@enoch & @IAmTheBlurr: Spiral dynamics is not for everyone... and there is very little empiricism to back it up because the bases upon which the different levels are concerned have not been qualitatively elucidated sufficiently enough to study them, to say nothing of the scientific method, itself, as being contingent upon certain assumptions within a given level of consciousness and not others.

However, if you were to adopt the philosopher, Hans Vaihinger's postulate of "As If," you may find a utility of the theoretical orientation which extends beyond its empirical accuracy. That is to say, "So what if it's bullshit, so long as it's useful?" This goes for many of the theories that are widely used in the social sciences, including Abe Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" among others.

That said, we should note that none of this "spiral dynamics" theory is very original. The concept of the "evolution of consciousness" is itself the basis of much of early Vedas in Hinduism which are nearly 5 thousand of years old.. However, the theory has become more codified in the 20th century by mystics and scholars such as Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Clare Graves, Edward Haskell, Arthur Young, Erich Jantsch, Jean Gebser, and, most recently, by Ken Wilber.

Of these, I'd have to say the following books are worth reading:

Aurobindo's The Life Divine & Synthesis of Yoga
de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man
Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin
Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

(partly because I haven't read the others' works)

Due to entropy, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc, we know that there isn't such a thing as a perpetual motion machine. Everything which begins to exist does appear to end, including the Universe. For instance, the expansion of the Universe into heat death. A record player will wear out, a DVD player will break down. I believe that the temporal is temporary because it was created with a specific purpose which will end. After that, only that which is perfected and can co-exist with God eternally will remain.

Yes, talk of the eternal is intelligible. It doesn't mean we can't grasp a few concepts about it. One, it lasts forever, always has been, always will be. It never began to exist and it will never end. Two, it is essentially perfect, because it doesn't break down. It has no real flaw or weakness. It is self-contained and nothing could be added to it to make it better than it is in this sense.

Yes, you can doubt anything, but reality is orderly. It has a way which works and makes sense. I'm not sure why you believe time is only in the mind, because we can do very precise experiments on forces which show time as an emergent conception. What we perceive of time may be faulty, but clearly everything isn't happening at once; there is a logical progression to events which suggests time is more than in our minds.

As far as astronomical history you're talking about a history which is completely speculative and not based on observation, ie the origin of the moon, dinosaurs etc. If you doubt so much, why do you accept the secular narrative as truth? There are certain things such as the existence of the short period comets that proves a young earth. IE, if they're still here it means the Earth can't be that old. The secular narrative inserts the illusive and unobservable "Oort cloud" which supposedly replenishes all the comets.

Yes, I believe knowledge is certain and true, but I think you must see how limited beings with limited perceptions and knowledge take quite a bit on faith. Just in your normal life, you must see past your senses to navigate and interact with reality. You don't know everything that is going to happen, or even what you do know is even reliable, but you make the best of it. I don't see how anything could pass the "certainty" test.

