The end of god?

electric_blue

Rick Chasey wrote:

It's their emphasis on the scientific aspect I guess.

Our decisions are based on the available evidence and our assessment of the outcomes of our actions, not on any dogma or sacred text.

Now, to cut long a boring story short, if you understand, or are convinced, that knowledge is ultimately subjective, (in the way Foucault and Edward Said do), and that that subjective knowledge is ultimately violentely political (in the sense that it creates the epistemological space for domination of one over another), then you also understand that the scientific discourse is just a particular way of knowing something, and not the only.

Thus, an emphasis on purely 'observable' reason, or at least, reason based on 'observable' occurances, is a little flawed, since everything you know, and how you know it, is subjective, and ultimately, not the only way in which you can know stuff.

I think I agree with you more than with Dawkins - however, you have to admit that science has a pretty good track record, and we now have many many devices that work extremely reliably based scientific observation and theory.

I'd describe myself as a Fortean which means I usually end up between camps in these arguments. I find myself interested in reports of "unexplained" phenomena such as ESP, apparitions, strange beasts, etc but usually take a sceptical position, though not entirely. I still ahve a gut feeling that life can survive death, and that there is "more in heaven and earth, Horatio" than science can admit. The foundations of our knowledge - the intial assumptions are arbitrary and often wrong - or just true within very narrow limits. These arbitrary assumptions will ultimately lead us down dead ends or end up with irreconcilable opposite "truths" - we may be there already. There is no doubt in my mind that mathematics will not be able to describe all of reality - there was a very good article about this in New Scientist about 10 years ago - so what of the bits that we cannot know?

I think science will one day be surpassed by a superior system - maybe science Mark II.

So - I accept science is limited and the human experience is not being fully described by science. However my beef with religion is that there is even less evidence for their world views, they very rarely agree with each other, and there is no common experience that we all have of god. My experience of spirituality is more akin to what christians call "heathen" or pagan. Just because the Bible exists and claims to be the word of God is no reason to belief it to be true. The default positions on religion hass got to be that of either complete sceptic, or believer. I am not a believer so I must be a complete sceptic. You might as well believe any religion as the basis for each is about as valid as each other. so I pick paganism becasue I see it as a genuine attempt to explain the world about us. Christianity began by explaining the world about us, however we now know from the science that works that few if any of the christian explainations for the world about us actually make any sense.

So - yes I'm between camps, and probably very confused.

rick_chasey

Look, ultimately, I'm not evangelical about it. I came to the conclusion have spent many days and weeks studying various philosophers for my history degree. I found I could explain it to my peers who had done similar work to me, studying the same chaps etc, but I couldn't explain it someone who hasn't got the same grounding. It's not snobbery, it's that it took me a lot of work just to get my head around it, and even then it was a struggle, so I can't really condense that stuff in a way that explains it well.

*shrugs*

It's a stance which just pokes holes in everything with no solution. But i'm comfortable with not being sure of anything.

UpTheWall

Rick Chasey wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Rick and Nolf - why are you against history on TV - is it the idea or the execution you don't like?

And what do you suggest as an alternative way of doing things?

Take me as your core audience - I'm interested in history, but haven't got much time or money to invest in the subject.

It's a bit like reading the paper when you actually know about the story first hand - it's usually wrong.

I don't know about other history courses but mine was very focussed on historical theory which puts conventional one-narrative-led history to bed good and proper.

They brush over important details (which often lead to glaring mis-interpretations), focus on the unimportant or even uncessary, and often present theory and conjecture as fact, often without the necessary caveat that it's widely disputed, blah blah.


Msot of the time though they're just flat out wrong.

Edit: Also... I have a particular issue with trying to make it relevant to the average TV veiwer's life (which it often isn't, since it's in the past!!), usually with some grand narrative which is conveniently succint, and as such whoely innacurate, and so general it means little in real terms. They make assumptions which are often wrong and they go unsaid. Indeed, what I learnt from history was that the study helped me challenge the assumptions we make when appraching anything in the first place. The distance of the past helps us to do that. TV does the opposite.

It's a non sequiteur to say that because it's on TV it can't be rigorous enough.

Similarly, it doesn't follow that because it's simple and uncomplicated that it's less likely to be accurate.

all of the arguments you put forward against the TV format can easily be applied to academics in their corduroys and elbow patches.

Historians wont know most of history first hand so they can't say they have the true story either.

UpTheWall

Rick Chasey wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

So coming back to my original question, how would you use TV to better effect for educating a wider audience?

I wouldn't I guess.

Any TV prog I'd make would be so dry...

TV is ultimately about entertainment, and for the vast majority of people, what I call 'proper' history just isn't entertaining. No-one would watch it.

Proper history, and the theory that allows you to practice it, is hard work - some of the theories and approaches took very long days and weeks in the library trying to get my head around them, and years to learn how to use them. That doesn't translate to TV.

Surely that's why we have historians like you to do the hard work to get the best representation given the evidence, then they can present their results to us thick uneducated masses in an easy to understand format.

