Gosh Golly.... there sure are a lot of big words in there-- and latin phrases.

This is not an attack, merely an observation.  

YARN wrote:

BTW - I am not trying to debunk using induction. I am just pointing out that we do not have airtight justifications.  

The whole point of our approach is that we don't seek  airtight justifications. It is this assumption that airtight justifications are required to gain useful understanding of the world that is the source of the 'problem of induction'.

 You keep going on about the limitations of reason etc. We fully acknowledge this, as does Science. We have said this repeatedly.

What, pray, is your alternative to reason? 

Rhad,

 I am glad that you have a sense of humor. I wouldn't take a lot of what I say too seriously.   

"YARN, are you actually reading my posts,"

Yes, I am reading your posts. I think that a lot of what you say makes good sense. At bottom, I am not sure that we disagree about that much.

"or just skimming them for hot button issues? I specifically acknowledged the value of the Philosophy of Science."

Fair enough. I was just a little taken aback by your off-hand dismissal of philosophy in regard to induction.    

"To say anyone elevates the ideal of reason to the status of a religion does seem to be broadening the definition of 'religion' to virtual meaninglessness."

As Tadangst(?) pointed out, I am arguing somewhat colloquially here. His criterion of believing in something for which one has no proof offers one brightline -- and there are some people who think that reason can do stuff that it can't. There are some people who hold out for certainty in a world of probability. What is so threatening about the idea that some irrational people get carried away with reason? I submit that you should concede this point.  

Just for fun, let's look at the situation anthropologically:

Do you have a God-term? Yes (reason)

Do you have a Devil-term? Yes (God)

Do you have apostles/prophets? Yes (Dawkins, Dennett, etc.) 

Are people here working hard to spread the faith? Yes

Do people congregate here to share their faith and support their paradigm? Yes 

Is there a collection plate? Yes (I see the names of supporters as a write these words) 

Does your world-view involve deep metaphysical commitments? Yes

Does your group express contempt or intolerance for people who do not share your deep commitments? Yes (See your own comments below)  

Does this literally make atheism a religion? Perhaps not, but there are some striking similarities. Again, I was making a weak claim about defective versions of rationality.    

"I repeat, what is your alternative to reason?"

Lemon flavored skittles, whiskey, and Xbox 360 -- oops, wait a second, I never argued that we need an alternative to reason to begin with. My alternative to one form of reason can only be another form of reason -- our argument should center on what sorts of reasons are adequate.    

"And if you want audacious, the area of study I definitely and un-apologetically regard as not valid, as a real waste of time and space, that would be Theology."

Well, I guess it's a good thing I am not a theologian.  

BTW: Nietszche dropped by and gave me the bad news.HUBBLE IS DEAD! Take that deep field imagery! -- Just kidding I too shall miss Hubble images.   

At any rate, don't get your blood pressure up - I am just playing a dialectical game here.  

I am not surprised you were taken aback by my comments on Philosophy in general. It is as likely to be a source of error as useful information, unless it closely checks its premises and conclusions against more rigorous disciplines. if they still think there is a 'problem of induction', that to me just indicates how irrelevant they are. Seriously, they can go and join their even more useless colleagues in Theology .

I hope you aren't someone who takes people like Anselm of Canterbury seriously, or in more contemporary context, Alvin Plantinga .

I am glad you admitted you were not being entirely serious here, otherwise I would have to take serious issue with your mapping of my attitude to reason to aspects of religion, it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously anyway.

Thoroughgoing, informed, rationality/reason is aware of all the limits and limitations of human reason and takes this into account along with everything else in making judgements about the nature of reality.

Are there people who consider themselves rational who aren't as fully informed on these things as others? Well, d'uh!

Oh, and since Servicing Mission 4 has been approved, "These upgrades will keep Hubble functioning at the pinnacle of astronomy well into the next decade". (http://hubblesite.org/servicing_mission_4) And "We are continuing to make excellent progress in our preparations for the servicing mission, which is presently targeted to fly in September 2008." (most recent News Release on Hubble from NASA Jan. 29, 2007)

News flash, not all atheists are uppy, RRS types. Heck, there are atheists that don't like science and reason and the like.

But then again, I shouldn't expect much when you like to do blanket statements, and continuus self-touching-term-changing. 

this sounds a lot like you are saying we would hate to have a god. 

Again, not all athiests are the uppy, RRS types. And even more self-touching-term-changing.

*Sigh*, this kinda sounds like a small sample fallacy.

"HUURRR HHUUURR!!! RRS therefore all atheists (It's like me saying Hitler, therefore all xians and subgroups) . The Rational Responce Squad does not represent all atheists, heck I don't even agree with the idea that theism is inherenly irrational, but The more I see the theists that hang around here, the more I start thinking "I could be wrong!"