I said what is spiritual couldn't be empircally proven, but I believe God has material evidence because He is a part of history. Where the rubber meets the road is the resurrection of Christ. God did interact with this world; He redeemed it. God isn't beholden to the world though, as if He needs anything..it is by Grace that He interacts with us. I will also tell you that God proves Himself. He promised to reveal Himself to those who come to Him in repentance of sin, who believe in Him and His resurrection and confess Him as Lord. To those He reveals Himself and grants eternal life. God can change a skeptic to a believer in a nanosecond, but He isn't going to show Himself to the world until the right time. What He wants is a heart willing to change, a broken and contrite heart coming to Him in total humility.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@shinyblurry
There is no logical necessity for time to have an ending only because it had a beginning. A record player spinning with no end comes to mind. There is no reason to assume the end is necessarily destruction. A comparable analogy would be would be when a DVD is over; the fact that it has ended has nothing to do with its eradication. Either is plausible. There is also no reason to assume that something eternal will arise from temporal. It isn't impossible either, mind you, just not necessarily or shown to be the case.
I don't think it is possible to think about what is more plausible about eternity. We have no idea how to predicate eternity. We don't know "Being" is a consistent idea with "Eternal". Any type of talk about eternal is unintelligible. I don't mean that in a rude way, what I mean is I have no reason to believe anything that is said. If 2 things are logically possible, and I have no understanding of what it means to be eternal, then any talk about what is the more "likely" mode of an eternal metaphysics is a fruitless debate, rife with personal bias and little else.
And once again, this whole line of thought revolves around the very subjective idea of time. I have had no compelling argument to show time to be anything more than an experience of minds any more than the color blue. I have no reason to accept time as anything more than the way in which minds alter the information of the universe to make us more successful creatures.
I don't understand, beyond bias, why you would accept data about a young earth vs an old one with any less skepticism. Assuming they are using the same dating methods, why trust 10k year old earth and not 13 billion? The detective work that goes into the methods of age aren't perfect, prone to mis-calibration, and lack true modes to calibrate with, but it never claimed to be exact, just a rough cut. When they talk about the ages of dinosaurs, it usually has 50ish million year give or takes. Even our own solar history, and the history of our moon, and of Mars speak far more about a much older universe than a 10k year old one. I also can't see the Grand Canyon being made in 10k years. But isn't is a debate on the Christion bible, but on a more basic idea.
I am not an empiricist. I believe my classification is either a existential phenomenologist, or perhaps an transcendental idealist...most likely a combination of the two great schools of rationalism and empiricism. For me, knowledge is the same as Descartes put it. It is certain, and it is true. By certain, that means it passes Cartesian doubt. More to the point, it means that it has the right stuff to have an answer to every criticism. It is the opposite of doubt, it is certain. In that, religious evidence fails the certainty test, as the main element of all the great religions isn't knowledge, but faith. So to your point, prove that it can be known, with certainty and without any doubt any of the claims you have made, you would be the first in history to do so, to my knowledge. And to say that God can not be empirically proven seems rather lonely, for it means that God does not interact with this world; as empirical study is the world as it is beholden to man. If God is not beholden to the world which man exists, then he isn't really our God.

@shinyblurry

There is no logical necessity for time to have an ending only because it had a beginning. A record player spinning with no end comes to mind. There is no reason to assume the end is necessarily destruction. A comparable analogy would be would be when a DVD is over; the fact that it has ended has nothing to do with its eradication. Either is plausible. There is also no reason to assume that something eternal will arise from temporal. It isn't impossible either, mind you, just not necessarily or shown to be the case.

I don't think it is possible to think about what is more plausible about eternity. We have no idea how to predicate eternity. We don't know "Being" is a consistent idea with "Eternal". Any type of talk about eternal is unintelligible. I don't mean that in a rude way, what I mean is I have no reason to believe anything that is said. If 2 things are logically possible, and I have no understanding of what it means to be eternal, then any talk about what is the more "likely" mode of an eternal metaphysics is a fruitless debate, rife with personal bias and little else.

And once again, this whole line of thought revolves around the very subjective idea of time. I have had no compelling argument to show time to be anything more than an experience of minds any more than the color blue. I have no reason to accept time as anything more than the way in which minds alter the information of the universe to make us more successful creatures.

I don't understand, beyond bias, why you would accept data about a young earth vs an old one with any less skepticism. Assuming they are using the same dating methods, why trust 10k year old earth and not 13 billion? The detective work that goes into the methods of age aren't perfect, prone to mis-calibration, and lack true modes to calibrate with, but it never claimed to be exact, just a rough cut. When they talk about the ages of dinosaurs, it usually has 50ish million year give or takes. Even our own solar history, and the history of our moon, and of Mars speak far more about a much older universe than a 10k year old one. I also can't see the Grand Canyon being made in 10k years. But isn't is a debate on the Christion bible, but on a more basic idea.

I am not an empiricist. I believe my classification is either a existential phenomenologist, or perhaps an transcendental idealist...most likely a combination of the two great schools of rationalism and empiricism. For me, knowledge is the same as Descartes put it. It is certain, and it is true. By certain, that means it passes Cartesian doubt. More to the point, it means that it has the right stuff to have an answer to every criticism. It is the opposite of doubt, it is certain. In that, religious evidence fails the certainty test, as the main element of all the great religions isn't knowledge, but faith. So to your point, prove that it can be known, with certainty and without any doubt any of the claims you have made, you would be the first in history to do so, to my knowledge. And to say that God can not be empirically proven seems rather lonely, for it means that God does not interact with this world; as empirical study is the world as it is beholden to man. If God is not beholden to the world which man exists, then he isn't really our God.

Given how much I follow politics, I kinda recognize when people are just trying to give the least offensive answer to a question and avoid controversy.

So, girls in a beauty contest are overwhelmingly giving the safe answer "people can believe whatever they want, and people should be taught everything in school".