I work in IT. i have a better understanding than many of how this website works. Doesn't mean i don't begrudge other people using it.

rick_chasey

UpTheWall,

The history I've written no-one wants. It's not I begrudge them using it. They just don't want it.

I've tried explaining it to friends who haven't studied it, and let's be honest, they're an easier crowd than most, and I get a hostile response.


My experience is that people want to know 'what happened' as accurately as possible.

I came out of uni absolutely positive that not only do we not know remotely what happened, and cannot know, but that it's irrelevent. People don't want to hear that.

rick_chasey

To add: it does bring up interersting questions about the actual role and function of historians in society.

There are many who take no notice of the developments in historiography, and carry on writting history that people want. Some of them even make a bit of cash out of it, with popular books. See Niall Ferguson for example.

But, those that I responded to, and those that I feel are at the real cutting edge, are doing stuff that requries so much initial knowledge to understand its internal logic, that it's not particularly palatable to the un-read public. Rather like cutting edge science - it requires a lot of specialist prior knowledge. It's research for research's sake.

UpTheWall

electric_blue wrote:

shm_uk wrote:

Can someone please point me to something that shows a new species clearly linked to another, with all the intermediate forms and mutations that led there?

I doubt the fossil record is perfect enough for this to have ever come about. Only certain conditions lead to fossils being laid down; but you don;t need "something that shows a new species clearly linked to another, with all the intermediate forms and mutations that led there" - there's plenty of evidence for evolution; but you've asked for what you know does not exist as evidence. This is the way that deniers operate.

Nah mate. He's asked for someone to fill in the gaps in the theory. That's what scientists do.

To name the issue: Microevolution: is simply a change in gene frequency within a population.

This has been clearly proved.

Macroevolution on the other hand, is species to species evolution. That's where we have the more lively debate.

It can be argued that macroevolution is a corollary of microevolution, but as has been pointed out, we don't seem to have explicit evidence of jumps between species.

That said, it's not a question of apes to humans. it's a case of common ancestors (branches on a tree) that are likely to now be extinct.

But that's enough of that.

UpTheWall

Rick Chasey wrote:

UpTheWall,

The history I've written no-one wants. It's not I begrudge them using it. They just don't want it.

I've tried explaining it to friends who haven't studied it, and let's be honest, they're an easier crowd than most, and I get a hostile response.


My experience is that people want to know 'what happened' as accurately as possible.

I came out of uni absolutely positive that not only do we not know remotely what happened, and cannot know, but that it's irrelevent. People don't want to hear that.

I don't think there's anything wrong with assumptions. In fact we couldn't function in the world without them.

Descartes realised this with his famous axiom.

Just as long as historians / tv presenters caveat their presentations with sources, and describe their reliability / agenda, then we can come to conclusions, however shakey they may be.

I absolutely agree with you that we can never know for certain. But that's true of every area of life, not just history before our lifetime.

Much like with the above "scientific theory" debate above, nothing is certain. That comes with the human condition.

And of course in direct opposition to that is the human need to understand. To figure out cause and effect. To put things in a framework.

And coming back to the OP, that's why god / superstition / spirituality makes people feel so much better, because it can resolve that contradiction.

Innit?

1footedninja

Had to get this one in......

grayo59

1footedninja wrote:

Had to get this one in......

Very good!

deptfordmarmoset

Rick,

Given that just about any language-based knowledge is ordered around narratives, is your position a little like ''there is no single over-arching narrative, there are only narratives (which will automatically vary, just as different people, and different people's perspectives, will)?'' Or am I way off track?

Jay dubbleU

Surely gods are a creation of primitive society to explain away phenomena which they don't understand and therefore as we become more able to explain the universe there is less room for them? At the same time science reveals new wonders which we never imagined were possible - we really are made of stardust 8)

NatoED

here is one thought on evolution. Modern man has been around for a little over 6,000 years with speech, language , complex numracy , economies , hypercomplex social interaction , husbandry and moral aptitudes . Now these are suddenly happening in an interlectual explotion that is way higher than any other animal . "Neanderthol man" is actualy closer to us than to apes in both form and age (carbon dating on samples now closer to just 8,000 years possably less) , the latest "missing link" was found out to be just a monkey with no human like charictoristics. So what caused this sudden explotion ?

Cleat Eastwood

NatoED wrote:

here is one thought on evolution. Modern man has been around for a little over 6,000 years with speech, language , complex numracy , economies , hypercomplex social interaction , husbandry and moral aptitudes . Now these are suddenly happening in an interlectual explotion that is way higher than any other animal . "Neanderthol man" is actualy closer to us than to apes in both form and age (carbon dating on samples now closer to just 8,000 years possably less) , the latest "missing link" was found out to be just a monkey with no human like charictoristics. So what caused this sudden explotion ?

Claire Balding.

