Faith or lack thereof = intellectual superiority?

[Alliance SpecForceTrooper]

A few decades later, the entire semiconductor industry is demonstrating that God does indeed "play dice" with the universe on a daily basis.

*snicker*

I just had this funny image of God and St. Peter playing craps....

'Come on sevens! Baby needs a new pair of shoes....'

[arigo]

And here we go with the "Many great scientists believed in god" argument that religion and science should be able to intermingle.

Who gives a flying fuck which scientist believed in what god? Einstein was flat-out refused to believe quantum mechanics because of his ideas about God's intentions and methods. A few decades later, the entire semiconductor industry is demonstrating that God does indeed "play dice" with the universe on a daily basis. That should be a textbook example of why religion and science don't mix and why they should stay completely separate.

That is a good point. A scientist shouldn't allow his belief system to interfere with practicing science. The thing is, he doesn't necessarily have to.

[Molyneux]

A few decades later, the entire semiconductor industry is demonstrating that God does indeed "play dice" with the universe on a daily basis.

*snicker*

I just had this funny image of God and St. Peter playing craps....

'Come on sevens! Baby needs a new pair of shoes....'

I always liked this metaphor -
"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

-(Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, although that passage has a very strong feel of Pratchett to it...if you haven't read it, you really should. It's awesome.)

[wolveraptor]

What a jackass. You obviously don't realize that the fact these scientists were theist/deist/penis-suckers means absolutely shit about their scientific contributions. These people could've contributed just as well without their religion, but, being a typical dumbass, you attribute the deeds of a theist/deist/penis-sucker to their religion, and not to the individual.

Calm down there turbo. I never made the implication that they were good scientists because they were religious; I really doubt that is the case. I'm using them to show that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive like many seem to be suggesting.

Yes they are. You still don't get the point. When Isaac Newton was thinking about his theories of gravity and prisms, etc., he didn't have to keep God at the back of his mind to do so. In fact, it would only be distracting. These scientists tried to keep their beliefs and their work separate. Only when they encountered the untestable (such as outer space, etc.) did they resort to religion. The fact that one person can be both religious and scientific is irrelevant, because didn't let their beliefs influence their science, and vice-versa.

Conclusion: You don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.

[tharkûn]

Einstein was flat-out refused to believe quantum mechanics because of his ideas about God's intentions and methods. A few decades later, the entire semiconductor industry is demonstrating that God does indeed "play dice" with the universe on a daily basis. That should be a textbook example of why religion and science don't mix and why they should stay completely separate.

You are not being fair to Einstein. He had no problem with mathmatics describing QM, hell his Nobel prize is for his contribution to quantum mechanics via the photoelectric effect. What he had a problem with was the interpretation of QM. When you run through the EPR paradox the Copenhagen interpretation requires a superluminal 'something' and Einstein proposed that given the abscence of evidence it was better to assume that QM was an incomplete theory (there were hidden deterministic variables) rather than 'something' having the ability to correlate states lightyears apart.

It is not until after Einstein is dead that actual evidence comes out favoring Copenhagen. For the evidence availible at the time Einstein was not unreasonable for opposing the Copenhagen interpretation. It is not like every other theory in the world hasn't it shares of quite reasonable detractors before the evidence comes in.

Some of the greats were quite religious. Newton wrote more theology than science and further was rather Arianian in a time period when certain people would kill you for it. Pascal, Kelvin, and Mendel all come to mind as more than pew warming religionists; Einstein does not.

[sketerpot]

Now (I'll make myself clear from the outset - I don't personally give much credence to any study on intelligence - as in my view, it is indefinable). People have in the past used studies to explain why black people are inately more stupid than white people

eg. "let's go to a school in and test 50 black kids and white kids, completely disregarding all social factors that blacks as a whole have (ie. high percentage of parents are less educated and poorer than whites, demographic, institutionalised racism blah blah blah)" - "oh look, blacks are stupid and whites are smart, aren't we great! "

this was however disproven by many black children who are brought up in white middle class homes doing as well in school as their white counterparts...

It really ticks me off when people see studies noting a correlation between membership in a group and intelligence and assume that it's talking about individual members of that group.

Those studies, as far as I can tell, talk about statistics. They talk about shifted, overlapping bell curves. THEY DO NOT SAY THAT A BRIGHT BLACK PERSON CAN'T BE AS SMART AS A BRIGHT WHITE PERSON! LEARN! FUCKING! STATISTICS!