I wasn't keeping a tally, but I think there were only two that said evolution shouldn't be taught, and only 2-3 who took the position that it not only should be taught but taught as the one and only truth.

My feeling is that they need to find a way to teach epistemology to kids as early as possible. The real issue people care about in the creationism vs. evolution in school isn't whether they're taught generally, but whether they're taught as fact or opinion.

To some degree the solution to the larger debate isn't for the answer I think is right to win the fight (evolution), but to get more people to understand the limits of human knowledge, and to really come to understand the methods for evaluating whether something is true or false, or knowable or unknowable.

Yes, most people get exposed to those tools in science and math (empiricism and deduction, respectively), but it's probably worthy of a class itself.

Then again, if I ran the world "philosophy" would be as much a core subject as "math" and "science" in school.

Also, if I ran the world, I'd probably have more than one of these women in my harem...

On a car trip to and from my Thanksgiving destination, I had long discussions with my (Christian) family about faith. I tried to explain the sense of contentment and dignity I feel facing life without religious comforts and fears, just as this guy describes that sense very well.

I am always comforted by exploring the limits of knowledge. Knowing what I don't know is comforting to me. I like waking up every day knowing I'm ignorant of all sorts of stuff...operating from a sense of curiosity and caution rather than thinking I have everything figured out.

Empiricism > Rationalism > Mysticism

if anyone liked this video and missed this one:
http://videosift.com/video/Science-saved-my-Soul

Thanks for the sift.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

No, he is nearly making the subtle, but logical distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Have had this conversation here a lot on the sift. The experience of blue is a very different one than the wavelength of 475 nm (which corresponds to blue for most people). "Light" is a subjective experience not related to real properties of photons. Photons appear bright because through the course of a billion years of evolution, interrupting photons as light, and their corresponding wavelengths as colors has better aided that animal that interrupting them as something else. But that says nothing about photons themselves, only the way in which minds are translating reality.
It is the distinction between Empiricism and Intellectualism. One believing that it takes senses to understand truth, the other, that only the power of pure reason can lead knowledge. I, for one, am mostly under the school of intellectualism as it pertains to epistemology. I trust the power of reason and logic to find truth, not eyeballs and olfactories.

No, the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon would more properly apply to colours than to light itself, which was proven by Newton to be a particle (or at least particule-like, and then later a dual particle-wave thingy of course). His conclusions were accepted by Kant, who redefined the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon to not contradict Newton's findings. Goethe disagreed with Kant and Newton, but he was a fool. He thought light and colour were the same thing thus he failed. Schopenhauer rectified Goethe's theory to apply only to the perception of colour but Goethe wouldn't have it thus he failed again and it was up to psychologists to prove Schopenhauer was actually right in a limited sense.

Your distinction of empiricism and intellectualism is also very naive. As far as we know, the only way you can prove the factuality of your knowledge is through experience. That's why modern science works and idle speculation (like most Ancient Greeks did) does not. Being an empiricist doesn't mean you "trust your eyeballs", quite the contrary in fact. That's why David Hume talks a lot of the required skepticism needed to know nature from one's senses. If we could see things as they are (as noumenon), then we would not need our senses nor our reason to interpret what they sense (the phenomenon). That's in fact the basic premise of Kant's whole Critic of Pure Reason. His solution, in a word, was to view reason as recreating it's own idea, in the original Greek sense of "form", of the original noumenon (the thing-in-itself) by interpreting the filtered sense data of phenomenon that passed through the categories of understanding (like substance, causality, etc.). Some call his solution a form psychologism and I think they are right, but Kant certainly didn't think so. In fact, I think it's not psychologistic enough, though one must be wary of going as far as to try founding everything on psychology, a circular dead end if there was one.

Ultimately, it comes to the question of what kind of knowledge you want: absolute knowledge or human knowledge? I purport absolute knowledge is unknowable (irreducible) to human knowledge in the same way the noumenon is irreducible to the phenomenon, not only by its own definition but by the very way knowledge works (at least for us, meaning in a subject-object duality where the subject cannot simply copy the object it wants to know but must make an inherently reduced image of it, i.e. an idea). I think this problem to be related to the P=NP conundrum. Only if P=NP can we ever hope to achieve absolute knowledge and then that is not even guaranteed (we would need to evolve somehow to transcend the P and NP divide which factually exists in our present human knowledge). As Scott Aaronson of the MIT puts it, "If P=NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in “creative leaps,” no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it’s found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss; everyone who could recognize a good investment strategy would be Warren Buffett. It’s possible to put the point in Darwinian terms: if this is the sort of universe we inhabited, why wouldn’t we already have evolved to take advantage of it?" (from his blog).

