[FRIAM] God in Science and Religion (was Re: why some people hate cops)

Fri Sep 25 19:25:40 EDT 2020

This isn't in response to Nick, just a convenient place to hit "Reply" in a
thread in which I've already deleted most of the past messages. My own take
on why to hate religion and/or religious people is based on my upbringing
in and around a population of fairly uneducated, intolerant religious
bigots in northeast Kansas. There was one, and only one, "true" way to
believe, and that was a "fire and brimstone" authoritarian father figure as
"God", and us poor mortals as worms whose only hope to escape painfully
burning for eternity in hell, was to admit how much filth we are and beg
humbly and fervently for forgiveness for being that way. I grew up
believing all that crap. I loved nature, so I was drawn to biology.
Unfortunately, my high school biology teacher was a deacon in the Baptist
church and fervent creationist. I went to University to study biology, with
a huge chip on my shoulder, determined to prove these evolution-believing
numbskull professors of their folly. I basically wasted the first three
years of my college education believing that creationist shit. Somehow I
finally saw through it and became a "born-again atheist". My hero is
Richard Dawkins. In my case, that was the only way I had been exposed to
religion, and once I rejected it, I've found it much easier (maybe I'm
lazy) to reject religion out of hand with the same fervor that those
intolerant people of my childhood did, and continue to, embrace it.

On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 5:04 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> reiteration of evidence to Eric the deep disdain and hatred many in Science
>
>
>
> Yeah.  Richard Dawkins and three other loonies.  I was in a chatgroup with
> hard scientists, etc., from all over the world for about a year, and I was
> the only avowed non-religious person on the chat.  The european physicists
> were all dedicated cartesians seeking truth in the real world … I e, the
> world that god knows and we aspire to know.   Any belief in a world beyond
> experience is a religious belief.
>
>
>
> I persist in thinking the key word is “hate”, here.   The way you speak
> these “many”,  with their “deep distain and hatred” in such sweeping terms,
> it seems that you hate them.  So what exactly is hate.  I think it’s an
> attempt to recruit allies to expell the target from one’s universe, to
> exile them. But Frank is right:  There is an element of “*get thee behind
> me”* in hatred.  You cannot hate what you don’t feel in some degree
> attached to.  So the key to resolving hatred is to find the tie that binds
> one to the thing one hates, and snip it.  Once you have done that, one
> doesn’t need allies any more.   You just walk away.
>
>
>
> So, Steve.  What do you find *attractive* in the scientistic denial of
> faith?  I am guessing that it has to do with their claim of certainty. But
> certainty is something that ony a religious person can have.    Or, to put
> it round the other way, Whenever we speak with  certainty, we are speaking
> from the religious side of ourselves. As I am doing right now.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Stephen Guerin
> *Sent:* Friday, September 25, 2020 10:41 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] God in Science and Religion (was Re: why some
> people hate cops)
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 5:42 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
> I don’t, for example, recognize quantum mechanics as truth.  If it turns
> out there is a convincing explanation why nature has to be this way, then
> it has to be this way and the “divine” has been cornered.   If nature can
> be some other way, in regimes that are hard for today’s technology to
> observe, then those are interesting qualifications or alternative models.
>  It’s all just provisional.
>
>
>
> I brought up Planck's views for two reasons:
>
>    - His views on religion and his rejection of its foundation of miracle
>    and superstition
>    - His challenge to the most sophisticated of scientists with
>    "generalized world views" that an understanding/model of "God" is a worthy
>    goal for a scientist.
>
> While I think Action and Bidirectional Path Tracing in Dual Fields is a
> potential model (Glen and Jon can unpack that in a steel man) I don't want
> to get distracted by the "How" the synthesis might happen. To borrow from
> Eric Smith in the Jim Rutt Podcast
> <https://jimruttshow.blubrry.net/the-jim-rutt-show-transcripts/transcript-of-episode-40-eric-smith-on-the-physics-of-living-systems/>:
> "we shouldn’t try to spin scenarios at this point".
>
>
>
> And for full disclosure, upon reflection, my post was mostly targeted at
> Eric Smith after I saw his comment on Marcus's post.
>
> First was to use Marcus's post as a reiteration of evidence to Eric the
> deep disdain and hatred many in Science have for Religion which we've
> talked about in the past and second to potentially engage Eric as one of
> the few scientists I know with a sufficient "generalized world view" to see
> the most basic patterns in Science and attempt a synthesis. If not leading
> the synthesis, at least playing bullshit detector and helping in pointing
> out potential formalizations.
>
>
> FWIW,  Eric's close colleague, the late Harold Morowitz, expressed similar
> views as Max Planck.
>
>      see:
> https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Joy-Local-Pain-Scientist/dp/0684184435
>
>
>
> I know Eric is resistant at the value or even the worthiness of this
> pursuit. I put this out as a public challenge to Eric and he can decline.
> I think it could be one of the greatest scientific contributions of our
> time.
>
>
>
> To Marcus, Glen and Jon, I will try to refrain from casting pearls ;-p
> (meant in humor)
>
> -Stephen
>
>
>
>
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