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<p>If one recognizes that he or she is applying subjective criteria of “good” in making that characterization, there is nothing religious about hoping for something good to happen.</p>
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<p>There are neurochemical signals for happiness and sadness.</p>
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<p>I see you have a rather loose (read: inaccurate) sense of the word “confirm.” :)</p>
<p>Explanation:</p>
<p>Aristotle: Earth is round and 25,000mi around</p>
<p>Copernicus: Earth goes around Sun, as do other planets</p>
<p>So yes, many people theorized about a round world before Copernicus’s time.</p>
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<p>If you recognized that fact, there would be no reason to apply such subjective criteria, unless you had another level of “good” that says that applying subjective criteria is “good”.</p>
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<p>Why are some of these neurochemical signals “good” and others are “bad”?</p>
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Science confirms religion. For example, biblical translations have shown that people theorized about a round world long before Copernicus.
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<p>Um, what? I don’t think the Bible even addresses the shape of the earth. It’s a historical and theological record, not a scientific one.</p>
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<p>What is “that fact” referring to exactly? I would ordinarily assume that you’re referring to the entire quoted sentence, but that renders your response wholly illogical.</p>
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<p>In a general sense, they aren’t, nor did I claim so. But if one associates “good” with the greatest net production of “happiness” and associates certain neurochemical signals with “happiness” as per those signals’ agreement with his or her subjective sense of “happiness,” then those signals can be “good” or “bad,” though, again, not in a general sense.</p>
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<p>It’s not clear what you’re trying to say here. </p>
<p>Also, you haven’t explained why labeling something as “good” is religious. </p>
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<p>I don’t believe anyone made the argument that they are good or bad.</p>
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<p>The bible did say somewhere that the earth was round. My bible teachers pointed it out to me, but I don’t remember where, lol. I think it’s quoted somewhere earlier in this thread as well.</p>
<p>^ IDK, by my understanding the Bible occasionally refers to the earth, usually in a poetic sense, and people make claims that it is stating something about the shape of the planet. I think it’s usually talking about something else, though I think that what is written is consistent with the fact the God would have know that the earth is round.</p>
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<p>The fact that your value judgements are purely subjective.</p>
<p>To restate:</p>
<p>If you realize that value judgements are purely subjective, then there is no reason to make them, unless you believe in a non-subjective value that says that making subjective value judgements is “good”.</p>
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<p>Because there is no rational, naturalistic justification for making these judgements. Therefore, if you do make them, you are betraying a belief in some authoritative, non-natural standard for “good”.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean you’re a theist. This standard could come from a god, but it could also come from some mystical “force of the cosmos” like some eastern type religions believe, or from humans themselves, as some western philosophers believe.</p>
<p>But none of those options are scientifically justifiable, because science is the branch which determines what things will happen, and how they happen, while religion tries to answer what things should happen, and why they happen.</p>
<p>Fittingly, post #2000 goes to mifune. I had #1000… What’s the over-under for the time until post #3000?</p>
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<p>Maybe I will, if I can find the time…</p>
<p>I can put it in my high school transcript! :P</p>
<p>Assigning personal criteria to “good” and then labeling things as such is not religious in any way. One simply likes those criteria and, thus, uses them to make the concept of “good” more concrete. If I say that I like macaroni and cheese, I am not saying that macaroni and cheese has been endowed by some god with a quality that makes it objectively good. </p>
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<p>Science can almost always answer why certain actions or phenomena happen; it cannot, however, answer the ultimate why’s about why things are the way that they are. So when a scientist claims that our understanding of physical laws makes the fact that something can come out of nothing possible, he or she is using physical laws as the fundamental explanation. Someone like you would want an additional level of explanation: how did those laws come into existence?</p>
<p>And so science seemingly has an insurmountable void in that respect. You’re absolutely correct in saying that religion attempts to answer “what things should happen, and why they happen.” But these should’s are obviously merely the work of man; they are an attempt to generalize and deify those aforementioned subjective value judgments. Religion fails to fill the ultimate explanatory void of science because it is fundamentally speculative and, in turn, subject to the many psychological biases of the people who are speculating. Such biases manifest in religion’s personified explanation of the physical laws.</p>
<p>(And faith in those religious ideas colors people’s interpretations of science, as we have seen in your posts.)</p>
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<p>But you are expressing a belief that it is objectively “good” for the matter arbitrarily defined as “you” to be in the state arbitrarily defined as “happy”.</p>
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<p>In complete contrast, I am in fact not saying that it is objectively good. I am saying that eating the food elicits such a response that I want that food again.</p>
<p>There IS a rational justification for determining if things are “good” if they are proved to be beneficial.</p>
