Don't let anyone tell you that there's anything absurd or ridiculous about nihilism. It follows logically from skepticism, and is no less rational than agnosticism or theism. If it weren't for their tendency to deny objective morality, I might be more inclined to be persuaded by this theory.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I've been trying to clarify my views on this subject and haven't attacked you personally that I can see.

It's tempting to get off topic into a whole lit crit thing here but I have to agree about the effect of a good novel at least. (I gather that you can imagine science ultimately accounting for the whole range of human experience, but I have to shudder to think how the scientific mentality might go about dealing with the poverty of experience and empathy such a book can cure by itself).I know Tolstoy is known for his religious phase later and Anna Karenina has a lot of religion in it too, but Russian Orthodoxy is so much part of the Russian culture of the time it seems to me that mostly he just couldn't have left it out. However, he does seem to have a particular interest in all the forms and details of it.But I don't see that his "vision" is religious in the story as a whole, just that religion is given quite a bit of attention in it. Do you see the story itself, the details of the various lives, as conveying a religious message of some sort?Anyway I found the section about Levin's brother and have been reading it, so when I finish it maybe I'll have more to say about your view of it.Meanwhile I found this interesting paragraph. Levin's wife Kitty has persuaded Levin's dying brother to take the sacrament, and he rather pathetically tries hard to pray and get himself into a religious frame of mind. As a Protestant I can't help but be appalled at the reliance on external forms, the "holy picture" they set up and the emphasis on the literal taking of the sacrament itself, but at least Nikolay appreciates the importance of the inner state since he tries to pray.So that relates to what you were saying. But it also relates to my "two cultures" concern. How providential to find such good examples in a good book that itself demonstrates the point. My bolds of course.The contrast of science with "the classics" was the theme earlier; now it is seen to be the cause of religious falling away as well. And of course it is the cause for the last hundred or two hundred years or so, and has been despite all the strained arguments here that try to prove science is not incompatible with belief. Of course it's not, as long as you lop off the inconvenient parts of religion to fit science rather than the other way around.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith,I want to ask again why there must be a dichotomy? If there is a God, aren't our scientific thoughts and abilities part of his creation?You seem to have the view that scientifically minded folk are soulless robots! Quite the opposite, in fact. In my own experience many scientists are both very culturally aware and often artistically gifted. They seek not to crush anyone's faith or spirit, but to understand the world around them. What's the problem?Do you want to see a rejection of modern science?Edited by RickJB, : Typos.

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WARNING - OFF TOPIC

Edit: Sorry about this, I was hoping to reach some closure on the subject so that I could make an important decision about the future. This will be my last post of this nature.

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I'm now positive that we're speaking a different language, even if by some remarkable coincidence the words are the same. You change what I say and then argue your version, which is exactly what my previous girlfriend did, so now I'm sure you're female. I will make one last attempt at being as precise as humanly possible with my argument before I give up with you entirely: Now, a person is said to commit a personal attack when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when examining another person's claims or comments. What I'm referring to is when you said I have no idea what you're talking about. Regardless of its validity, it seems to fit the definition pretty well in that it alludes to my ignorance rather than provides tangible evidence. Now, I took little offense to this because I know that it's a common reaction by people who argue emotionally, however this doesn't change what it was. But this is neither here nor there, so I'll continue to the more relevant point. I'm almost certain that this is in response to: Notice the difference in what you're arguing with what I've stated? I said "concrete" clarification, then elaborated by saying that you're only offering conclusions. In your response, you eliminated my qualifiers, and then offered a rebuttal to something I never disagreed with. If you wanted to offer evidence against my claim, instead of responding the way you did, you should've looked through you four responses to me in this thread:(1) Message 93
(2) Message 96
(3) Message 111
(4) Message 117Note that a conclusion is defined as a decision based on facts. For example, if you woke up and saw that it was light out, and then went to went to sleep and saw that it was dark out, you might make the conclusion that your level of fatigue is dependent on the amount of light you see. You'll notice that my attack is that you've only been making the conclusion part of these types of statements. If you wanted to defend yourself, you would need to look at these four posts and try to find something that could qualify or be interpreted as the first type of statement.And so ends my final attempt. If this doesn't clear anything up, then I'm obviously not smart enough to be able to communicate through our language barrier, so I'll stop attempting to do so. And before we part ways, for the sake of peace of mind, could you tell me whether or not the assumption I made in the second sentence of this post is correct? It'd be nice if we could agree that I was right or wrong about something before we stopped talking.Edited by jmrozi1, : Edited in response to message 126

