freecounterpoint: Duh?

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Duh?

Counterpoint [Free] to Chet Raymo's piece.

Note Harris':“The core of science is not a mathematical model; it is intellectual honesty,” said Sam Harris, a doctoral student in neuroscience and the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

“Every religion is making claims about the way the world is,” he said. “These are claims about the divine origin of certain books, about the virgin birth of certain people, about the survival of the human personality after death. These claims purport to be about reality.”

By shying away from questioning people’s deeply felt beliefs, even the skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.

12 comments:

Mr roT said...: Ah, so much to hate.; 11/21/2006 5:13 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: And what has the "Scientific" community learned from the late R.G. Collingwood? Not much here. This smacks of full-on nineteenth-century Positivism... and that, ahem, never caused any society or culture any problems...

Whatever Dawkins or the Pope might say, these cold beers still taste pretty damned good in the evening.; 11/21/2006 5:48 PM
Mr roT said...: Why Positivism?; 11/21/2006 5:53 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Positivism in the sense of the scientism of the Comtean "Social Positivism", and not the "Logical Positivism" as adumbrated in the 20th Century analytic philosophy...I think....maybe?; 11/21/2006 6:07 PM
Mr roT said...: Yeah. I have heard Hawking (especially) say he's positivist. I tried to read that Con guy. Made zero sense to me. I think Hawking was being inscrutably British. He works hard math and physics problems with great creativity like a good scientist and leaves the philosophers to figure out what he's 'really' doing.; 11/21/2006 6:15 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Okay, let's get down to this: AA was right when he referenced my reference to Comte. We could even liken this to 19th century American and European historians who, like von Ranke, recreated history with the "facts," the "facts spoke to them," and told them how "it actually was." To them, the "facts" are irrefutable (Carl Becker had a nice argument about that; see his, "What is an Historical Fact?" published sometime in the mid 1930s). We get "scientists" like Dawkins, who have irrefutable evidence in proving whether something is "right" or "wrong" -- and that's soooOOOOooo 19th century. I listen to Dawkins the same way I listen to someone who tries to tell me that I need to accept Jesus Christ and proclaim it to everyone otherwise I'm going to hell: their mouths move, and I remain straight-faced and just keep swillin' on that cold beer (it'll get warm if you don't drink it in a timely manner).

Let me explain it this way too: for a long time, North Dakota's first historian Orin G. Libby was oh-so interested in proving the exact spelling and pronunciation of Sakakawea's name. He searched far and wide, and came up with the end-all be-all. However, what about that nifty little Native American custom where a Native is given up to three (maybe more) names throughout the course of their life? It may not have applied to Sakakawea, but holy shit how is one supposed to stand on one supreme answer and say, "THIS IS IT! I'VE GOT IT YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" (no, that's not a direct Libby quote). Here's what we should really be analyzing: the size of Dawkins ego, or the size of the person's ego who says they have the end-all answer to that constipated-diarrhea question known as LIFE. Fuck those absolutists. It's not for me. I'll be in the bathroom.; 11/21/2006 7:03 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: On the other hand, MFT, 2+2=5. O'Brien is never wrong.; 11/21/2006 7:46 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Michael Richards, is that you under that JJ suit?; 11/21/2006 8:47 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: AA, 2+2 can equal five, but keep in mind that the individual who subscribes to that is going to have an awful hard time playing pool, or making change.; 11/21/2006 8:55 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I'm looking at a Cartesian X,Y coordinate system. It looks really perfect, and very true. Too bad reality is never perfect or true.

Is the earth a sphere? Not really, unless you shave off Everest and McKinley. Even then, it's pretty bumpy. The most accurate definition I've come across is that it's a geoid (meaning, "earth-shaped"). ...now we're getting somewhere.; 11/21/2006 9:02 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: So, 2+2= 4.99 ?; 11/21/2006 10:26 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: That's not what I was getting at, AA. Again, this is what happens when Pepe is gone. Whatever.; 11/22/2006 9:02 AM