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I (predictably) disagree.

Crazy Horse:

Like Alain Aspect's third experiment, where testing Bell's Inequalities confirmed quantum theory, but thereby also presupposed action at a distance.

You only need to pressupose action at a distance if you accept Einstein's idea of elements of reality. But the fact is that apart from the Bell Inequalities (which show that QM is incompatible with local realism) there are other predictions of Quantum Mechanics such as the Hardy and the Kochen-Specker theorems which show that Einsteinian hidden variables not only need to be nonlocal but also contextual and non-counterfactual. To be honest, I prefer to say that Einstein's hidden variables don't exist. I have written about this before: The world is weirder than you ever thought on May 29th, 2006.

Maybe I should write something about what Wheeler's alternate universes (are you talking about the misnamed "Many Worlds Interepretation" of QM by Everett, who gave it the more sensible name of "Relative State Interpretation"?) are not.

Einstein's philosophical prejudice that God doesn't play dice has been very fruitful by stimulating research into the foundations of Quantum Mechanics but, for my money, it has ultimately been shown to be wrong.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 30th, 2007 at 07:35:03 PM EST
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Crazy Horse:

Religion is Not Spirituality

Yes, I agree.

by Fran on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 01:45:35 AM EST
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Re: Religion is Not Spirituality (4.00 / 3)

There was nothing spiritual about the church I grew up in...it was just a bunch of unhappy folks.

Watching the sunrise while driving up the pacific coast highway near big sur...now that's the church that gets me "what I need."

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 03:33:55 AM EST
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Um... which direction does the sun rise from on the west coast of America? These days in Norway, it comes up from the south (sets in the south, too), so I have an open mind about such things.

by Andhakari on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 07:52:24 AM EST
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Well, he didn't say he was watching it rise over the ocean, just watching it rise. It does have to come up, even on the West Coast....

by the stormy present (stormypresent aaaaaaat gmail etc) on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 08:05:52 AM EST
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Big Sur Sunrise (4.00 / 2)

It has been empirically proven that the sun does indeed rise in Cali, and there is no finer place to see it than from the heights of Big Sur. (When the fog isn't rolling in, sunsets over the ocean can be even more spectacular.) One of my favorite places in the world, because the world is so far away.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 08:22:25 AM EST
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Re: Big Sur Sunrise (4.00 / 2)

Well, if you're going to bring up standards of empirical proof in the context of a discussion of religion I may as well give up now.
I've been to California a number of times, including Big Sur, and although I do seem to recall the sun rising on most days (not so often the case here in Norway) I have no recollection of which direction it might have risen from. I will accept the contention that sun does not always rise from the sea, however.

by Andhakari on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 09:56:31 AM EST
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Big Sur is about 36 degrees North. Oslo is about 60 degrees North. The earth's axis is tilted by 23 degrees. Of course the sun rises and sets from the South in Norway: you're at most 7 degrees south of the terminator at this time of year.

See Lo The Darkness by rg on December 19th, 2007.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 08:21:17 AM EST
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Re: Religion is Not Spirituality (4.00 / 4)

This is the essence of my dissatisfaction with this discussion: a lack of definition of terms. Religion is not the opposite of science. Science is not something to BELIEVE in: it is a method for understanding and describing the objective universe. Mathematics is a language we use to quantify and understand the data we objectively collect. Mathematical and scientific theories are systems for understanding the objective universe, and they are fundamentally not static or immutable.
Religion is many things, and it is different from society to society, but it is certainly not spirituality, although that may be a component of the greater framework.n
Nor is religion the opposite of atheism. If atheism is the denial of god, then it is at least as irrational as faith. The proof of a negative proposition is a logical impossibility. Faith in an objectively unprovable proposition (god and soul)may be un-logical, but it is not necessarily illogical.
Most religions include a dogma as a more or less arbitrary set of game rules for human behavior and a mythology to explain and justify the legitimacy of those rules. This is not spiritual faith. Dogma is more about defining the membership and purpose of a club than about ones subjective spiritual understanding of the self and ones purpose within creation.
It's hard to have a coherent discussion about a subject as diverse as "religion" when the word invokes so many thoughts and emotions. I hope I haven't added too much mud to the water.

by Andhakari on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 07:40:07 AM EST
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At one point, to do science you have to believe in some induction...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 08:05:16 AM EST
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Yes, but using induction and BELIEVING in god the son and the holy ghost are more than a little different. We can of course retreat to cogito ergo sum and stop there, but that doesn't do us much good. I can't remember how Descarte got us from there to whatever point he finally made (was it proving the existence of God?) but I imagine induction was in the mix.

by Andhakari on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 at 10:08:03 AM EST
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Descartes had to use the "fact" that "God is good" as opposed to a "Great Deceiver" in order to get from Cogito Ergo Sum to an objective basis for any other knowledge.

