How is "scientism" bad? Science is the only consistent source of fact and an going project of building...

Science can only approximate reality. It is not a source of 'fact'. It's very efficient at finding an image of reality that seems to be consistent, but it can't reveal the truth.

Wow, valence numbers of sodium and calcium! Major bias there, why didn't us feebleminded STEMlords notice it before? Someone call the ACLU, there's a court case brewing! Valence Numbers v. The People of the United States: How could one little theory have caused so much suffering?

t. high school dropout

Nice opinion, unfortunately it isn't a fact :^)

>Science is the only consistent source of fact

How are you able to prove that?

Also, you image gives your intent and position away to quickly OP, though I suppose you did goad me into replying.

Not that guy, but I suggest you read a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, he's a psychologist who goes over all the common bias' people experience and yes, you're probably still doing some.

There are for example statisticians who consistently fuck up things they absolutely should know are statistically, mathematically false. Obviously that doesn't mean every proven scientific theory is false, it's just saying that scientists and mathematicians are human as well.

>science proves facts

No it doesn't, it creates competing models of reality

Seconded, great book.

Science has no answer for the supernatural.

Or at least it doesn't yet.

Hey Ive been enjoying your site, are there any philosophers works/books which would better help understand your point of view?

Science's answer to the supernatural is "it's natural."

The computer you're posting on right now is pretty solid proof that empirical science and logical postivism get results.

Modern philosophy by contrast is mostly endless circlejerking that has no real relevance to real life.

Until you can prove that every, yes, EVERY, scientific and mathematical theory is utterly false, there is no point in divesting of faith in science. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Meanwhile, nothing (zero, zip, nada, zilch) is provable in any religion in the history of mankind, and so we can understand why the vast majority of thinking people tend to prefer science and scientism when the chips are down. God didn't save you from Nazi domination. American ingenuity did. God won't save you from climate change. Human technology will.

Which I'll admit does make sense. Of course it's natural. Everything in the world is 'natural.' Ghosts are natural. Healings are natural. Gods are natural. Monsters are natural.

I just wish science would stop pretending they didn't exist.

They really don't though.
There's no evidence for the supernatural that is distinguishable from hoaxes or delusion.

>he's a positivist
:^) I tip my data too you, Dr. :^)

How are results facts though?

I'm not arguing about the existence of the things in front of me, but that science necessarily implies truth, or some sort of moral good/evil.

Scientism is just as dogmatic and faith driven as any branch of philosophy or religion is what I am trying to get at.

There is, actually. Maybe you need to poke around a little.

>>How are results facts though?
Well lesee now, it's a fact that computers work in a certain manner in much the same way that it is a fact that early childhood immunizations protect us from serious ailments that would otherwise kill or cripple us.

>>I'm not arguing about the existence of the things in front of me, but that science necessarily implies truth, or some sort of moral good/evil.
Morals are subjective to a certain extent, true. But the benefits of say modern farming techniques, clean water and modern medicine are not subjective at all.

>>Scientism is just as dogmatic and faith driven as any branch of philosophy or religion is what I am trying to get at.

Without positivism though, your life has a much better chance of being more miserable in a very real and obvious manner. You cannot say the same about any given religion or philosophy.

>Until you can prove that every, yes, EVERY, scientific and mathematical theory is utterly false, there is no point in divesting of faith in science

There's a difference between divesting faith in science and divesting faith in smug STEMlords so far up their own asses that they think they're immune to bias' literally no human on earth is immune to and that smarter people than you regularly fall into. YOU are not the scientific method, you merely utilize it and - I'm willing to bet - fuck up now and then as all humans do. Scientists are wrong all the fucking time.
Additionally, even if I were anti-science, what sort of stupid bullshit are you getting at by saying you need to disprove EVERY SINGLE scientific theory proposed in order to disbelieve it? By that rationale do you need to disprove EVERY SINGLE religious statement in order to divest faith? And for that matter...

>Meanwhile, nothing (zero, zip, nada, zilch) is provable in any religion in the history of mankind

That's quite a statement. You're going out on a limb and saying no religion in all of human history, everywhere on earth, has never said any single thing correct? Nobody once got any observation about the world right? Never? How thick are you? How hard do you need to go on this stupid "science is the opposite of religion" irrational nonsense to not realize this is an absolutely stupid statement? If a priest said "grass is green" would you tell him he's wrong or something?

