In my latest post, I was trying to make the point that in order to get to paradise, you have to die first. That's literally what most christians by far believe. If you wanted to make a point that paradise is a "perfect" state of mind and that religion is the only way to reach it or somesuch, then I disagree. I don't think of religious people as particularly more harmonius than atheists.

Your metaphor about the shadows in the cave possibly bewilder and confuse more than they help. If you wanna make a point, you could perhaps try not be so abstract.

I don't know what you mean by "shadows", but if you substitute it for something like "reality" or "empirically proven truths" and that you can get "lost" in that, well .. I would say how can figuring out stuff about the universe we live in, where we come from, why we are here - make us lost? That people get enstranged from whatever beliefs they may have used to replace that knowledge with from before (religion), yes, there I agree with you .. and I think it's a good thing.

Its a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

Well, then the point becomes that by doing science, we waste time studying something which is not real, only representations of it. Yet here we are, sending rovers to Mars .. Obviously, we are able to take scientific knowledge and put it to practical use and even if you believe it's somehow wrong, the fact we can do these things should prove that it does in fact have a practical use and, I think most would agree, a value.

We're sitting here writing on a forum for example. Is that a result of studying shadows on the wall?

Needless to say, I think it was a bad metaphor and a poor comparison.

edit :

Plato was talking about philosophers as the ones who see more than just the shadows on the wall, the reality. Philosophers, not religious people. Thus, it's also a bit cheeky to use the cave allegory by Plato, academia's grandad, in such a way.

naturally they have practical value, because they allow us, as an individual organism, to adapt to our environment so that we can better sustain ourselves in it. the crux of the scientific reality is, however, to see the individual organism as separate from the environment, which is always an arbitrary boundary. the religious truth which i am hinting at is the collapse of that boundary, which renders science effectively futile. however, operating in the realm of sensuous experience, science is a very useful tool that allows us to play a variety of games which together consitute the experience known as 'life.' the problem is when rather than using science to adapt to our envionrment, we use science to disfigure our environment into reflections of ourselves, because we try to use scientific and logical understanding to pinpoint our own identity, which is futile since it operates on a schism in our identity. again, i'm sorry for being so abstract, i can't really help it, at this point i'm talking about things like mass entertainment and communications and increasing global corporate control, which i feel harbor self-destructive tendencies and convince people to want only what they can't have. as such, though there is an obvious divide between religion and science, science without any sort of aim or direction is probably the biggest threat imaginable to humanity.

very well said

Unless I'm mistaken, it seems to me you're talking about something like the disintegration of the "me" and subsequent fusion with "everything" (God?). It seems that this is something we should strive for and when attained, we don't need science .. I guess that would mean elimination of all "me"-related personal goals etc., so perhaps that makes sense.

The only problem about your argument is that without extensive doses of psychoactive drugs or some intense religious experience or something else out of the ordinary, what you're talking about here is basically incomprehensible. Since people don't experience such things or live lives in this state, there doesn't seem to be a practical value to the religious truth you're hinting at.

The other stuff about how we can't use science to identify us with science, well, not even a scientist would exclusively define him or herself with science. I identify myself with opinions, enjoyments, dislikes etc. that I think have little to do with science.

i think as far as "all is one" amounts to "love thy neighbor as you love yourself" has an extraordinary practical value that many people leave unexplored in their lives... of course this might not apply to you but i might suggest that perhaps you live more religiously than you realize.

also, i guess i should make clear that I'm using "religiously" as a contrast to science, not philosophy. in the sense i'm using them both qualify as philosophical perspectives.

So the "collapse of that boundary, which renders science effectively futile" is simply love thy neighbour. I don't think that leaves science futile because while loving our neighbours, we're still living our practical lives with our cars and computers. Also, as you've guessed, I don't think love for others exists solely within the confines of "religious experience".

If you think I live religiously, then you're using the term in a different way than I do. I think of it as something like living your life intentionally according to a religion. I don't think of it as being capable of love, morale or spirituality.

From your post, it seems you're now blaming science for a lack of empathy and love in society. Since science doesn't tell us how to live or love, I think that topic is more at home in a religious debate or in a discussion on society. In other words, instead of blaming science, maybe one should look to those areas instead to find the culprit.

