Davis Aurini - The Difference Between Science and Religion

Dec. 12, 2012 - Davis Aurini

26:46

The Difference Between Science and Religion

Buy my book: http://www.amazon.com/Walk-These-Broken-Roads-Volume/dp/1480121827 Read my blog: http://www.StaresAtTheWorld.com Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/Aurini SFDebri's excellent takedown of Janeway: http://youtu.be/M50H7ob_VUM An Intuitive Guide to Bayes Theorem: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes Mathematical Proof that the Supernatural Exists: http://www.koanicsoul.com/blog/mathematical-proof-that-the-supernatural-exists/

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	What is the difference between science and religion?
	This is a question I've never seen handled well, and I've often seen it handled absolutely terribly.
	Now, what sparked this video was a review by S.F. Debris of a particularly ham-fisted episode of Star Trek Voyager, where they utterly mangled the question, where scientists believe in science the same way that religious people believe in religion.
	And S.F. Debris does a great job eviscerating this episode and explaining what science is.
	If you don't know who S.F. Debris is, he is an excellent science fiction reviewer, mainly focusing on Star Trek, and the link is down below to the episode in question.
	Now that said, he really dropped the ball when it came to explaining what religion was, for very understandable reasons which aren't due to him having a lack of intellect.
	But we'll get to that in a bit.
	Typically, when you see this question, the way it's phrased, the answer is that science is what we can prove to be true, and religion is what we believe to be true.
	Which right on the face of it falls to pieces.
	Science and rationality in general can prove very, very little.
	For instance, I believe that the car I parked in my garage tonight is still there and hasn't been stolen.
	Is that a form of faith?
	Of course not.
	Bay's theorem undermines that definition of science.
	And then you have the matter of what I like to think of as the low church theists.
	What always comes to mind when I think of these people, and I'm willing to bet that 50% of my audience thinks of these people whenever they hear the term religion, is this utter fool on the pen teller show yelling about how he don't want his Bible taken from the courthouse steps.
	And you can have varying views on it, but these retard religious people that quote convenient sections of the Bible, have never read the entire thing, and believe in Jesus.
	They know that Jesus exists.
	Both of these definitions are demeaning to both realms of magisteria.
	The fact of the matter is that science and faith, in fact, I'm going to replace that word science, rationality and faith are not concepts that are at odds.
	Atheist cult and low church religion definitely are, but not faith and rationality.
	And incidentally, this is why SF Debris skimmed over the part on what religion is.
	Because the dominant religion of our modern era is multiculturalism, is accepting other people's beliefs.
	See, it was bad enough when we had a single religion in our society.
	All these idiot low church people running around proclaiming whatever nonsense that they interpreted from some words that were translated.
	No, we now have a multicultural society with multiple religions, each of them full of low church retards believing retarded things.
	And so, as not to offend anybody, you can't actually discuss what faith actually is, because it undermines the majority of churchgoers.
	And S.F. Debris, even though he runs an extremely intelligent and entertaining channel, which I highly recommend, is an entertainer.
	He is a television and science fiction critic.
	He does not want to have a giant religious flame war going on in his comment section.
	So, science, rationality, and reason.
	This one shouldn't take too long.
	First of all, because you've heard this a million times before.
	We live in a materialistic age, and so we know how to study material.
	Not to mention I've discussed it before.
	Science is an investigation of the material world.
	It's an idiot-proofing because we are highly biased creatures.
	The same brain that can very rapidly figure out a political situation or figure out how to catch a baseball is so good at thinking quickly that it's very bad at thinking slowly.
	And we can often trip over mental errors.
	The scientific method is meant to prevent this.
	But of course, the scientific method really only applies to a limited number of things.
	It doesn't work very well with history, for example.
	And you certainly won't use the scientific method when you're walking to work, when you're trying to figure out which girl to talk to at the bar.
	You can certainly apply some of the methods to it, but ultimately, not everything in our human endeavor is reducible to a hypothesis, a test, and a conclusion.
	That's not even getting into Bayes' theorem.
	And I do trust that all of you guys out there are good Bayesian conspirators.
	The fact of the matter is that science isn't even the best way to achieve knowledge.
	It's the best way to make sure you have accurate knowledge.
	For instance, for most of human history, we all knew that when you dropped something, it fell at a consistent velocity until it hit the ground.
	Until we proved otherwise.
	This is a highly unintuitive conclusion.
	There are certain aspects of the natural world that are highly unintuitive, and science is very good at discovering these.
	But for life in general, the Bayesian method is far, far better.
	And if you aren't already, again, link down below to a quick and dirty introduction to Bayesian probability theory.