Hey guys, what's going on in this thread? Anyone need some paradigm shifting?

You can't honestly believe personal bias doesn't have any influence on the design and carrying out of experiments or the analyzation of data, can you?

>sexuality and morality controlled by the same "mind"

I don't even have to read it, either it's total bullshit or you wildly misinterpreted it.

this

>computers functioning is proof that positivism is a good general worldview
>positivism having good results of any kind is proof that positivism is a good general worldview

nice meme, I suppose anything created by a Christian proves that God exists?

>But the benefits of say modern farming techniques, clean water and modern medicine are not subjective at all
the scientific method being used with good results != positivism being a good general worldview

>You cannot say the same about any given religion or philosophy
I disagree. Whatever your religious affiliation or lack thereof, Christianity has been beneficial to the West and the world in general.

>Meanwhile, nothing (zero, zip, nada, zilch) is provable in any religion in the history of mankind
Under a positivist outlook, this would mean that religions and everything they entail are useless. However, things like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or almsgiving have certainly been good for the world.

If a Christian could create God, I'd worship the shit out of him. Still waiting, alas.

> Christianity has been beneficial to the West and the world in general

Oh geez it's one of you fucksters again.

>However, things like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or almsgiving have certainly been good for the world.

OH CHRIST, IT'S A "MORALS CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM RELIGION" ARGUMENT AGAIN. SOMEONE PLEASE KILL ME.

>But the benefits of say modern farming techniques, clean water and modern medicine are not subjective at all.

Ignoring the ways in which industrial agriculture and modern drugs harm humans, your view is still biased to your subjective values as a human. Your judgements are based on desires for food and continuation of your species. There is no objective morality.

Well, here is the thing from my view, we cannot entirely accurately say that a computer must work in such-and-such a way,
or that without immunizations, we may succumb to disease. That is, while it certainly seems the case (I have no intention to disagree with that!) that for example computers on the vast majority do function in a certain manner, I cannot, without making an unverified assumption, say this must always be the case.

Further, in response to:
> But the benefits of say modern farming techniques, clean water and modern medicine are not subjective at all.
Even that is debatable, as arguably such things lead to the exponential growth of the human population, which if we are operating in such a frame of ethics, is an evil. (I hold a different opinion myself.)

>
Without positivism though, your life has a much better chance of being more miserable in a very real and obvious manner. You cannot say the same about any given religion or philosophy.

I don't want to keep throwing out the word assumption, because it is a somewhat lazy response, but again, this is a major problem I see.

I wholeheartedly agree that religion is an insufficient answer, but I think we may still use philosophy as long as it is not dogmatic.

It amazes me how you black versus white fuckwits manage to call yourself analytical or scientific while you systematically refuse to examine anything you've decided you don't like the sound of. Like the idea that a religion has ever been beneficial triggers you so hard that it can't possible be true, so you bury your head in the dirt.

Just so you know, atheism doesn't magically make you a scientist, nor does it make you intelligent or the things you say inherently worth something. You just reduce it to "lol sky wizard" and then don't think about it more critically or in-depth than that because it makes your head hurt.

>Scientists are wrong all the fucking time.

"Oops, we were wrong. Shit, let's revise our hypothesis, maybe we'll get it right this time. Sorry everybody!"

>Theists proved wrong about demonstrably impossible phenomena

"No, God can do that! Trust me, I know, the Bible/Koran says so! Oh, that passage about Eve being created from Adam's rib? Haha, you poor atheist, don't you see it's just a metaphor? What a maroon! The earth wasn't created in 7 HUMAN days, it was created in 7 GOD days. Trust me, my pastor says so."

Science is not immune to those things but it actually tries to reduce them.

>"Oops, we were wrong. Shit, let's revise our hypothesis, maybe we'll get it right this time. Sorry everybody!"
I'm honestly shocked by how naive this statement is.

>Christianity has been beneficial to the West
No it hasn't, at least not in any way that wouldn't have happened with a different religion or philosophy.

>>However, things like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or almsgiving have certainly been good for the world.
Morals and charity existed a loooonnnnnnngggggg fucking time before xtianity ever did pal.

