Mohammed, Moses, much better names for a prophet.

Yes, science is Very Hard, but there is no point of disconnection, beyond which everything has to be taken on faith. Its maths and observation all the way up.

Instead of religion, compare it to language. I can’t read Spanish, so I can’t translate Don Quixote myself and, in a sense, I am just taking the accuracy of a translation on faith. But in a more important sense, I’m not. Spanish is not a mystical, personal experience, its a set of grammatical rules and a vocabulary, and I can see that translating something from Spanish to English means applying those rules and that vocabulary.

Saying religion and science are the same thing is a really bad idea.

Scientific thought as practiced by scientists is quite the opposite of religion, I agree. It’s almost completely about embracing a limited and enlightened faithlessness, if you will. It’s about total acceptance of observed phenomenal facts, but only proximate acceptance of the theories underpinning those facts—ie, if a better theory comes along that explains more facts, then it wins out.

And, of course, the biggest problem of science is that NOT everyone can eat the pudding. Some people aren’t smart enough to eat the pudding. And even people who are smart enough might not have enough time to get around to eating the pudding because they’re busy eating other pudding. Um, one sec, I’m going to go have pudding…

Oddly enough, for many people there’s an acceptance of “scientific facts” that IS an acceptance on faith because they fundamentally do not understand the theories and cannot judge for themselves how known facts support or fail to support those theories. If people can’t follow the math, they have to take it on faith—they have to trust the scientists who explain it to them. And in that way, in the eye of the uncomprehending beholder, scientists and priests are exactly the same.

Think of it as relativity…

Why do you think it defies common sense and intuition?

There really isn’t a comparison with religion. The motions of the planets remain the same whether you believe in gravity or not, but any effects religion have are limited to the believer. The proof of Newton’s pudding is that anyone can eat it.

My father spent all his money on Scientology, took many courses, and attained the level of “clear”. Since having a stroke over ten years ago, he has spent most of his time being totally apathetic, and saying “I want to die”. It seems his main reason for this is so he can start his “next life” as a dedicated Scientologist.

I met an old friend of his yesterday, who also spent his entire life savings on Scientology courses – over two hundred thousand dollars. He finally realized that all of the “abilities” he was supposed to have in exchange for his time and money didn’t exist. He’s in his seventies and working hard to save again.

BTW, celebrities have their own special “org” in LA (and maybe others) where they get the red carpet treatment. They are catered to so the “Church” gets their star power for recruitment.

And my point about the proof of the theory was in the eating was precisely that a scientific theory is tested. Newton’s theory delivered the goods, despite its lack of explanatory power. (He could predict the motion of the planets, but not explain why they were subject to gravity, as many pointed out to him.)

He writes almost like a libertarian—ha has a violence theory of the state sort of like Duhring’s, not that I’ve read Duhring himself.

The defense was not convincing. Russell’s position was nuance, but included the possibility of a short war in which only one side had nuclear weapons.

I believe that the process theologian Charles Harteshorne wrote something similiar. I just saw something by Wittgenstein (Culture & Value pp. 48-9, 1946) in which he seems to welcome nuclear war out of general disgust with humanity.

When Eurasia, Oceania, and Eastasia switched sides in 1945-1948, a lot of people said things best forgotten.

In the past some of the weirdest stuff [LaRouchians] dug up has proven to be true. (But not the stuff about Aristotle being a Persian agent).

Sure he wasn’t a Persian agent, but is it possible that he was objectively pro-Persian?