Which is bollocks.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 1st, 2008 at 06:33:16 PM EST
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I've, after much reading come to the conclusion that only the first couple of meditations are of any worth, the rest of them ammount to a please dont burn me defence.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Jan 1st, 2008 at 06:37:11 PM EST
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Religion is not the opposite of science. Science is not something to BELIEVE in: it is a method for understanding and describing the objective universe.

I would agree with the first statement, and disagree with the latter.

Science is the belief system of this last couple thousand years (give or take, depending on where on the planet you look at it.) It causes people to say with a strait face

It [scientific method] is the known method that most reliably weeds out wrong inferences and theories. And that is an empirically supported statement. Migeru-Dec 24th, 2007

It reminds me that there are hundreds of thousands of movies and songs that are pure dreck, yet we remember the classics of the [50's, 60's, or 1720's, 1780's] with fond regard as if that is all their are.

Science and the scientific method have had billions of wrong forks, some of them quite consequential (like the eugenics party thrown as part of WWII.)

But the belief system says and relies upon and proves that in the end, we know (or, will know) ____. Empirically.

Perhaps it is true. And, perhaps it (the method) will be scoffed at in a few hundred years like the previous methods are scoffed at today. It certainly only says that given enough time, (enough weedkillers of wrong inferences and theories that have to be worked through) some things will work out right, and if you throw enough time and energy at a situation, (and enough people to experiment upon in some cases) perhaps (if the background information is straight and the technology and mentality of the time is ready) that a slice of truth will be dusted off and put on a shelf as understood, usable in another context, and often, available to slap others with.

That spirituality has sometimes progressed and slid in a similar manner in the last several thousand years, sometimes (often???) used to slap others with, well, I don't have to be an apologist for Saddam Hussein and religion in the same decade. But it can be done, in the same way that I am certain that [any clever person] is able to parse their own statement and find them as false as they are true.

If it were only as bad as 1984.

by siegestate (siegestate or beyondwarispeace.com) on Tue Jan 1st, 2008 at 03:42:10 PM EST
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Science and the scientific method have had billions of wrong forks, some of them quite consequentia

Well yes. That's how it works, though your chosen example isn't really science, as far as I know, but science abuse.

The problem with "spiritualism" is that no-one even seems to be able to define what it is unless one accepts that it is meaningful to start with.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Jan 1st, 2008 at 03:51:00 PM EST
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Well yes. That's how it works, though your chosen example isn't really science, as far as I know, but science abuse.

Yes, that is how it works, and it is what you (and others) have been defending, regardless of how off the rails it can be for however short or long it takes to get back on track again.

Well, yes. That's how it works, and it means that there is, or can be, a propagation of 'not true' into the loop without feedback until some other variation comes along...which itself will be continuously refined and/or modified until the Great Truths that Explains All Truths is derived.

'Yes, that's how it works' means to me that you can take any 'after the fact' analysis and say, well, obviously, that wasn't science, or it was science abuse. It also means that I need to have faith in your science and someone to tell me which is the real stuff and importantly, to keep a straight face.

To the side detail point, the science of eugenics was very well accepted at the time and accepted as derived from very scientifically researched theories. Its ramifications still haven't been wrung from the system.

The problem with "spiritualism" is that no-one even seems to be able to define what it is unless one accepts that it is meaningful to start with.

Yes; I'm pretty certain that you could make the same argument of science as well if you wanted to. (I haven't thought about this, but will pretend to be a science guy.)

You would start by pointing out that words generally are created in an experimental fashion that favors science, that science is tailor made for labeling things...sometimes, that it all it is good at. Things don't need to be understood, but they sure can be named.

Then a nice hustle with a pejorative post-fix, call it scienceism and...

OK; that's enough of that. I'll let you nail science for all that it is not by yourself.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that we can play with double-helix models in the bio lab and the physics lab (even if they might have different words and models for explaining the same things in different ways. I am not a church goer, I don't get into spiritualism, and I don't like people ripping people off of money or time or anything else.

I do believe that there is an area of study in an area of non-bio, non-physical essences. If it is important to have a set of words for that, I'll work on it and perhaps present it in my first diary. But having a name or set of words for it isn't critical for those who are looking to find it and get benefit from it. Perhaps that is why they get nailed by charlatans so often.

That science and religion have both littered the present field, and that neither explain or handle more than they do (with a lot of work left over for the future), that they have both been used for harm (perhaps equally), that they both seem to give their adherents a sense of superiority (or inferiority that needs to be rigorously defended), doesn't mean that the future needs to be the same way.

If it were only as bad as 1984.

by siegestate (siegestate or beyondwarispeace.com) on Tue Jan 1st, 2008 at 06:23:15 PM EST
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