>>Well, here is the thing from my view, we cannot entirely accurately say that a computer must work in such-and-such a way,
or that without immunizations, we may succumb to disease. That is, while it certainly seems the case (I have no intention to disagree with that!) that for example computers on the vast majority do function in a certain manner, I cannot, without making an unverified assumption, say this must always be the case.

This is why modern philosophy is useless to the average person.

Nice strawmen, very scientific, I like it. It's funny because your strawmen for theists is still revising their hypothesis. Either way, you're trying to create an argument I'm not arguing about, I'm calling you retarded and irrational, not calling theists smart and rational.

Now that you've built a few strawmen to pick apart and got that out of your system why don't you address my post in that scientific analytical way we all know you're really, really good at. Or maybe you're, I don't know, substituting a difficult question for an easier one to minimize effort required to address it? You know, that's a common irrational behavior in humans that you flawless golden gods wouldn't ever do.

Name the ones that aren't /x/ tier then.

>No it hasn't, at least not in any way that wouldn't have happened with a different religion or philosophy.
and someone could test this claim how exactly Mr. Science Man?

There's a decent amount of evidence for the existence of ghosts, to use one example of a 'supernatural' occurrence.

The problem with science is that it can't account for phenomena that isn't reproducible. It's essentially a one dimensional tool that can determine things to probabilistic generality. It falls apart when it can't relate that data to new findings, like a kink in a hose.

Until the Enlightenment (also know as the "Fuck God, we naturalist Deists now" movement), the Ottomans were the most wealthy and technologically advanced society in the West.

They inherited a Christian empire. We could argue all day about that socio-economic shit and where religion ties in, and the merits of Islam over Christianity or Christianity over Islam or animism over whatever the fuck, but that's not a scientific debate. Or can we actually agree that philosophy, anthropology and the arts fill a murky, vague and difficult to measure gap that the scientific method isn't well equipped to address?

>ghosts

I would still have to accept this statement that presupposes the also unproven dualism without any proof provided by you that you also would not have proven to differ from delusion and hoaxes.

Give it time and science can probably solve it.

>How can we account for these blasts of lightning in a storm, Mr. Franklin? They are unreproducible!

>How can we account for the growth of a fetus in the womb, doctor? It is an unreproducible act!

>How can we account for other galaxies? We can't even see that far, Mr. Hubble!

They try and fail to fill that gap. In doing so, they create more murk than they bridge as the aforementioned imperfect humans let their thoughts be guided by pure emotion and feeling with not one shred of logic.

>the Ottomans were the most wealthy and technologically advanced society in the West.
That's a pretty wacky claim, but let's pretend it's true for a moment.

Even if the Ottomans were the most wealthy and technologically advanced society prior to the enlightenment this does not prove that modern society could have been the product by any other different religion or philosophy.

Ottoman society was not our society.
Prove that our society would have resulted from any other religion or philosophy.

Logic is overrated.
Humans are incapable of making rational decisions without an emotional connection.

So what, you're saying 'don't bother'?

Are you acting like no historians have ever tried to approach these things analytically, propose a thesis and then try to prove it with evidence? Are you saying that prominent philosophers haven't advocated reason and logic for thousands of years? The difference is that it's always going to be less objective - by its very nature - than mathematics and other hard sciences. It's still pretty damn stupid to just go "if we can't get a 100% perfect answer let's not even try."

lol faith

>consistent
>implying science holds answers to all applied issues

Science has its place, but don't pretend it can solve any life problem or isn't susceptible to human error. Science won't tell you the definition of beauty or how to deal with the concept of death.

Arrogant assholes like you are the reason scientism is bad.

A bunch of hard-drinking Irishmen developed that microprocessor in that computer or phone of yours, eh? I can only imagine how they did it without making any rational decisions. Must've been divine providence!

I'm saying one drop of humility would be more beneficial to the body of every religious institution in the world than ten trillion drops of certainty. For the level of certainty that religions and philosophical schools espouse, their levels of evidence are decidedly lacking. The humanities in general seem to have zero interest in thoughtful reform - they never had a Martin Luther to call them out on their most absurd and self-destructive practices, though the scientific establishment occasionally tries.

