Sam Harris - Science must destroy religion article

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by Candide West

Not at all, I’ve explained how this works, I didn’t say that experiences call themselves experiences and nor have I said that experiences detect themselves. In fact I’ve specifically explained that this is not necessary. Remember where I wrote

“There is no need for you to "detect" them (perceptions), or of you prefer your having those thoughts IS you detecting them."

"of you prefer your having.."?

“There is no need for you to "detect" them (perceptions), or of you prefer your having those thoughts IS you detecting them."

You equated "you" with your experiences (which include thoughts).

No, human morality is human morality. Bat morality is bat morality. Perhaps you’ve forgotten where this came from again? You asked for evidence of other species having systems of morality. So I provided it.

You asserted it without providing evidence of rational morality.

Indeed, we often find that several things make up a single act. For example the simple act of catching a ball, involves dozens of muscles, hundreds of muscular actions, thousands of nerve signals and vast numbers of calculations of velocity, position, force etc. So there’s nothing surprising in finding that the act of making a choice involves many processes.

"involves" <> "is".

People are different to each other,so treating people as equals means understanding that they are different and behaving differently with different people accordingly. So no, I don’t treat everyone equally in every respect, that would be patently silly. What I do is treat everyone as if they are equals.

In which respects?

Indeed, but definitions ARE definitions. And that is what we were talking about.

Morality consists of prescriptions.

So you are claiming that any act of “removing impediments” is because of “lust for pleasure”??? So when I asked my neighbour to move her car a bit because it was blocking the drive my justification was REALLY “lust for pleasure” even though I thought I just wanted to park my car?

Hitler's diabolical belief in Aryan supremacy is hardly comparable.

You tried to argue that any areligious environment must have been the product of a religious environment. Since we both know that humans were areligious before they were religious this is quite clearly incorrect. Indeed the inverse is actually correct.

Your time scale is distorted to prove your point.

And after the teaching of Jesus - The Golden Rule was not applied to the whole human race including men, women, children and enemies and almost all societies were patriarchal and opposed to equality.

Irrelevant.

Indeed this condition continued for over 1700 years before the situation started to change in some countries, and it’s only over the last 100 years that equality has become a realistic proposition. Oddly the last 100 years has also seen a huge decrease in the power of organised religions.

Irrelevant.

And once again I didn’t invent these axioms, I just identified them.

You inherited them.

Ah, perhaps you’ve forgotten the subject again, you said: “Catholics do not pick and choose from the fundamental beliefs and values of the Church.” Hence why I provided evidence that they DO.

Orthodox Catholics do.

Of course they do moral and immoral are not defined from good and evil. Those are religious concepts.

Philosophical concepts.

Of course I can, what I can’t do (and neither can you) is care about someone I don’t know to exist. For example do you care about my friend Ben and the issues he’s going through at the moment? Well you could say you care slightly more about him now than you did 5 minutes ago, because then you didn’t even know he existed. Let alone that he is going through a difficult time right now. No doubt if I told you more about him and his current situation you’d care more deeply about him as you came to empathise more with him. I guess you could say that you cared about him in the generic “I care about everyone” sense. But of course in that sense so do I.

Genuine Christians care deeply about every person even if they know nothing about that person because they see Christ in everyone.

This is of course exactly what we expect from the way that morality developed from our nature as a social species.

From the bloodstained history of the human race?

We are all humans, why should I consider some people to be unequal? Why should I overcome my own natural empathic response to others to stop myself caring?

Natural responses are an inadequate basis for morality - as the bloodstained history of the human race amply demonstrates...

[FurtherSuntime]

Originally Posted by Sair

One of the most detailed baseless assertions I've ever seen...

I don't think there is any real argument from the this camp, everything including translation is relative....

If an individual does not believe in spirit or God, then we would know if there is a God, the God would not believe in the individual....There is simply no common ground to enable an association...

