational way you speak of, since according to you, weak atheism isn't it?

No, I challenge your use of "weak atheism" as a loaded term, attempting to create an atheistic plurality with bad terminology.

How was my usage of weak atheism a loaded term? I've challenged your view that atheism in its entirety is not rational by stating that a subset of it actually was, and now you somehow seek to dismiss it when it doesn't suit you? If you use the term atheism to mean strong atheism, it's not me who's using bad terminology. 

Also, I note that you didn't prove there's a teapot between Earth and Mars...

Why should I? It's a red herring. Unless you're challenging my assertion that it is physically possible to conduct a search for the teapot? The volume is vast, but not infinite, and the tools required in many ways already existent. It is something that could be done, and thus an unsuitable metaphor for the task at hand.

Believers in the teapot can always word the location and nature of the teapot to be as impossible to prove as any god you can think of. Hence, it's as rational to believe in the teapot as in god.

[Sushi]

GB, most of this thread is a mad, murky mess, but your Battutism thought experiment is straight-up awesome. 

The rest of this discussion, I'm not touching with a 40-foot pole.

[NGTM-1R]

One can make the claim that their home in Olympus is hidden from sight, and they've had no wish to interact with mortals from... whenever. Also, greek mythology doesn't state the exact powers its gods have. The fact is that one cannot make the claim that greek mythology is any less rational than say, hindu, or christian mythology.

No, one cannot make that claim. That's making **** up ex post facto. They could have pulled that for Bellerophon. Artemis could have cast invisibility or barrier or whatever before she went skinnydipping. (In fact, there's exactly one cloak of invisibility running around Greek myth and it's never replicated, but it gets loaned out a ****load.) They don't. Absent evidence from their own stories they are capable of this sort of thing, you wish to assert, out of the blue, that they are?

This is theological bankruptcy. You know nothing of your subject and are in fact engaged in outright heresy. You have no argument.

(And it's fun to pull that on a lot of Protestants too when referring to certain beliefs that don't seem Biblical.)

If you use the term atheism to mean strong atheism, it's not me who's using bad terminology. 

So basically, your assertion is that intuitive terminology is bad. Weak atheism as a term was constructed by people with an admitted atheistic axe to grind, in an effort to bring agnosticism into their camp. The answers "no" and "I don't know" betray a world of difference in attitude, but you want to lump them together as the same thing? For that matter, you would lump directly together the answers "I don't know" and "I don't care", one of which is essentially the exact opposite of the other. Intellectual rigor and total intellectual failure in the same house?

Believers in the teapot can always word the location and nature of the teapot to be as impossible to prove as any god you can think of. Hence, it's as rational to believe in the teapot as in god.

Not the metaphor you constructed. (And indeed, the metaphor you constructed was not the original metaphor.) You're backsliding. As long as you gave a physical location, that is, was, and forever shall be something theoretically provable. The assertion of an omnipotent diety is not. Your metaphor is bankrupt, and you have to move the goalposts to even try to make it work.

[Ghostavo]

One can make the claim that their home in Olympus is hidden from sight, and they've had no wish to interact with mortals from... whenever. Also, greek mythology doesn't state the exact powers its gods have. The fact is that one cannot make the claim that greek mythology is any less rational than say, hindu, or christian mythology.

No, one cannot make that claim. That's making **** up ex post facto. They could have pulled that for Bellerophon. Artemis could have cast invisibility or barrier or whatever before she went skinnydipping. (In fact, there's exactly one cloak of invisibility running around Greek myth and it's never replicated, but it gets loaned out a ****load.) They don't. Absent evidence from their own stories they are capable of this sort of thing, you wish to assert, out of the blue, that they are?

This is theological bankruptcy. You know nothing of your subject and are in fact engaged in outright heresy. You have no argument.

(And it's fun to pull that on a lot of Protestants too when referring to certain beliefs that don't seem Biblical.)

So absence of evidence now is evidence of absence?

Also, of course I'm making **** up, greeks never knew we would have the technology we have today, and as such we could ever so slightly say a few things to make it work. All mythologies have this problem with technology and science, not just greek. Do I have to point out creation myths and whatnot in almost every single religion?

If you use the term atheism to mean strong atheism, it's not me who's using bad terminology. 

So basically, your assertion is that intuitive terminology is bad. Weak atheism as a term was constructed by people with an admitted atheistic axe to grind, in an effort to bring agnosticism into their camp. The answers "no" and "I don't know" betray a world of difference in attitude, but you want to lump them together as the same thing? For that matter, you would lump directly together the answers "I don't know" and "I don't care", one of which is essentially the exact opposite of the other. Intellectual rigor and total intellectual failure in the same house?