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<p>No, actually your “ingenious” sarcasm comes by way of inventing a straw man argument to give the illusion that I was propounding a sweeping generalization. I am speaking of personal methodological approaches and considerations, not necessarily inherent or learned mental competencies. </p>
<p>Truth be told, acceptance of a particular religious opinion requires the acceptance of many indiscriminate assumptions and factual irregularities. As a Christian, you, without any stroke of doubt, take your holy book as a source of valid assertion because you believe it is celestially inspired as a basic matter of associating with the faith, while disputing the purportedly divine underpinnings of texts such as the Donghak scripture and the Bhagavad Gita. (In fact, due to your particular religious upbringing, you most likely aren’t even cognizant of their existence.) You probably believe in vicarious redemption, the resurrection of Christ and that the Great Flood (the downpour of 8,640 inches of rain per day for forty consecutive days) is rooted in historical certainty (although it has been geologically debunked) and that Joshua was able to prevent the sun from setting when the Israelites took vengeance on the Canaanite kings ([Joshua</a> 10:12-13](<a href=“Joshua 10:12-13 KJVJoshua - - Bible Gateway”>Joshua 10:12-13 KJV - Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the - Bible Gateway)). Your god also believed that houses and clothes could contract leprosy ([Leviticus</a> 14:33-57](<a href=“Leviticus 14:33-57 KJVLeviticus - - Bible Gateway”>Leviticus 14:33-57 KJV - And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto - Bible Gateway)), while the cure entailed incantations and the blood of a bird ([Leviticus</a> 14:49-53](<a href=“Leviticus 14:49-53 KJVLeviticus - - Bible Gateway”>Leviticus 14:49-53 KJV - And he shall take to cleanse the house - Bible Gateway)). </p>
<p>Both science and religion attempt to derive factual explanations governing existence, but both approach such in entirely separate ways. Namely, both are two completely separate modes of thought. Religious assertion is an intellectually primitive system of deriving fact by fabricating arbitrary, unsystematic, and scientifically unsound explanations through commonsense intuition. “Truth” in religious affairs is simply the pervading set of supernatural speculations that have survived, devoid of any fidelity to factual detail. When it makes testable hypotheses they are almost invariably wrong, as is naturally the case for unmethodical conjecture. Yet when the Bible of any religion possesses a factual irregularity, it’s either dismissed as “just a metaphor” or “an indication of highly symbolic circumstance,” or most conservatively, that something cannot be true if it contravenes the position of Holy Scripture. Or perhaps some simply feel apathetic towards doublethink or think little of trusting something with profound credibility issues. The main point is that the failings of faith-claims are rarely, if ever, a point of nuisance to those who hold the belief in the highest veneration. Religious assertion has never been held to the same rigorous standards as scientific deduction. Given the ordinarily held passive agreement that religion should remain invulnerable to exacting factual evaluation and the common contention that those who challenge or rebuke sacred religious explanation reek of a socially malignant, pompous arrogance, it is usually an avoided subject altogether, just as many don’t bother quibbling with their slightest concerns with regard to affirmative action for fear of racist labeling. </p>
<p>Religion has had a more historically pervading influence on humanity for several reasons. It is emotionally and psychologically gratifying; possesses far more primitive origins and is often firmly ingrained whether it be through culture, community, or family; typically imbibed beginning in infancy; held for the sake of social and familial cohesion; requisite for personal and public acceptance (think American politics); believing in a particular something, no matter how one’s rationality informs oneself, is taught as more virtuous than not believing; atheistic bigotry; less intellectually rigorous for the layperson to understand than more esoteric principles; general apathy towards evidential, objective understanding; more accessible to the general populace; a general profound fear of the unknown, statistical uncertainties, and hypothetical scenarios; wishful thinking is a more preponderate influence than the inherently impassive nature of logic; and so on. Religion is science’s epistemological forerunner, but it did not have the technological or methodologically sound means of explaining and investigating phenomena through a clear lens of inquiry. </p>
<p>Resorting to the “God did it” default is far more intellectually undemanding and emotionally mesmerizing than understanding and contributing to a technical base of structured, coherent, and logical thought. The same goes for the more liberalized sentiment of understanding and accepting objectively procured fact yet adhering to the erroneously perceived notion of the elemental foundation of supernatural handiwork. </p>
<p>Science, on the other hand, requires a specified, intellectualized, and technical form of knowledge that requires the abandoning of preconceived opinions of reality, which is a much more difficult task when indoctrinated into a particular, sanctified theological perspective. It is ultimately a more enlightened and superior mode of disinterring fact and understanding. The future resides in scientific expansion and technological innovation, not the erroneous, fanciful guesswork of centuries’ or millennia past.</p>
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<p>Assuming that it reaches that extent, I will no longer be participating, as I will have academic and outside obligations. I will be staying active in the subject, just not with unfamiliars on public message boards.</p>
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<p>What is the difference between “good” and “beneficial”?</p>
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<p>Why is it “good” to do what you “want”, if “want” is just a state of the matter in your brain?</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t presume to make claims about the future, but this claim extends from oen of two premises, from what I can see:</p>
<p>1) That which is inevitable is necessarily good, with “inevitable” being understood in the context of constant progress, including scientific
2) Technological innovation or scientific understanding of the world constitutes a good</p>
<p>I have not yet seen any reason to accept either of the premises on a scientific basis. Perhaps you could enlighten me, or introduce another premise that is more in line with your own justification.</p>