I shudder to think what devoutly religious scientists like Francis Collins, or deeply philosophical ones like David Bohm would make of such tripe. — andrewk

No need to think, you can read what David Bohm said. Turns out he agrees with "such tripe".

http://dbohm.com/david-bohm-science-spirituality-world-crisis.html

Many thousands of years ago our culture was not broken into fragments as it is now. At that time science and spirituality were not separated. Since then they have grown far apart. In my view it is important to bring them together.

The modern view has been that of mechanism and the universe was compared to a gigantic machine (originally clockwork and later the structure of atoms). This outlook has gone on to regard the human being as a machine

This development has led to a view that has had bad effects. For example, Steven Weinberg, one of the leading physicists of our time has said the more we look into the cosmos the less we see any evidence of meaning. There is no place in this for spirit. It is all mechanism. The domain of spirit has receded until it’s gone as far as science is concerned. We may still hold onto the idea of spirit in spite of this, but at the expense at a kind of split in life.

Modern views on science must be contributing to the current lack of meaning. First of all directly by being mechanistic and secondly indirectly be leading people who want to hold onto spirituality to be incoherent in various aspects of their lives.

But does modern science really force us into mechanism? At present, most scientists seem to believe that this was inevitable.

A current notion that is commonly accepted is that science is value free except possibly for truth, honesty, and similar notions. But that is not really so. Thus, Thomas Khun has said that scientists almost unconsciously pick up paradigms in their apprenticeships which have all sorts of values in them. One of the current values is that mechanism is the right way and the only way. Another value is that we want to make everything calculable by some sort of algorithm.

It is clear that he considered reductive materialism a widespread view among scientists, and that he too saw it as a problem.

After all why would we be surprised that most scientists hold that view, considering that it is the view taught in schools? Kids are taught in physics classes that they are made of particles, that these particles make up everything that exists, and then some of these kids move on to become scientists. If they don't philosophize on their own, they stick with the default physicalist view. And if you actually conversed with scientists, you would realize that the majority indeed hold that view.

When scientists just do there jobs, look at some new collected data and make their scientific article on what the data can tell to us, it isn't hard to imagine that by observing this 'behaviour' you get the impression of scientific materialism and physicalism being the dominant beliefs in the scientific community.

Ask them a little bit else and you can notice that physicalism isn't the trendiest fad in the community. — ssu

That impression doesn't stem from observing their behavior, it stems from the fact that fundamental physics claim to describe the fundamental constituents of the universe, of everything including ourselves, and other scientific fields (chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychiatry, ...) submit to this position of authority that fundamental physics has, they are imbued with the belief of physicalism. There is the widespread belief that in principle everything reduces to and emerges from the constituents described in fundamental physics, that is elementary particles interacting with one another as described in laws of physics.

And the salient question is 'what possible changes could we make, in any attempt to somehow include the observer, to the way we practice the natural sciences?'. How would including the human observer change what we say about geology, or climate science? — Janus

That's the thing, it would be so different that you can't imagine what that would be like while reasoning within the framework of a mind-independent world. You don't see the changes that we could make precisely because you are assuming a mind-independent world.

Now, without assuming a mind-independent world, what is it that has an influence on geology and climate? There are the apparent regularities that we observe in our collective experience (which the natural sciences address), and then there is what we desire. What we desire shapes geology and the climate, it shapes everything we do, which shapes geology and the climate.

And it isn't clear at all that we could ever account for that variable (what we desire) by modeling a human being as an aggregation of elementary particles that behave according to laws of physics, it isn't clear that the behavior of a living being could be predicted from laws of physics, even in principle.

However, in a model of geology or climate, besides the variables of temperature, pressure, wind, solar activity, tectonic plate motion, ..., we could add as a variable the desires of living beings, and work on formulating a model that describes accurately the influence of desires on our environment, and come up with tools to find what people desire (these tools could be speaking with one another, interacting with one another, it doesn't have to be tools in the mere sense of physical object).

And it would put back living beings in an important place, as beings that can shape the world through their will, rather than seeing ourselves and others as meaningless accidents, as heaps of particles that blindly follow physical laws while having the illusion of choice.

I will. Despite the fact you were diagnosed as schizophrenic, he seems to find more common ground with me, that should tell you something.

Many people see psychiatric labels as stigmatizing, if he doesn't, great. However what I said about it could be helpful to him, in case he finds himself surrounded by people who won't listen to him and won't consider what he says seriously because he has been assigned that label, or who will treat him badly and pretend that they didn't, that it's the paranoia talking.

When you're in an environment where people don't have your best interest at heart, it is dangerous to tell you that if you're treated badly it's all in your head.