Atheism is simple disbelief in deities. You can disbelieve in them actively or passively, but it's still disbelief in deities. The answer "I don't know" can be made from many view points, weak atheism, agnosticism, etc., not all of them atheistic. What are you suggesting? You seem to think atheists all have the same view points regarding the same question, they don't. While they may have the same core disbelief in gods, they may arrive to it from any number of ways.

Finally, there is a difference between disbelieving in something and categorically stating it doesn't exist.

Believers in the teapot can always word the location and nature of the teapot to be as impossible to prove as any god you can think of. Hence, it's as rational to believe in the teapot as in god.

Not the metaphor you constructed. (And indeed, the metaphor you constructed was not the original metaphor.) You're backsliding. As long as you gave a physical location, that is, was, and forever shall be something theoretically provable. The assertion of an omnipotent diety is not. Your metaphor is bankrupt, and you have to move the goalposts to even try to make it work.

I linked the goddamn Russel Teapot article so I wouldn't have to make the same argument you have heard over and over again. But since you insist, I can be that annoying, here:

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

If you really have doubts about this, write a letter debunking this to a university near you.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah, I really don't get why people do not understand Russell's teapot. It's not even trying to debunk god, but a kind of argumentation that apparently many rational people think is a valid one.

[karajorma]

GB, most of this thread is a mad, murky mess, but your Battutism thought experiment is straight-up awesome. 

I do wonder how much of it was influenced by Dr Who though.

[General Battuta]

GB, most of this thread is a mad, murky mess, but your Battutism thought experiment is straight-up awesome. 

I do wonder how much of it was influenced by Dr Who though.

Directly inspired by, thank you!

[watsisname]

The entire point of Russell's Teapot is to demonstrate the ridiculousness of hiding behind the argument "you can't prove a negative", through the use of an even more ridiculous negative to try to prove.

It ought to be noted though that the whole argument that a negative cannot be proved is wrong to begin with.  Some negatives are actually extremely easy to prove.  If I assert that there are no elephants in my closet, I can prove this easily by examining the contents of my closet and finding no elephants.  Some of the more difficult negatives can be proved if the proposition comes with specific testable claims.  This would be like the Michelson-Morley experiment proving that the aether described by 19th century physicists does not exist.  (Kind of a poor example since the original claim was that aether does exist, and providing testable claims of what we'd observe if it does exist, but whatever.)

The difficulty of proving a negative mainly occurs when the negative is either vague or difficult to investigate scientifically.  Gods are typically proclaimed to be completely unobservable, so how is one supposed to demonstrate that they do or don't exist?  There is no explicit claim to put to test.  However, we can make their existence increasingly unlikely if we are able to explain the origins and workings of life and the universe in ways that are inconsistent with the creation stories associated with those gods.  This goes back to the Michelson-Morley example.  If the existence of a god comes with claims that are testable (for example, all species on Earth were created at roughly the same time, or perhaps that the earth and the universe were created at roughly the same time), then you can test this and show it to be false.

Deists can always alter their beliefs so that the existence of their god(s) is consistent with the updated scientific understanding of how the universe works.  Heated debate arises when they refuse to do so. 

[General Battuta]

Quite so. And so long as religious belief safely confines itself to the untestable, it doesn't have a problem.

[Luis Dias]

The untestable is indistinguishable from the non-existent. Your claim that religion "doesn't have to be" troublesome runs agains the obvious fact that religion is very much about the concrete actual world, its social relations, power structures, ideological programming of individuals, etc.

Why wouldn't it be so, when it's exactly those characteristics that are sought by humans, who are taught to search for a purpose in life from infancy?

But if religion is sought because of its actual effects on humans, how couldn't it interfere with anything else?

How doesn't the teleological mindset of all religions run against an empirical enquiry, if said empirical enquiry finds that apparently, we are actually living in a non-teleological universe? How sane will be the rantings of a scientist, when speaking about these matters, if his mind is poisoned by theology?

How isn't the homo sapiens polluted by the metaphysical thought, even the brightest ones, a relic that stems from the religious tradition, a trap for the less experienced on these matters, the fixation over the Real, the Absolute Truth, the confused minds that are easily tricked by those who (rightfully) proclaim that Objectivity can only be required by an absolute godlike mind, thus rendering his existence as something not only provable, but absolutely necessary for all morality and philosophy.