Science is just a tool
it produces cold data of no meaning or worth until someone comes along and applies ideology to it in order to make that data worthwhile somewhere to someone

science isn't an ideology any more than a hammer is, you can have different ideas of how you use your hammer but ultimately its the same tool, just translated through different hands.

people who take this further however, Positivists/scienticim are working in a faith based preistly structure and applying it around their tool of choice.

in the past Priests would gain their power primarily because they held a monopoly on the tools and knowledge to interprete the will of the Gods.
they built entire temple-cities with this power in Mesopotamia

the same goes for medevial Europe where Bishops lived like kings and only they had the knoelwdge and tools to translate the words of God for the common man who was woefully ill-equipped to the task.

there is no difference today, science is one of many tools and politicians/demagogues/scientists and many others make use of it and data they create to further their own ends. there is no more truth in it than we give it, but as before the use of these tools is so complex and above the vast majority that we are utterly reliant on the science-priests to translate and interprete for us.

material creation has little if anything to do with this as an ideology, not any more than miracles did in the ideologies of religions past.

the biggest difference today is that spooks of the past hold little sway any more, so those in power resort to things like the economy, science, and progress to justify their actions, as opposed to God and Nation.

all are more or less myths insofar as their use in our control.

inspiration is irrational by its nature.

you only claim rationality after the fact since it all worked out in the end, but during the process itself there are numerous illogical acts and leaps of faith to get things working.

if rationality was truly important, then nothing would ever get done because diverting from the perfectly ordered norm is irrational.

>The humanities in general seem to have zero interest in thoughtful reform - they never had a Martin Luther to call them out on their most absurd and self-destructive practices, though the scientific establishment occasionally tries.

They've had plenty. Since this is a history board I'll nod to that in particular, but Leopold von Ranke was basically the sort of reformer you're alluding to for empirical historical research.

Moving on from that, as I said, religious and philosophical schools generally inhabit areas of low certainty because they're areas of low certainty. Personally I think most religions (at least Christianity) are generally obsolete in terms of the idea that their basic principles have been undermined. I'm not going to pretend there aren't significant disproven claims in the abrahamic faiths - though it's also worth noting that not all religions behave the same way, some are more philosophical. A lot of their importance was in their social function for moderating behavior. Yes, atheists will be quick to scream that morality would exist without it, but they always fail to acknowledge that the tenets of Christianity (and other religions) are a codification of morality that help enforce it - we see all the time that if there isn't an incentive and/or punishment for behaving well, people don't do it. In modern western society, the state has taken over the role traditionally taken by the church.

In regards to the humanities though, they fill uncertain areas because at the moment hard science is incapable of it. They are addressing questions without easily measured answers, but as I alluded to Ranke, there are efforts to perform these studies with a rigorous and methodological approach, making use of facts and evidence. Philosophy has been the foundation through which the scientific method was conceived, emphasising logic and reason, and continues to address questions the scientific method can't through more abstract approaches.

I don't need to.

Want to know why?

Simple, there is no mechanism by which non-christian peoples are made incapable of grasping scientific concepts.

That said, the rise of europe and the subsequent development of modern science occurred long after the authority of the catholic church had started to wane.

Science can't prove anything though. For one, it is heavily based on induction, and you can't prove anything with induction, you can only increasingly strong evidence for a model. Another issue is that science just abstracts what is quantifiable from reality, which is really nice for experimental procedures that we want control of, but it cannot get at reality itself because it is in the business of abstracting from reality. Now of course given that it has predictive power, because it abstracts those features of reality which are predictable, it gives us power to more successfully act and create. But the argument that science benefits us through technology, where philosophy and religion does not, actually suggests a lack in it's value as a source of knowledge. In such as case it is only valuable insofar as it is good for something else, through this argument science is reduced to only being good derivatively. Philosophy gives us knowledge that is good for no other, but is simply good in it's own right, it doesn't need support from other things outside of the sphere of pure knowledge where it has its home. Truth be told the more noble of the sciences have their home here as well, and are ultimately just specialized forms of philosophy used to deal with specific aspects of reality.

Scientism is bad because Science is good and those who uphold scientism don't know anything about it except memes, and actually do more to pervert the noble discipline than support it due to their ignorance.

Problem with this is twofold for me. Firstly, by your own admission non-xtian faiths also codify morality, which makes xtianity's supposed role far less important then you think, as it is inherently replaceable by other religions/philosophies and also who's morals are we talking about here? I certainly don't agree with the standard christian approach to sex for example. You can bring up other aspects of said morals if you like, but the bible is not exactly original in forbidding stealing and intergroup killing

>I don't need to

Oh, that's interesting, I thought scientists were supposed to test their claims not just throw them out there and assume they're true, that sounds an awful lot like faith to me.