I think he needs most of all to feel in control of his life, and constantly telling him that he is paranoid and attempting to dismiss what I say to him as misguided while he has felt supported and understood by me, is what I find most unhelpful.

He has felt understood and supported by me, and misunderstood by you. You're not focusing on what he says.

Besides, he has explicitly said that he doesn't feel stigmatized by the label of schizophrenic, so my characterization of his diagnosis has little relevance, but he does feel stigmatized by people who dismiss what he says as paranoia.

He is a human being, stop seeing him as just a diagnosis.

I do not insist that I know what's best for him, I'm just trying to genuinely support someone who is looking for support. Sometimes people simply need a listening ear from people who understand them, rather than be told that they are sick and need to consult a professional, which indeed is the sort of response he would usually get on the internet but not the one he needs.

The typical response you would get just about anywhere else on the internet, where rational thought is encouraged would be something of the sort to seek professional advice. — Wallows

You seem to believe that professionals possess holy knowledge that only them can impart, and us plebeians cannot possibly analyze their thought processes in what leads them to make such or such diagnosis. I wouldn't call that stance rational.

Here are the criteria used by psychiatrists to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t22/

To sum it up, at least one of the following symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech.
And at least one of the following symptoms: grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms (i.e. diminished emotional expression or avolition)

THX1138 doesn't have disorganized speech and hasn't mentioned having hallucinations. He thinks it is possible he might be targeted by some people, but he doesn't believe it fiercely against all evidence, he has some reason to think so, so that doesn't count as a delusion. From what he has told through this thread, there is currently no basis to diagnose him as schizophrenic, as he doesn't fit the criteria.

He did have a belief over 10 years ago that was forced into him by pastors and church members, which could count as a delusion, but he hasn't held it for a long time.

Your insistance that a diagnosis made by a professional is always right, and that as such we should dismiss everything that THX1138 says that goes against this diagnosis, is irrational, patronizing and stigmatizing. After all, why do you believe he received such a diagnosis? It may be the paranoia talking!

Lastly, THX1138 has mentioned that he consults a psychiatrist and a therapist already, which helps him feel supported, so your suggestion to seek professional advice shows how little attention you give to what he has to say, besides the fact he was given in your view a holy diagnosis that renders everything else irrelevant.

However, one notable characteristic is that energy is not always linearly organised. For example, when looking at the relation between visible light and invisible light, instead of observing another red after the violet or another violet before the red, we find that, even using special instruments, the shades of colour do not exceed a certain spatial range. That is, the infra/ultra-red are close to the visible red, then followed by the infra/ultra-orange which are adjacent to the visible orange, and so on. — BrianW

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Etymologically infrared means below red, that is of frequency below that of red. I have never seen infraorange being used, but it would mean of frequency below that of orange. "Ultra" means beyond, that is of greater frequency. This is just semantics. Infrared doesn't appear red to some instrument, ultraviolet doesn't appear violet to some instrument, they're just called that because they correspond to frequencies below that of red / above that of violet.

You seem to have the misconception that whenever there is for instance visible orange there is at the same time invisible ultrared, but ultrared would simply refer to light of frequency above that of red, so orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, ..., ultrared is not invisible light that has independent existence and that is found when orange is found ...

I realize I never replied to you, sorry about that.

I agree that we have similar points of view, this is probably due to the fact that I have been through a lot as well because of others, a lot of injustice and suffering, and I too refuse to accept being treated that way, even though back when i was a kid I didn't really know how to defend myself psychologically. Those who haven't been through that wouldn't really understand.

If you don't consider yourself as sick, or crazy, and don't see the label "schizophrenic" as defining you then that's good, that diagnosis doesn't mean in any way that you are less worthy as a human being.

If you feel that the meds you are prescribed and your therapist help you, then me questioning your diagnosis of schizophrenia wasn't implying in any way that you should stop doing what helps you. And if you don't feel weighed down at all by the label of schizophrenia I don't really need to expand on why I think that the basis for making a diagnosis of schizophrenia is shaky from a philosophical standpoint.

But basically, feeling bad and having beliefs that contradict those of the psychiatrist are enough to be diagnosed as schizophrenic, and in your case the belief that you ought to get rid of the demon inhabiting your body (your sexual orientations) seems long gone. Then being homeless doesn't help one feel safe, and based on what you have experienced in the past it is not surprising that you constantly question the intentions of others. And on this point, if the therapist and the meds help you feel more relaxed and at peace then that's all that matters, the diagnosis of schizophrenia seems unnecessary. But again, if that label doesn't weigh you down then that doesn't matter anyway.

The concept of space-time is not necessary to make the same observable predictions that Einstein's relativity does, it is a concept that was introduced for mathematical elegance rather than because it was a necessity, so it is already dubious to treat space-time as fundamental. Probability waves from quantum mechanics are not necessary either to make the same observable predictions that quantum mechanics does, so again it is dubious to treat probability waves as fundamental.

