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5 Questions Every Intelligent Atheist MUST Answer

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  • #182
    DJ Dodgy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 113 ✭✭DJ Dodgy


    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    Of course science is amoral, its the practise of using models to determine facts about reality and use those facts to produce more models. Its up to people themselves to be moral. Honestly, you might as well argue that the five-times-tables are immoral.

    You've just twisted amoral (neither moral or immoral) into immoral.

    A chemical weapons missile is amoral. It is just an object. The people who built that chemical weapon (be they engineers or scientists) would like to claim to be amoral also. However I would disagree.

    You think it is riduculous to suggest delaying progress to attempt to understand the consequence of our investigations before we pursue it. They dropped the first bomb not sure if it was going to set fire to the atmosphere or not.


  • #183
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,592 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    A chemical weapons missile is amoral. It is just an object. The people who built that chemical weapon (be they engineers or scientists) would like to claim to be amoral also. However I would disagree.
    Who has used chemical weapons in the last 30 years?


  • #184
    chezzer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 184 ✭✭chezzer


    As soon as this idiot started on "where do we get our morals from" ... switched it off ... yes we got it from the Bible ... .. right , i have some guests and have to go now and offer my daughters up for gang rape ... for they have "known" no man ...


  • #185
    marco_polo
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 10,093 Mod ✭✭✭✭marco_polo


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    By us I assume you mean us white anglo saxon northerners. The lucky one billion of the 4.5 you mentioned earlier. I doubt your 'us' would include an African children born with aids in civil war torn countries because then the :D doesn't work quite as well, and the statement stands up.

    By the way all those things emerged by communties deeply submerged in religion long ago.

    While there are many many political and social problems in Africa , none of the afformentioned problems are because of Science. In fact it in terms of Aids and Malaria treatment, better crops with higher yields and higher drought resistance the exact opposite is the case.

    Certainly change is not happening fast enough, but it things are changing slowly in the right direction.I do feel there is a lack of political will to enact real change both in the Western world in terms of fair and improved trade agreements and but also in terms of corruption and mismanagement of current resources by African countries themselves, which is also a major factor in the current problems on the continent.

    All politics really.


  • #186
    Flamed Diving
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,609 ✭✭✭Flamed Diving


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    Just checking. The Atom bomb that was engineering too right?

    Of course. Knowledge of how the atom splits is Science. Using this knowledge to build a bomb, is Engineering. Using this bomb to murder people, is Politics.


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  • #187
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,834 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    The ability to study something without having to be mindful of its consequences has yielded us alot of benefits. Just like wars have yielded us huge advances in technology and many other fields of study. I just don't believe we can afford the luxury anymore of driving the 'pursuit of knowledge' train without some idea of where it is going to bring us. We are now capable of destroying ourselves with weapons. We are probably slowly destroying ourselves through unchecked industrial activity. The world has always had religious and political fundamentalists but now they are accessing advanced weaponry.

    So religious and political fundamentalism is ok as long as all the fundies just use sticks and stones to kill people?


  • #188
    DJ Dodgy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 113 ✭✭DJ Dodgy


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    The pursuit of knowledge is never going to stop out of fear of the possible applications of that knowledge

    This started as a God versus Science thing. I am not a believer in God but the arrongance that most people on the science side have shown has had my back to the bible wall.

    There are other ways of knowing that are necessary other than scientifically. We have emerged from within a natural system we partly understand and have the arrongance to propose understandings of the universe around us.

    You all seem content that the sciences (all of them 5uspect) will have the answers we'll need to solve the problems ahead.


  • #189
    DJ Dodgy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 113 ✭✭DJ Dodgy


    Mark Hamill wrote: »
    So religious and political fundamentalism is ok as long as all the fundies just use sticks and stones to kill people?

    Yeah Mark that's exactly what I meant.


  • #190
    marco_polo
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 10,093 Mod ✭✭✭✭marco_polo


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    This started as a God versus Science thing. I am not a believer in God but the arrongance that most people on the science side have shown has had my back to the bible wall.
    .

    It is hardly arrogant to point out the basic differences between Science, Engineering and Politics.

    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    There are other ways of knowing that are necessary other than scientifically. We have emerged from within a natural system we partly understand and have the arrongance to propose understandings of the universe around us.

    You all seem content that the sciences (all of them 5uspect) will have the answers we'll need to solve the problems ahead.


    You are the only one making the claim of Science having all the answers, but for many questions it is the only game in town, without resorting to making sh*t up.


  • #191
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    This started as a God versus Science thing. I am not a believer in God but the arrongance that most people on the science side have shown has had my back to the bible wall.

    There are other ways of knowing that are necessary other than scientifically. We have emerged from within a natural system we partly understand and have the arrongance to propose understandings of the universe around us.