Are you suggesting that just because the catholic church had waned in secular authority that religion became irrelevant, or something? You do realize there were other sects of Christianity in important parts of the western world that were protestant? All you're doing is showcasing your lack of knowledge on religion and its history, then filling this absence with your unverified or in many cases unverifiable assumptions.

Your 'simple' answer is false because there are billions of irrational non-Christians in the world who frequently refuse to acknowledge inconvenient scientific concepts. This is plainly visible in all the pants-on-head retarded atheists that regularly spout complete falsehoods in petty arguments. Irrationality is not exclusive to Christians or even religious people in general.

But the scientific revolution was rooted in the Condemnations of 1277 when the church was at a high point of it's power. The Oxford Calculators of the 14th century were incredibly influential and important for the scientific revolution, which happened only because the universities turned away from humanism and started teaching scholasticism again, this new scholasticism was the basis that thinkers like Galileo and Descartes would build up from and create modern science and the new philosophies that came with it. There is no way around the fact that modern science is historically christian. The shift from Aristotelianism in the 14th century that would culminate in modern science was just as much based on theological grounds as it was philosophical, scientific, and mathematical grounds.

>>blah blah blah yer retarded herp derp.
I don't need to do it for two reasons, One the Greco-Romans, the Chinese, the Persians and the Indians all build powerful civilizations with high degrees of technological sophistication without being christian. You are the one who is making the absurd claim here, you need to prove why a non-christian society couldn't come up with modern science given enough money and free time for the upper class.

This ties into reason Two. European development was spurred on by colonialism and the massive amounts of wealth it brought in. That allowed the existence of a massive leisure class which in turned led to developments in both the material sciences and also the philosophical developments of the enlightenment. There is no reason to assume that given similar amounts of wealth(and competition, but that's another matter for now) that a non-christian society couldn't have done the same thing other then bias in favor of christianity.

Nah, it would have happened anyway, given enough time and wealth. You assume too much based on something developing within a given historical timeframe mean that said thing is incapable of developing under different circumstances.

That western science emerged from christian roots does not mean that it couldn't emerged from euro-polytheist or bhuddist roots for example.

Science presumes the uniformity of nature. In a polytheistic society you have no reason to initially believe that there is a set order of nature that is uniform, and that all the "pieces" actually fit together, since the God' that represent the different aspects of nature are all seen as having different wills that conflict with one another.

If you read the works of Boyle, Leibniz and Newton you find theological beliefs influencing their scientific presuppositions about how the world ought to be well ordered and unified, that justifies the belief that reality is quantifiable in the way science needs it to be so to make sense of reality by it's means. They believed that it was well ordered because they believed that a single omnipotent, omniscient, etc God was behind all of it and constantly sustaining it at each moment.

>Firstly, by your own admission non-xtian faiths also codify morality, which makes xtianity's supposed role far less important then you think, as it is inherently replaceable by other religions/philosophies and also who's morals are we talking about here?

The point of the argument, in my understanding, is that it's impossible to create a reasonable model where you can substitute the role of Christianity in western history. It was the bedrock of western European society for centuries. It had a distinct role in the culture, mindset and governance of almost every human being in the region. Not to say everyone was a religious fanatic or even necessarily believed in God, but it still created many implicit assumptions. The medieval and early modern mind did not draw the same distinctions between science and religion that we do. It's always worth remembering that many scientists and philosophers were clergymen. Any attempt to switch this massive element of western society with something else would be a futile attempt at guesswork, and it's folly for any person claiming to be rational to make a statement like "if Christianity never existed we'd be better off" because you simply can't model that in a reasonable way. The men who did all this science, for generations and generations, were educated by the Christian church. There are parallels in Islam, but trying to predict how different Europe would be if Islam took over has so many untestable factors that it's basically like writing fiction.

As for the lack of originality in the bible, the uniqueness of any given religion is more than the sum of its parts. Boiling a religion down to its most basic tenets isn't really a good way to explain its impact on a society. The catholic church and its theology was constantly evolving, and things like the reformation ended up bringing dozens of different interpretations of the same scripture.