Rather, physicists have chosen to treat space-time and probability waves as fundamental, and then they find that they cannot mix the two elegantly, so they look for something else. But in looking for something fundamental from which emerge space-time and probability waves, they are constraining themselves to look into a direction that is again not a necessity, so they are creating their own problems.

Another potential direction would be to do away with space-time and probability waves entirely, but since physicists spend years and years learning these concepts and how to apply them, and since they receive funding to carry out research that makes use of these concepts, they have little incentive to look elsewhere.

What are the problems that you think are solved by not believing in Truth, or by supposing that all truth is relative? — PossibleAaran

Many people are convinced they hold Truth, yet their truths contradict one another, but they believe they hold the real Truth and that the other side is wrong, and they will defend their Truth at all costs. So by believing in Truth, we have the problem that people attempt to impose their Truth and fight one another to make their Truth prevail. This leads to indoctrination, oppression, wars, genocides, ...

A finite set of observations can be explained in an arbitrarily large number of ways, in an arbitrarily large number of theories, so we won't ever find only one theory that fits all the available evidence. Not believing in Truth removes the problem of which theory is correct, we just have to pick the most practical one or the one that best suits our needs.

Because a finite set of observations can be explained in an arbitrarily large number of ways, we can always arrange to see new evidence as consistent with our Truth, which is one of the reasons why many people won't let go of their Truth, to them it fits the evidence perfectly. And if people can't be convinced that their Truth may not be the Truth, how could we ever know when we've found the Truth, if it even exists?

When people agree on a Truth, it reinforces their conviction that it is the real Truth, and they see those who disagree with them as suffering from delusions, and if they fail to convince them they label them as mentally ill, and use this label to justify treating them in inhumane ways.

We don't stop seeing a Truth as Truth until we find some evidence that we are willing to see as contradicting that Truth, but until we see this evidence we are not aware of it, so there is always the possibility that there is something we are not yet aware of that would contradict this Truth, and so again even if we're sure we found the Truth it may be contradicted later on.

We don't have direct access to what other people experience, at least I don't, I only guess what others experience based on what I experience, but then it is possible some people see things I don't see, and that I see things that some people don't see, that our realities are different in some profound aspects, in a similar way that someone who is blind has a very different reality from someone who is not, and then if I believe I've found the Truth how could I know if it applies to people who see things differently?

So for all these reasons, and probably some others I'm not thinking of at the moment, I believe that truth is personal, that Truth is a mirage that leads to confusion, conflicts, suffering, and that people would be more compassionate and listen more to others if they stopped believing in an idea of Truth that exists out there independently from their existence.

And then if people stop believing in such a Truth they will start seeing themselves as responsible for what they do and how they treat others, rather than using Truth to justify doing the worse atrocities, as if that Truth was greater than themselves and they were just servants following its orders. If they see truth as coming from themselves, then they are the ones responsible for how they shape the world, them and not some superior principle existing out there.

Why? The idea that we are collectively responsible for the way the world is? That a human being can do both good and terrible things? That there is no absolute standard independent of us we can rely on?

Also I would like to say that I do hope there is some Truth, not in the sense that there is a Truth that exists independently of us, but in the sense that we all participate in creating the world, in shaping our reality and the realities of others. And this idea that there is no Truth existing independently of us doesn't have to leave us feeling powerless, on the contrary if we are the ones shaping the world then we are potentially omnipotent, the world is what we make it, Truth is what we make it, God resides in each one of us if you will. But until others see it as Truth it won't be Truth, it will remain my personal truth.

You can believe what you want to believe, but still from my point of view I don't see evidence of that Truth. It is true to you that there is Truth, while it is true to me that there is no Truth, which I see as evidence that truth is personal, and not as evidence that there is Truth.

The argument in the OP rests on the premise that Truth exists, so I felt it important to point out that this premise is not true for everyone, considering that the conclusion of the argument is that there are objective values that apply to everyone.

The Truth is the transcendental Truth; it is what it is regardless how many different personal “truths” there are. — AJJ

Do you have examples?

Then if some people do not see these examples as examples of truth, how would you prove it to them that they are Truth?

It seems to me that a person who actually lived as if there were no truth would collapse right where they were, to eventually die and rot away; because there’d be no reason for them to do anything else. — AJJ

No, because there is my personal truth, and I act on it. But I don't pretend that it is objective, that it is embedded in an universe that exists independently of us, or that others ought to agree with me.

I behave based on what I believe, based on my personal view of existence, I have beliefs, but I don't believe that others ought to believe what I believe, and I don't need a Truth to find a reason to do something, I just need my personal truth.