And finally

the lord said "Jib it off and go to bed" so it is said! and so t shall be done

Crapaud

NatoED wrote:

here is one thought on evolution. Modern man has been around for a little over 6,000 years with speech, language , complex numracy , economies , hypercomplex social interaction , husbandry and moral aptitudes . Now these are suddenly happening in an interlectual explotion that is way higher than any other animal . "Neanderthol man" is actualy closer to us than to apes in both form and age (carbon dating on samples now closer to just 8,000 years possably less) , the latest "missing link" was found out to be just a monkey with no human like charictoristics. So what caused this sudden explotion ?

Dunno. It wasn't god(s) though.

NatoED

but claire balding sugests more horse like anccestors than ape..............ahhhhhhh thats why there is no missing link . looking at all the wrong places.

rick_chasey

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

Rick,

Given that just about any language-based knowledge is ordered around narratives, is your position a little like ''there is no single over-arching narrative, there are only narratives (which will automatically vary, just as different people, and different people's perspectives, will)?'' Or am I way off track?

It's more to do with semiotics. Ultimately, you can't know what the writer has meant, since there are infinite interpretations of language, both from the writer, and the reader. Language has no real fixed meaning, bound by soemthing objective - but instead works by a process of intertexuality, where language works by self referencing.

In all honesty, it's a little hazy and I'd have to refer back to the articles and texts where I originally read all this (which I no longer have access to ).

The narrative part is a related, but seperate point. Hayden White explains it better than I can.

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

Flasheart

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Surely gods are a creation of primitive society to explain away phenomena which they don't understand and therefore as we become more able to explain the universe there is less room for them? At the same time science reveals new wonders which we never imagined were possible - we really are made of stardust 8)

Amen....oops ...wrong word

Yep Jay..can't say that I've EVER put it in a more simple way to tell my "simple" god-fearing acquaintances or work colleagues. I worked side by side with a Baptist for 7 years. He was so brainwashed, he didn't even have the first clue why he believed what he did apart from what that was was what he'd been told since he was a kid. He understood nothing about science and evolution and took EVERTHING he was told in Church on "Faith" Truth be told, he isn't the sharpest tool in the box or in these days, the online catalogue. I actually regard the poor guy as a fool truth be known.
I hate all organised religion with a passion for all the misstruths (read lies) and downright lies that it has "inflicted" on us humans. As much as I may like certain people, I have to say that if I find that they are a church-goer, my respect and credence for them and their views drops sharply..instantly.

Anonymous

Rick Chasey wrote:

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

Rick,

Given that just about any language-based knowledge is ordered around narratives, is your position a little like ''there is no single over-arching narrative, there are only narratives (which will automatically vary, just as different people, and different people's perspectives, will)?'' Or am I way off track?

It's more to do with semiotics. Ultimately, you can't know what the writer has meant, since there are infinite interpretations of language, both from the writer, and the reader. Language has no real fixed meaning, bound by soemthing objective - but instead works by a process of intertexuality, where language works by self referencing.

In all honesty, it's a little hazy and I'd have to refer back to the articles and texts where I originally read all this (which I no longer have access to ).

The narrative part is a related, but seperate point. Hayden White explains it better than I can.

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

Rick, not knocking your intelectual learnings, but reading back through your posts on this subject I get the impression you are ultimately dissapointed with your degree subject, or is it that you are ultimately pleased with your stance now because you would not have had that stance, had you not studied your degree subject.
It seems a little like watching ever decreasing circles in a pond reading back throught the last posts. I do agree though, that within historical events there have seemed to have been absoulutes that are open to interpretation when all influencing factors are applied.

Back to the OP, God is man made, if you have faith in God and believe in God then God exists for you. The same way we have love, faith, belief, trust, luck.

If you try to prove or dis-prove the existance of God, then you only have to look at yourself.

rick_chasey

dmclite wrote:

Rick, not knocking your intelectual learnings, but reading back through your posts on this subject I get the impression you are ultimately dissapointed with your degree subject, or is it that you are ultimately pleased with your stance now because you would not have had that stance, had you not studied your degree subject.
It seems a little like watching ever decreasing circles in a pond reading back throught the last posts. I do agree though, that within historical events there have seemed to have been absoulutes that are open to interpretation when all influencing factors are applied.

It's the latter. I loved my course.

I'm disappointed I've forgotten it all so quickly.

Anonymous

Rick Chasey wrote:

dmclite wrote:

Rick, not knocking your intelectual learnings, but reading back through your posts on this subject I get the impression you are ultimately dissapointed with your degree subject, or is it that you are ultimately pleased with your stance now because you would not have had that stance, had you not studied your degree subject.
It seems a little like watching ever decreasing circles in a pond reading back throught the last posts. I do agree though, that within historical events there have seemed to have been absoulutes that are open to interpretation when all influencing factors are applied.

It's the latter. I loved my course.

I'm disappointed I've forgotten it all so quickly.

I think you are a little too hard on yourself, although you and I tend to lock horns occasionally, your posts are always succinct, concise and written from a learned angle.