That's bone dead obvious to anyone capable of a sober reading of your post.  

As usual, you have no ability to comprehend what is actually said to you.

1) It's not narcissism for a mod to get the board to stick to a topic. It is your narcissim that is in question: your need to talk about whatever pleases you, damn the thread, and your need to go on about yourself rather than stick to the issues...

2) However, at the same time, you've been invited, continually, to speak about whatever you want - make whatever thread you like   - What I've told you is that your comments in regard TO MY POSTS ought to stick to the topic, seeing as you are responding to my posts about the topic! This is why other comments you made had no relevance.

You will be utterly unable to follow these simple points, so I only write them for posterity.

YARN wrote:

If your “conversion” to atheism was built upon a rhetorically puffed-up case for reason, you stand to be scandalized when you someday learn that human knowledge is not a crystalline palace, but “Neurath’s raft.”

Personally, I never found anything remotely convincing in the God story, so I never experienced a "de-conversion".

You are again making this extreme dichotomy between perfection and unavoidable biases. I'm prepared to accept that some atheists may have such a misunderstanding about the possibility of perfect knowledge, but does seem more the domain of Theists, at least those stupid enough to take the concept of Revelation seriously. I doubt anyone here makes that assumption.

As I said before, the idea of our finite minds and senses achieving perfect knowledge about anything is deeply irrational. I honestly don't think your point is valid wrt to the vast majority of atheists.

Any such problems with the atheist, rational approach to gaining some sort of understanding of reality apply in spades to the Theist position. Their "raft" firmly settled to the bottom of the sea long ago.

“That's bone dead obvious to anyone capable of a sober reading of your post.”

Dem’ bones are gonna rise up! You give Bob props for not holding philosophy in contempt, but I am not so sure. Consider what he says later on:

“I am not surprised you were taken aback by my comments on Philosophy in general. It is as likely to be a source of error as useful information, unless it closely checks its premises and conclusions against more rigorous disciplines. if they still think there is a 'problem of induction', that to me just indicates how irrelevant they are. Seriously, they can go and join their even more useless colleagues in Theology .”

We get the disarming smiley face at the end, but Bob clearly does not respect philosophy as much as you do. You told me to wait and see what he says – well he said it. Philosophy isn’t completely useless, just mostly useless – not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“you can't discourse with someone who can't even read your post properly.”

Huh, I don’t get it. Can you say the middle thing again?

“1) It's not narcissism for a mod to get the board to stick to a topic. It is your narcissim that is in question: your need to talk about whatever pleases you, damn the thread, and your need to go on about yourself rather than stick to the issues...”

If you take a look at the title and point of this thread (“Reality is a Religion”) I am clearly within the topic area – I have advocated a weak version of this claim “Reality can be made into a religion.” No, I have not championed the case of the OP, but so what? You only have a handful of people posting here anyway. I give you arguments and you play traffic cop.

“2) However, at the same time, you've been invited, continually, to speak about whatever you want - make whatever thread you like - What I've told you is that your comments in regard TO MY POSTS ought to stick to the topic, seeing as you are responding to my posts about the topic! This is why other comments you made had no relevance.”

You’re so vain – you probably think this post is about you, don’t you? Your comments have been made in response to my comments. You are now hooked on the horns of your own dilemma. 1. Either I am now topical, because you have made me topical be including me in your “official” discussion of the thread OR 2. Your own comments are off topic because they are meta-thread topics. You have just made a whole flurry of non-topical posts because they are centered on little ole me.

No doubt when I post a thread you will tell me it is in the wrong forum and so on. Don’t get mad at me just because I refuse to take your ill-conceived invitation fo rme to impugn contrapositive negation. Am I only on topic if I attempt to prove the 2 + 2 = -23.6?

“Yes, this is the typical error found in this theistic complaint: give me perfect or else universal skepticism rules the day! The theist never gives us his perfect reason for accepting that reason need to be perfect to work.”

Cough, cough. Excuse me while I take these words out of my mouth. If you had actually read my posts, you would have noted that I never launched a jihad on human reason. I am not arguing for universal skepticism. I am just trying to be honest about human reason (pointing out its limits and the possibility of confusing the map with the territory) and it appears to be getting you bent out of shape – hence I have made the observation of a certain panicky “twitch” amongst the faithful apostles of universal reason. To even point this out gets you mod-smacked, accused of illiteracy, and goaded with pointless challenges. You will be utterly unable to follow these simple points, so I only write them for posterity.

"Because it's an "The atheists are.." thing.

