George, Of The Jungle Wrote:Science and religion differ from each other in a significant way, but are also related. Both are about humans trying to understand the world. The difference is that science has a strict method, that is not the case with religion.

The scientific method is simply put about coming up with a hypothesis and trying to test that hypothesis. This is probably where the scientific method has the most in common with religion. A person coming up with a hypothesis doesn't have any proof for that, at most some clues. Still he believes that he's right.

Religion comes from humans having difficulty with the futility of life. That we're not put here with a purpose. They have a hard time grasping that we just are here and that it doesn't even matter that we (or the entire human race) are alive, the planet/galaxy... just goes on without us.

Well said.

George, Of The Jungle Wrote:There's a big difference in logic though.
Take evolution theory for example, there's tons of evidence supporting this theory.
Can we be 100%, beyond any doubt sure that this theory is accurate? You can say no.
But because of the massive amount of evidence, we assume it is.

Another example: do flying elephants exist? No.
Can we be 100%, beyond any doubt sure of this? You can say no.
But there is zero evidence supporting the hypothesis that elephants can fly. So we assume they can't

naive Wrote:There is plenty of evidence that religious mythology was true, even enough to convince *most* people in the world. Simply because most scientists do not accept the evidence as conclusive proof, does not mean they are false, it just means they cannot be definitively proved as true or false.

A lot of stories in the bible probably are somewhat historically accurate, many researchers agree. But when it says that Moses split the Red Sea, there's no reason to believe this is possible.
There's a lot of people, even religious people that say that religious mythology, biblical tales, etc... are not to be taken literally, but to be interpreted symbolically.

naive Wrote:If religion is considered a pursuit of truth, then it is also done through establishing accepted beliefs. Like I said earlier, the sources and methodology differ, but the goal is the same.

I think here lies the difference between science and religion. Science tries to understand the world as it is.
Religion originated from the fact that humans can't accept the world as it is.

Too true, although I don't think that religion is necessarily a search for truth. For many, I think that it provides a way to be purposefully ignorant, and/or to just be happy/comforted.

naive Wrote:

silly Wrote:Do you believe that there is a distinction in probability between the possible truth of the claims that "humans cannot fly", that "Jonah lived in a whale for three days", and that "men are from Mars while women are from Jupiter"?

You could say that with infinite time and infinite space the probability of such things happening are 100%. <img src="/s/images/smile/happy.gif">

First off, you didn't directly answer my question "Do you believe that there is a distinction in probability between the possible truth of the claims that "humans cannot fly", that "Jonah lived in a whale for three days", and that "men are from Mars while women are from Jupiter"?

I'm not talking about the rest of the universe, I'm talking about our galaxy only.

naive Wrote:But yes, I believe you can determine the probability of things that can be observed, however just because something is improbable or probable does not mean it did not or did not happen.

If something has a 0% probability of happening, it will not happen. 100% means that it will definitely happen, and there are also all of the percentages in between 0-100% where that something can possibly happen. Of course, it may be impossible to determine the exact probabilities of some claims, and for some the probability may not even be knowable.

I was asking about the relative probabilities of the three claims (you didn't have to use percentages). So in other words, are any of those claims more likely to be true than the others?

naive Wrote:I'm not trying to defend biblical claims (I'm more of an ancient astronaut theorist personally), merely that no matter how strongly denied by modern thinking they *may* be true. I would expect no more, and no less evidence about such events listed in the bible to exist today.

From what you've written, you seem to be trying to put the possible truth of religious claims on par with the possible truth of scientific claims...

There is not enough evidence to believe in most of the things in the Bible. It is irrational and arbitrary for people to believe in things for which there is insufficient evidence of. If by "modern thinking", you mean rational/logical thinking, then yes, unsubstantiated claims are not acceptable by "modern thinking". These days many people are placing more value on the notion of actually thinking rationally/logically, instead of arbitrarily believing in things because those things are part of tradition, or because they simply sound good.

Quote: 
Formally, If a claim is not testable, then the truth of it cannot be verified, and it cannot be accepted. It's possible that it could still be true, but there is no reason to believe that it is. There exists a "burden of proof", and all positive claims must provide sufficient evidence in order to be accepted as true. Without evidence/proof, there is no way to distinguish between the likelihood of any claim.

I don't particularly know, but this point does not help your argument. It is important that you recognize that if there is not sufficient evidence for something, there does not exist a compelling rational reason to believe it.

naive Wrote:We can not prove that black holes exist (that I am aware of), is there any rational reason to believe they exist?

Apparently there is evidence of black holes (go to the "observational evidence" section): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole However, I'm not very good at physics, so I'm not going to try and debate about whether or not that evidence is sufficient. I'd be happy to do so with another example which is not related to physics or chemistry (for example: some sort of claim made by biologists or psychologists).

naive Wrote:There is plenty of evidence that religious mythology was true, even enough to convince *most* people in the world.

First off, what evidence? Secondly, It doesn't matter how many people believe in something, they can still all be wrong. People used to believe that the Earth was flat, and before Galileo, they believed that the Sun and all of the planets in our galaxy revolved around the Earth. When a person concludes that something is true based upon the fact that many people believe it, they commit the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

naive Wrote:Simply because most scientists do not accept the evidence as conclusive proof, does not mean they are false

Agreed.

naive Wrote:it just means they cannot be definitively proved as true or false.