    You all seem content that the sciences (all of them 5uspect) will have the answers we'll need to solve the problems ahead.

    What way do we have of knowing things other than scientifically? Btw, please don't say "philosophy" or something like that. How will these other methods allow us to know things?

    And if we use these other ways of knowing things, is that knowledge not just as dangerous?


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  • #192
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    DJ, do you wish the plane had never been invented because of all the death it has brought both deliberately and in accidents?


  • #193
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,834 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    You've just twisted amoral (neither moral or immoral) into immoral.

    You are one twisting immoral with amoral by implying that the amoral practice of science will definittely lead to an immoral outcome
    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    A chemical weapons missile is amoral. It is just an object. The people who built that chemical weapon (be they engineers or scientists) would like to claim to be amoral also. However I would disagree.

    See Dades response.
    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    You think it is riduculous to suggest delaying progress to attempt to understand the consequence of our investigations before we pursue it. They dropped the first bomb not sure if it was going to set fire to the atmosphere or not.

    No, I think ethics is a great thing and I am not against the level of progress being tempered with humanism and respect for the enviroment. I am however against people who think we shouldn't create stronger building materials out of the fear that someone else might pick up a rod and beat someone to death with it.


  • #194
    HOOHAA
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2 ✭HOOHAA


    This chap gets close to the bone, sometimes, but this video's a winner:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M114bK4qaiM&feature=channel_page

    Or this one...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEtfdzNAE74

    (Can't remember how to post YOU TUBE vids)


  • #195
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,592 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    chezzer wrote: »
    As soon as this idiot started on "where do we get our morals from" ... switched it off ...
    I assume given that you must have read the charter that the idiot you speak of isn't a user here.


  • #196
    Zillah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,371 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    The pursuit of knowledge should never be restrained for fear of how this knowledge will be put to use.

    Y'know, I'm not sure I can support this statement in it's absolute form. I'm not fully sure of my feelings on the matter, but I'm certainly not entirely comfortable with, for example, the existence of nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was a genius, and he actively pursued knowledge of how to create a nuclear explosion. I would be very curious to hear his rationale at the time. I would like to see how he would react had he been sitting on a mountain within view of Nagasaki that morning (assuming something other than misquoting the Bhavagad Gita). Of course the men who deployed those weapons bear ultimate responsibility, but Oppenheimer used his intellect to create those weapons, knowing they'd be put into the hands of such men. He essentially handed a gun to a child.

    Can you honestly say that there is no knowledge that should not be pursued? What if people start working on a branch of physics that would make it possible to connect to a parallel universe composed entirely of antimatter? Sure it might lead to endless energy for our species, but it could also destroy the entire galaxy. Is pursuing such knowledge a decision we have the right to make?

    Less hypothetically, I'm terrified by nanites. Nuclear weapons aint got nothin' on nanite technology for sheer destructive power. I honestly believe that the knowledge of how to make self-replicating nanites may be too dangerous to pursue. Apply your understanding of evolutionary principles to the situation and I'm sure the potential (likely?*) consequences are clear.


    (*If we're using nanites day to day in industry then we have hundreds of trillions of them replicating hundreds of trillions of more...so even if the chances of something akin to a mutation occurring is one in a hundred trillion then it'll happen eventually, and if that mutation is to disable the abort system or some means of escaping human control our society turns into sludge overnight)


  • #197
    Galvasean
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    Zillah wrote: »
    Less hypothetically, I'm terrified by nanites. Nuclear weapons aint got nothin' on nanite technology for sheer destructive power. I honestly believe that the knowledge of how to make self-replicating nanites may be too dangerous to pursue. Apply your understanding of evolutionary principles to the situation and I'm sure the potential (likely?*) consequences are clear.


    (*If we're using nanites day to day in industry then we have hundreds of trillions of them replicating hundreds of trillions of more...so even if the chances of something akin to a mutation occurring is one in a hundred trillion then it'll happen eventually, and if that mutation is to disable the abort system or some means of escaping human control our society turns into sludge overnight)

    Michael Crichton, is that you?


  • #198
    Zillah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,371 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    Galvasean wrote: »
    Michael Crichton, is that you?

    *Googles, reads Prey plot summary, gags*


  • #199
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,460 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Galvasean wrote: »
    Michael Crichton, is that you?
    It's either Crichton, Prince Charles or Eric Drexler, who came up with an entirely new thing for people to worry about. Drexler recanted a few years back:

    http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=763/journal/0957-4484

    but it'll be a cold day in hell before the other two guys unclench their buttocks.