[Candide West]

Originally Posted by yppop

Candide*
Thank you for the very extensive and well thought out response. We are on two sides of a very difficult- to-hurdle fence. On my side are those that believe God exists, on your side (I assume from your responses) are those that believe that God does not exist. *There is no way to prove either that God exists or God does not exist and what we are about is expressing opinions one way or the other.*

Fair enough, personally I think there is still room for belief in God even if one has a proper understanding of how the brain works. Obviously I personally don't hold that belief but I see nothing in this which would make religious beliefs necessarily untenable.

I am a devout Catholic and believe that the only soul I need worry about is my own, so I have no compelling need to proselytize anyone else; I merely am intrigued by the difference we hold in interpreting something we all experience, namely the "stuff" we call qualia. When Edelman describes consciousness as: the property of the dynamic core is a reflection of the capacity to make refined discriminations, he is linking qualia space to the brain. He calls this linkage, "phenomenal transform". This string of verbiage is what I mean by "explicatively implanting" (sorry, should have been stated it more simply).Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading two Edelman *books, I learned a lot. I also understand them.*

Apologies I did not intend to imply that you did not.*

*By the way, I interpret n-dimensional qualia space not as the 3-D color map -- that's physics -- but as the interaction of the various types of qualia. The 5 categories I presented in my post implies a 5-dimensionla qualia space.*

Indeed, I simply find that 3-dimensional colour mapping as an easy way to visualise a subset of qualia space. Personally I think you'd be looking at much higher dimensions than just 5 to consider a real qualia space type representation.*

I accept your contention that a quale is not a "thing"; sensations, feelings, emotions and the transcendental are too amorphous to have a specific identities'. My point is that they are real and immaterial and must be stored somewhere beside the neuronal circuitry. Surely there is one or more neuronal circuits that "entail" each quale, but those "material circuits" are not qualia; qualia are not material.*

In that I think you are correct. I would argue that the qualia if they are said to "be" anything in themselves then it is the pattern of neuronal relationships. And i suspect that anything that we might call an individual quale is in fact made up of thousands of neuronal relationships. Our brains certainly have plenty of capacity in relationships to do that and more.

Qualia are only part of what is stored in the non-material part of the mind (nous); there are also percepts, those images that allow us to "recognize" things. The "things" that we recognize (faces, trees, fords, etc.).are mapped as percepts in the nous to be used to recognize the face, the tree, the car.

I of course would argue that these are memories, no more mysterious in themselves than the memory of a computer (although in a lot of respects vastly more sophisticated).

Percepts and qualia are the main part of subjective reality. What you marvel at and find beautiful is inside your head. What is outside, objective reality, is for the most part, nothing more than configurations of photons, electrons, and quarks..*

Agreed and spectacular ones they are at that.

So when you and Sair are expressing the awe you feel when contemplating the marvel and beauty that matter induces, you are commenting on your subjective experience. *And subjective reality is firmly imbedded in the spiritual substance that I refer to as nous.

I understand that this is how you view this. And to be honest I have a great deal of respect for anyone who shares my admiration for the beauty of the universe and wants to understand more of it (and from the way you write it certainly sounds as if you do on both counts). However, I see no reason to posit anything "spiritual" to explain my subjective experience of reality.*
*

Now here is the idea on which I ground my belief that qualia and percepts are stored in something other than the neuronal circuits of the brain. The hydrogen atom is 30,000 the volume of its nucleus and that ratio increases with the number of protons defining an element., The volume of the hydrogen atom is defined by the presence *a single point. particle called the electron. Inside that volume are three point particles called quarks. This idea of point particles in extended volumes applies to all the elements The neuronal circuits in the brain, at the ground of reality, are nothing more than configurations of point particles immersed in a immaterial background. that I contend is the substance in which qualia and percepts are stored.*

Here I would raise the point of emergent properties. Many different things show emergent properties take a load of hydrogen and put it in one place and nothing happens. Put enough hydrogen in one place and you have a star undergoing nuclear fusion. Was there something special about the last bit of hydrogen you added before fusion started? No, it is just that it took you above the amount needed to create a star.*

Equally you get a transistor it can only be in a 1 or 0 state. That's never going to be anything much right? But of course we know that a pattern of transistor 1 and 0 states can be a photo, or a document or a program, or any one of any number of other things.*

In a computer memory where is the "picturyness" of a picture? Where is the redness of the red? None of those 1's or 0's are labeled "red" none of them even have a colour. Yet when it comes up on the screen or out of the printer the picture including the red bits are there. So where did the redness come from? Same as in our brains - patterns of association. So when the computer outputs data to the monitor to put red parts on the screen the screen knows what to do with them and shows them as red.*

[Sair]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

Natural responses are an inadequate basis for morality - as the bloodstained history of the human race amply demonstrates...