That's not true. Sometimes there is contrary evidence which can disprove a claim. For example: I could claim to have gone to to the moon (with a NASA spaceship) to eat cheese last night, yet there could be evidence contrary to my claim, in the form of surveillance footage of me at Earth.

Quote:There is no rational reason to believe that two coins can magically transform into three, there is only pure faith. There is no evidence that things like that actually happen. Also, being able to test something does not make it true, it just makes it possible to determine whether or not it is true.

naive Wrote:So, if I were to take 10,000,000,000,000,000 lbs of shit and add 10,000,000,000,000,000 lbs of shit to it, most scientists would say very quickly, oh you will end up with 20,000,000,000,000,000 lbs of shit. This however is itself an untestable claim, scientists however have lots of *faith* in their mathematical reasoning.

It may not be empirically testable, but it is logically (mathematics is a form of logic) testable.

naive Wrote:It takes faith to conclude that 1+1 will always = 2, making it a system dependent faith. It may be true, but to accept it as true, a belief must be formed, it is beliefs that require faith, not truth. If science is the pursuit of truth, it can only be so through establishing accepted beliefs. If religion is considered a pursuit of truth, then it is also done through establishing accepted beliefs. Like I said earlier, the sources and methodology differ, but the goal is the same.

There's a difference between the two notions that you have identified, for one there exists sufficient evidence, for the other there does not. 1 unit of something plus 1 unit of something has always equaled 2 units of something. As those mathematical laws have continued to hold true, there is no reason to divert from them.

Quote:How so? Rationality involves logically consistent beliefs, it requires logic and reasoning.

naive Wrote:Logic and reasoning themselves are tools used to determine where to put one's faith. Belief in a religion also requires logic and reasoning (you may say incorrect logic ans reason, but nevertheless).

I'm talking about valid/sound logic and reasoning (most religious claims are not logically valid/sound). There has been no accepted logical process in which God was validly arrived at. When someone uses logic, they are putting their faith in logic. Without logic, we would have no way to distinguish between the truth or probability of any claim, as none would be determinable. Empiricism itself has logic at its core.

Quote:I made a claim that science and religion definitely can be mutually exclusive concepts, and if you want to dispute that, then I can provide evidence to back up my claim.

naive Wrote:I am not sold yet, I would like to see this evidence.

Someone who believes in a literal interpretation of Genesis believes that all organisms (including humans) were created in the same form that they are in now, and that the Earth was created less than 10 thousand years ago. Someone who believes in Evolution believes that all organisms (such as humans, fish, plants, etc.) progressively mutated and diverged from common ancestors (for example: single-celled bacteria), and that the Earth is billions of years old.

Quote:So you think that scientific data can accurately depict objective truth?

naive Wrote:I would propose that all data depicts objective truth. The fuzziness is in our extraction of information from the data.

True. There is potential fuzziness in regards to our subjective interpretation of objective data, but in regards to many religious claims (e.g. God exists), adequate objective data has not even been put forward to allow a logically supported interpretation. That's one of the differences between scientific claims and most religious claims.

Quote:In what way does reasoned logic require faith?

naive Wrote:I would say that if you were to add 2 coins together all day long, and they did not once equaled three. It would take faith to presume that they will *never* equal three. Extrapolation requires faith. With religious people their faith is not determined by experiments but rather by ancestral records and history. There must be a distinction between the beliefs that are held, and the processes used to facilitate the existence of any beliefs.  It is impossible to make a scientific extrapolation without the faith in math

These days science relies on falsificationism; the philosophical doctrine that scientific theories can only ever be disproven and never proven. However they can be supported, and if there is adequate supporting evidence and no contrary evidence, there is no reason to disbelieve the theory.

Canister Wrote:Science has aspects of it that are religious. There are some things in the scientific community that are hard to challenge because they are so widely accepted, and in that way you have a case. There's tons of examples I can give you but science as a whole isn't a religion.

Can you give an example?

Canister Wrote:All belief systems are fixated and can't be changed or challenged. Everything in science can be disputed and investigated.

I agree, but you seem to have contradicted your earlier implication that there are some dogmatic scientific theories which are not questionable.

Canister Wrote:Every scientist believes in uncertainty and theoretical ways of thinking so I don't understand the faith comparison. Everything we can't prove is theoretical and is shaped by the proven laws of the universe, this goes for black holes, the big bang, etc...

True.

Canister Wrote:My way of thinking is that everything is from perspective. I've personally never seen an elephant in my life so therefore they are only a theoretical existence to me.

You've never personally seen Obama, is he only of theoretical existence to you? You haven't personally seen me, am I of theoretical existence to you?

Canister Wrote:To me an elephant is in the same ball park as a unicorn.

There is plenty of evidence that elephants actually exist though. For instance: you could simply look at video evidence of elephants.

Canister Wrote:Only in this case you can argue faith is involved because I have faith in another persons experience.

I don't think it's another person's experience alone, in almost all cases, you would have had experiences which. supported their claim.

I think ptk said it quite well: "I believe that it depends on the person. For some people it does and for others it doesn't.  It all depends on the person.  There are those who blindly believe science without understanding it. People like that, use science as their religion because claiming to know something without actually have any idea if it's true or not is exactly what religion is."