  • #200
    Galvasean
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    robindch wrote: »
    It's either Crichton, Prince Charles or Eric Drexler, who came up with an entirely new thing for people to worry about. Drexler recanted a few years back:

    http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=763/journal/0957-4484

    but it'll be a cold day in hell before the other two guys unclench their buttocks.

    Well I can't imagine Crichton unclencing anything any tme soon on account of being dead.


  • #201
    Zillah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,371 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    robindch wrote: »
    http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=763/journal/0957-4484

    Life will find a way!

    MV5BMTQ3MTM3NjI1N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwOTYxNzE3._V1._SX475_SY355_.jpg


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  • #202
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    I agree with you that the posts are getting a bit tennis like. That is probably because we are on opposite sides of the fence on this one. You might find it suprising therefore that I don't believe in God, organised religion or an after life, although I say that with melancholy rather than pride. I believe the opinion that you can engage in scientific endeavour and still be ethical is valid but is not supported by history. The scientists who created the atomic bomb created it first and only began to allow the ethical questions dawn on them afterwards.

    The scientists who created the atomic bomb were working for the US military and trying to beat the Nazi's and Russians to the bomb.

    The theory for atomic energy had been discovered 20 years before.

    I'm not sure exactly what you are proposing but it sounds like you are saying we should not seek scientific discovery because it might be used to do bad things.

    The military has always weaponized new technology, that has been going on since fire lead to heat, cooking and fire tipped arrows, the wheel lead to carts farming and war chariots.
    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    But I don't want to start the tennis again. Here's my best attempt at a concrete example of what I'm trying to say. I'm trusting your interested in dialogue rather than tennis on this one.

    I'm not sure what you are saying, you are saying that atomic theory lead to atomic bombs, but I'm not sure what the general point is. Should we not have developed atomic theory? Should the USA, German and Russian scientists not have used this knowledge for weaponry? Do the scientists who discovered atomic theory 20 years earlier take responsibility for the dropping of the bomb?
    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    You lose something when you imagine yourself capable of abstracting yourself from the world to analysis it scientifically.

    I disagree. I think we only truly understand ourselves when we see how we are in the world in relation to everything else.

    What I feel abstracts us from the world is the flights of fantasy we indulge in to escape from reality, such as religion or spiritualism. We retreat into imaginary worlds that make more sense to us. Which is fine, but it doesn't lead to understanding or any closer to truth, it in fact drags us away from these things.

    You seem quite happy to demonize scientific pursuit but you ignore that scientific discoveries over the last 300 years have influenced huge movements for social and environmental improvement. The scientific method has lead to understanding of biology that has saved billions of lives, lead to understanding of electricity that has improved the lives of billions, lead to the discovery to the harm humans do to the environment that has lead to the environmental movement.

    I echo Dades comment from earlier, it is easy to criticize from a position of comfort and security that scientific pursuit has already brought you. If you were a Somalian child who had to walk 40 miles for fresh safe water, who had not heat or electricity, who had no communication, no access to medicines, I wonder would you think the big questions we need to be asking are the same big questions.
    DJ Dodgy wrote: »
    Just in case that is too hippy wishy washy for ye try - Unrestrained science has had a more destructive impact on the planet than all organised religion put together in the twentieth century.

    I can't really think of any war that has been started over science. Science leads to understanding which leads to technology. Technology is very often militarised. Military technology is used for wars. But there is a bit jump from science to military technology.

    It is impossible to know that something you discover is going to be militarised before you discover it.


  • #203
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Zillah wrote: »
    Y'know, I'm not sure I can support this statement in it's absolute form. I'm not fully sure of my feelings on the matter, but I'm certainly not entirely comfortable with, for example, the existence of nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was a genius, and he actively pursued knowledge of how to create a nuclear explosion. I would be very curious to hear his rationale at the time. I would like to see how he would react had he been sitting on a mountain within view of Nagasaki that morning (assuming something other than misquoting the Bhavagad Gita). Of course the men who deployed those weapons bear ultimate responsibility, but Oppenheimer used his intellect to create those weapons, knowing they'd be put into the hands of such men. He essentially handed a gun to a child.

    Can you honestly say that there is no knowledge that should not be pursued? What if people start working on a branch of physics that would make it possible to connect to a parallel universe composed entirely of antimatter? Sure it might lead to endless energy for our species, but it could also destroy the entire galaxy. Is pursuing such knowledge a decision we have the right to make?

    Less hypothetically, I'm terrified by nanites. Nuclear weapons aint got nothin' on nanite technology for sheer destructive power. I honestly believe that the knowledge of how to make self-replicating nanites may be too dangerous to pursue. Apply your understanding of evolutionary principles to the situation and I'm sure the potential (likely?*) consequences are clear.