But that completely overlooks just how much of that bloodstained history was motivated by religious ideology, which was often constructed and pressed into service on behalf of territorial ambition. There is nothing that cannot be justified by the presumption of divine sanction.

[Candide West]

Originally Posted by Jehannette

I believe that there are excellent reasons to believe that spirits exist and that our conscious minds survive the annihilation of our physical brains.

Fair enough, to date I have neither heard, seen nor read anything which would provide me with reason to believe those things.

[DCNBILL]

Originally Posted by Candide West

Well that rather depends what you mean - "best" at what?*

This is actually one of the problems inherent to comparing systems of morality. Let's say I was debating morality with an Aztec priest (one of those chaps who used to rip the hearts out of people on their temples). I could say that his system was inferior to mine because it resulted in vast and gratuitous suffering. And no doubt he would say that mine was inferior because it would prevent their offerings from restoring the god Huitzilopochtli and could thus lead to the end of the world.

He might share my position that suffering is bad in a general sense but would certainly wish to avoid suffering himself, but I'm sure he'd argue that I wasn't seeing the big picture because I don't believe in*Huitzilopochtli and thus don't understand the importance of sacrificing human blood to renew his strength.*

This is a key challenge in systems of morality - the basis on which you establish your moral system defines what the system seeks to achieve. And therefore it's success criteria. If you establish your moral system on what is best for Huitzilopochtli then your moral system will be very good for achieving the requirements of*Huitzilopochtli (or at least the perceived requirements of*Huitzilopochtli, as I'm sure we are both in agreement that he doesn't actually exist).*

I have based my moral system on the nature of humans. So delivers a moral system which works well for humans (but is terrible for the perceived requirements of Huitzilopochtli).*

This is a very long answer to a very short question but I think the example makes the difficulty in identifying a "best" system of morality clear. You'd have to start with what it needs to be best AT and that would give you the basis for the moral code to achieve that objective.

You and God have a lot in common here.

Originally Posted by Candide West

Afraid not. I do my best but often falter.*

So you have personally set up a standard of moral codes for yourself that you know that you can not possibly follow all of the time? This in itself does not seem very logical.

[Gaber]

Originally Posted by Sair
But that completely overlooks just how much of that bloodstained history was motivated by religious ideology, which was often constructed and pressed into service on behalf of territorial ambition. There is nothing that cannot be justified by the presumption of divine sanction.

Yes, all that bloodshed was in the eyes of the participants, i'm sure, very moral for whatever reason. And Sair is right; both sides often go into battle with the surety of the backing of their god(s.) Aside from what piety might dictate as morality, or any particular faith system, morality has to do with dictating behavior that has to do with the welling of groups. No groups, no morality, only integrity. What might be of contention then is whose paradigm of morality do we choose and why. The Church hasn't been against wars in many cases, and if I'm not mistaken was to a degree and for a time ok with even the Nazi regime.

[Jehannette]

Originally Posted by Candide West

Fair enough, to date I have neither heard, seen nor read anything which would provide me with reason to believe those things.

How is your position falsifiable? What type of evidence would convince you?

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by Jehannette

r read anything which would provide me with reason to believe those things. How is your position falsifiable? What type of evidence would convince you?

Excellent question!

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by Gaber

Yes, all that bloodshed was in the eyes of the participants, i'm sure, very moral for whatever reason. And Sair is right; both sides often go into battle with the surety of the backing of their god(s.) Aside from what piety might dictate as morality, or any particular faith system, morality has to do with dictating behavior that has to do with the welling of groups. No groups, no morality, only integrity. What might be of contention then is whose paradigm of morality do we choose and why. The Church hasn't been against wars in many cases, and if I'm not mistaken was to a degree and for a time ok with even the Nazi regime.