Sure I believe for instance that when I'm thirsty I need to drink some sort of liquid to stop being thirsty. That doesn't mean I believe that any being ought to drink to quench their thirst.

I have found that people can function well while having incompatible and contradicting beliefs between one another. If they live by having very different truths, what is Truth?

I think we have access to something, but that something is not the same depending on the person. I think each of us has their own reality, and in some aspects our realities overlap, and I find it interesting to discuss about where they overlap and where they differ, and how through speech we can influence the realities of others to some extent.

I used to believe that there is Truth, but I have failed to find evidence of it, rather it seems to me a lot of confusion and problems disappear if we stop assuming that there is Truth out there existing independently of us. Rather I believe that we create it ourselves, that we are involved.

But again I don't claim that what I say here is Truth, this is my own truth that I have formed after a lot of personal thinking and observations over the years.

You have a good point. That there is Truth does not necessarily mean that we have access to it. However, I don’t think this affects the OP argument, since it can still be the case that facts ought to be believed, even if we can never really know what is and is not a fact. — AJJ

Indeed I think "not having access to Truth" in itself does not affect the OP argument, but the OP argument rests on the premise that "there are facts" (in the sense facts that are True, that ought to be believed), and to me we don't have to accept that very premise as True.

To me there is only the apparence of facts, that is things that many people agree on, but to me this is not proof that there is Truth. It could be that Truth is something that many of us imagine to exist, rather than something existing independently of us.

“The cat is on the mat” is false if the cat is not on the mat. — AJJ

But how can you ever know that it is True that the cat is on the mat?

What if what you think is a cat is not a cat but a fox that looks like a cat? What if what you think is a mat is not a mat but something else that looks like a mat because of some optical illusion? What if you were dreaming that the cat is on the mat, or you imagined it, or no one else but you saw it?

The issue I see with the idea of Truth is that it is unreachable. I see subjective truth, something that you or I believe is true. I see shared subjective truth, something that you and I believe is true. I see objective truth, a subjective truth that is shared by so many people that they dismiss those who do not share it with them as delusional. And that's it.

And what I have just said is of course my subjective truth, because I personally don't see anything that would contradict it. But I won't pretend that my subjective truth is Truth in the sense that it applies beyond my existence, because to me it is possible that someone somewhere might see something I don't see that makes them have a subjective truth that disagrees with mine.

Logic is a man-made tool that applies to propositions of a language. If you had no one to communicate with, if you didn't use language, then you wouldn't use logic. That doesn't mean you wouldn't or couldn't function in the world. You don't need logic to know that when you're thirsty you need to drink water, you just know it, you're driven to find water. You don't need logic to know that you must avoid touching fire, after you get hurt you will naturally avoid it.

We get lost inside our minds when we think using language, when we think about the tools we apply to language and wonder why they fit the world so well, but remove the filter of language and you can see the world clearly again, without the artificial problems we create ourselves in our minds.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make though, it feels like we're going off on a tangent and away from the point of this thread.

The point is basically that what counts as science is not defined objectively but through a consensus, and scientific consensus on whether a theory is worth considering is not based on objective criteria but on the subjective motivations and beliefs of influential individuals/groups, which leads theories to be abandoned/rejected/ignored while it would be potentially fruitful to explore them further, and one barrier to doing that is that the scientific consensus and their followers attack/ridicule/ostracize those who want to explore/believe theories that do not follow the consensus.

true, and to follow convention, that does define a demarcation between 'hard science' and 'soft science.' — ernestm

That's not the case though, physics is considered a hard science, and yet what I said applies there too, physicists carry activities in their work that don't follow an objective method. If you describe an objective scientific method that physicists supposedly always follow through their work, I can point out instances where they don't.

The issue is that attempts to make the description too exact wind up excluding things that are conventionally considered science. While trying to make it too fuzzy (but concretely stated, so that a robot could follow it, say), wind up including things that are conventionally not considered science. — Terrapin Station

I would say it is worse than that, see the examples I gave with using "verifiability" or "falsifiability" as a criterion. It is not that they exclude a few scientific theories while including most of them, it is that they exclude almost all of them.

science is typically concerned with objective events. What we're going to call something and why we're going to call it that are not objective events. — Terrapin Station

Here you are implicitly outlining a demarcation criterion, "science is typically concerned with objective events", but there are plenty of theories concerned with objective events that are deemed unscientific, and plenty of theories involving subjective events that are deemed scientific.

If you regard science as a method, rather than some collection of facts, then there isn't really a way to define a limit to its application. — ernestm

The issue is there is no such objective method that defines science. If you define scientific activities as those that follow some objective method (the "scientific method"), there are activities carried out by scientists in their work that don't follow that method, and there are activities that are not considered scientific that follow that method.