Of course it's not just towards me only"

I am glad that, unlike tadangst, you realize that I am not talking directly and only to you -- but then again, if you read my comments carefully, you will note that they are not directed to all atheists everywhere -- my anthropological comments were based on what I see on this website. I didn't say, for example, that all atheists pass the collection plate - I said that atheists here are pumping the faithful for cash. NPR also pumps their faithful for cash, so obviously this is not a sufficient condition. Then again, NPR doesn't have promos that encourage people to record themselves taunting people who don't see the world in the same way that they do (e.g., "OK, go down to your Clear Channel radio and tell them that you reject the RNC in the most a--hole way you can think of and post it YouTube!" ). You will also note that I only claimed that there are striking similarities with religion. "Religion" is not so easy a thing to define. The easist method is simply to point to people who claim that they are a religious group, but this quickly runs aground when we find some religions calling other religions "cults". We would need to find an agreeable way to define our terms before seriously attempting to test the claim that atheism is a religion. This, however, leads me to my final point - you will note that I lead off the observation with the words "just for fun" - funny how the joke is never all that funny when it comes at your expense, isn't it? And here we have another similarity with religion - no sense of humor when the shoe is on the other foot.

this particular problem seems to be easy to address. i think it is safe to say that yarn wasn't talking about you. if it seemed like he/she did, that was a mistake or a misinterpretation.

i have been viewing this discussion go back and forth and i have been able to appreciate points on both sides. i don't think yarn is way off the mark and i would even go as far as saying todangst and yarn aren't as different as todangst is making it out to be.

todangst: what do you think yarn is trying to say?

Hey, what do you know, I haven't paid too.

In fact I had an idle account for a couple of weeks, with no posts, nothing. and even then no one e-mailed/PM'ed for cash. 

YARN:

I presume referring to the title of this thread as "“Reality is a Religion" rather than "Reason is a religion" was a typo? Since you then go on to talk about a claim that “Reality can be made into a religion", perhaps not. Must be problems with your reading comprehension, as I had already suspected .

Once again, your key point about the "limits of Reason" and other reasoning 'traps' related to our finite minds, is not an issue for most of us here - we are aware of this, why do you keep trying to make a big deal of it?? Is that your only point??

Your comments continually over-state the issues, whether it is the 'problem of induction', our 'twitchiness', your own key point in this thread, or my view of philosophy.

This sort of rhetoric gets stale very quickly.

With regard to philosophy, I have already painstakingly laid out just what I do and do not respect about the subject, your reaction suggests someone who has spent way too much time reading philosophy and assuming it necessarily has inherent truth value. Its value is very much dependent on the inclinations and intellect of the individual philospher. Out of philosophers of earlier centuries, David Hume stands out for me. I can hear you muttering, "well of course a skeptic would like Hume, wouldn't he". I don't care much for Hegel or Kant.

Biggest problem with argument that is not restrained by the disciplines of science, is that as an argument becomes more elaborate, goes thru more and more chains of logic, the greater the risk that a slight unnoticed slide in the interpretation of a proposition or an individual term, especially when dealing with grand generalized concepts, can propagate a progressively wider divergence from the 'true' path, leading to an ultimately wildly inaccurate conclusion.

This also a risk in scientific theories, but the requirements of independent checking against the data and replication of results will eventually catch this.

But when you are arguing about the abstractions of philosophy, this is not readily applied. So it is really up to the individual to decide whether the conclusion is sufficiently consistent with his current world-view to just adopt the idea as a useful concept, maybe with some adjustments, or reject it entirely, or somewhere in between. If they can identify a flaw in the argument, so much the better, but the jargon has become pretty opaque.

For just about any abstract philosophical idea, there are usually a flock of alternatives from other sources with just as apparently valid an argument, but with entirely contradictory conclusions.

Todangst has a somewhat different regard to various aspects of Philosophy to myself, but I strongly suspect that we have a lot in common - like respect for David Hume, among other things. Noticing such individual variations in assessment of such things is not a major achievement, after all there is much subjectivity and complexity involved.

We are not all clones of each other, especially not of your imagined  fanatical reason-deifying Atheist/Rationalist.

I think we contest your point about 'reason as a religion' because it really seems to be stretching the concept of religion to breaking point.

I would have been more ready to assume that you weren't about to spring some Theist argument on us if you made the more general point about the inherent fallibility and uncertainty of all human perceptions or assumptions about reality, all feelings of 'knowing' something, whether based on what we think of as reason, or faith (in the religious sense, not the ordinary sense of a stronger form of 'trust' ), or 'revelation', 'gut feelings', a priori assumptions, etc.

We also get irritated at your tendency to make unwarranted assumptions about our positions, like assuming todangst was a Platonist and I essentially dismissed all Philosophy, just to name two examples.

I really like damasio.  Decartes' error was good, but I really liked his later book called The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the making of Consciousness.  It was the best book about the subject I've read to date, as it contains scientific studies and research in addition to the usual philosophical srgumentation that we get from people like Dennett. 

Shaun