How will we ever study the limits of the human's condition, how will we ever have a reasonable look unto human's death, unto conscience, love and, heck, religious feelings, with these mental shackles?

How will we ever study morality in a non-religious manner, i.e., in a scientific outlook, an educated, reasoned and informed discussion about how we should arrange the society, how we should deal with one another and to those that are around us, with these shackles short-circuiting our brains?


I'll tell you how. With a painful amount of extra work. With a painful amount of exercising the mind against metaphysical distractions.

[Scotty]

religion is very much about the concrete actual world, its social relations, power structures, ideological programming of individuals, etc.

The religious systems you cherry pick and attack are like this. 

I believe there is a God.
I believe that I should still be a good person.
I have no quarrel with sciecne, and in fact strive to better myself through it.

"HOLY ****!  HE'S RELIGIOUS!  HE MUST BE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO SCIENCE!" is the argument you're spouting, reduced to a microscopic level.  See how retarded it is?

[General Battuta]

You're arguing with a fundamentalist here. It's just a form of fundamentalism where he reduces all religion to a bizarre caricature from the outside instead of the inside.

Everyone believes a whole host of totally irrational things that rest on belief rather than scientific proof. (There is no compelling rational reason to remain alive, for instance; the desire to live is simply a product of the fact that the desire to die extinguishes itself through natural selection.) Science does not speak to these things; it is a tool for investigation and understanding of the empirical world, and must be carefully protected so it isn't compromised by ideology.

[Luis Dias]

religion is very much about the concrete actual world, its social relations, power structures, ideological programming of individuals, etc.

The religious systems you cherry pick and attack are like this. 

I believe there is a God.
I believe that I should still be a good person.
I have no quarrel with sciecne, and in fact strive to better myself through it.

"HOLY ****!  HE'S RELIGIOUS!  HE MUST BE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO SCIENCE!" is the argument you're spouting, reduced to a microscopic level.  See how retarded it is?

Of course I see it. That's why I would never state something so inanely stupid.

If you are really interested in what I said, please do read it as I wrote it, and do not fill in the blanks with your prejudices, just like Battuta is fond of doing.

If however you have something interesting to bring to the table, bring it on. Just leave the silliness behind you, it does not favor you at all.

It's just a form of fundamentalism where he reduces all religion to a bizarre caricature from the outside instead of the inside.

This is just the usual white noise that always comes from the ideology of intellectual impotence, such as the one you espouse here. For anyone who sincerely believes that knowledge is not possible in this or that field of inquiry, all opposite answers seem arrogant and fundamentalist, but this isn't news to me. Your mind is still polluted by metaphysics. The error is still deeply ingrained in your mind.

There is no compelling rational reason to remain alive, for instance; the desire to live is simply a product of the fact that the desire to die extinguishes itself through natural selection. Science does not speak to these things; it is a tool for investigation and understanding of the empirical world, and must be carefully protected so it isn't compromised by ideology.

There is no teleological reason for anything. The universe has no purpose. This *is* a scientific finding, so your assertion that science does not speak to these things flies in the face of your entire speech about it, for if you were born two centuries ago, you would not believe in that sentence for a minute, for the reason for your existence would have been declared to have something to do with a man that was nailed to a cross two thousand years ago. Your paragraph is a self-defeated one.

So one more bull****. Bah. I can take it, Battuta, all of your cheap insults, that I am a fundamentalist, etc., but I'd even submit I'd rather be that, than the spewer of irrational and incoherent arguments you keep trolling this thread with.

[General Battuta]

There is no teleological reason for anything. The universe has no purpose. This *is* a scientific finding, so your assertion that science does not speak to these things flies in the face of your entire speech about it, for if you were born two centuries ago, you would not believe in that sentence for a minute, for the reason for your existence would have been declared to have something to do with a man that was nailed to a cross two thousand years ago. Your paragraph is a self-defeated one.

Exactly what I've been saying. Yet in spite of the lack of empirical justification, everyone on Earth holds to and believes in purposes; it is why we act and live. The fact that we believe things that stand outside the empirical is precisely why religion is not incompatible with science. We all do it. Where science does not tread, nonetheless human beings do.

It's ironic that the paragraph you'd describe as self-defeating is perhaps the most compelling argument you've made against yourself so far.