>that faggot in the pic

I swear if I meet anyone wearing that gay sock on the street I'm going to deck him in the face

>how the world ought to be well ordered and unified

This is also where the erroneous ideas about evolution being an ordered ladder of progress arose from.

Uhh the natural world isn't uniform in the way that you're thinking it is.

>>Boyle, Leibniz and Newton
Their equivalents would have eventually come to similar conclusions in a polytheist society, because the development of philosophy and science is not tied to a given religious belief. But rather caused by wealth and leisure time.

>The point of the argument, in my understanding, is that it's impossible to create a reasonable model where you can substitute the role of Christianity in western history.

In other words special pleading, which I see no reason to buy into. Again, non-xtian societies around the world had ethics of one sort or another and so would europe in the absence of xtianity.

>>and it's folly for any person claiming to be rational to make a statement like "if Christianity never existed we'd be better off" because you simply can't model that in a reasonable way.

I think in terms of morals we'd be roughly the same, not better off.

>you need to prove why a non-christian society couldn't come up with modern science given enough money and free time for the upper class.

You're asking the wrong questions here. A better question is why a Christian society did. All you're offering is hypothetical debate that I got the impression you STEMlords looked down upon. You like facts, don't you? The fact of the matter is, these developments occurred in a Christian society. And yes, society was predominantly Christian during the enlightenment and continues to be predominantly Christian today. Is this to say Christians are genuises? No, certainly not, in fact I've been arguing in this thread that the role of Christianity in modern society is largely obsolete and replaced by the state. But you seem to have this delusional belief that Christians are somehow exceptionally anti-scientific when this is quite clearly based on history not the case, considering the that modern society flourished in a predominantly Christian society. What I am saying is that you can't just muck up scenarios where Christians had nothing to do with the development of the western world because religion triggers you. Europe and Christianity are too connected to just ignore it, and any alternate history theories on how things would have gone differently if other places in the world had had their own enlightenment and industrial revolution can only ever be hypothetical banter.

I think this fixation on Christianity also came out of the stupid dichotomy between religion and science which, again, is just nonsense. Religion and science are not polar opposites. Christianity is an easy target because there's a lot of stupid Christians saying stupid things.

Just a friendly reminder that science is based on the unfounded belief that the future will resemble the past. The only reason we believe this is not die to any rational, well thought out deduxtion, but because we're animals and our brains construct cause and effect out of habit.
But it seems to work for the most part, just don't get too comfy in your models, something will upturn them eventually.

The point of the argument, in my understanding, is that it's impossible to believe life can exist outside earth. It was the bedrock of life for aeons. It had a distinct role in the genetics, body development and sentience of every human being on it. Not to say everyone liked earth or even wanted to be born, but it still created many implicit assumptions. The medieval and early modern mind did not draw the same distinctions between life and earth that we do. It's always worth remembering that many scientists and philosophers were born on earth. Any attempt to switch this massive element of life with something else would be a futile attempt at guesswork, and it's folly for any person claiming to be rational to make a statement like "life probably exists on other planets" because you simply can't model that in a reasonable way. The living entities who did all this living, for generations and generations, lived on earth. There are parallels in Europa, maybe, but trying to predict how different life would be if it formed on Europa has so many untestable factors that it's basically like writing fiction.

As for the lack of originality on earth, the uniqueness of any given planet is more than the sum of its parts. Boiling a planet down to its most basic chemical composition isn't really a good way to explain its impact on creation. The planet and its zoology was constantly evolving, and things like the Permian Period ended up bringing dozens of millions of different species of the same lifeforms.

>>delusional belief that Christians are somehow exceptionally anti-scientific
I don't think that historical xtians were necessarily anti-science. I think their faith had little to do one way or another with why europe had an industrial revolution and why say ethiopia(christian ethiopia, mind you) didn't.

>>You're asking the wrong questions here.
No I am not. You are making an absurd and unwarranted assumption that a non-christian society couldn't have developed modern science if they had access to the same amounts of wealth and leisure for the upperclass that xtian societies did.

All I'm saying is that any sort of religious belief is secondary to wealth, trade and leisure time for the upper classes when you're talking about scientific and philosophical development.

Like I said, morals isn't the only part of it. Enforcement of morals in a society was merely an example of one of the things the Christian church undertook. It performed a lot of the roles we commonly associate with the state today, like education and welfare.