First, in the spirit of solving one thing at a time, does this mean that you agree that it wouldn't be possible to come up with objective demarcation criteria? — Terrapin Station

I don't see how it would be possible, although I would have a hard time proving it is impossible, but up to now all attempts have failed, so the way things are now activities are labeled unscientific based on subjective criteria.

We're talking about the supposed objectivity of calling/considering one set of activities "science" and another set of activities "pseudo-science" (or whatever else we'd like to call it), right? — Terrapin Station

Indeed. So if it is subjective to call one set of activities "science" and not some other one, how could we arrive at the idea that the activities called "science" follow objective principles and are devoid of subjectivity?

What do these people mean when they say that have "felt God". One doesn't feel, or otherwise observe, God directly, like one observes how other organisms behave in their environment, or rockets blasting off and landing on the Moon. We can all (believers and non believers alike) observe these things and verify that the theories about are valid or not.

Referring to God would be more like theorizing the existence of atoms or the Big Bang. We dont observe those things, we use them to explain what we do observe, and it has to be logically consistent and coherent. God has yet to be defined in any consistent way, like atoms have. Each person that claims to have felt God may not agree on what God entails except that it can be felt, but how is that useful? How can that be tested? — Harry Hindu

I gave the example of God but what I said applies to any idea/theory/practice that is labeled as unscientific, or that is abandoned/rejected/ignored by the scientific community.

That being said, the people who have "felt God" know what they mean, and those who haven't don't really see what they mean. In a similar way that people who have "seen rockets blasting off and landing on the Moon" know what they mean, while those who have always been blind don't really see what they mean, they have never observed rockets or the Moon directly and they cannot observe them, they can just try to get an idea based on what other people tell them.

Those who have never "felt God" can say that those who have felt it were hallucinating, or that they felt something out of the ordinary and arbitrarily chose to interpret it as God, but so can blind people who have never seen a rocket or the Moon say that those who have seen them were hallucinating, or that they saw something out of the ordinary and chose to interpret it as this wild idea that there is a world far far far way that can't be accessed by walking or swimming but only through a magic vehicle that leaves Earth.

However those who have felt God can communicate with each other about it, and attempt to find out if they felt the same thing and what made them convinced that it was God, and maybe attempt to find out how that experience came about so as to devise ways to experience it again.

The whole idea that there can be objective criteria is way off base. Any criteria are going to be subjective. — Terrapin Station

If science was an objective enterprise, in the sense that a theory is accepted because it matches objective observations and not because it suits the desires or beliefs of some people, then we should be able to characterize that enterprise objectively. In saying that we can't characterize it objectively, you are agreeing that the objectivity of science is a myth.

It's simply a matter of whether there's some consensus about it or not. And there is a consensus about what's scientific or not — Terrapin Station

A consensus between a majority of individuals in the community of people who call themselves scientists, who use their desires and beliefs to classify a theory as scientific or not, and use that label to justify whether it is worthy of consideration.

Also, obviously one does not have to care about the consensus, though it is true that the consensus has some socio-psychological impact that's more difficult to avoid. — Terrapin Station

It is hard not to care about it considering the status that science has gained. Those who want to explore or accept theories that go against this consensus are ridiculed and ostracized, not just by scientists who follow this consensus but by all the people who believe in science (and who fail to see it as a belief by the way which makes them even more aggressive as they believe they are defending objective truth). The label "unscientific" is not neutral, it has come to have very negative connotations, so it is problematic that a community gets to have such an oppressive influence on what others want to think or believe or research by simply labeling it as unscientific, or by saying that the scientific consensus has abandoned or rejected it.

Those arguing for some kind of specific science, be it indigenous science, islamic science or whatever creationist humbug are politicizing themselves science. And they believe it's totally normal because they start from the idea that science is a tool of political power. — ssu

You don't understand their motivations. You fail to see that the science that is taught is not culturally neutral, it is imbued with a set of beliefs that are not necessary to make accurate predictions or build precise technology. Those who hold conflicting beliefs that they cherish and that define them do not want to change them because it is not necessary, rather they want to come up with scientific theories that have a similar predictive power but that are formulated in a way that doesn't conflict with their beliefs. What's wrong with that?

Modern science is imbued for instance with the belief of materialism, that deep down all we are is matter, that consciousness is a byproduct that doesn't cause anything, that we are like machines subjected to unchanging laws. These are not beliefs that follow from observation or experiment, these are beliefs that are arbitrarily imposed and that are not necessary to make accurate predictions or build precise technology. Some people do not want to hold these beliefs, what's wrong with that? Why do you insist on making them change their beliefs so they suit yours?