Do you really believe the Catholic Church condoned a regime which killed priests and millions of the Chosen people?

The truth is many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the "crime" of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history....
The Dachau concentration camp was used by the Nazis for many of its most hated enemies. Among them were Catholic priests. Indeed, of the 2,720 clergy sent to Dachau, 2,579 were Catholic priests, along with uncertain numbers of seminarians and lay brothers. Most were Polish priests, 1,748 in all; there were also 411 German priests. Of the 1,034 priests who died in the camp, 868 were Polish. The priests were housed in a special "priest block" and were targeted for especially brutal treatment by the SS guards.
It is estimated that at least 3,000 other Polish priests were sent to other concentration camps, including Auschwitz, while priests from across Europe were condemned to death and labor camps: 300 priests died at Sachsenhausen, 780 at Mauthausen, and 5,000 at Buchenwald. These numbers do not include the priests who were murdered en route to the camps or who died from diseases and exhaustion in the inhuman cattle cars used to transport victims. Several thousand nuns were also sent to camps or killed on the way.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/art...on/pch0229.htm

You claim to be a Catholic yet your remarks in this and other posts give the opposite impression.

[FurtherSuntime]

The bottom line is people don't and cannot live up to their very own standards, they claim are priorities.

When peoples emotions come into play, without a solid belief to guide the way " as a true identity of realism"there is nothing but nothingness to militate against betraying their very own beliefs. Nothing.

Now that we know the full and I will say adamant atheist of which there are very few, has no fundamental reality other then self in applying all the wonderful prorities , its easy to see how atheist leaders in a country which is falling apart, go ahead and blow up everybody they can get their hands on, including their own.

Mankind wouldn't even of made it this far without some kind of belief. He would be extinct already. A few here and there as hunter-gatherer's returning to the old way. Law and order cannot be administered without a higher-power idea. When emotions and survival are on the table, the priorities and standards go right out the window in a snap.Theres more to this, self survival is implicated...but the bottom line is...No God idea...No man....Boom and thats it. Put that bomb in every countries back pocket and how many continents would be left for tomorrow mornings coffee...? Don't go blaming weird leaders all together, a bomb is the result of allowing things to get that far by all...it is a package which contains a communication understanding....a communication takes two. And people want to take in God we trust off the dumb coin....whats next...in money we trust?....ok sounds good for the popular CEO who rips everyone off.

Religion amplifies the dynamics of emotionality, so what happens is everything goes on expression mode but with people who have a sound spiritual devotion and live by it no matter what....thats the saver....we wouldn't even be here

What I'd like to see is the argument that would arise if a law was passed to limit all atheists to...all atheists jury ( hmmm everybody wants a fair trial and knows exactly where the honesty is in society when the chips are down on the table.

[LogisticsBranch]

Originally Posted by Candide West

The previous thread on this article seems to have closed. I'm guessing there is some time limit or post limit on these threads?

In any case there were a few interesting discussions in progress at the time so here's a new thread to continue them.

Thanks

Thank you for starting this topic. I will post my reply here since the other topic is now closed.

Originally Posted by Touchstone:
A 5 year old boy who is a son of a colleague where I work just died this past March of a brain tumor. A cruel, painful, terrible and slow death, with parents as committed and faithful and hopeful for a miracle from God that I've ever seen. And yet, God, in his evil genius ways, deigned it right and well that the girl Padre Pio healed miraculous had her vision restored. This monster of a god can see fit to work a "miracle at Fatima", but this young, innocent boy is ravaged and ruined before he is extinguished by cancer.