	It is a must-read.
	And by the way, there's some irony in mentioning Bayes' theorem that will come up shortly.
	So, science, rationality, logical thinking, this is how we approach the material world.
	This is how we figure out the world around us.
	And it undermines a lot of religion.
	No, the rain dance doesn't work.
	No, that's not faith.
	That's what you think is knowledge being proven wrong.
	As S.F. Debris said, science is like looking through a dirty window.
	You know, you think you see a tree through the dirty window, but you clean it a little bit, you get some more information, you say, oh, I was wrong, it's actually a telephone pole.
	That's what science is.
	Now, what about faith?
	Because I know what's coming to mind.
	There's a lot of examples that are labeled faith that contradict science.
	Even simply having faith in Jesus, well, that's a scientific question.
	Did Jesus exist or not?
	And if that's the way you're looking at it, you don't have faith in Jesus, you have low church belief.
	Faith involves the supernatural.
	And the supernatural does not exist in the natural universe, thus the bloody label.
	When people hear supernatural, the first thing that comes to my mind anyway is a ghost or telekinetic ability or something like that.
	And the simple fact of the matter is, if you saw a ghost, if you interacted with a ghost, that ghost is now having an effect on the natural universe.
	The ghost is a part of the natural universe.
	Period.
	Go read thermodynamics.
	It's right in there.
	That's not what the supernatural is.
	Supernatural is that which is not part of this reality.
	And in fact, it very much exists.
	Just not in the way things exist in the natural world.
	Down below is another link for you.
	It's a philosophical proof of the supernatural which has been bopping around the philosophy departments for the better part of a century and nobody has an answer to it.
	Aside from saying, well, yeah, I guess the supernatural does exist.
	I'm not going to ruin it for you.
	You might need to read it a few times, and there's further links in the article to give you some background if you need it.
	But the fact of the matter is the supernatural does exist.
	It is a reality.
	It's not quite what you're thinking.
	This isn't a proof of ghosts and goblins.
	And quite frankly, anybody out there that actually understands what mathematics is won't be surprised by this conclusion.
	Because in addition to this philosophical proof, mathematics is the supernatural.
	So if you have two oranges and you add two more oranges, how many do you have?
	That is not mathematics.
	There is no such thing as a orange or two oranges.
	You have two unique events going on in space-time there.
	They are not identical, even if their cellular structure were identical.
	They're happening in different physical locations with their own relativistic reality.
	Math does not exist anywhere in the natural universe.
	Saying that two oranges plus two oranges equals four oranges is the equivalent to telling little Johnny that if you're nice to people, people will be nice to you.
	It's that same low level of childlike reasoning to introduce them to higher truths.
	And yet, nowadays we don't even want to admit that mathematics is a higher truth.
	Why do you think people are turning away from it in droves?
	And feminist publications are talking about how mathematics is poisoned by the patriarchy.
	Because it is one of those supernatural truths.
	And the thing about supernatural truths is that you can't see them until you see them.
	Let me tell you a couple of riddles.
	One is a very bad riddle, and the other one is a very good riddle.
	Actually, it's not a very good riddle.
	It's an okay riddle.
	I'm going to have to ruin these for you.
	I don't want to ruin any good riddles.
	Really good.
	First riddle goes something like this.
	What travels with a car goes at the same speed as a car and never leaves the car, doesn't make a sound, never travels on its own and disappears every night.
	The answer to this is its shadow.
	Or it could equally well be the displaced air in front of it.
	Or it could be just about anything.
	I remember running into that riddle years ago, and I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure it out.
	And then when I read shadow, I felt like I'd been slapped in the face.
	And the reason is, I'm going to tell you a good riddle.
	Not a great riddle, but a good riddle.
	There are two switches on the outside of a room.
	And one of them controls the light bulb inside the room, the other one doesn't.
	You are only allowed in the room one time.
	How do you figure out which light switch controls the light bulb?
	Now the answer to this one is beautiful.
	What you do is you turn on the light switch and you leave it on for For a good few minutes.
	And you also have to turn it off before you go inside.
	Forgot to mention that part.
	And then you touch the bulb in the room.
	If the bulb is hot, you know you had the correct switch.
	If the bulb is still cold, you know you had the wrong switch.
	Now I say this is a good riddle, not a great riddle, because, you know, now we have light bulbs that don't make heat.
	There's certainly the question: are you supposed to try and peek under the door or what have you?
	But the reason it's a good riddle is because when you come up with the solution, when you sit there and ponder, how do I figure out which is the correct switch, and you eventually stumble upon the idea of touching the light bulb to see if it's hot, you know that even if that's not what the jerk that wrote the riddle says the answer is, you know it's the right answer.
	You hit the nail on the head.