Wonder what you don't think to be a tool of oppression... — ssu

Consider that the same set of observations can be explained in various ways, according to various world views. A lack of oppression would be allowing each world view to flourish, rather than saying that world views different from the one accepted by mainstream scientists are unscientific or lack merit and should be discarded, while they account for the same evidence. Science could be free of oppression, but the way it is practiced and communicated is not. One wonders why it elicits such strong reactions to point it out.

Traditions like belief in there existing witches and black magic. How noble traditions have been destroyed by science. — ssu

Or, you know, spiritual beliefs that saw man as more than a heap of atoms, that saw nature as more than a resource to exploit, that saw love as more than the release of a chemical in the brain, that saw death as more than the end.

We can't define what science is? Not even a bit? Is it ridiculous even to try? — ssu

It isn't ridiculous to try, but come up with a definition, and you will see that some things that are considered science do not fit this definition, or some things that are considered non-science fit the definition.

Ah!!!! Science is a tool for oppression!!! :death: — ssu

Replace "Science" with "Religion", and I suppose that's something you would have said back when Religion had the status that Science has today.

Simply the actual method it is? — ssu

And if so-called scientists do not use that method you have in mind, who practices the science you have in mind? And if no one practices it, what are you talking about?

Sure there is a lot of what they do that fits the method you have in mind, and also a lot that doesn't.

Sorry, but you do conflate scientists with science. Especially everything else they can do or think that isn't science. — ssu

They do not practice the science outlined in your method, the science you have in mind exists as an idea, not as a practice. But what they do professionally, people call science. I am not talking about what they do in their private life, I am talking about what they do that they call science and that doesn't follow the "scientific" method that they claim to follow (or that others claim scientists follow).

Science is used as a tool for oppression in the same way that organized religion has been used as a tool for oppression, in that their followers force their beliefs onto others, because they are convinced they are right and everyone else is wrong. Followers of organized religion are convinced they spread the word or wish of God, followers of Science are convinced they spread Truth. God and Truth are seen by their followers as a supreme ideal that ought to be spread to the world. If people don't want to accept the God or the Truth that is imposed on to them, they are ridiculed, attacked, ostracized. Like, you know, what you are doing now.

But you will protest, you will say that science is not like religion, science has brought benefits, it has brought technology! It has brought death and destruction also. Religion has brought benefits as well, and technology in a sense, not a technology that makes you fly around the world or gives you the ability to kill millions of people in seconds, but a method that can make people feel love. Both religion and science have been and can be used for good or for bad, when it becomes dangerous is when their followers stop seeing that their beliefs are beliefs, and not some greater thing that has to be forced onto everyone else.

No free will - Quite long, but it's a complex issue. — FreeEnergy

There is the saying that if you can't explain it simply then you don't understand it well enough. In that complexity lie a bunch of implicit assumptions, and if you haven't identified them then you may come to see the conclusion as irrefutable while it really isn't so.

During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored — FreeEnergy

Indeed at first glance this sounds horrible, but isn't it possible that our idea of it is much more horrible than the real thing? What does it feel like to be eaten alive? Sometimes people who have very serious injuries to the point that we don't know how they can be still alive don't feel a thing. Maybe as you are eaten alive you don't feel a thing, you have accepted your fate and you're letting go. Maybe it's the adrenalin, maybe it's something else. Is running for our life such a bad thing when we manage to escape the threat? On the contrary the victory is glorious.

If humans had such a horrible life back when they had to hunt and were hunted, why didn't they all kill themselves? Why do some primates kill themselves when they are imprisoned in a small cage but not when they are free? What if it is those who want to kill themselves who suffer more than those who don't?

But when scientists say that we observe such or such thing because subatomic particles behave in a specific way, or that the light of galaxies is redshifted because the universe is expanding, or that all life is doomed to go extinct forever because the energy of the universe is constant and its entropy increases, they are not doing science, they are not sharing data they have measured or observed, they are pushing a world view based on pure belief.

All the evidence for the existence of unobservable subatomic particles can be explained without invoking subatomic particles, all the evidence for the expansion of the universe can be explained without invoking an expanding universe, and all the evidence that the energy of the universe is constant can be explained without invoking the constancy of its energy, so these kinds of claims are not scientific at all, they are not something that follows from observation, they are one possibility out of many that is pushed as scientific fact, as something to believe in, while other possibilities have widely different implications.

And this is far from inconsequential, for instance when some people become depressed because they are made to accept as true some claims made by scientists, because they are presented as scientific facts based on observation and reason rather than as the pure beliefs that they are.

You say I conflate scientists with science, but what is science if not what scientists do? There is this great ideal of science that is pushed in education but it doesn't match what scientists do.

