Comments on the Supernatural

By Oskar

After around twenty failed attempts to write articles for this blog, I have decided to compile a series of my better paragraphs that can be understood alone, but I feel lend strength to one and other. Most of them are comments on the debate over the existance of the supernatural that has been continually re-raised by Reuben. While I am on that topic, I should mention that I think we should change our sub-heading, as little actual thinking seems to be going on on either side of said debate. This, I feel is a hypocritical situation, given that most of our contributions come from Reuben, supposed champion against political rhetoric. I also feel it is a bit condescending, I personally do not feel qualified to teach anyone as a superior and am equally open to and expectant of, learning from my discussions with those critical of my thoughts.

Essentially what has been repeatedly said during our discussions is that some of us think we know what we currently can’t know , while others think we don’t know what we currently can’t know (thought I’d better express it in clear English). I put myself in the latter category because I make an initial assumption that, while it is impossible to confirm something (with the possible exclusion of some mathematics [I'm up for debate on this]), we should include the most probable scenario, based on our observations of the world, as part of our working model. While this assumption is unfounded, it removes the need to assume a host of other things, so I’m going to stick with it.

Simply claiming that there are things we don’t know is a perfectly valid, even a constructive, thing to do. Claiming, on the other hand, that YOU know what others don’t, should only be done when you have some kind of evidence that makes the probability of your thoughts outweigh the probability of existing thoughts. This is not always a clear cut case, but the most dramatic shifts in our thinking are often accompanied by clear cut changes in evidence.

Claiming that things exist “beyond the material world”, is something that is difficult to substantiate with evidence (keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming article I am writing about how this might even be a paradoxical claim). The person who has come closest to the mark in doing this is, in my opinion, Plato. With this in mind I would like to suggest that any attempts to make this claim could be substantiated by speculative philosophy (still, no philosopher has really gone beyond Plato, in this respect, in the past 2400 years, so good luck with that).

I believe both sides of this argument have made repeated reference to some kind of Darwinian evolution as evidence. I feel this is quite out of place, as that is not a debate on how present biodiversity has occurred, but on the existance or lack of, of the supernatural. This is a common mistake in debates on the existence of a god, because it is often used as evidence against a literal interpretation of the bible, but it is quite removed from the supernatural debate (evolution would not be disproved if the animals being selected for and against had souls or experienced reincarnation, or if they coexisted with any number of supernatural beings). This is accepted by most theists as well and groups such as the Vatican and the church of England have made it clear that they are no longer in conflict with evolutionists.

At one stage during the heated debate in the previous post, Sanders said “we have never seen an ape change into a human”. Indeed this is true in both its literal meaning, and the meaning I believe it is clear he was intending it to have. Like all things in science, we cannot actually prove that Darwinian evolution occurs. There is certainly a very high probability of this being the way biodiversity has occurred, given current evidence, but we have no confirmation that new evidence will not arise. Like our judicial system, we must base what we accept as our reality on evidence we have available to us that proves something ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

I feel that another point that has repeatedly been causing confusion in these discussions is the idea that logic and evidence will always agree. I believe (and history has shown) that this is not always the case. If I was to base an argument on my own assumptions, I would say that logic is, at least in part. based on our observations (in everyday situations). If we come across a non-everyday situation, the evidence we encounter may not follow our logic. Quantum undeterminism springs to mind as an example. On the other hand, logically applied reason can extend beyond our current evidence based theories and provide answers to questions yet to be evidentially confirmed, or even tried. A successful example of this is the other pillar of modern physics, Einstein’s relativity. A less successful example of applied logic is Xeno’s paradox (I know the paradox is actually based on flawed logic, but I have included it anyway because we do make wrong assumptions in our logical reasoning sometimes).

It should be noted that in the above paragraph I have used the word logic to mean something probably closer to common sense than some definitions of logic.

So there you have it.  A collection of my thoughts on the supernatural and our debate about it. Please debate, disregard, disprove, reinforce and force me to modify them as you like.

Oskar

A challenge to the scientific method

By Reuben.

From a random discussion on Facebook comes a rather interesting comment:

I’m not arguing against science or the scientific method at all. In fact, I wasn’t even espousing a particular worldview or religious dogma. My point was simply that Scientism as a worldview is incoherent. This is because Scientism maintains that the ONLY knowledge which is valid comes from the scientific method. But how do they arrive at that conclusion? Using the scientific method? The scientific method cannot be its own justification. Proponents of Scientism are making a metaphysical and epistemological declaration which cannot be arrived at empirically. That was my only point. The same problem holds for Logical Positivism which states that the only meaningful statements are those which are scientific in nature. But that is not itself a scientific statement, but one of abstract reason.

Discuss.

Know Thy Enemy: Fundamentalism

(Nathaniel writes:)

There is a powerful and dangerous idea among the ‘elite’, scientific intellectuals. It is by no means a new idea, having been around for quite a long while, and it is this: That most (or all) of the problems in the world have been caused by religion – or superstitious beliefs – in one form or another.

That’s the great thing about prejudice, isn’t it? You can form great judgments without first getting all of the facts. As we shall soon discover, getting all the facts is a very difficult process – some might say impossible – and that’s why certain individuals find prejudiced ideas so useful.

We know of countless wars that have been waged in the name of one religion or another. According to history – which is not in itself completely infallible – these wars happen all the time. According to the news, these wars are happening right now. You can be sure they’ll continue to happen in the future.