The Forum Guidelines request that members focus their attention on the topic and not on their fellow debaters or on their personal feelings about the topic.While comments along the lines of "just the thought of it makes my stomach turn" are not necessarily out of place, if not accompanied by any meaningful discussion of the topic then they do not help move the discussion forward. When comments in a thread begin mentioning insults and personal attacks then some moderator effort needs to be exerted.I do think that a good deal of the recent discussion addresses the thread's topic pretty well, but it never hurts to have a reminder. The opening posts poses the question of what is wrong with a scientific approach to life.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY can't you get it?Never mind. I have to leave. More later.

I guess you are again not talking about the whole two-cultures concept but again just about religion? Please remember that this is a lot bigger in my mind than religion, as I used to hate the scientific approach to psychology for starters long before I became a believer, and found it ludicrous that science would pronounce on the stuff of great novels.But to focus on religion, science started out perfectly compatible with God. In fact many of the first scientists in Europe, and some to the present as well, consider science to be a sort of worshipful investigation into His creation, based on the Biblical revelation of a rational God whose nature is run by laws.And no, our thoughts and abilities are no longer as He made them, but are "fallen," since Adam and Eve's sin in Eden. This means we inherit corruptions of all our abilities since then, since in our natural state we are cut off from communication with the God who made us, and able to know Him only through His revelation.The result of this fall is that science doesn't always get it right. Science started contradicting God with Darwin and has been the single greatest source of falling away from belief in God since then.But again, I haven't been focusing on this aspect of things. My focus has been on the absurdities of scientific equations of the brain with the mind and that sort of thing. It's not the persons as such but SCIENTIFIC THINKING. No. NWR already answered you, and I would think I've been clear about this. I'm not going to say it again because I don't want to go on another wild goose chase.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm only curious! I don't know exactly what you expect me to "get", I just find your position curious. No I'm talking about your "two cultures", but I don't really believe they exist as separate monolithic blocks. You seem very eager to emphasize that religion plays little part in this, but then you attribute scientific thinking to Adam's fall.. Of course it doesn't always get it right. Science represents the accumulation of knowledge - it's rarely a neat and tidy process. We can never capture "the truth", but we can get nearer and nearer to it. This sounds like God's problem, not science's. In any case you have no way of knowing God's intent. I can say with just as much certainty that God is a scientific thinker. It's not absurd. Science is simply asking questions and seeking answers. What's absurd about that? Certainly, this area of science is in it's infancy, but then 500 years ago chemists (alchemists) were trying to make gold from lead...

I think (not certain) that even at this stage of his life, Tolstoy comes down on the religious side. However, he also criticizes organized religion. The description about the Pietists, in an earlier section, strikes me as semi-satire.

I read of qualia in Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, "Figments of Reality" (1997) who say: The texture of experience, being the processes that generate them in response to various inputs.

If scientists had at all turns lopped of inconvenient bits of science to fit religion then you wouldn't be typing on a computer at this moment.Observation trumps belief. That's why certain elements of religion (most especially the creation myth) have fallen away.

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No, I do think it is the scientific worldview that bugs me. The external approach to the internal or something like that.

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I'm wondering how anyone could agree with anyone regarding an aspect of their internal experience without externalising it? I am aware I may be overstating your position as you don't state that we can't validly externalise our experience.
Is it that you don't accept an external(i.e. material) cause for human experience and thus attempts to find one are futile and even damaging?

Can't you imagine having literature and science?Science can't replace living experience, or the reinvention of living experience we get in a novel. Even if neuroscientists provide a complete scientific interpretation of emotion, that doesn't change your emotional life or the value of Anna Karenina. Ah. Interpretation, interpretation. The final sentence suggests something quite different to me. (But that's the beauty of a novel, isn't it? That's what makes it so different from either a scientific paper or a religious tract). My bolds.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Perhaps Faith is objecting to such practices as the tendency to provide (often speculative) evolutionary explanations of human behavior--e.g., the reason I am attracted to such-and-such feature of a woman is due to an unconscious idea I have about her ability to produce healthy offspring--that sort of thing.