As a methodological note to try to help you to be a better scientist: you should actually make weaker arguments above. Science has not found that the universe has no purpose; science never can. What you should say is that no evidence has been gathered to suggest a purpose or intentionality to the universe. An empiricist should be satisfied with this, because the statement is non-falsifiable and therefore not interesting.

So one more bull****. Bah. I can take it, Battuta, all of your cheap insults, that I am a fundamentalist, etc., but I'd even submit I'd rather be that, than the spewer of irrational and incoherent arguments you keep trolling this thread with.

You sound like you're having some trouble there. Disentangling the tools of empiricism from your own beliefs is a painful process, but when you're done, you will find that science as an instrument rather than science as a religion is far more powerful.

[Scotty]

Cute.

"Religion is diametrically opposed to science/rational thinking."

Is this or is this not your position?  This is the macroscopic view, dealing with large-scale views and large-scale organizations/belief.

"A religious person is diametricaly opposed to science/rational thinking."

If the first is in fact your position, then this is de-facto your position as well, merely shrunk to the microscopic level.  If this is inanely stupid, your whole premise is accompanied by more inane stupidity than most things on Earth.

[General Battuta]

He seems to be arguing a bit behind the curve. I think if he'd spent more time here he would be well aware that I view the universe as a vast and deterministic (if not discrete) machine in which all human morality and beliefs have been shaped by evolution working in the theater of a blind and purposeless cosmos.

Unfortunately he's been taught to believe this, rather than to know it. When you wield a tool, you have to know its limitations, or you'll break it on something you can't cut.

Science does not deal with the nonfalsifiable. It simply doesn't care about it. Science has nothing to say about those elements of religious belief which fall outside the falsifiable. It can analyze how they arose, of course, and what neural structures underlie them, and what confirmation heuristics maintain them - something I've spoken to at length in this thread - but it says nothing about the beliefs themselves. Science can also speak to the empirical outcomes of religious belief, but in the case of a religion like Battutism - or the Congregational Church example I cited, or a pure interpretation of Islam looking at only the Five Pillars - these empirical outcomes actually bolster both social justice (in the context of a modern, Westernized, liberalized society) and the progress of science as a politically dependent entity.

His only argument against this has been 'but religion DOES have real world outcomes.' Sure, of course it does. But he's having trouble translating this into an argument for the fundamental incompatibility he asserted, and at the rate he's going I don't think he'll manage it.

[Luis Dias]

There is no teleological reason for anything. The universe has no purpose. This *is* a scientific finding, so your assertion that science does not speak to these things flies in the face of your entire speech about it, for if you were born two centuries ago, you would not believe in that sentence for a minute, for the reason for your existence would have been declared to have something to do with a man that was nailed to a cross two thousand years ago. Your paragraph is a self-defeated one.

Exactly what I've been saying. Yet in spite of the lack of empirical justification, everyone on Earth holds to and believes in purposes; it is why we act and live. The fact that we believe things that stand outside the empirical is precisely why religion is not incompatible with science. We all do it. Where science does not tread, nonetheless human beings do.

The unjustified assumption in this paragraph above is the notion that we need to "believe" in this thing called "purposes" in order to live. I've yet to see evidence for this. Usually, when people talk about "purposes", they are describing long-term desires. I have the "purpose" of living a happy life. What does that have to do with belief, one distracted fellow may ask? Well, obviously, nothing, with the sole exception that there is a "belief" that stems from other people's experience, that living "a happy life" is something to fight for. But this isn't a religious belief in something "out of this world".

In this sense, it is empirical. I see other people's happy lifes, and I want the same for me. I strive for it, to obtain what I recognize in other people's happy faces. Why? Because I desire happiness.

If your point is that desires are deeply ingrained genetically, okay. I'm fine with that, it's absolutely true (not really, but you know what I mean).

If your point is that those types of purpose "beliefs" (religions) are not only deeply genetically ingrained, but also deeply necessary to live, I don't buy it.

It's ironic that the paragraph you'd describe as self-defeating is perhaps the most compelling argument you've made against yourself so far.

Please, don't turn this thread into nonsense comedy. I know you are an expensive chap, but still.

As a methodological note to try to help you to be a better scientist: you should actually make weaker arguments above. Science has not found that the universe has no purpose; science never can. What you should say is that no evidence has been gathered to suggest a purpose or intentionality to the universe. An empiricist should be satisfied with this, because the statement is non-falsifiable and therefore not interesting.