Christians, and many Catholics among them, are quite ready to tell me of their petty, pathetic "miracles" that bring them closer to God. I have to much desire to not admit the depths of God's evilness to believe them, because if they are right, YHWH is way more of a cruel demon than I can bear to contemplate. Frivolously wasting his supernatural interventions while so many innocent, desperate and deserving people go unhelped, alone, unanswered, forsaken by this "God of Love".
-TS

LogisticsBranch replied: Let me ease back into the topic "Science must destroy religion" by saying I'm very sorry to learn that your friend (colleague) no longer has his/her little boy. It wasn't God who killed the child. It was cancer. Maybe you would be kind enough to tell his parents who believe in God that I send them my love, knowing how difficult it must be though realizing that they must be surrounded with kind and loving friends and family that will support them at this time of sorrow. Oftentimes, having loving friends and family to comfort them is somewhat a miracle since there oh so many times a parent(s) may not have such and there are times a child has no parent or loved one at his or her side. I recall long ago flying to a bedside of a person(adult) because no family member wished to be present since they thought the individual was already dead because to them the person wasn't responding to them but did respond to me for a few moments before passing on.

Take care TS. I might ease again back into the topic in a few days.

http://forum.catholic.com/showthread...09#post9455909

Touchstone replied:

Thanks for the kind words, LogisticsBranch, but let me clarify a couple things on this.

1. I'm not saying God killed the child, and I also believe cancer killed the child. From the brief conversations I had with the father (it's a work relationship so there are practical limits to how far the exchange on this can go), they do not think anything like that either -- all agree cancer was the cause of death and no one suspects God of intervening in any way to cause the death of the child.

2. The cruelty, the indictment of God, then, comes from two conflicts:
a. Why was this beautiful young boy refused a supernatural intervention when Aunt Martha's goiter got miraculous healed or, (to use a case officially recognized by the RCC) Gemma di Giorgi's eyes were miraculously fixed up?
b. On the response (which is ubiquitous and inevitable) that "we just don't know the reasons", God's silence and removal on this question is ITSELF an immanent form of cruelty, a manifestation of evil. That is, this is the role a trixter demon would act: heh, watch this, we're gonna fix Aunt Martha's goiter, and then we will SERIOUSLY screw with the heads of this kid and his parents. Why not him? Why not heal this boy? Hahaha -- it's bad enough he succumbed and died for the parents, but now they get the lifelong additional suffering of wondering why I demurred in his when I granted a miraculous favor to Aunt Martha. And I ain't sayin' nothin'.

None of this has anything to do with causing the cancer itself, or blaming God for instigating the cancer, or the young man's agonizing, pathetic death. The accusations against God comes from God's capricious use of life saving miracles *elsewhere*, combined with the cruel silence he inflicts on the victims and those who care about the ones suffering as to the particular rationale (or lack of any rationale) that went into the decision.

I appreciate the compassion in you message. It saddens me to see such a noble disposition kneeling in front of God such as you imagine. It's not a miracle to have family, parents and friends come together in crises like this: this is as basic a feature of human nature as can be found. There is nothing less miraculous than that, and well it should be that way.

-TS
http://forum.catholic.com/showthread...687232&page=28

LogisticsBranch replies: It appears the topic “Science must destroy religion” has been closed, I would like to respond in this topic if that is ok. I do apologize for being late in replying to you but I have been extremely busy. First off, I do think you wrongly perceived my usage of “somewhat a miracle” to mean a supernatural event thus your rant. I would hope in the future you learn that the word miracle can have many meanings. I was using #2 and you were using #1.

2. One that excites admiring awe.

TS, you have misjudged me by insinuating I was using:

1.An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/miracle

You have falsely accused me. Think about it! I do kneel a lot while tending to my garden and when I kneel at church there are a few tears I will leave behind for you.

[Candide West]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

"of you prefer your having.."?

Ahh, I see that would be a typo. It should have read

“There is no need for you to "detect" them (perceptions), or IF you prefer your having those thoughts IS you detecting them."

The key point is to understand that there is no perception of perceptions - no inner perceiving that a perception occurred. That's where you were mostly going wrong before.

You equated "you" with your experiences (which include thoughts).

I am that which calls itself "I", yes.

You asserted it without providing evidence of rational morality.

I asserted that some species of animals have forms of morality, you challenged me for evidence (quite appropriately) and I have provided it. Nice how these things work isn't it

"involves" <> "is".

Incorrect. The action of catching a ball IS the combination of all of those actions required to catch the ball. In fact everything you think of as a single action (walking, having a drink, saying a word, etc) is made up of many actions.*

In which respects?