Because there is no criterion that allows to demarcate between what is science and what isn't science, and because many people, including scientists, impose their beliefs onto others in the name of science, we have the big problem that scientists and their followers force their beliefs onto others while pretending that they are not belief but scientific fact, something that others should accept. They can't pinpoint what makes that fact "scientific" in a coherent way, if they attempt to apply a criterion to demarcate science and non-science then that criterion will include facts that they deem to be non-scientific, and yet they will keep on disregarding or ridiculing claims that they deem to be non-scientific. In that sense science becomes a tool for oppression.

Scientists don't observe that the Earth orbits the Sun, they observe the apparent motion of the Sun, from the Earth or from a spacecraft. That motion can be described in the reference frame of the Earth. We can assume that the Sun and other planets revolve around the Earth and describe their orbits as accurately as we do when we assume that the Earth revolves around the Sun. We can model gravity in a different way to account for these orbits. There is nothing there that shows in any way that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than the other way around, it is just simpler to describe these orbits and gravity in the reference frame of the Sun, but simpler doesn't mean more true. There is not some absolute space we have detected that allows us to say that the Earth really orbits the Sun rather than the other way around. And yet scientists will say it is a scientific fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and will ridicule those who dare want to believe that the Sun is revolving around the Earth, and claim that this is a triumph of science over religion, of reason over obscurantism, of fact over belief, which is quite ironical when they are precisely pushing a belief without realizing it. That's one instance where science is a tool for oppression.

There are many examples of people who have had a positive impact on a non-local scale for instance. Why do you believe you have no free choice? If you give the argument I could point out assumptions that are not necessarily true.

It is problematic if rationality is the only thing you stick to religiously, if you look at the whole of existence through the filter of rationality. Intuition is not rational, creativity is not rational, spiritual experiences are not rational, feelings are not rational, you can attempt to analyze them rationally but the very moment you do that you are missing their essence.

Nature can seem cruel, heartless, but that is a subjective interpretation. Another way to look at it is to see beings who desperately want to live and who do what they need to do to survive. A wild animal usually won't be cruel if you feed him and he doesn't have to worry about surviving, he might even become your friend and care about you. There again you can take the depressing stance that he uses you and only cares about you so you can keep feeding him, or you can imagine that he really has feelings like you would have for a friend. Interacting with animals leads one to see that they have a rich inner world, they aren't just a chunk of meat. If you eat meat someone has killed an animal for you, but if you don't want to participate in that you can go vegan.

What I see is that you have beliefs that are in conflict with what you want, but if you critically analyzed these beliefs you would realize that they are not as certain as you think they are. But by sticking to these beliefs no matter what you push yourself into an impasse that you can't get out of.

So why do you want to stick so hard to the belief that you don't have free choice or that what you do cannot matter on a large scale? Why do you focus so much on the cruelty and stupidity in the world and not on the people who are here this very moment to help you?

My ambitions had to do with the belief that if I'll make my life better I would become happy, I don't believe in this anymore — FreeEnergy

What made you stop believing this? How did you want to make your life better? How would the world need to be for you to be happy?

Life is an evolutional process of entropy acceleration, there is no free choice, it's not even clear why there is consciousness, evolution is cruel, stupid and wasteful by design, nothing you do matters in a non-local scale — FreeEnergy

If this is all that life was then indeed why is there consciousness? Why don't you see consciousness as a sign that your view of life is not the whole story?

I gather that you want there to be free choice and you want what you do to matter on a non-local scale, why do you believe this is impossible?

How does one deal with an existential crisis? — FreeEnergy

everything feels meaningless — FreeEnergy

It depends on what caused it. Can you say more about how you went from having ambitions and direction to feeling that everything is meaningless?

When you want something, the things that help you reach what you want have meaning to you, so everything feels meaningless when you don't really want anything anymore, which is related to you not finding existence beautiful, focusing on the bad aspects of life and not seeing the good aspects as worth it anymore.

The inevitability of death does not make life meaningless, that's only the case if all you want is to live forever. And even then, you don't have to believe that death is the end of everything, it is no less rational to believe that death is a new beginning, somewhere else or in some other form.

What did you want in life before you fell in this depression?

Do you currently take medication for anything? Be aware that some medications cause some people to become severely depressed, to think about suicide and even to kill themselves, while some medications cause people who were severely depressed to feel good again. What will work for you will depend on your particular case, so the more you say the better.

