The problem with science II

Yes, overall you have put your finger on something central to the problem here, the utter lack of any attempt on the part of the science side even to begin to grasp what the other side is saying before they start forcing the conversation into their own terminology, thereby misrepresenting and making a shambles of the whole effort.
Good show. That is correct, I never have said such a thing and I'm now ridiculing that very idea, as I already explained.

I'd say so, yes. I'm hesitant to make too broad a generalization -- but I'll go with it. OK, that's one thing that scientism does. But I doubt they'd say they care about "doing away with" the feeling as long as they make sure it's understood that's all it is, a feeling and therefore an illusion that has nothing to do with reality.

I'm sorry Percy, the way you are going about this just doesn't ... interest me. I don't want to even think about "how scientific methods are applied in biology." Sorry. I'm trying to do something else, and in fact at the point of abandoning communicating anything at all about it.

I think I have a problem with the way you derive this, because when I was an atheist I would have thought that nihilism did make sense as you define it (without using the word), but I resented the thinking that made human beings into things, always hated the physicalistic reduction of mind to brain and thought and feeling to epiphenomena and human being to animal. All that even though I was an atheist and believed in evolution. But maybe I was being stubbornly irrational about it -- I trusted my subjective introspective "knowledge" that human beings were way more than that.I would have agreed, however, based on my atheism I suppose, and general nihilism in the sense of believing we have no "formal purpose" as you defined it, all thanks to Darwin really, that morality makes no sense, or sin or virtue. But I would have denied, just on the basis of subjective experience, or on the basis of human history, or even literature, what you say about how ""free will" is meaningless" or that "Our thoughts are merely like water running downhill."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Now I'm having trouble following you. I thought I'd disagreed with some part of what you were saying.But I think this subject has got out of my hand. It got going before I'd thought it through and all the strange and aggressively argued misunderstandings by others have made me lose interest.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

OK I'll try to say it again. The idea that any church has any interest in suppressing ordinary science, the kind that builds computers, is completely wrong. You might as well be from some other planet for all you get anything I'm saying.And again, BEFORE I was a believer in God I KNEW human beings were far above animals and even nature in some sense. Stop trying to attribute this to religion. The term "sacred" never came up. You are making up the whole thing to suit yourself. There are many people who aren't believers who see it the same way, or always used to be.I don't know how much you really understand, as you claim, since you keep religifying it.

Well, for instance, the sort of speculative scientistic explanation that Robin encountered some time back that he reported on this thread, about men's attraction to particular qualities in women "really" being about their suitability for breeding. Sure doesn't FEEL that way. Nor for a woman's attraction to particular qualities in men I might add.Or the famous sociobiology idea that self-sacrificial love for a child is really based on an altruism gene or something like that and is intended to further the genetic package of the family. Sure doesn't feel like that.

Sigh. Baby steps in the wrong direction aren't going to get us anywhere. I don't understand the difficulty here, except that it's an example of the very divide I'm trying to talk about, and I don't have a way to solve it. No, the baby steps bit isn't going to do it. It's in the wrong direction. Afraid not. The idea makes me extremely tired. Who knows, maybe some time I'll get a new perspective on it and try it again. I don't know. I don't think I'm criticizing science. I think I'm criticizing a certain mentality that grows out of science, and yes, does get applied as science where it just makes up stuff. Like sociobiology. Like Robin's example. But if you don't get it after all my attempts to talk about it so far, I should just give up.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What can I say. Spoken like someone from the Science side of the divide. End of subject for you, apparently, but for us on the other side of the divide it elicits pain, groans, eyerolling and cynical snickers.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They are TOTALLY silly ideas and that's that. If you don't get it you don't get it. Stop this bullying you all do.What can I say? OK I'll say that it's all speculative and unprovable, for starters, and nothing but the thinnest application of the most stupefyingly addlepated version of "survival of the fittest" to the complexity of human experience.

It's been supported. And it is bullying. And no you do NOT feel any genetic motivation in your sexual attraction.

I've supported my point. You don't get it. You are the one being abusive and bullying. Again, this is a perfect example of the cultural divide. All you want to do is force me to submit to the terms of your side of the divide instead of making any effort to get what things look like from my side. My point has been supported. I've been arguing it for weeks off and on. You and others here have an occupational blindness to recognizing the point I'm making. That, again, is an expression of the two cultures problem.

There is no way to test such a thing. It's purely interpretive, just a typical case of imaginative fantasy based on evolutionism. The particular statements under discussion are stupefyingly mindnumbingly reductionistic, trivializing and addlepated.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thank you. At least this much we can agree on. Thanks again, but I have to point out that I did NOT say "that science should be barred from certain fields of investigation" at all, only that when they get into some of them they make a mess of it, and that is a clue that science can't deal with some fields.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

In my judgment I produced an argument. Your demands for argument or proof are what is abusive under the circumstances, as well as your accusation that I have produced none. This is a typical go-round between you and me.In my judgment I am not being abusive, merely descriptive of the level of thinking involved in this sort of thing. It's reductionistic and trivializing. You want me to leave off "addlepated" perhaps? I guess I can do that.