Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief

Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief May 2, 2019 14:53:12 GMT goz likes this

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Post by general313 on May 2, 2019 14:53:12 GMT

May 2, 2019 6:10:55 GMT Arlon10 said:

Apr 30, 2019 14:57:03 GMT general313 said:

One thing for sure is that in this world there is no shortage of people that overestimate their grasp of truth. It's so much easier to spot in others than in ourselves. I see it all the time on these forums and elsewhere. Not being so sure of oneself and questioning one's own competence are important first steps toward a more objective understanding of one's abilities and limitations.

In my opinion (and those of many others), the methods of science (at least at its best) are most suited to overcome these limitations, by marginalizing the role of personal opinion or dogma and relying instead on observation.

   Going into the election season there is a "lean toward" (for lack of better description) science. That is partly Trump's fault. He does not represent religion well. He also does not represent capitalism well, but that's another topic.

   Ordinarily religion fares much better. The faith you don't realize you have is the worst faith there is. People who believe in science don't realize theirs is as much faith as anyone else has. Ordinarily people who believe in a god are perfectly aware they can't do anything miraculous, that there is little or no evidence for their beliefs, that theirs are indeed beliefs. People who will believe in mind reading so long as the claim is based on what they think is "science" are on this board and you can see how wrong blind faith in science can go.

   A desire to rule the world doesn't make anyone scientific at heart or better at math, it just makes makes them invoke the most powerful thing they can imagine, which to them is "science," but they aren't any good at real science because they don't have the heart of a scientist.

   Science can be powerful and have the last word in some disputes, but not on most issues in society. I've said it many times, but here it is again. If everyone agrees they want to build a birdhouse, science can help. It can even help attract a specific kind of bird. If people cannot decide whether to build a birdhouse, a lawn sprinkler or a badminton court there is really nothing science can do. Most issues in society arise because people cannot agree on what must be done and science is really useless in politics.

    I suspect that when you develop the true heart of a scientist you will realize that religion is a good and necessary thing. You will realize that Donald Trump is not religious. You will realize that there are many important things even science cannot do.

Without going into your irrelevant asides about politics or this "true heart of a scientist" nonsense, I'll make these points:

1) " People who believe in science don't realize theirs is as much faith as anyone else has." -- this is completely wrong. Science requires far less faith than religion, in fact that is the point of science. Instead of needing to accept some kind of divine revelation or other mumbo jumbo from some authority figure on faith, science provides arguments based on experiments, often ones that anyone can perform and even more often can be understood by laymen. The only faith required of science is an assumption that there is consistency in the universe, far far less than what is required in Christianity, for example.

2) "If people cannot decide whether to build a birdhouse, a lawn sprinkler or a badminton court there is really nothing science can do." Replace "science" with "religion" and you're still saying the same thing.