[ExI] A science-religious experience

[efc at disroot.org]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat wrote:

> On 20/02/2025 20:10, Jason Resch wrote:
>> Surely you hold some beliefs, including those that you can't justify 
>> with science or reason.
>>
>> 1. ... an external reality beyond your consciousness (non solipsism)
>> 2. ...  you will experience future events in your life (rather than 
>> "you" being confined to this singular moment in time)
>> 3. ... physical laws that have held will continue to hold (a belief in 
>> empiricism)*
>> 4. ... other people experience things and are neither automatons (sic) 
>> nor figments of your imagination.
>> 5. ... the universe is old (rather than being created in its current 
>> state in the last few minutes)
>>
>> You choose to not call these religious beliefs, but they are 
>> nonetheless beliefs you accept as true and operate according to the 
>> assumption of their truth. An assumption not justified by science.
>
>
> None of these are beliefs, and all are justifiable. They are null 
> hypotheses, or working assumptions, that are backed up by experience. As 
> long as no contrary evidence is presented, we keep assuming they are 
> true, because they are useful. This is the very essence of science.

Thank you Ben, I think you stated my view better and more succinct than my 
rambling. ;)

What philosophers (if any) inspire you? It would be interesting to hear if 
I missed any good ones out there. =)

> The word 'belief' can be confusing, and I prefer to avoid using it (when 
> I can remember to).

Yes!

> If you define beliefs as 'working hypotheses', then ok, these can be 
> called beliefs, but when someone says they have no beliefs, I think we 
> can assume they mean 'big B' Beliefs, that often, but not exclusively, 
> relate to religion. In other words, dogmatic assertions that are not 
> tested against evidence (or 'Believing in' something). It's the 
> difference between "I believe it's going to rain soon" (a testable 
> hypothesis) and "I Believe in the holy trinity" (untestable gibberish 
> that nevertheless has some emotional significance to the speaker).

I like what I see...

> I will sometimes say "I believe so" in response to a question, but it 
> just means "I think so", not "I fervently cling to this opinion, despite 
> any evidence to the contrary".

I think belief is the culprit here. If we remove it from this 
conversation, and try to rewrite it, at least to me, everything becomes 
much more clear, and the risk of misunderstanding becomes less.

> I think it's important to distinguish between an opinion that you're 
> willing to change when evidence or logic shows that it's false, and one 
> that nothing will persuade you to change. I think that, for most people, 
> the five points above all fall into the former category.

> *Empiricism has nothing to do with constancy of physical laws, it's just 
> a view that knowledge comes from experience.