>> ^robbersdog49:

Is it just me or is the bloke far left (viewer's view) an idiot? The whole light is invisible thing is just an irritatingly misguided regurgitation of an error. I'll add arrogant as well.
He should listen to more Scrubius Pip.


No, he is nearly making the subtle, but logical distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Have had this conversation here a lot on the sift. The experience of blue is a very different one than the wavelength of 475 nm (which corresponds to blue for most people). "Light" is a subjective experience not related to real properties of photons. Photons appear bright because through the course of a billion years of evolution, interrupting photons as light, and their corresponding wavelengths as colors has better aided that animal that interrupting them as something else. But that says nothing about photons themselves, only the way in which minds are translating reality.

It is the distinction between Empiricism and Intellectualism. One believing that it takes senses to understand truth, the other, that only the power of pure reason can lead knowledge. I, for one, am mostly under the school of intellectualism as it pertains to epistemology. I trust the power of reason and logic to find truth, not eyeballs and olfactories.

>> ^Nebosuke:

>> ^robv:
Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution. That's not logical. Therefor I can't support him.

Paul is usually reasonable, but the "evolution is a theory" is a game killer.


What game are you playing? Would you rather one that believes in it and never ending war? Also, anyone in medicine believes in evolution, he just doesn't believe it is the complete explanation for life on this planet. (to which many different people hold in fact. Some think that the particles for life come from outer space, or even that those particles were already organic and life didn't originate here...there are many non-evolutionary based ideas here. The debate to the origins of the first life on this planet are not as simple as invoking "evolution". It is still a hot area of debate, and one I take particular interest in.)


"(as if something that is a proven scientific FACT needs belief)"

Firstly, philosophically, belief means any cognitive content held as true. Everything you "think" is, philosophically, what you believe. Belief is your personal, subjective position.

Knowledge is defined as right and true belief. To make the claim something is knowledge, you have to be able to show it is true. Science isn't a method of showing things to be true, but things to be false (you start with a statement "all doves are white", this statement is emperically true until you find you first black dove; the practice of empiricism works on negative evidence). Philosophically speaking, the only path to knowledge is rationalism, not empiricism (as pointed out by Kant's noumena and phenomena). There is no scientific/empirical claim that is irrefutable (meaning certain: without any doubt: can be shown that it can't, and never will, be otherwise (positive evidence)). Certain, without any doubt, is what is meant by the word truth. Knowledge being true (or certain) belief means one can say, logically, that any information gathered empirically isn't knowledge. Is there any scientific fact that hasn't be usurped by later scientific facts? Not even motion has even been certain, which is far less complex than evolution, and we see motion everyday.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

(I largely believe in most of evolution btw)

PS (this comment brought to you by parentheticals...use them love them, overuse them!)

I WAS KIDDING! Did you not read the next line? However, I think being specialtive of data that comes from the distant past is prudent. If one did not question the geocentric model like Copernicus and Galileo, but rather agreed with the Aristotelian consensus would we be better off? Most of the tools we have for looking at the distant past are murky at best, so while useful always have to be taken in stride, which is what I have been saying all along.

Radio age dating, and stellar cartagrophy have all shown themselves to be off by large margins at times. For instance, the believed age of the universe has increased 5 billion years in my life time...a very large number when trying to make other measurements like cosmic inflation and other dependent things. Small and large variances would undo very fundamental understood physical properties of the universe. If the age of the universe changes by any amount, any new theory trying to explain cosmological inflation has to be reworked from scratch...or at the very least re-propagated.

I never said throw it out, I said approach it with cautious skepticism, the same would go for radio carbon dating. It is good for estimations and approximations, but the fact is the data sets could be wildly inerrant. For general things like tectonic tenancies and the slow moment of things overtime, this isn't as big of a deal. But for making very detailed climatic predictions about the overall direction and the results of said direction of the weather is putting to much credence in the information at hand.

If the science is bogus, it doesn't necessarily have to be disproven in a timely manor either. It was nearly two thousands years from Aristotle to Galileo, and that was with something that could bee seen, this can never been seen. Your mistaken my faith in God for my ability to use reason as well. I started an atheist and have a firm back round in science and scientific thinking. The modern movement of science by consolidation more resembles church that true empirical thought. I find that true science is dead, and what is alive now is conjecture by consensus. The empirical model is dead. Science now has more faith than most would care to comment on. Belief in aliens because of the large amount of space and large amount of planets is evidence of faith before empiricism. If you want faith, church is ok, but science is chop full of non-agnostic positions.