It's easy to say "if there was no church we'd find other ways to educate people, enforce morals, provide welfare, etc" and yes, you'd probably be right. If there was some nebulous void where Christianity was in history, hypothetically, it would no doubt get filled by other institutions. But that's an alternate history that you can't predict due to just how thorough and nuanced Christianity's influence was.

The further back and broader you try to make an alternative history scenario, the more impossible it gets to do it reasonably. Imagining if Christianity didn't exist is like trying to imagine if the Roman Empire never happened. How can you possibly account for how different the world could be?

This. The scientific model is based on a logical fallacy, but the statistical probability is so high we probably should stick with it for the time being.

Wealth and leisure only enables thought, you still need material to work on, ideas don't spontaneously arise. Christianity filled this role in actuality.

Also, for a long time China was far wealthier than the west, yet we already find these new ideas that would lead to the scientific revolution as early as the 14th century in Europe. Was 14th century Europe significantly wealthier than 14th century China ?

>You are making an absurd and unwarranted assumption that a non-christian society couldn't have developed modern science if they had access to the same amounts of wealth and leisure for the upperclass that xtian societies did.

I never made the assertion that they couldn't, I'm making the assertion that they didn't. Europe did. That means addressing why Europe did it, rather than trying to guess why somewhere else might have. And I'm not saying that Christianity was absolute front and center to the scientific developments, either, I'm saying Christianity can't be removed from the equation.

Try a lobotomy.

Also, when you consider who the literate and reasonably wealthy people with a lot of leisure time were in the medieval and early modern period they were almost always clergymen. There wasn't just some intellectual vacuum before the enlightenment, either.

This thread is bait. OP purposely created it as bait.

Sage, report, ignore.

So what?

It's a discussion prompt. Perhaps framed in a way designed to piss some people off, but it provokes discussion. Does OP "win" if people get into a debate?

>>Like I said, morals isn't the only part of it. Enforcement of morals in a society was merely an example of one of the things the Christian church undertook. It performed a lot of the roles we commonly associate with the state today, like education and welfare.
This depends on what you mean by enforcement of morals firstly, prostitution was all over medieval europe in spite of various popes wanting the practice outlawed.

Secondly every society ever has had some sort of enforcement of given moral and legal rules and there is no reason to assume that a non-christian europe wouldn't have had various mechanisms to enforce said rules.

>>The further back and broader you try to make an alternative history scenario, the more impossible it gets to do it reasonably. Imagining if Christianity didn't exist is like trying to imagine if the Roman Empire never happened. How can you possibly account for how different the world could be?

That just makes the task difficult, not impossible. I can just off the top of my head offer some hypotheticals for your no rome scenario around the first century AD. Firstly, an italy split between celts and italians in the north, italians in the middle, and greeks, phoenicians and whoever the native sicilians were in the south. Italy as a whole would likely be governed by a greek and phoenicians upper class with some native italian and celtic input.

Gaul would be dominated by a mixed group of germanic and celtic tribes, as would what we now call england. Iberia would be split between native iberian, celtiberian and berber groups. Eastern europe would be split between germanics, slavs and various steppe tribes. Anatolia and much of the middle east would be split between turks, persians, arabs, some greeks, and a few surviving phoenician cities here and there.

North africa would be split between egypt, berbers again, and phoenicians also.

Again, this is just the first stab at it but given more time the concept can be refined.

Ethics, putting results in context

>Wealth and leisure only enables thought, you still need material to work on, ideas don't spontaneously arise. Christianity filled this role in actuality.

And the material would have existed regardless of which religion people followed. This is why the romans had surgery of some kind for example, why they had manufacturing that bordered on being industrial, why they had such an effective military for so long etc.

>>for a long time China was far wealthier than the west, yet we already find these new ideas that would lead to the scientific revolution as early as the 14th century in Europe. Was 14th century Europe significantly wealthier than 14th century China ?

European nations had massive amounts of competition with each other and with the ottomans, china had very little competition in comparison.

>>And I'm not saying that Christianity was absolute front and center to the scientific developments, either, I'm saying Christianity can't be removed from the equation.

And you're wrong because non-christians can comprehend and make use of science. There is no reason why they couldn't have developed it either other then special pleading.

