The explanatory power of evolution.

[TX-Beau]

In 'your' 'scientific description of the universe' are you then stating that spirits do not exist?

I'm saying you have zero evidence to just assume they do.

 

[ludolfo]

I'm saying you have zero evidence to just assume they do.

which means you are limited by your limited definition of 'evidence' which IS scientism.

 

[TX-Beau]

Which means you are inventing definitions for "evidence" to suit your imagination. Words mean things, pretending otherwise just makes you look sillly.

Making up LOL "scientism" when you get called on it makes you look even more ridiculous.

You want to believe in unicorns, knock yourself out. Don't come crying to me though when you can't find one and people don't believe you because you can't. That doesn't make them "scientism-ists." That makes you someone who just believes something he can't back the fuck up.

You want to believe in souls and spirits and what-have -you WHY should anyone take your word for it, WHY? YOUR claim, YOUR burden of proof.

That's not "scientism" it's common fucking sense.

 

[ludolfo]

“the "Scientist's Creed" - all Scientistic sects profess a common faith in the premise of materialism and the method of reductionism

Like a fundy Christian wants to demand you believe in an historical person called 'Jesus' without any actual evidence, you want to demand that everyone bows down to the scientific method as the arbiter of what reality is. I have tried to inform you that that stance is not science but scientism, but you refuse to accept that term and call me silly and ridiculous?

Even Albert Einsten used the term:

Einstein wrote this in a letter to a friend in 1952.”
“Weinberg and Maddox are part of what seems to be a little-discussed, quasi-covert twentieth century ìreligionî known as ìScientism.î Adherents of scientism are convinced that within the established scientific community resides by far the best, most reliable description of existence. Believers in Scientism consider that religion, spirituality, and ìpseudoscienceî (which includes everything from cold fusion to ESP research to UFO investigations) are the prime dangers to humankind (never of course their science and philosophy). They are further convinced that the world is composed of only matter (whatever that is!) and electromagnetic radiation in a space-time plenum, and that all of existence and consciousness can be reduced to existing physical laws governing these. Even if they were correct about the latter, their religious zeal in excoriating any other possible cosmologies is offensive and, in fact, unscientific.
Science, not Scientism, should govern our actions in investigating all of existence. Science, with a capital letter, gives meaning to life. Scientism, when decomposed to its basic elements, is fundamentally a covert ìreligionîñone, ironically, that denies the efficacy of reason.” “…today the high priests of Scientism, such as physicist Weinberg and APS flak Robert Park, are trying to ìcut the throatsî of all who disagree with their pseudo-religion.”

 

[TX-Beau]

Oh Please. You think you're the first person to wander in here with "scientism?"

It is and remains a term made up by people with irrational beliefs in order to justify TO themselves why people questioning their irrational beliefs are persecuting them.

I don't' give a flying fuck what you believe. I'm not going to take any of it as fact of course, but that is hardly bursting in your door and demanding your bible.

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LOL reality is what it is, believing in fairy tales isn't reality no matter how much whining you do.

All the rest of that is you dancing around the germane point.

If YOU make an assertion, YOU have to back it up.

 

[TX-Beau]

"...It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it..."

[letter 24th March 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Princeton University Press. Hereafter "AE:THS"]

http://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/einstein-the-atheist-on-religion-and-god/

 

[ludolfo]

Oh Please. You think you're the first person to wander in here with "scientism?"

Oh Please. You think you're the first person to wander in here with "materialism?"

It is and remains a term made up by people with irrational beliefs in order to justify TO themselves why people questioning their irrational beliefs are persecuting them.

The one who is irrational here is you who cannot accept what the definition of scientism means and how real scientists refute what claiming science is, how you state it is. Science is not about stating what reality is. What hubris you have!

I don't' give a flying fuck what you believe. I'm not going to take any of it as fact of course, but that is hardly bursting in your door and demanding your bible.

I can tell from your tone just how much of a fundamental position you are defending. I don't believe in the Bible. So this is not an atheist versus theist thang. I am more animist.

[Quoted Text: Removed]

[Text: Removed]

LOL reality is what it is, believing in fairy tales isn't reality no matter how much whining you do.

And you know what reality is? OMG. You are still in denial about what church you belong to huh? Tis theee Church of SCIENTISM dear...?

All the rest of that is you dancing around the germane point.

If YOU make an assertion, YOU have to back it up.

I don't HAVE to do anything. And I know the mindset you represent. it is funda-mental. there will no no getting through no matter what.........do I care?

 

[TX-Beau]

LOL

[Text: Removed]

You don't get to define shit about anyone else for any reason, what hubris have you, or what they have to accept - funny, that's what you are trying to accuse me of isn't it. Hypocrisy they name is Ludofo. If you want to pretend "scientism" is real. knock yourself out.

It's still bunk people like you invented to evade having to answer hard questions, bible or no bible.

