Anyone here actually religious?

yeah its one of those disciplines where our most publically known figures (ruth benedict, jared diamond, indiana jones) are actually pretty embarassing to the field. though benedict gets a little bit of a pass because the whole discipline (and western world) was racist when she was writing, and indy gets a pass because he's a character from action movies

 

god came up behind me and was like boo and i was like whoa

 

I think you're getting mixed up. It's the Islams who are freedom hating terrorists. Muslims are the peaceful ones.

 

You have religious freedom up to the point where it starts to infringe on other people's rights. So a person can't claim that God wants him to kill a bunch of nonbelievers, because that's a violation of someone else's right to live.

It's not that I think unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a good thing, far from it. But if somebody disagrees with it they have the right to protest....peacefully. Killing 3000 people is not a legitimate form of protest.

 

Regardless of what's an appropriate response to US foreign policy, the point is that US foreign policy, not religion, is the primary motivation.

 

Because "truth" carries with it the idea of perfect certainty. That is a nigh non-existent concept in science. I don't think it's good for science to ever presume that we're 100% right, I feel we benefit much more from understanding the limitations of our knowledge. Heck, I can point out things about the Big Bang theory that have changed just in the last 15 years.

It's tweaking it, rather than throwing it out entirely, but I think it's dangerous to make unfounded assumptions like "That's it, we understand this perfectly now". Our current understanding is just that... our current understanding. I think of our progress as approaching the actual workings of the universe asymptotically. Even though I think science is becoming an ever better reflection of the actual workings of reality, I don't think we can, nor do I think it is reasonable to assume that we can, represent a complex universe in a perfect fashion.

 

Wormie, what would you do if God told you, not the spread his Word, but instead to crash your car into a bunch of dirty Muslims?

 

Regardless of its motivation, it is religious fanaticism that enabled the highjackers to execute their plan. The IRA is/was a terrorist organization but they tended to shy away from confiscation of large commercial vehicles and turning them into high speed bombs. In many discussions with friends I respect, there is the conflation of "freedom fighter" and terrorist and I get it. The political goals and the disproportionate offensive capabilities and resources are the same. But there are limits in the freedom fighter's crusade that a religious fanatic just doesn't have.

All I'm saying is that if Islamic Extremism wasn't on the table, I think Bin Laden would have had a hell of a time convincing 10 intelligent men in the primes of their lives to kill themselves and thousands of other people just to make a political point.

Dude. I made a similar point in another thread regarding a far less-understood pseudo-scientific discipline (economics). I've noticed in recent years this tendency to overstate the extent of our understanding in light of some nebulous scientific consensus that pushes the argument away from the foundations of the issue into just how much consensus actually exists. Some of that is political maneuvering (global warmin--er, climate change) and some of it is because, to bring the discussion back here, many of the politically powerful religious groups are so anti-science as to be downright scary.

Lastly, I just want to say that I loved Andrew's post. I think it adequately summarizes why people choose to believe whatever makes them comfortable with that awe.

 

Other than strongly disagreeing with your suggestion that 9/11 wouldn't have happened without the religious martyrdom element (and I refer you to the Kurdistan Workers' Party suicide attacks or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka)...

Excuse me?

 

That's fair. I'll amend my point to say that the religious martyrdom element makes fueling of suicide terrorist attacks, in general, easier.

lol. Quasi-scientific better?

Edit: After a short debate with a mutual friend, I retract "psuedoscience" as it is entirely unfair. Replace "pseudo" with "soft" or "social".

 

Social sciences are still sciences, no matter how many ignorant people and/or tabloids like to say "lol but dem only knows stuffs once it's already happened lololol". We use the scientific method, and mathematic models, and all that stuff. Okay, we don't wear lab coats, I'll give you that.

 

I agree, Dave. I'm sorry.

But I think it's also important to distinguish between the level of certitude we have about the predictive power of social sciences (indeed all sciences) vs natural sciences. There's a tendency to say stuff like "economists predict [stuff]" without pointing out the limitations of those predictions, which vary widely depending on the subject.

 

I'd say for me the exact inverse is true. I suppose I subscribe to the Russell-viewpoint on this.

I also live in a very atheist environment. I mean, I come from Catholic background, but not believing, it's more the expectation than not around here.

 

Arlol. I didn't realise a lot of you were still alive. I feel so lost coming back here and not seeing people.

Also, I am not religious.

 

Economics doesn't focus on empiricism, which is one of the most important things in science. The point is, economics is not a science.

 

omg hiiii

 

Wait so when I wrote my thesis for grad school in an Agriculture Economics degree when I asked a question, researched to see if anyone else had asked the specific question, formulated a hypothesis, gathered data from the students and observed how they fared in a performance based course, analyzed my data and came to a conclusion, and then went to a conference to tell my results to others you're telling me that isn't science?

You're telling me that when we forecast what we think is going to happen that we're not using observations from 10 years past or more?

The problems I worked on would've been a heck of a lot easier if I could've just made stuff up instead of using actual data that was pages long.

You do not know what you're talking about so please stop.

 

You're simply plain wrong, sorry.

 

Science is required to be falsifiable, which cannot be said for a lot of economics.

Frankly, I don't see why you're taking it so personally, horsey, I said it wasn't science, not that it was horrible or something.

 

So what part of economics can't you prove false?

And before a mod asks me to stop, Econ is like my second religion.

 

The part where no one conducts tests in a controlled environment.

Also I'm pretty sure the only time a mod is going to step in the unlikely event where you, I don't know, accuse me spreading lies about economics.

 

Vivec, you're right about Macro but totally off base on micro. Look up Esther Duflo. She won the John Bates Clark award for her work on randomized control trials in development. You can be rigorous with economics on a small scale. Its when it comes to Macro (the trade policy, the monetary policy, fiscal policy, etc) that you lose that ability.

 

But, New_York_City, you have to see that just because some tests can be done in a controlled environment doesn't make the entire field a science.

 

I don't think economics is any sort of hard science. I just wanted to be clear that, when possible, people do controlled tests. The entire discipline isn't just made up guess work.

 

sean, wikipedia says "shut up, this is a stupid fight"


but for some reason they spelled it