	And riddles like that, where you can feel the right answer.
	You will sit there for half an hour, 45 minutes, pondering this thing, and then bam, the answer pops into your head, and you know it's the right answer.
	Supernatural, sort of like that.
	You can't actually see it until you see it.
	We really haven't got that close to explaining exactly what faith is.
	The fact that mathematics is an entity that exists, that numbers exist in and of themselves and not within this reality.
	Not to mention the philosophical proof, which is, again, down there, and I hope you read.
	We're not really getting to faith yet, are we?
	Well, let's take another aside, another divergence off of this.
	I'm sure most of you have seen those cats in the Chinese restaurant with the one paw raised up.
	And you've all heard about the Chinese obsession with luck.
	Lucky, happy, goberry, juice bar.
	You see luck coming up a lot in the Chinese culture.
	Alternatively, fortune, fortune cookie.
	And really, this is a terrible, terrible translation of the actual concept.
	For one thing, nobody in Western culture believes in luck, aside from a few sad gambling addicts.
	Luck is a flip of the coin.
	It's one of those things that happens.
	The most iconic believer in luck that we have is Two-Face from Batman.
	And his belief in luck isn't an actual belief in fate.
	It isn't a faith in luck.
	It is a rejection of faith.
	He is shouting that there is nothing but the material world and the flip of a coin.
	And so to accuse the Chinese of believing in luck like a gambler or a self-destructive monster, it infantilizes a culture which is far more profound than that.
	The Chinese don't believe in luck.
	Fortune is the better translation of that.
	And it's not unearned fortune.
	See, luck, luck of the draw, that's unearned.
	Sometimes it rains on you, sometimes the sun shines on you.
	It's just the way life works, right?
	So, you know, sometimes you win the bet, sometimes you lose the bet.
	That's not what fortune means to the Chinese.
	Fortune means that if you run your business properly, you will have a successful business.
	That cat with its paw raised is a reminder of that.
	It's saying that despite the whims of fate, and yes, they will buffet you, if you run your business properly, it will succeed.
	Buddha spoke about the path, about walking the correct path.
	Inspired by this, you see the, and of course, the Tao, the way, you see books like The Art of Warfare.
	Know yourself and know thy enemy, and you will be victorious in a hundred battles.
	Not exactly science, that, now is it?
	All of these are things pointing towards the ineffable.
	That thing that you can't measure, you can't prove, that you can't scientifically investigate, that is not part of this world.
	And in Christendom, we call this grace.
	It is the same concept that you can't point to directly.
	You can certainly outline successful business strategies versus unsuccessful strategies.
	But being a consistently good entrepreneur isn't just about having the strategy.
	It's about doing the strategy, about walking the path, having the way and moving with grace.
	And this is why I told you those two riddles earlier.
	It's very easy to mistake belief for faith.
	All of these low church people that are shouting about their belief in the material because of some misinterpreted nonsense they saw, well, very few of any of them had any faith to begin with.
	They use their religion as a blunt weapon to attack the material.
	They are as materialistic as the worst of atheist cult.
	But even those trying to pursue that faith, pursuing that ineffable path, that mathematical certainty that you can't quite put into words...
	that you have to illustrate through poetry, music, and art, that religion, that religious texts try and point you towards but can never really explain, you know it when you see it.
	It's like the riddle.
	When you get that answer, when you catch a glimpse of that light, of that grace, you know it.
	And yet it's so easy to mistake your own false beliefs for that as well.
	That's what faith is.
	It's a supernatural aspect of reality, and it's the pursuit of it.
	Nowadays we have such a degenerate material morality.
	There's no absolutes in our worlds anymore.
	There's no flying buttresses on cathedrals reaching up and towards the infinite.
	Instead, we've got a tawdry little God that we believe in and tawdry self-serving morals.
	Well, if it didn't hurt anybody, then it must be okay.
	what was the the the material results of this uh i don't think it was intentional but every good character in martin's game of thrones series even though he punishes the good
	all of the good characters, all of those with grace, all of those that walk the path, that understand the Tao, at least partly, do meet good ends.
	And it's those that reject it that come to horrors.
	Final word for the low church theists out there.
	If you believe in Jesus, if you believe that there was a historical Jesus, that there was a resurrection, if you believe all these things, You are missing the goddamn point.
	Having faith is understanding what that story represents and that whether or not it exists in the material world.
	that that metaphor has a supernatural existence.
	is true even if the literal facts described in that story aren't.
	Faith is not about facts.
	The real world is about facts.
	Driving your car is about facts.
	Studying history is about facts.
	When you take your faith and decry, decry the material world, decry science, and then try and dictate what reality is you're as bad as the Fourth Lateran Council And you attend a synagogue of Satan.

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