I saw a similar thing with the Larry Summers scandal. He said that maybe there were genetic neurological differences between men and women that could partially account for the differences between the numbers of men and women in science and engineering---and people jumped over him as if he were making a blanket statement that all women were intellectually inferior to men in science and engineering. The widespread misinterpretation is so maddening that I wasn't sure whether to post here or in Venting.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the average intelligence figures for blacks and whites are, or if it is possible to quantify general intelligence, or how valid the studies to which you refer are.

[Spyder]

There was once I guy I worked with, at the end of the day he'd say "Look at my sales!" and point to his total, unless someone else was higher, failing that he'd say "Look at my total profit!" and point to that column, that is unless he wasn't at the top, failing that he'd say "Look at my customer count!" and point out that he'd served the most customers, unless of course this wasn't true either.

Failing all that he'd flex his arms and say "check out my pecs!"

At the end of the day people will look for any reason to claim any form of superiority.

[arigo]

What a jackass. You obviously don't realize that the fact these scientists were theist/deist/penis-suckers means absolutely shit about their scientific contributions. These people could've contributed just as well without their religion, but, being a typical dumbass, you attribute the deeds of a theist/deist/penis-sucker to their religion, and not to the individual.

Calm down there turbo. I never made the implication that they were good scientists because they were religious; I really doubt that is the case. I'm using them to show that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive like many seem to be suggesting.

Yes they are. You still don't get the point. When Isaac Newton was thinking about his theories of gravity and prisms, etc., he didn't have to keep God at the back of his mind to do so. In fact, it would only be distracting. These scientists tried to keep their beliefs and their work separate. Only when they encountered the untestable (such as outer space, etc.) did they resort to religion. The fact that one person can be both religious and scientific is irrelevant, because didn't let their beliefs influence their science, and vice-versa.

Conclusion: You don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.

You're an idiot. Look at my response to Drunadal. I said just that. Infact, I'm getting very sick and tired of having the very thing I say thrown back at me by retards that don't read. [/b]

[arigo]

There was once I guy I worked with, at the end of the day he'd say "Look at my sales!" and point to his total, unless someone else was higher, failing that he'd say "Look at my total profit!" and point to that column, that is unless he wasn't at the top, failing that he'd say "Look at my customer count!" and point out that he'd served the most customers, unless of course this wasn't true either.

Failing all that he'd flex his arms and say "check out my pecs!"

At the end of the day people will look for any reason to claim any form of superiority.

Lol, he was just trying to be funny though wasn't he?

[Darth Wong]

I never made the implication that they were good scientists because they were religious; I really doubt that is the case. I'm using them to show that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive like many seem to be suggesting.

Yes they are; the fact that one person can have a duality of mindsets does not disprove the proposition that those mindsets are in fact incompatible. One cannot simultaneously use both mindsets at any given time; the best you can do is show that one person can be religious on Sunday and scientific on Monday.

[arigo]

I never made the implication that they were good scientists because they were religious; I really doubt that is the case. I'm using them to show that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive like many seem to be suggesting.

Yes they are; the fact that one person can have a duality of mindsets does not disprove the proposition that those mindsets are in fact incompatible. One cannot simultaneously use both mindsets at any given time; the best you can do is show that one person can be religious on Sunday and scientific on Monday.

Under those conditions, any belief system is mutually exclusive towards science. Being unwilling to change from any preconceptions at all does not allow one to follow scientific ends. It's just that some people are willing to question their own belief system, thereby allowing for both science and current belief system without consequences.

[Darth Wong]

I never made the implication that they were good scientists because they were religious; I really doubt that is the case. I'm using them to show that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive like many seem to be suggesting.

Yes they are; the fact that one person can have a duality of mindsets does not disprove the proposition that those mindsets are in fact incompatible. One cannot simultaneously use both mindsets at any given time; the best you can do is show that one person can be religious on Sunday and scientific on Monday.

Under those conditions, any belief system is mutually exclusive towards science.

Correct. Science relies on the ability to make decisions without factoring unfounded beliefs into them.

Being unwilling to change from any preconceptions at all does not allow one to follow scientific ends. It's just that some people are willing to question their own belief system, thereby allowing for both science and current belief system without consequences.

That only works if science is always made the victor in the event of a conflict. That is hardly disproof of the simple proposition that science and religion are mutually exclusive. If the only way to make them work "together" is to have a policy of always making religion into science's bitch, then the point remains.

[wolveraptor]

If you begin to question your own religion with scientific inquiry, you almost invariably realize that it is irrational. At that point, you will remain religious only if it makes you feel good, or comforts you.