My desire is to not be ignorant. I find the current fear mongering as a play on ignorance. I find people defending the radical data as definitive as naive. But I also see pollution as a problem that should be corrected if not just for the sake of doing it or the planet; but for breath of fresh air in the morning, a commodity that is hard to price.

Try not to be jaded by people you assume I am like and look at my argument more fully next time. I don't think you read exactly what I said but you read more what you wanted to read from someone named like I am named. I also was very crass and kinda rude to start off my comments in that thread, so maybe I had it coming

Anyway, it is a problem that is bigger than any one of us, so us calling each other names or mocking each others believe systems is not going to get us anywhere. I will endeavor to not get sarcastic when on a mountain dew high if you will read my objections for what they really are, based in rational skepticism. When confronted with skepticism, my position is to remain as agnostic about projections about what I am skeptical about until that thing is resolved; it is the only logical position.

In reply to this comment by asynchronice:
"O shit, they had climatologists in the 300,000BC"

LOL...you've got to be fucking kidding me. Let's throw out carbon dating too. It's unverifiable! You weren't there ! And how do they know what stars are made of ? They can't verify it !

I don't get the defensiveness here. No debate corporations will use this data for profit. They will use ANYTHING for profit. And governments will always want to tax more of their citizenry. It has no import/relevance on the scientific facts being given. And if the science is bogus, then it will be disproven. PERIOD. That's just how it works. Just because you're spoiled and think the scientific community has to give you a day, a time, and detailed description of what will happen, isn't a reason to dismiss it. If you want that, go back to church.

It weirds me out that people go to great lengths to show how it is all a conspiracy to instill fear and get money; just look at the facts, and make up your own goddamn mind. And if you choose to be willfully ignorant, then do people a favor and stay out of the debate. Some of us actually want to understand what's going on.

O shit, they had climatologists in the 300,000BC! Hell, they even measured CO2 and ice levels in the dark ages, black plague don't slow those folks down for science! The chart don't lie, we are all screwed! Let us consume our way out of this problem quickly!

I hope your sarcasm detectors are ringing, I was being quite hyperbolic. Measurements from prehistorical record are always intriguing to me, people can be very smart at finding the marks of the distant past in rocks or ice. However, you have to take that evidence for what it is it is, unverifiable. You can make neat models and predictions off it and try and get a sense of scale and scope for current models; trying to balance the equations that aren't working now with a window into the past. But you are peaking into what is essentially unscientific (I mean unverifiable). There is simply no way to be certain that evidence left behind in ice or certain geological formations hasn't undergone massive change over the hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years that the evidence sample is supposed to represent empirically (or the extrapolations gained from this are accurate).

The bits of wisdom uncovered from the vast long history of this world are vital, but you always have to weight that with your rational skepticism which I feel is lacking in most summations of doomsday scenarios. To believe that no such levels of CO2 or ice melt values have EVER existed places far to much credibility on something that is essentially unverifiable (that isn't just for 100k years ago, but 500).

I think concern is wise, I think prudence is advised, I think writing a paper saying we are all fuxed and run for the hills is irresponsible. Empiricism is dead, long live manipulated staticism. (assuming a spherical cow, let us calculate its volume)

Ok... I still see this line as completely arbitrary. How are our actions not "probabilistic events?" The amoeba is operating off the same basic principals. It's exerting energy to maintain certain ion concentrations. It's moving matter in order to seek out food, and even flexing its pseudopods along the shortest path between food sources in proportion to their delivery frequency. There is even a paper showing that it will respond to periodic stimuli (such as cold shocks at particular intervals) with predictive changes of behavior. How is that any different?

Further, comparison and recall? Why is memory necessary for experience? For the successful completion of certain cognitive tasks, sure, but I keep needing to remind you that isn't what we're talking about here. As for comparison, it's happening everywhere all the time. Electrons are "comparing" electric fields when they settle into a state, otherwise they couldn't obey their physical laws. I think the problem here is that your thinking is boxed into the human sensory modalities. As far as I'm concerned an electron is sensing an electrical field in the same way I am sensing visual band EM. It just can't image it as well, and thus can't respond to complex patterns at much distance. Again, not to diminish that extraordinary decrease in entropy, but I don't know why it should be so fundamental.

