"Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?"
-Francesco Petrarca-
“Truth is not as pompous and romantic as myth ... but it has the immeasurable value of being the Truth.”
-Felix Alba-Juez, E=mc^2: The Most Famous Equation in History... and its Folklore-
Before leaving Italy, 18 months ago, I had a lot of opportunities to talk about the reasons behind my choice with friends and family, and, needless to say, the invasive presence of religion and the deeply anti-scientific atmosphere you can breathe in my home country played a relevant role in the matter.
That's why a lot of discussions I've had involved the topics of religion and science.
I was much less informed and with just a few, brief arguments to back up my thesis back then, and most of the discussions I've had were not exactly satisfactory. But there was one that left me particularly uncomfortable, because the person I was arguing with is a very good friend of mine, and his final argument that particular night troubled me and gave me a lot to think about. I could feel that there was something wrong with it but I couldn't really identify what was that. His argument in favour of religion was the following: everyday life is not only about science. Fortunately I have a good memory, especially when it comes to the opinions of those people who are important for me, and after 18 months I think I finally have an answer to that. Sorry for the delay, these are not easy topics.
My friend's assumption is based on a fallacy, that science and religion are somehow analogous, two sets of opinions about non overlapping areas of one's life.
This is a really dangerous misconception of science, which implies that religion has the monopoly on feelings and emotions, and science leaves no room for such things.
Equating science to an ideology is wrong, this misunderstanding must end, science and religion are not analogous, and should not be compared.
Science is nothing but a tool we can use to investigate reality and then acquire knowledge, science is an epistemology. The product of this epistemology is technology, and the amount of knowledge about reality that mankind was able to collect in the past four hundred years.
Religion is not an epistemology. Religion is a product, a set of knowledge claims about reality (to postulate a universe created by a supernatural omnipotent entity is claiming to know something very different from those who postulate a universe originated from "nothing"), often contradicting modern day knowledge, which are based on something that is not science, a different epistemology: Faith.
So what is faith and why should one consider it important on her everyday life? When it is not used as an extreme of the word "trust" (faith in humanity, faith in the institutions), the definition of faith is the following, from the Oxford Dictionary of English:
Faith: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
Philosopher Peter Boghossian suggests an alternative definition:
Faith: pretending to know things you don't know
I think this definition is quite accurate, when people claim to believe that Jesus walked on water based on faith, they make a knowledge claim about reality, they claim to know there was a man called Jesus who was able to walk on water. But there is no way they could possibly know it, and they surely can't bring any kind of evidence, otherwise they wouldn't need faith to believe in things when they could just rely on evidence.
We can now compare the definitions above with the definition of science, and try to understand which one is the most reliable process to investigate reality.
Science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
I honestly challenge you to find me one example in which using Faith is more reliable than using Science as an instrument to get to the truth about reality. I don't think this is possible.
Everytime I engage in these discussions people will start blaming me for being an asshole who just wants to piss somebody off, and I should stop doing that. This is false, what I see when I hear the faithful talking is somebody who fell victim of indoctrination, and was led to use a failed, epistemology to navigate reality. But since faith is seen as a virtue rather than an unreliable tool, they not only ignore the fact that the base of most of their assumptions is flawed, they pride their faith, their pretending to know things they don't know.
All I want to do is help people to realize this because I'm sure most of them would probably change their mind if only they were exposed to the sort of trick they were baited into, and we all would be much better off if this happened.
That's why I think there is nothing wrong in what I do, rather the opposite, all the moderate, uninvolved non believers should praise everybody who wants to take part in the discussion about Faith, at least for not being passive to the threats this abusive mentality poses on society.
So, for the late answer to my friend, it's true that science is not everything, you can find solace and bliss in the depths of the cosmos just like in a song, in a book, in poetry, in the relationship with people, in ancient mythology, none of them are "alternatives" to science, just because science is not analogous to them.
But when it comes to acquiring knowledge, the only reliable epistemology to get to the truth is using reason and evidence, science. Somebody may argue that getting to the truth is irrelevant to some people, and I totally agree on that. But I don't see why reasonable people should take them seriously.
