Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:In the beginning, I agreed with what you were saying. Later I began to notice a thread of idealism and even religiosity in your comments.
The word is "project" not "notice." Your very limited, rigid and narrow categories are probably the cause of this. This is a typical symptom of ideology -- oversimplifying the world and forcing everyone and everything into narrow rigid categories. There is no "idealism" whatsoever in anything I said and according to the definition YOU GAVE, I am 100% realist. Though perhaps you did a piss poor job defining your sort of "realism" after all, and you forgot to mention all the mumbo jumbo special handshakes needed to prove one a member of your little cult ideology.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote: I still remain in agreement with much of what you have said. However, there is a point of fundamental difference between us, which I will get to in a moment.
On 15th November, you said in substance that although there is a need to adjust one’s “subjective” apprehension of reality to the findings of science, it is not the case that one should do so because these findings correspond to reality, for science has nothing to do with reality itself but only with its subjective apprehension.
No I never said any such thing, so that must be the mental construct talking in your head again.
1. Yes there is a need to adjust one's subjective apprehension of reality to the findings of science.
2. No it is not the case that there is no correspondence between science reality.
3. No it is not the case that science has nothing to do with reality itself.
4. What I said is that science is not EQUAL to reality, nor is the universe equal to reality.
5. I already explained this like a window and you agreed. What you see through a window gives you information on what is out there, but what you see is not equal to the totality of what is out there.
6. I also gave the example of the Ptolemaic picture of the universe. It shows there can be a very high degree of correspondence with particular evidence, in this case the movement of the planets in the sky of earth, and yet it can still not be a very good picture of everything.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:It seemed to me that this was a clumsy way of expressing the Kantian view that science only concerns itself with appearances (phenomena) and not with reality (noumena). Incidentally, by his own admission, Kant made this distinction “to make room for God.”
You seem very stuck on Kant. Perhaps this dialogue with your imaginary version of myself is the fullfillment of your fervent desire to talk to Kant rather than me.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:Naturally, I was surprised at your use of the word “subjective” in this context and began to suspect that you were heading down the road to idealism.
Ah yes the typical slippery slope rhetoric of the ideologue. I would recognize that BS anywhere. Next is the "with me or against me" speech, telling us how we have to agree with every stupid thing you say in order to be one of the "good guys" rather than the "bad guys."
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:On 18th November, you said in essence that it is “useless speculation” to ask if things known through science actually exist outside us and are the source of our knowledge of them.
Incorrect. what I said was this...
As to whether some things "exist in their own right," I am not entirely sure what you mean by that but it looks highly philosophical to me. BUT I agree that it is only natural to presume that things known objectively are thus things which exist outside of us and are the source of our knowledge about them. But whether this is really the case is largely irrelevant and thus a useless speculation.It is natural to presume this and so I assume this to be the case, but no I am not going to get into as snit like you do over it, like this is some dogma we must believe in for our salvation or something. But as I have said elsewhere, we have excellent evidence that an objective reality exists,
but we do not have evidence that reality is exclusively objective. So once you are finished burning all your strawmen fetishes in your Sunday rant, the real difference between us comes down to the part underlined and what I said immediate after the quote above.
My "middle position" stance is that I will not jump to the conclusion that things known subjectively are thus things which don't exist outside of us to be the source of subjective knowledge about them. We cannot objectively establish which is the case either way. Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:You added, in essence, that because such things as God cannot be disproved by science, it could not be said that one is not justified in believing them because of the findings of science.
No that was the little straw construct in your head talking again. Whether this is a deliberate fabrication, an overactive imagination, or the beginnings of schizophrenic delusion, I do not know. All I know is that an exhaustive search of the text reveals nothing even remotely similar. So let's step outside your fantasies and go to the REAL person and see what he actually says on the matter, shall we?
1. No, science does not speak on the topic of God's existence.
2. Yes, there is
ultimately no objective evidence either way on this topic.
3. However, this does not mean the findings of science are irrelevant to the topic. Depending on the way you have defined God, there may indeed be objective evidence against the existence of a god defined in such a way. Science can rule out many things that people have or might claim about God.
4. So yes, within these constraints, you are therefore free to make your own choices on the subject for whatever subjective reasons you choose. Naturally, there are scientists of all persuasions on this issue, because although there are those who have turned science into a kind of religion for themselves, that is not what science is really about at all. Science is defined by a methodology not by a set of beliefs.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote: This double negative translates to: One can properly believe in God if that is what he wants and science has no bearing on the question.
From the above we can see that Neri's "translation" has missed the mark by quite a margin. I suspect the reason for all this desperate twisting of words and double talk is that Neri wants to make the argument from ignorance that if we cannot know from science and the objective evidence then we have to agree with his subjective opinion about the existence of God. Why else would Neri get so riled up by the idea that we are free to make our own decisions about the existence of God? Neri's fantasies might include science eventually proving all his opinions to be right at some time in the future. But here in the real world we can see that Neri's fantasies tend to diverge from reality quite a bit.
Correct.
Correct. I did not say those words. You made that up. You lied.
This so called implication was only in your head. It was that little straw construct version of me that you keep having your discussion with that said this, not I. And it is a construct build upon these few, rigid, and narrow categories that you want to stuff people into.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote: Further, the question of the existence of God is, after all, the subject of the present inquiry. That being the case, it was proper to comment on any suggestion that a belief in God is justified even if there is no evidence to support it.
Incorrect. As I reminded BJ, the subject was not God but a particular argument for the existence of God.
But you are certainly free to broach this topic. I just suggest that you talk to the real people involved rather than the fantasies in your head for whom you make up their side of the conversation as well as your own.
Neri » November 20th, 2017, 9:46 pm wrote:The proposition that God exists is an empirical and not an analytic one and as such requires empirical proof. Absent such proof, no one is justified in believing such a thing. This is my position.
Incorrect. According to this the creationists should have their theory taught in schools along side evolution as an alternative hypothesis. But God is not a proper scientific hypothesis at all. It is NOT a falsifiable proposition and thus it not any kind of empirical question. People like you and Dawkins who play this game turn science into a tool of rhetoric for their subjective opinions and that is pseudo-science not science and they begin to sound more and more like creationist themselves because of it.