I'm not blaming science, I'm really blaming the lack of religious feeling that allows science to spiral out of control. I think a large part of this is, however, the lack of philosophy and religion in general education, which leads to a misconception in a lot of people that 'science is finding all the answers,' when science only really finds itself. As Einstein said, "nature is simple, it is we who are complex." We can spend the rest of eternity reading complexity into the Universe, but ultimately we're only studying our own capabilities of studying.

Sounds like everywhere to me... Point please?

Are you aware that you almost never make any practical sense?

Take me for example. I'm conducting my own scientific research. At the moment, I am studying the wind dispersal of terrestrial flightless invertebrates like collembola and mites. First, I want to know if they are dispersed by wind. If yes, I want to know how patterns of wind dispersal relate to patterns in meteorological conditions. Is a dispersal event more likely to take place on a dry, sunny day compared to a rainy day? Does wind enter into it?

At no point have I felt like I'm spiralling out of control. I don't think that goes for any of the scientists I know. I don't really feel like I'm exclusively studying my own capability of studying either .. I'm pretty sure it was invertebrates and wind dispersal. I'm even able to provide some pretty good answers to some of the questions I posed before I started my work.

So what's the point? The point is that people like me and others who do scientific work is finding out stuff about the world we all live in, wether it's why the sun shines, how many years it's been since antarctica seperated from pangea or if a species of collembola can survive being dessiccated for long periods.

In other words, we are figuring stuff out. Without such knowledge, how are we even gonna understand our own impact on the planet we live on, something you at least do seem to care about.


I don't know what you have against science, but I'm fairly certain it can't be my studies in the arctic that does it. Science just wants to answer the hows and whys. I agree that philosophy like the basics of society and morale theory should be perhaps more important in education and that will also help us put scientific knowledge like that gained from stemcell research to good use. I think religion, however, splits peoples and societies as much as it unifies. It misleads just as much as it guides. It also hinders inquiry more than it promotes because it provides all the easy, but practically useless answers.

you have to understand i'm speaking on two levels. i absolutely agree that the sort of research you do is useful and helpful and wonderful because it is driven by a desire on some level for love and harmony. i also recognize that there is a lot of science where this is not at all the case, where technology is developed simply to market the development of further technology, where we're told we need to keep upgrading because products are getting 'better,' where everything that is built is built to be obsolete so that we clutter the planet with useless items... we research into building more and more destructive weapons for the sake of 'deterrence' when really the better our weaponry gets the more likely we are to destroy ourselves. on top of this we keep tapping our energy resources, develop better ways of distracting ourselves from the problem, better ways of marketing products nobody actually needs... obviously there's a huge flip side to science where it's not being used in a reasonable manner. the larger problem is WHY do people feel the need to keep buying these new products, to spend money to look and live like superstars, etc. this to me is the destructive flip side of science where it used as a tool simply to satisfy irrational desires, and ultimately what renders desires like complete instant satisfaction or self-destruction irrational is religious 'feeling'. now you could completely disagree here and say it is simply 'reason' and i would feel no reason to argue that point, all i'm really getting at is that science needs a justification beyond science.

I think you got your science mixed up with social trends, war, fashion, market forces and other things that I don't think should be confused with science.

Science wants to find the answers to questions. Why? Because we don't have the answers yet. That's it. Science doesn't want to sell lipstick or make weaponry. Those are goals pushed by market forces or possibly governments. If you have a problem with them, I'd say you have a problem with your society, not science.

As I wrote earlier at some point, the scientific community didn't produce the atom bomb. The manhattan project was led and pushed by the US Army. Even if you remove the scientific community, military forces like the US armed forces are still gonna employ scientists to make more devastating weapons.

Sometimes, scientific knowledge can be used for the wrong ends and so I agree morale philosophy and, I would say, particularly basics on society is so important to teach people today. Every democratic nation is ultimately governed by it's people. If they don't even know what a society is, why we have it and how it works, how are they supposed to know how to shape it?

Has Sleepy Jack finally gone to bed? I have yet to argue with him today...

Did you take the trouble to read the posts before that? There was discussion about Florida, I said I hated it. Plus it was over 2 months ago...don't you have something better to do?