Subject: Re: Take the belief futures challenge Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 18:19:52 -0800 From: Brian Holtz Organization: Sun Microsystems To: Netcom jimhumph Netcom jimhumph wrote: > > Just for fun, note that naturalists don't commit mass suicide > > > Yet we know that suicide rates are lower > amongst religious believers than amongst > non-believers. Which belief system is likely to be more delusional: one somewhat more susceptible to personal angst and despair, or one overwhelmingly more susceptible to mass suicide? (I say "overwhelmingly" because I don't know any examples of naturalist mass suicide, so it's sort of a divide-by-zero situation.) Of course, neither kind of suicide is going to much affect the long-term percentages of fideists vs. naturalists. > > By the end of the 1960's, humanity had, for all nine questions, > > [the origin, mechanism and fate of mind, life, and the universe > >etc] outlined answers > > that will probably still be considered correct in two > > hundred, two thousand, and two million years. > > > Of course there is no way of knowing this- you > are engaging in fortune tellling. Are you claiming we have zero information about these prospects? Are you claiming it's equally likely that in 100 years it will be generally accepted that babies come from storks, or that the brain is (as Aristotle thought) just an organ for cooling the blood? > And as previous scientific theories have turned > out to be false, we might reasonably expect that current > theories may do so too. Not really. I cover this in my book: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#ScientificProvisionality : The propositions of science are mainly synthetic ones, and the truth of any synthetic proposition is provisional and subject to revision according to new evidence or better interpretation of evidence. Science tends to converge asymptotically and almost monotonically on truth. Critics of skepticism point to the scientific revolutions in the past to question the validity of what science asserts in the present. They cite Kuhn's theory of paradigms, Einstein's transcendence of Newton, discoveries of unforeseen physical forces and particles, various premature announcements of the end of physics, and various incorrect predictions of technological barriers. First, technology and science are different. Those who incorrectly denied the technological possibility of powered or supersonic flight did not deny the scientific reality of birds or gunshots. Second, science in the past left vast swaths of phenomena unexplained. The darkness of infinite star-filled space was considered Olber's Paradox until well into the 20th century. The Sun was a marvel of inexplicable energy as recently as 1900. Disease and heredity and the blueness of the sky were still unexplained in 1850. Electricity and magnetism were spooky curiosities as recently as 1800. In 2000 there are still big mysteries about purposes and origins, but fewer marvels about what some phenomenon might possibly be. Perhaps humanity's biggest marvel in 2000 is quantum action at a distance, followed distantly by minor marvels like dark matter, gamma ray bursters, and high-temperature superconductivity. Even a phenomenon as marvelous as mind has been demonstrated to be neurological -- although diehard dualists insist that consciousness is a true marvel. Third, science converges toward truth even across some paradigm shifts. The Earth is still spheroid and still moves around the Sun, even though the Sun is now known to not be the center of the universe. Gravity still obeys Newton's inverse square law, even though relativity now explains gravity as geometry instead of as force. Momentum is still conserved, even though mass and energy are interconvertible. Since roughly the time of Darwin, there have been very few big questions for which science gave answers that were not even approximately correct. Perhaps the biggest mistakes in this time were the underestimations of the age and size of the universe. Finally, humanity is now clearly converging on answers to the biggest scientific questions. [...] > > The century that began with _Origin of Species_ was > > the century that severed the taproot of religion. > > > A vague assertion. What exactly do you mean? I mean that the taproot of theism has been (among serious thinkers) the existence of unexplained Design in Nature. That amazing century outlined answers to questions that had seemed hopelessly unanswerable. As a result, and from the perspective of millenia, the (often explicit) acceptance of the Design Argument abruptly vanished among the intellectual class whose beliefs constitute a leading indicator of society's consensus beliefs. (Does anyone have a graph over time of percentage of revelation-based faith among university faculty or journalists for the last 150 years?) > recently we have seen the revival of Islam, and a reaction > against secularism. As religion withers, it is predictable that a hardcore minority of fideists will react as the fate of their belief-system becomes increasingly apparent. As I say in my book: "intellectual fideists have in the 20th century retreated from actual revelation-based faith. They are seeking refuge in either outright mysticism or a false skepticism that pretends deism is a skeptical epistemology instead of a supernaturalist metaphysics. Rank-and-file fideists are responding variously with fundamentalism, mysticism, and (primarily) an operational agnosticism that maintains only the trappings of faith. This hollow fideism will dilute into vague agnostic mysticism by about 2150, while hardcore fideists will dwindle and become increasingly isolated." Islam's reaction is even greater because this century's communications revolution has confronted it with the future all at once rather than over the last 150 years as in Christendom. Thus I predict that Islam is on the same track as Christianity, but probably a century or two behind. > It seems to me a quite useless exercise to try to predict the > future > of religious belief- we simply do not know how it will develop. So to you, it's equally arguable that in 1000 years humans will be 95% fideists as it is they will be 5% fideists? If so, what about in 1000 months, or 1000 days? If you won't hazard a guess about even 1000 hours into the future, can you at least tell us what you think the trend is at this moment? (You had no problem asserting that the trend was *not* that "religion is withering on the vine", so you must have some knowledge of the present trend.) -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net