    (*If we're using nanites day to day in industry then we have hundreds of trillions of them replicating hundreds of trillions of more...so even if the chances of something akin to a mutation occurring is one in a hundred trillion then it'll happen eventually, and if that mutation is to disable the abort system or some means of escaping human control our society turns into sludge overnight)

    You say we don't have the right to pursue the knowledge but I don't think we have the right not to pursue the knowledge. What you're talking about is the application of that knowledge which could be anything. Nanites might result in the end of our civilisation but they might also end up saving it, it all depends on how we apply them and, very importantly, how careful we are in applying them.

    Everything in life carries a certain level of risk and everyone has their own pretty much arbitrary line where they say "everything before this can be managed but it's impossible to control this". It's the same logic that people use when they're talking about how drugs will destroy your life while drinking a pint, smoking a fag and eating a burger. Nanites could be designed in such a way that that would never happen. It's just a matter of controlling the situation.


  • #204
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Dades wrote: »
    I assume given that you must have read the charter that the idiot you speak of isn't a user here.

    I thought he was calling someone on the forum an idiot too when I first read it :D

    He is of course calling the guy in the video an idiot for which he should be commended.


  • #205
    Zillah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,371 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    You say we don't have the right to pursue the knowledge but I don't think we have the right not to pursue the knowledge. What you're talking about is the application of that knowledge which could be anything. Nanites might result in the end of our civilisation but they might also end up saving it, it all depends on how we apply them and, very importantly, how careful we are in applying them.

    Everything in life carries a certain level of risk and everyone has their own pretty much arbitrary line where they say "everything before this can be managed but it's impossible to control this". It's the same logic that people use when they're talking about how drugs will destroy your life while drinking a pint, smoking a fag and eating a burger. Nanites could be designed in such a way that that would never happen. It's just a matter of controlling the situation.

    So are taking your above declaration as absolute?
    The pursuit of knowledge should never be restrained for fear of how this knowledge will be put to use.

    There are no circumstances where you would consider it better to simply leave a certain avenue of research unexplored? Learning how to manufacture untreatable viruses? Racially targeted diseases? Let's take the extreme and say some guys want to see if they can learn how to develop an untreatable virus that targets only people of Jewish ancestry. Sure they have no intention of using it, but would we not be better off just leaving it unresearched? How about seeing if they can develop a method for atmospherically dispersing prions? Shattering the continental plates?

    Basically I'm asking this: If a given avenue of research has no feasible application other than something awful, is it still right to pursue it?


  • #206
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Remember that I'm not talking about applications of knowledge, I'm talking about the knowledge itself. Knowledge of genetics allows you to create a racially targeted virus. I don't think there is any area of knowledge that has only awful applications.

    To be honest, since we already have the means to destroy the planet a hundred times over by a variety of means, I don't think having a few more ways to kill each other makes that much of a difference.


  • #207
    Húrin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,045 ✭✭✭Húrin


    I don't see why atheists MUST answer anything.
    toiletduck wrote: »
    ...and that's where I stop watching.
    cos atheists don't have any beliefs?


  • #208
    chezzer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 184 ✭✭chezzer


    Dades wrote: »
    I assume given that you must have read the charter that the idiot you speak of isn't a user here.


    yes of course !!!


  • #209
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    Húrin wrote: »
    I don't see why atheists MUST answer anything.


    cos atheists don't have any beliefs?

    Some atheists might have some beliefs but they're separate to atheism, there is no atheistic belief system. For example, religious people would say we believe in evolution but I don't believe in it, I recognise the fact of its existence

    Also, accepting evolution is not a requirement of atheism


  • #210
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,592 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    Zillah wrote: »
    *Googles, reads Prey plot summary, gags*
    As a fan of a lot Micheal Crichton's stuff I must say "Prey" was a pretty awful book.
    Zillah wrote: »
    Life will find a way!
    Also a Crichton quote I assume you know!


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  • #211
    DJ Dodgy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 113 ✭✭DJ Dodgy


    Sam Vimes wrote: »
    Nanites might result in the end of our civilisation but they might also end up saving it, it all depends on how we apply them and, very importantly, how careful we are in applying them.

    That's all I am really saying.

    We have learned to pursue our knowledge seperately from determining the ethics & consequences of this pursuit.

    There is a much greater efficiency to the process by sidelining away all the 'soft' gray issues to pursue the empirical black and white ones. But given the power of so many of the discoveries being pursued is this good enough? The moral questions are passed on to other specialists (in the areas of ethics or morality) but true understanding of the discoveries may be beyond these people.

    The tower of Babel analogy comes to mind. People are pursuing knowledge down narrower and narrower areas of study with more and more disconnect from a main stream. We don't understand what the guy beside us does on the project never mind have an overview of where the project might lead. So how are we going to be able to understand what is safe/moral to pursue and what isn't?


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