[ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 04/05/07, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:

First, it is not at all clear to me that there is a fact of the matter
> regarding the existence of God. When the gods are said to live atop Mount
> Olympus, there's data to be had: climb the mountain and see whether you
> encounter gods or not. But the monotheistic God is typically placed outside
> our universe. How do you propose to step outside the universe to see whether
> you encounter God?


Inaccessibility is not license to posit the existence of anything that takes
your fancy. What if I say that Santa Claus exists, but he lives just beyond
the edge of the visible universe. Would you say that there is no "truth of
the matter" regarding the existence of this Santa Claus?

Well yes it does, at least to those of us who subscribe to the pattern
> theory of identity. Science at least suggests the existence of at least some
> levels of the Tegmark multiverse; and that means all possible continuations
> of your subjective experience do indeed occur. So yes, in a sense there is
> an afterlife. What does that mean in practical terms, for what we will
> actually experience? Nobody knows - nobody from whom we have verified
> testimony, at least.
>
> And that's before you even get into things like the Simulation Argument.
> I'm not saying SA is true, I'm not saying it's false - I don't know either
> way. I am saying, let he who thinks he can disprove the existence of God
> have that debate with the SA folk and let me know who wins.


The SA is to religion as speculation about extraterrestrial life is to
speculation about the existence of Klingons and Romulans.

So much for the material question. But an important point being missed here
> is that there are different kinds of truth.
>
> If the facts are all we're interested in, shouldn't we throw out all our
> copies of Hamlet, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? There aren't really any
> such things as ghosts or elves or the Force, after all, so why waste time on
> stories about them?
>
> Because those stories contain profound moral truths, wisdom about the
> human condition and how we should live; and this is a sort of knowledge that
> we cannot live without, any more than we can live without knowing how to
> grow wheat or make penicillin.
>
> And that is the purpose of religion. Sure, Noah's flood didn't literally
> occur any more than the War of the Ring did, but that doesn't make the Bible
> valueless.


I am happy to include the Bible as a great work of literature, but I don't
see the slightest reason why it should be taken any more seriously as a
description of reality than, say, the Iliad and the Odyssey. If we had
Homeric fundamentalists alive today we could have the same discussions with
them as we do with Christian fundamentalists.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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