Why do scientific facts obtain so well? You can say that it is similar to how a carpenter creates a masterpiece furniture, but is that the same? A man-made object created by someone, or a social convention, can be arbitrarily changed, and is contingent, varied. Any decision on it would be the freedom of the carpenter, or the architect. Perhaps the language of the woordworker is real in that community, but they are contingent conventions. This is not so with the science language game. There are constraints that nature is imposing, making the findings a necessity. It is nature forcing our hand. It moves away from contingency and hits on necessity. — schopenhauer1

Of course the default is that the mathematically-informed science is just an interpretation. But the interpretation corresponds with a greater predictive ability and technology which gives it a different characteristic far beyond other language-games and their heuristics, even accounting for other heuristics getting refined over time with accumulated knowledge. — schopenhauer1

The thing is that we could have the same predictive ability and technology with very different language-games. It is a matter of convention whether we consider that there is such a thing as atoms and subatomic particles or not, we could explain observations differently. Rather than saying "we observe such result because electrons were deflected by the magnetic field", we could say "we observe such result when we heat a metal surface in a vacuum tube and there is a magnet nearby".

We could frame the science language-game in a very different way, but in that language there would still be a name for the Sun, and ways to describe how the Sun moves in the sky, or how the sky and the horizon move while the Sun stays still, or how to find where the Sun is, there are conventions in the science language-game in the same way that there are in that of the carpenter.

To create his masterpiece furniture the carpenter would be implicitly applying his theories of how his tools work and how wood behaves in various situations, he just wouldn't call them theories because he would have internalized all that from his experience, each of his past experience with wood being experiments he carried out, from which he inferred generalities and expectations and predictions. Which is what scientists do, they carry out experiments, they infer generalities, expectations, predictions, and they share their results with one another.

The difficult question is how much of what we see is a convention? There are plenty of so-called optical illusions, where we see different things depending on our state of mind. Plenty of examples of so-called shared delusions, where something seen by an individual becomes seen by a few other people, while others don't see it and interpret it as a delusion. But then if that "delusion" spread to everyone it would become reality, and then how do we know we're not living in a shared "delusion", how do we know how much of nature is man-made, how much it is not nature imposing constraints on us but ourselves imposing constraints on ourselves?

That is not an appeal to authority, I could have said I understand what scientists do better than you do, but then you would have called me pretentious. I say what I say based on what I understand, not on what others have said, however I have found that people usually consider what I say more seriously when some renowned individuals have said similar things, but in an ideal world I wouldn't have to do that. But I also mentioned Feyerabend because he has said many insightful things that most people are not aware of when they talk about science, and many discussions about science would take a very different turn if people were aware of these things. Also I referenced his book in case you or others want to learn more about this point of view, and then people can have a more educated opinion based on relevant information and examples that they previously weren't aware of.

There is no universal criterion that allows to demarcate between what counts as science and what isn't science, this is known as the demarcation problem. Popper had proposed the criterion that a theory that is scientific is a theory that is falsifiable, but as it turns out most theories that we call scientific aren't falsifiable. For instance the theory that there is dark matter is not falsifiable. Scientists have carried out experiments to detect dark matter interacting with their instruments, but up to now these experiments have failed. That doesn't falsify the theory however, because scientists can always say that dark matter has properties that makes it undetectable to past experiments and come up with different experiments to attempt to detect it. And if they do detect it, it is always possible to come up with an alternative explanation as to why the signal they detected is not dark matter but something else.

So if we can't even characterize precisely what is science and what isn't science, it is presumptuous to claim that science is better than other practices or traditions, what actually goes on is that many people attempt to push their beliefs by calling them "scientific" as if it gave them a higher status, in essence what they call "scientific" is "what ought to be believed". There is obviously predictive success in identifying apparent regularities in what we observe, and that's the part of what scientists do that brings an ability to predict and technology, but another big part of what they do is pushing their own beliefs in the way they frame their observations and research, and that's the part most people are not aware of, which leads them to see science as this higher objective endeavor devoid of conventions and beliefs, while it is really not so.

Or rather he understood what scientists do much better than you do. Read his book if you ever find the time, and you might get something important out of it, for instance that there is no such thing as "the scientific method". What scientists do and have done to reach their results cannot be summed up under "one method". If you attempt to describe the "scientific method", you can find plenty of examples where scientists did not adhere to the method you describe, and it is precisely by not adhering to it that they formulated such or such theory or made such or such observation that allowed to make more accurate predictions, or build more precise technology. The "scientific method" is a myth.

Would you say that "the Earth revolves around the Sun" is a fact or truth? Or both? And what proof would you give to show that it is a fact or a truth, what observational evidence would you say is proof of it?

You might say that we send spacecrafts into space, based on the world view that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and we are able to make them reach other planets accurately, so surely that world view must be correct? And yet we could have the world view that the Sun and other planets revolve around the Earth, describe the motion of these bodies in the reference frame of the Earth, describe gravity in the reference frame of the Earth, and we could reach these planets with as much accuracy. So what makes "the Earth revolves around the Sun" fact or truth?