Also, to be clear, I've never claimed that what I'm looking for is something immaterial. I just believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Being matter, and conscious, I have no reason to think otherwise. Again, this consciousness is distinct from "thinking". It's the sheer fact that there is a phenomenal experience, not the particular nature of those phenomena. You've presented me no evidence that I should only expect phenomenal experience in a complex organism, as you have no test for phenomenal experience. This is why Chalmers, and others, have argued that consciousness is not necessarily best studied by traditional english empiricism. It's wholly inadequate to investigate the phenomenon. A better solution might draw on Eastern traditions of meditation, for instance. Many monks, including the Dali Llama have been interested in cooperating.

But you have made a claim, that for some particular X, P(X) > P(!X). On the basis of that statement, and the assumption that you are rational, I draw the conclusion that you have some concept of what X is, or at least what its consequences are, otherwise you are making a non-sequitur claim.

I do have some very general concept of what x is, but not such a certain idea that I would ever make a claim like P(X) > P(!X). That is, unless you toe a hard Bayesian line, and accept that my claim is completely a subjective degree of belief. Otherwise, my claim was something like "I believe that P(X) > P(!X)". Something you shouldn't really care to contest, but I'll defend my priors against your priors till you're blue in the face. I won't be bullied by the tyranny of some arbitrary model selection criteria.

>> ^oscarillo:
they are saying the same thing "Spreed the word because this is the truth", and one of the phrases that I hate the most "If you dont belive as I" and they just change the end from "youre going to hell" to "youre stupid"
I think we need to find the right balance because for either fanatics "you're goint to hell" or "you're stupid"


Saying the same thing doesn't mean they have similar merit. The underlying arguments are completely different.

Behind the atheist argument is empiricism - your beliefs are derived from evidence, gathered through your senses (science is a refinement of this; a methodology to minimise error, uncertainty, cognitive biases, etc).

Behind the typical religous argument is innate belief. Belief that comes from what you internally decided, rather than what the world shows to your senses. Otherwise known as faith: The bible is true and god does exist. It doesn't matter how much reality shows to be the contrary, faith means you still go on believing that there is such a god in this reality anyway. The quickest to explain of one of the severe problems with this is the way in which faith contradicts itself. By faith's defintition, there is no way of telling which of two faiths is right. And there are an infinite number of possible faiths.

It's the merit of reason/empiricism vs faith you should be paying attention to, not the superficial similarities between two sentences. Of course, if that one sentence is all they say, then yes, there is no argument there at all.

>> ^csnel3:
" ^ The UK is about as imperialist as it is religious. The United States has more resemblance to our Red Coat past than GB does now. Always seemed like a bizarre irony that the Founding Fathers might be more at home in modern day Britain."

imperialist? I thought that he was saying "empirical" and "empiricism", Not Imperialism , completley two different things. I think I'm right! ( its my nature and my downfall). I'm suprised at how far you guys can miss the whole point of what they are saying by being off by one word.


I think it is you, not I, that needs to improve their comprehension. Please re-read my post and pay special attention to the person I was quoting. I am perfectly aware Fry was talking about empiricism, I would have thought the second part of my post demonstrated that well enough. I only mentioned our imperialist history to point out that it is just that, history, and as such actually has very little to do with modern day Britain.

I am surprised at how far you can miss the whole point of what I saying by being off by one word.

" ^ The UK is about as imperialist as it is religious. The United States has more resemblance to our Red Coat past than GB does now. Always seemed like a bizarre irony that the Founding Fathers might be more at home in modern day Britain."


imperialist? I thought that he was saying "empirical" and "empiricism", Not Imperialism , completley two different things. I think I'm right! ( its my nature and my downfall). I'm suprised at how far you guys can miss the whole point of what they are saying by being off by one word.

"Listen to Dawkins talking about religious people as if they are all the same - I can't believe they knighted a guy who stereotypes religious people into one group of behaviour."

Harlequinn, it seems fair to group supernaturalists all into the same category in the senses of e.g. (1) they all reject empiricism and rationalism, and (2) their brains look the same in brain scans, whether the content of their mystical experiences is in a Hindu, Muslim, hallucinogenic drug, or whatever context (see neurotheology).

That's of course not the only way to group supernaturalists, but it's a useful way when the topic of discussion is e.g. rationalism and the brain.