Soren wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2010 at 10:15am:

You would not be the intelligent man I believe you are if you actually believed that the concept of god is less dangerous than philosophy.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2010 at 10:20am:



Metaphysics, including the personal god idea, is evidently very fertile. We have, whether you like it or not, travelled on a metaphysical road to where we are as a civilisation. It harnesses creativity and destructiveness very well. Monotheism has proved the most fertile and powerful idea among theisms.

Philosophy in itself is harmless because it is only personal. It becomes dangerous when dressed in the religious rituals of worshipping metaphysical notions (but not necessaily god), learned from religion - das volk, ultimate victoriousness of the proletariat, Gaia and the like.

The god idea has the advantage over all the others of being a catalyst for BOTH intense personal, inner transformation and outward, social action, both for the better. There are people who have lived saintly lives. And even as there have been monstrosities committed in the name of god and religion, people do recognise that these are false beliefs, false interpretations.

I am defending the inevitability of metaphysical thinking in general and also the particular metaphysical tradition (Christianity) that has made us. We cannot, in good conscience, deny that we are functional Christians, even if we deny god.

mozzaok wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2010 at 2:17pm:



Meh... what isn't?!

Soren wrote on Apr 3^rd, 2010 at 9:02am:

Do you really believe that not a single one of "those people' to whom you refer are not capable of, say, being optimistic about the future? Or of believing in their family, or that good will triumph over evil? Just how flat do you imagine everyone is who is not your kind of theist?

While certain people here may not be good definitions of science, they do share a major characteristicwit it, that of being a tool.

I think I've figured out where the 'scientific' aspect comes in. They have figured out how to create an entirely new morality devoid of religious influence using science and magnets. Soon they will be able to fine tune these magnets and attach them permanently to control people's morals, finally ridding the earth of the scourge of religion.

Magnets Can Alter Moral Judgement By Changing Brain Activity

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=156&pst=1135279

US scientists have discovered that appyling a magnetic field to a particular place on the scalp can alter people's moral judgement by interfering with activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of the brain. They said their finding helps us better understand how the brain constructs morality.

You can read about the study, led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 29 March online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS. The research was led by Dr Rebecca Saxe, assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.

Lead author Dr Liane Young, a postdoctoral associate in Saxe's department, told the media that because people are normally very confident and consistent in making moral judgements, it comes as surprise to learn that their ability to do so can altered like this.

"You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior. To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing," said Young in a statement.

She said the study reveals "striking evidence" that the right TPJ, which sits on the surface of the brain, above and behind the right ear, plays a crucial role in making moral judgements.

When we make moral judgements about other people we often need to infer their intentions. For instance, when a hunter on a hunting trip shoots a fellow hunter, did he mistake his colleague for prey, or was he secretly jealous?

This ability has been termed "theory of mind", that is the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, intentions, and other qualities to oneself and others, and also to understand that other people's mental states can be different to one's own.

Ten years ago Saxe identified that the TPJ played a role in theory of mind and wrote about it in her PhD thesis in 2003. Since then she has been using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that the right TPJ is active when people are asked to make moral judgements that require them to think about the intentions of others.

Other studies have also shown that the TPJ is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, their beliefs and their thoughts.

For this study, Saxe, Young and colleagues wanted to investigate what might happen if they could actually disrupt activity in the right TPJ.

In this case, instead of the usual fMRI, they did two sets of experiments where they used a non-invasive method called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to apply a magnetic field to a small area of the skull (on the scalp) to create weak electric currents that stop nearby brain cells from firing normally for a while.

They found that this was enough to impair subjects' ability to make moral judgments that involve an understanding of other people's intentions: as in for example, a failed murder attempt.

In the first set of "offline stimulation" experiments, they exposed volunteers to the TMS method for 25 minutes and then asked them to take a test where they read about several scenarios and then had to judge the actions of the characters portrayed on a scale of one to seven (from "absolutely forbidden" to "absolutely permissible").

For example, for one scenario they were asked to judge how permissible would it be for a man to allow his girlfriend to walk across a bridge he knew to be unsafe, even if she does eventually cross it safely. In such a scenario, judging the man solely on the outcome would hold him blameless, even though he apparently intended harm.

In the second set of "online stimulation" experiments, the volunteers underwent a 500-millisecond burst of TMS at the point when they were asked to make a moral judgement.

In both experiments, Saxe, Young and colleagues found that disrupting the right TPJ resulted in volunteers being more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible.

They suggested this was because they were relying more on information about the outcome than inference on intention, since the process that normally helped them get information on intention was disrupted by the electrical current from the TMS.

"It doesn't completely reverse people's moral judgments, it just biases them," explained Saxe.

The researchers also found that when they applied TMS to a brain region near the right TPJ , the volunteers' judgments were nearly identical to those of volunteers who received no TMS at all.

They concluded that:

"Relative to TMS to a control site, TMS to the RTPJ caused participants to judge attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more morally permissible. Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially in the case of attempted harms."

Well if that's not it, I am still at a loss to find any kind of link to science.

You are right Grendel, science has no moral values, it was just started from a link to a TED talk by Sam Harris, who was proposing that by using scientifically developed rules of observation, we can examine types of behaviour, and link them to probable consequences, and so develop a more universl moral framework.

It is just an extension of the metaethics that we already see, on a more practical level, as far as I can tell.

But Harris apparently is known as an outspoken atheist, and so he links a lot of the obviously immoral behaviour sanctioned by religion (here he uses Islamic nuttiness as prime examples) as a motivation for exploring this option.