-Francesco Petrarca-
“Truth is not as pompous and romantic as myth ... but it has the immeasurable value of being the Truth.”
-Felix Alba-Juez, E=mc^2: The Most Famous Equation in History... and its Folklore-
Before leaving Italy, 18 months ago, I had a lot of opportunities to talk about the reasons behind my choice with friends and family, and, needless to say, the invasive presence of religion and the deeply anti-scientific atmosphere you can breathe in my home country played a relevant role in the matter.
That's why a lot of discussions I've had involved the topics of religion and science.
I was much less informed and with just a few, brief arguments to back up my thesis back then, and most of the discussions I've had were not exactly satisfactory. But there was one that left me particularly uncomfortable, because the person I was arguing with is a very good friend of mine, and his final argument that particular night troubled me and gave me a lot to think about. I could feel that there was something wrong with it but I couldn't really identify what was that. His argument in favour of religion was the following: everyday life is not only about science. Fortunately I have a good memory, especially when it comes to the opinions of those people who are important for me, and after 18 months I think I finally have an answer to that. Sorry for the delay, these are not easy topics.
My friend's assumption is based on a fallacy, that science and religion are somehow analogous, two sets of opinions about non overlapping areas of one's life.
This is a really dangerous misconception of science, which implies that religion has the monopoly on feelings and emotions, and science leaves no room for such things.
Equating science to an ideology is wrong, this misunderstanding must end, science and religion are not analogous, and should not be compared.
Science is nothing but a tool we can use to investigate reality and then acquire knowledge, science is an epistemology. The product of this epistemology is technology, and the amount of knowledge about reality that mankind was able to collect in the past four hundred years.
Religion is not an epistemology. Religion is a product, a set of knowledge claims about reality (to postulate a universe created by a supernatural omnipotent entity is claiming to know something very different from those who postulate a universe originated from "nothing"), often contradicting modern day knowledge, which are based on something that is not science, a different epistemology: Faith.
So what is faith and why should one consider it important on her everyday life? When it is not used as an extreme of the word "trust" (faith in humanity, faith in the institutions), the definition of faith is the following, from the Oxford Dictionary of English:
Faith: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
Philosopher Peter Boghossian suggests an alternative definition:
Faith: pretending to know things you don't know
I think this definition is quite accurate, when people claim to believe that Jesus walked on water based on faith, they make a knowledge claim about reality, they claim to know there was a man called Jesus who was able to walk on water. But there is no way they could possibly know it, and they surely can't bring any kind of evidence, otherwise they wouldn't need faith to believe in things when they could just rely on evidence.
We can now compare the definitions above with the definition of science, and try to understand which one is the most reliable process to investigate reality.
Science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
I honestly challenge you to find me one example in which using Faith is more reliable than using Science as an instrument to get to the truth about reality. I don't think this is possible.
Everytime I engage in these discussions people will start blaming me for being an asshole who just wants to piss somebody off, and I should stop doing that. This is false, what I see when I hear the faithful talking is somebody who fell victim of indoctrination, and was led to use a failed, epistemology to navigate reality. But since faith is seen as a virtue rather than an unreliable tool, they not only ignore the fact that the base of most of their assumptions is flawed, they pride their faith, their pretending to know things they don't know.
All I want to do is help people to realize this because I'm sure most of them would probably change their mind if only they were exposed to the sort of trick they were baited into, and we all would be much better off if this happened.
That's why I think there is nothing wrong in what I do, rather the opposite, all the moderate, uninvolved non believers should praise everybody who wants to take part in the discussion about Faith, at least for not being passive to the threats this abusive mentality poses on society.
So, for the late answer to my friend, it's true that science is not everything, you can find solace and bliss in the depths of the cosmos just like in a song, in a book, in poetry, in the relationship with people, in ancient mythology, none of them are "alternatives" to science, just because science is not analogous to them.
But when it comes to acquiring knowledge, the only reliable epistemology to get to the truth is using reason and evidence, science. Somebody may argue that getting to the truth is irrelevant to some people, and I totally agree on that. But I don't see why reasonable people should take them seriously.
It works.............
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