In whichever respects are relevant to the situation. Do you really need this stuff explaining Tony? These are basic rules of social interaction.*

Morality consists of prescriptions.

And in this case emerge from definitions, which is why we were talking about definitions, remember?

Hitler's diabolical belief in Aryan supremacy is hardly comparable.

Indeed, however one thing that they have in common us that neither has anything to do with a lust for pleasure. As you know full well. Again Tony, your position here is quite obviously untenable, you are arguing for the absurd.*

Your time scale is distorted to prove your point.

Nope, evolutionary timescales are well established.*Your problem here is not one of timescales but of having adopted an illogical position. It is entirely obviously that religious environments were preceded by non-religious environments.*

If you really struggle with understanding human evolutionary history then just look earlier on, did the dinosaurs have religion? No. Did they precede humans? Yes. So there was a non-religious environment that preceded any religious environment.*

Irrelevant.

Not at all. You admit that the golden rule existed before Jesus. We know that Jesus's teaching did not change the fact that it was not implemented. Therefore you have no basis to say attribute the teaching to him.*

Let's imagine an example. Let's say that I start telling everyone they shouldn't speed while driving, and for the next 1700 years after I die everyone keeps speeding as they have. Then in around 3700AD a social change occurs and people stop speeding. Do you think everyone should attribute the end of speeding to my teaching? Clearly not.*

You inherited them.

Well in the sense that everyone inherited them due to our human nature you're right, we ALL inherited them. Of course I didn't inherit them in the sense that someone told me what to base my morality on. The term there (as I said) is that I identified the axioms.

Orthodox Catholics do.

I'm sure you're correct. Indeed from the results in the survey the majority of Catholics do.*

Philosophical concepts.

If you say so, still the terms "moral" and "immoral" work perfectly fine, so I'll stick with those thanks.

Genuine Christians care deeply about every person even if they know nothing about that person because they see Christ in everyone.

Ah, so you do mean - in the generic 'I care about everyone' sense - well in that case yes of course, so do I, because we're all humans.

From the bloodstained history of the human race?

No, as I said "from our nature as a social species". Unfortunately our history is littered with examples of people setting these things aside to serve some "higher purpose" - often but not exclusively for religious reasons and alas frequently resulting in vast amounts of suffering and death.*

Natural responses are an inadequate basis for morality -*

Which is why I use axioms.

as the bloodstained history of the human race amply demonstrates...

And of course we can make the same pronouncement about religions as a basis for morality. Western Europe has been predominantly Christian and using Christian morality for well over a thousand years, how much bloodshed, suffering and death has it failed to prevent over that time.*

[Candide West]

Originally Posted by DCNBILL

You and God have a lot in common here. *

I'm afraid I don't agree with you there at all. But again I think this is a side issue so let's leave that one.*

So you have personally set up a standard of moral codes for yourself that you know that you can not possibly follow all of the time? *This in itself does not seem very logical.

Not at all, the same system applies to virtually anything. When I write papers I aim to do so with no typos, grammatical errors or missing information. I fail at this regularly (look at my post above to Tony) but that doesn't mean I lower my target, why would I? Racing drivers aim for an optimum lap for the fastest speed possible, do they ever achieve it? Nope, but they keep trying. Does a orchestra start a piece aiming to make only 10 errors while playing it? No they aim for perfection, even though they know that that it isn't truly attainable.*

We do this in every aspect of our lives, set ourselves "ideal" targets to aim for while acknowledging as we do so that we're almost inevitably going to miss them to some extent.*

But we always aim to improve and indeed thats what we would expect from our evolutionary development as well - an iterative process of improvement.*

[Candide West]

Originally Posted by Jehannette

How is your position falsifiable? *What type of evidence would convince you?

Oh, I'm not picky, if the Christian idea of God exists then he knows every possible iteration of evidence which would convince me. And I'm sure there are far more than I can think of. He can pick whichever he pleases.

A common mistake incidentally is to mistake evidence that people believe in gods for evidence that gods exist. The two are entirely different things.