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And it remains that if YOU are making the assertions YOU have to back them up. Your beliefs are not deserving of special regard just because you have them.

 

[Kulindahr]

Bullshit. End of story.

"Scientism" is a bunk pseudo-philosophy pushed by purveyors to the gullible.

NOWHERE does "science" (LOL which is a process of inquiry anyway not a monolithic "thing") attempt to define magical mythology. Nowhere.

Please point out where it does.

No, scientism is real. It is the position, taken without any possibility of proof, that everything which can be known can be attained by the human mind, and further that the human mind will attain it by relying on and using nothing other than science.

 

[Kulindahr]

Which means you are inventing definitions for "evidence" to suit your imagination. Words mean things, pretending otherwise just makes you look sillly.

Making up LOL "scientism" when you get called on it makes you look even more ridiculous.

You want to believe in unicorns, knock yourself out. Don't come crying to me though when you can't find one and people don't believe you because you can't. That doesn't make them "scientism-ists." That makes you someone who just believes something he can't back the fuck up.

You want to believe in souls and spirits and what-have -you WHY should anyone take your word for it, WHY? YOUR claim, YOUR burden of proof.

That's not "scientism" it's common fucking sense.

If that's common sense, the you'd better tell the governments of the world to throw out their court systems, because they rely almost universally on evidence that you wouldn't classify as such.

 

[TX-Beau]

Don't accept that, every time I go looking for scientism, I find people calling OTHER people that, and no one running around applying it to themselves.

Why is that do ya think?

"...Reviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars, Gregory R. Peterson[28][page needed] detects two main broad themes:

It is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things;

It is used, often pejoratively,[29][30][31] to denote a border-crossing violation in which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An example of this second usage is to label as scientism any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews).

Mikael Stenmark proposes the expression scientific expansionism as a synonym of scientism.[32] In the Encyclopedia of science and religion, he writes that, while the doctrines that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science (that is, typically the natural sciences) could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area or dimension).[32]

According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science has no boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone.[32] This idea has also been called the Myth of Progress.[33]

E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed, criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't be counted, in other words, it didn't count."[34]

Intellectual historian T.J. Jackson Lears argues there has been a recent reemergence of "nineteenth-century positivist faith that a reified 'science' has discovered (or is about to discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies." Lears specifically identifies Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's work as falling in this category.[35] Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have leveled similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and writer Malcolm Gladwell.[36][37][38]..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

 

[TX-Beau]

My position hasn't changed since the last time you and I had this argument. Shall we have it again?

 

[Kulindahr]

It is and remains a term made up by people with irrational beliefs in order to justify TO themselves why people questioning their irrational beliefs are persecuting them.

So Albert Einstein was a man with irrational beliefs trying to justify to himself why people questioning his irrational beliefs were persecuting him?

 

[TX-Beau]

If that's common sense, the you'd better tell the governments of the world to throw out their court systems, because they rely almost universally on evidence that you wouldn't classify as such.

Oh please, conflating a legal definition of evidence with scientific definition of evidence is DISHONEST and you know it, and neither do laws operate on a basis of common sense, nice goal post move, no score.

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So Albert Einstein was a man with irrational beliefs trying to justify to himself why people questioning his irrational beliefs were persecuting him?

Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein you can't speak for him neither can I, nor is he some infallible font of all things.

 

[TX-Beau]

And I suspect he'd agree far more with me that your Christian believer self.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh please, conflating a legal definition of evidence with scientific definition of evidence is DISHONEST and you know it, and neither do laws operate on a basis of common sense, nice goal post move, no score.

Your position has been always that only what you consider as evidence qualifies as evidence. The human race in general disagrees with you.

Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein you can't speak for him neither can I, nor is he some infallible font of all things.

So you do assert that Einstein was irrational and trying to justify his beliefs.

Sorry, but Einstein was criticizing scientism as a scientist, which is apparently how the term originated: scientists saw other scientists making irrational claims about science, and gave that a name. There are still many scientists who do the same; Einstein's observation remains valid.

In fact I'm not sure I've ever seen a better exposition of the point -- kudos to ludolfo for bringing us Einstein's comment.

 

[Kulindahr]

And I suspect he'd agree far more with me that your Christian believer self.

Given your positions here, and the Einstein statement ludolfo brought us, I highly doubt it.

 

[TX-Beau]

"...he says completely ignoring the following Einstein quote..."

LOL Oh come on. I could give a fuck what Einstein believed as well. Frankly I think you're on crack if you think his position is substantially different from mine, but that's not the point.

 

[TX-Beau]

Here you go

http://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/einstein-the-atheist-on-religion-and-god/

 

[TX-Beau]

..."I dislike very much that my children should be taught something that is contrary to all scientific thinking."

http://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/einstein-the-atheist-on-religion-and-god/

AL-FUCKING-BERT EINSTEIN!!!