>This depends on what you mean by enforcement of morals firstly, prostitution was all over medieval europe in spite of various popes wanting the practice outlawed.

No society successfully enforces its morals/laws 100% of the time. That isn't the point. The point is it defines the morality and undertakes the attempt, but I'll reiterate that the morality thing was one of several examples to illustrate the pervasive nature of the Christianity in European society. As I noted in my post, if you had a vacuum where Christianity was as if it never existed, you can obviously theorize that institutions would have filled these roles, but in removing Christianity you've created a MASSIVE vacuum that you cannot possibly, given your entire lifetime, fill it satisfactorily with your estimates. Even if you could, that would be guess work based on your assumptions rather than evidence, it wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.

>I can just off the top of my head offer some hypotheticals for your no rome scenario around the first century AD.

It's fiction. None of that is in any way verifiable or even possible to verify beyond the most vague estimate. There are so many 'what-ifs' that simply can't be answered in any way except a wild guess. Could make a mean novel, but its merit in historical or scientific debate is practically null.

>>It's fiction. None of that is in any way verifiable or even possible to verify beyond the most vague estimate. There are so many 'what-ifs' that simply can't be answered in any way except a wild guess. Could make a mean novel, but its merit in historical or scientific debate is practically null.

No. The actual problem is that only one guy is working on it at present. Get an entire group of knowledgeable historians working together on it though and you can have something that is more reasonable and accurate. Not perfectly so mind you, but an educated guess is still educated.

>And you're wrong because non-christians can comprehend and make use of science. There is no reason why they couldn't have developed it either other then special pleading.

I think we're arguing in different directions here.

I'm discussing that you can't have modern Europe without Christianity. You seem to now be arguing that other regions could theoretically have had a scientific revolution.

You are, of course, right. I don't disagree with that. Given time, it's likely somebody somewhere would have arrived at a similar method (though it's a fallacy to assume societies always move on an steady trend of 'progress', statistically somebody's going to hit on it eventually).
All I'm saying is that in the context of history as it happened in reality, not in a hypothetical scenario, Christianity cannot be removed from the equation. And any hypothetical scenario wherein Europe makes the developments it did sans Christianity isn't going to have an effective model, because it just can't be reasonably estimated what would be different.

deep down in the uncanny valley

>Get an entire group of knowledgeable historians working together on it though and you can have something that is more reasonable and accurate

It would be more reasonable and accurate, sure. It wouldn't be even close to reasonable and accurate enough to stand up to scrutiny. Creating two milennia of alternate history is literally impossible to do in a compelling, factual way that can be backed up with strong evidence. Most historical what-if scenarios are limited in scope for a reason, the butterfly effect is too unpredictable. Besides, half the time historians can't even agree on the history that did happen much less the history that could have.

>>I'm discussing that you can't have modern Europe without Christianity.
I don't disagree with this honestly, I'm just saying I don't see any reason why non-christian peoples,(including europeans in some hypothetical situation) couldn't have hit upon the scientific method.

Obviously in our timeline european development occurred with christian influence. I just don't see how a non-christian europe or anywhere for that matter is incapably of developing the scientific method for religious reasons alone.

Can you empirically calculate justice then? Measure it? I would argue that justice is relevant in today's society, yet there is very little empirical science behind it.

You don't need to agree with things philosophy comes up with, just entertain the thought for a while and then decide. It's not even scientific to just dismiss certain theories just because you dislike the source or field they are from.

They could definitely have something resembling what we have. They would probably have religious aspects from their own faith imported into their theories and practices the same way we have Christian elements imported into ours though. It's not as if the 'Scientific Method" is some objective fact of the world waiting to be discovered. It is a specifically human practice that is going to be determined by the humans involved in it. Different humans will come with different religions that affect their lives, and with them will come different "Scientific Methods" , even if there is allot of overlap in them.

OP is a faggot

Good thing we disregarded OP.

Just because philosophy doesn't bring facts, doesn't mean it's useless you filthy fucking positivist. The scientific method and empirical study are hugely valuable, but do not pretend that facts and pure reason are the only thing one needs to think about. I can't use the scientific method to think about my purpose in life.

>"Oops, we were wrong. Shit, let's revise our hypothesis, maybe we'll get it right this time. Sorry everybody!"

This is close enough to what I think that I see no reason in further bickering.