Ok, I'll accept that I was stretching my case a bit, but I don't think that it isn't necessarily a coincidence that the empirical finding of the mechanisms of evolution, of the wild chaotic and careless nature of the universe, etc., all come at the same time when mankind starts to get that the universe isn't telelological. I'd say that all empirical evidence we garner every day are totally pointing at one sole direction in that case. Only a fundamentalist would cling to the notion that perhaps there is still a case to be made for a teleological universe.

No, it doesn't seem to be working like that *at all*. And mind you, such thinking *does pollute your mind* if you are trying to understand evolution, etc.

You sound like you're having some trouble there. Disentangling the tools of empiricism from your own beliefs is a painful process, but when you're done, you will find that science as an instrument rather than science as a religion is far more powerful.

Let me one up you then. When you find that religion and metaphysical thinking isn't anything to be substituted for, and that the minimal mind that you'll end up with will be so much better, then you will understand that the last thing I want to do is turn science into religion.

But you can't, because you are in a grave misapprehension. You still think that many (important) themes and questions are forever doomed to be  within the realm of metaphysics, and if someone comes along and tries to state the (rather senseful) proposition that we could actually discuss them in a more proper rigorous manner, you call them religious.

[Scotty]

then you will understand that the last thing I want to do is turn science into religion.

This statement makes me laugh.

[General Battuta]

The unjustified assumption in this paragraph above is the notion that we need to "believe" in this thing called "purposes" in order to live. I've yet to see evidence for this. Usually, when people talk about "purposes", they are describing long-term desires. I have the "purpose" of living a happy life. What does that have to do with belief, one distracted fellow may ask? Well, obviously, nothing, with the sole exception that there is a "belief" that stems from other people's experience, that living "a happy life" is something to fight for. But this isn't a religious belief in something "out of this world".

The reason it is good to live a happy life is because evolution has produced a set of signals to indicate to you when you are living a life which is likely to produce high fitness. This we call happiness.

That is the empirical reason to seek happiness: because of evolution. That is why we seek happy lives.

It is also a rationally unsustainable position. There is no logical reason to want to be happy, to want to obey the selected behaviors of the fit organism. It occurs because it occurs, meaningless, without teleology. So we assign it teleology. We talk about how we want to live happy lives. Why is living a happy life good? (Because those who didn't want to died out, science says). Because living a happy life is worth fighting for, you say. Worth. Value. Belief. We assign these things constantly. Science can tell us where they came from, but it does not bear on our day-to-day deployment.

Ok, I'll accept that I was stretching my case a bit, but I don't think that it isn't necessarily a coincidence that the empirical finding of the mechanisms of evolution, of the wild chaotic and careless nature of the universe, etc., all come at the same time when mankind starts to get that the universe isn't telelological. I'd say that all empirical evidence we garner every day are totally pointing at one sole direction in that case. Only a fundamentalist would cling to the notion that perhaps there is still a case to be made for a teleological universe.

What you're talking about is called the semantic apocalypse, and it is one of my favorite things. Unfortunately for you, it does not bear on the argument at hand, which is the question of whether religion and science are fundamentally incompatible.

There is no empirical case to be made for a teleological universe, because the proposition is untestable. There could be an omnipotent God running it all. We could - of fare more concern to me - be in a simulation running in a Matrioshka brain. Both propositions are (more or less, in the latter case) untestable.

No, it doesn't seem to be working like that *at all*. And mind you, such thinking *does pollute your mind* if you are trying to understand evolution, etc.

You have repeatedly made this claim using moralistic language and yet you cannot empirically substantiate it. A believer in a God who set the universe in motion - and he need believe nothing more than that, no commandments, nothing past it - may fervently desire to understand God's design, and so be driven to study evolution with great precision and care.

Let me one up you then. When you find that religion and metaphysical thinking isn't anything to be substituted for, and that the minimal mind that you'll end up with will be so much better, then you will understand that the last thing I want to do is turn science into religion.

But you can't, because you are in a grave misapprehension. You still think that many (important) themes and questions are forever doomed to be  within the realm of metaphysics, and if someone comes along and tries to state the (rather senseful) proposition that we could actually discuss them in a more proper rigorous manner, you call them religious.

This would be a more compelling argument if I had any religious or metaphysical beliefs. Yet I am a pure materialist. As such, I understand that there can never, by definition, be an empirical investigation of an omnipotent God, nor of any other non-falsifiable proposition. It is impossible.

Anyone who attempts to propose that this is possible has rendered science a religion. This is the crime you are committing; debasing science by using it as an ideology, by applying it to topics it has nothing to say about.