Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival - Session 1

[UniversalRee]

Listening to these talks is like going to church, as I remember it (I'm a fully lapsed Mormon, without the personal motiviation to get my name off the church rolls): some speakers are better than others, some more interesting. The advantage, here, is it's not a potpourri of wishful thinking and indoctrination in a creed that does not represent reality. I'm not too old to learn stuff, and I love hearing people who agree with me talk.

[hasenj]

He made a factual mistake about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt wanting to stop science education. This is simply not the case.

[robobrain10000]

Lawrence Krauss reminds me of Leonard from The big bang theory. 

[rockgrandioso]

I really like the idea of "teaching is seduction" from the second speaker. I teach kids at a summer camp about nature and outdoor skills and they have really lost touch/interest in that realm at large. You have to go to where they are culturally and personally in that moment-help them transition into a realm of perception closer to what you're teaching, then they become receptive. I think Comedians work the same way-- They get you to come around to a different perspective and laugh. Seduction.

[ogp12]

So can one be a scientist and be religious at the same time?

[TheScienceFoundation]

@ogp12 As much as you can believe in intangible magic while understanding the real world.

[enlightendbel]

@TheScienceFoundation thing is, and I know plenty of people that are like it, there are people that can be 100% devoted to their science, without bringing their other beliefs into it, go home, put aside their science and turn into complete bible thumpers.

People are able to split their mind that way, without reason, beyond reason.

[stephenddblyth]

@ogp12 no! science is the quest for fact, not myth. myths can almost always be de bunked my fact.

[ogp12]

@stephenddblyth Which is why science is overy concerned with matter and fails to provide answers for any ontological questions.

[stephenddblyth]

@ogp12 like what?

[ogp12]

@stephenddblyth How life originated? What was before the big bang? When did the laws of physics emerge? How do lizards regenerate limbs? One has to be extremely stubborn not to see the long list of questions science fails to even begin answering.

[LuqmanNaq]

@ogp12 So are you proposing a 'god of the gaps'?

[ogp12]

@LuqmanNaq I'm proposing 'we have no idea', but just because something contradicts the mainstream 'model' doesn't mean we should discard it.

[LuqmanNaq]

@ogp12 Ok, an 'interesting idea' would be called a hypothesis, meaning it has no evidence supporting it. The problem is when people try to say that because something is unknown that religious/new age dogma has the answers - it's called the god of the gaps argument. Simply saying 'I don't know is fine', scientists are normally open when the say they don't know something, or if they are just presenting a hypothesis. Are you religious?

[ogp12]

@LuqmanNaq It depends on what you mean by religious. I'm not christian, buddhist, muslim etc. See, I watched this video a while ago and don't quite remember what was said in it. Also, I don't think I have matured enough intellectually to fully back my opinions. My disillusionment with science comes from the fact that I am involved with academia and in my opinion science/research has lost its true mission for a variety of reasons. Youtube is also not the place to be having serious discussions.

[wraith168]

@ogp12 Saying we have no idea is fine. That's is what any go scientist would say and then they would go looking for the answers to what we don't know. Saying we have no idea and then attributing our lack of knowledge to a an all powerful being that can do anything we can imagine without a shred of credible evidence of a being like that existing is not the way to go. As someone already said, that is a god of gaps. Unless evidence is presented it should be discarded.

[ogp12]

I don't feel prepared to support my argument well, but I meant to say that for an individual they serve the same purpose. I would disagree that they are opposites, rather two different phenomena things that do contradict on some subjects

[TheScienceFoundation]

@ogp12 They're polar opposites, they 'contradict' in the sense that accounts given by mythology contradict reality.

[ogp12]

science is the new religion, has its dogma has is priests, it's the new thing on the block

[TheScienceFoundation]

@ogp12 Science is the opposite of religion, science works by what we can know empirically.

[enlightendbel]

@TheScienceFoundation Not only that, but the greatest mind in science can be tossed to the sidelines when persisting to pursue a falsified train of thought.

No matter what obvious faults and flat out wrongs, a religious text or figure expresses, its instantly dogma and can't be believed to be wrong.

[Teltaminoru]

@TheScienceFoundation If science is the opposite of religion... how do you explain the existence of believer scientists? And I mean extraordinary scientists: Newton, Pasteur, Pascal, Leibnitz, Stokes, Francis Collins, etc. Its like a nazi sionist, like a nazi soviet, like a rifleman samurai, a christian muslim, a dry water, a square circle, a multicellular cell. So tell me, are they a kind of impossible (but real) phenomen, or maybe science and religion are not opposites?

[TheScienceFoundation]

@Teltaminoru I've never said they were opposites. If you do note though, all modern scientists of mention who are also theists realize they're two separate facets of their lives.

[stephenddblyth]

@Teltaminoru religion requires "faith" to exist. science does not. fact and faith are totally oppostite. theorioes in science are faith with out true testing and evaluation that is always undertaken. thats how religion still exists because people blindly cling on to faith as if its a vertue. silly silly silly!!

[Teltaminoru]

@stephenddblyth According with your viewpoint, there is a misteryous paradox here: If science is so great and religion so silly, why is religion so strong, TODAY, in an age of science? You may say: because the people is silly, but I ask myself how silly is religion. Remarkable scientists along the centuries have believed in God, passionately, I don´t think they were silly. If science and faith are opposites... then why can a scientist believe in God?

[stephenddblyth]

@Teltaminoru im not talking about god just religion, they are to differing things. religion is based in opinion and faith that most of the time can be de bunked by science or will be. most scientists if they believe in 'a' god of some kind, they may say yes whether they believe in religion they will prob say 'which one' just having more than one religion makes them all invalid by assosiation.

[wraith168]

@Teltaminoru Sure thru the centuries many great scientists held on to their faith. Their beliefs were still colored by their faith and a lack of understanding of the world around them. The more humans learned the less the idea of a god was needed. As the centuries have passed, scientists that hold on to some faith in a god have drop considerable to the point where the great majority of modern scientists don't believe in the existence of a god.

[bizzee1]

What we should do is put a teapot in orbit around the Sun to solve that Bertrand Russel argument once and for all! The teapot should have a radio beacon in it so that we can always find it and never have to wonder if there is a teapot in orbit around the Sun ever again. :)

[kevinscales]

@bizzee1 But we will still never know if there was one there today :(

[WeirdD1986]

religion gave its to humanity now is time for science

[SomethingSea1]

1:23:00

A year and 1/4 days.

[CognosSquare]

What a treat!

[sahandpar]

WOW! Awesome!!!