Now, here’s the problem as it affects our society. Religion and philosophy, despite making great advances in our time, cannot possibly keep up with the scientific revelations that occur every decade. They are simply no longer fashionable – in our culture, the things that move the fastest survive, and science most certainly moves the fastest.

Science is valuable. There are tangible benefits to supporting science. My enmity is not reserved for science, though – in and of itself I have no problems with science or its advancements. I’m weary of science, I’m paranoid of science, but I bear it no immediate ill will.

I bear fundamentalism ill will. Alas, most scientists these days are also powerful fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is, as I define it, the holding on to ideas until it serves to actually hamper intellectual growth. When a new, better idea is developed, the fundamentalist spits on it and cries heresy.

As most people around here know, I’m a self-professed magician. Not a stage magician, mind you, but someone who believer’s an individual’s will can strongly affect reality. This is, to most, crazy-talk; it’s up there with UFOlogy and ESP-research to most men of science. It simply does not warrant investigation.

That’s a problem. Not the fact that they don’t believe I’m right – that’s a normal, expected reaction – but that they’re not prepared to test that theory out. “It’s impossible!” they cry, when I talk to them of witchcraft and the latent psychic abilities within the individual human being.

Science does not work that way. Science understands that the laws it establishes are not really eternal, unbreakable laws: they cannot be absolute ideas, in a Platonic sense, because certain absolute ideas since that time have already been broken. We do not accumulate scientific theories until we have collected them all and reach enlightenment about everything in the universe; we collect and revise, add the good and subtract the bad.

To claim something is impossible is a powerful statement to make. In order to make it, you have to show that you know everything that is and is not possible. This is illogical. In a time where our understanding of the world is being shaken every decade, to say that we know everything is a monumentally stupid thing to say. If science, our dear friend, has proven anything, it is this: that nothing can be considered entirely impossible.

“Ah,” but some men of science will reply, “But magic and ESP and UFOlogy and paranormal events defy common sense!”

It’s often said that common sense is not all that common. There is a damn good reason for this. It is detrimental to the evolution of mankind as a whole. Still, common sense is a little too common among the intellectual elite for my liking.

Common sense is not what we need: what we need is a healthy agnosticism towards everything in this world. A weary, sceptical approach is prime – not the immediate shutting-down of all new ideas, not this common sense. Einstein’s theories attacked the common sense of physicists at that time; Galileo’s astronomical findings attacked the common sense of those who knew that the Earth wasn’t moving; Darwin’s theories of evolution attacked the common sense of those who knew they weren’t primates.

As it has also been pointed out numerous times before, common sense and logic are not purely objective things. How could they be? There is no ‘true’ objectivism; at least, not as true as we would like to think. While there may be objective truths, the problem is that when they are deciphered by an individual the individual’s subjective thoughts get in the way.

This is called a reality-tunnel; our sphere of beliefs. Reality-tunnels, in and of themselves, are fine – but we have to understand that there will always be more to the world than to what our reality tunnel tells us. Our paradigms should be used until they are useless, in which case a better model should be found.

Ultimately, every individual’s reality-tunnel is flawed. Our beliefs are always going to be influenced by (a) the beliefs of those around us and (b) our previous beliefs. Let’s look at a typical Marxist socialist, for example. A typical Marxist shows typical rage towards those who do not agree with their ideals – capitalists, in other words. Any who do not support their cause are evil scum, and should be destroyed.

However, a Marxist also has to somehow come to terms with the belief, eschewed by Marx himself, of economic determinism; that capitalism will fall, communism (or socialism) will rise, and we will enter a utopia world. Every man and woman has his place – either as a capitalist or a revolutionary – but it ultimately doesn’t matter, because socialism will win in the end.

Ultimately: it’s not the fault of the capitalists. It is their place to fall – someone has to do it! The two ideas would clash within the reality-tunnel of an established Marxist more than they would realise, I should think, at least subconsciously. The Marxist sphere of belief is flawed.

There’s a reason we do not talk about truth in things such as mathematics, the ‘pure’ science: we talk about validity. How valid is this idea, now? It may not be true, but it can most certainly be valid for our purposes, and in this case mathematics got things right.

After all, there’s more than one type of self-consistent algebra and more than one type of geometry. We use the different types as we need to. One type is only better than the other in that it is more useful – not, as some would believe, because it is more right. All of them are wrong.

We’re quite honestly working with dodgy models of thought that only work in certain situations, and we have the nerve to cheerfully proclaim what ‘is’ and what ‘is not’? They’re useful, yes, but the idea that they are right is a powerful misconception. There are no eternal truths that we know of – there is no pure reason.

We see something occur, some event in space-time, and some (but not all) of that energy hits us. We process the energy, and then the neurological processes subtract and add things to what we ‘saw’. The important thing is that we could not possibly have experienced the entire event, so how can we fully judge it?

“This is an apple” then equals the much more correct “this seems like an apple to me”. Now, if we all had reasoning like that – if we all had the gall to admit that our spheres of thought may be incorrect – how many atrocities would have occurred this century?

Hitler: “The Jews are evil filth” sounds a lot worse than “the Jewish people seem like evil filth to me”. Bush: “The war in Iraq is fully justified” would be much better as “the war in Iraq seems fully justified to me”.

Religion doesn’t cause all the wars and terror in this world – neither does science. A greater, darker force – a force that encompasses the two of them – is the problem humanity needs to overcome before things get better. Sheer-minded fundamentalism is the enemy. Since we cannot possibly get all of the facts, we must admit that we’re all prejudiced in one way or another; but come on, can’t we just admit that?

Thoughts?