And so now we get to the end of the blog. It's only appropriate that I finish this blog with another post on attitudes as that's what I did earlier. I was thinking the other day about atheist attitudes and I began to think about what I talked about earlier, demonizing.
It seems to be that in the same way that fundamentalists demonize, so do atheists. It almost seems like atheists have a fundamentalism of their own in the way they attack religion. But what is fundamentalism? The dictionary would like to define fundamentalism as "strict adherence to the fundamental principles of any set of beliefs." It would seem atheists have something like that, fundamental principals of science. The principals of science, the scientific method and skepticism, seem to be held to in a rather religious way. They use the same thing that the people they are opposing use just in a different way.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Demonizing
I've heard a lot about demonizing in the past semester. It comes from fundamentalists in the form of demonizing homosexuals, atheists, abortion doctors, Muslims, ect. However, it also comes from the exact opposite place. I've seen plenty of demonizing of fundamentalism. We, in our college culture especially, are so quick to demonize fundamentalism and to say that what they are doing is wrong.
But what does it mean to demonize a group of people? Well, when you demonize, you are basically making an entire group out to be evil. This comes from everywhere, but it especially surprises me when I see it from the college culture. College culture in general is supposed to be more liberal. Undergrads, obviously, are going to be this way, but the surprising part is when professors and grad students do it. There is supposed to be a certain amount of cultural relativism involved in study and academia that seems to be missing.
College culture is so quick to demonize the conservative right or even the fundamentalists. We are so quick to label what they do as illogical or evil. It surprises me.
But what does it mean to demonize a group of people? Well, when you demonize, you are basically making an entire group out to be evil. This comes from everywhere, but it especially surprises me when I see it from the college culture. College culture in general is supposed to be more liberal. Undergrads, obviously, are going to be this way, but the surprising part is when professors and grad students do it. There is supposed to be a certain amount of cultural relativism involved in study and academia that seems to be missing.
College culture is so quick to demonize the conservative right or even the fundamentalists. We are so quick to label what they do as illogical or evil. It surprises me.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The "T" Word
As I'm watching this documentary, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" I heard that beautiful word "theory." We talked about in class how that word in everyday language means "guess." People keep wanting to say that evolution is "just a theory" and that it isn't a "law" or a "fact." This, in my opinion, shows the pretentiousness and absoluteness of scientific language.
In the scientific world "theory" means a "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena." Or in other words: "a hypothesis that explains a group of facts" (my abridged version). What is a hypothesis in scientific language? Well I'm glad you asked! "a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts." Or in other words: "a guess as to why something happens which you than use during an experiment." A "fact" in scientific terms is simply something that happens. "Grass grows," is a fact. Facts really aren't all that important in science, as they are just little bits. The hypothesis and the theory are the important things as they attempt to explain the facts. A "law" is even less important. A law is "a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions." Or in other words: "something that happens the same way in the same conditions every time." For instance 2+2=4 is a law. It will always work that way.
In everyday language, we put quite a bit of emphasis on the word "fact" and "law." We believe that these are the things that we should look out for because they emphasize something that is real. We take the words "hypothesis" and "theory" as just meaning a guess. As such when average religious people talk about the "theory" of evolution, they really are saying the "guess" of evolution.
This is based in a lack of understanding of scientific language, but there is a worse problem at work here. It has come up several times before in debates and even in the Dennet/Plantiga book. People don't have a common ground from which to argue. They can't even agree as to what the definition of the word they are arguing about means. This happens all to often when people argue over things like religion, morality, or political matters. They are arguing over completely different things as they have different definitions of the same words.
In the scientific world "theory" means a "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena." Or in other words: "a hypothesis that explains a group of facts" (my abridged version). What is a hypothesis in scientific language? Well I'm glad you asked! "a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts." Or in other words: "a guess as to why something happens which you than use during an experiment." A "fact" in scientific terms is simply something that happens. "Grass grows," is a fact. Facts really aren't all that important in science, as they are just little bits. The hypothesis and the theory are the important things as they attempt to explain the facts. A "law" is even less important. A law is "a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions." Or in other words: "something that happens the same way in the same conditions every time." For instance 2+2=4 is a law. It will always work that way.
In everyday language, we put quite a bit of emphasis on the word "fact" and "law." We believe that these are the things that we should look out for because they emphasize something that is real. We take the words "hypothesis" and "theory" as just meaning a guess. As such when average religious people talk about the "theory" of evolution, they really are saying the "guess" of evolution.
This is based in a lack of understanding of scientific language, but there is a worse problem at work here. It has come up several times before in debates and even in the Dennet/Plantiga book. People don't have a common ground from which to argue. They can't even agree as to what the definition of the word they are arguing about means. This happens all to often when people argue over things like religion, morality, or political matters. They are arguing over completely different things as they have different definitions of the same words.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Communities
I've started watching the documentary "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" by Nova. I will post blogs here if anything is particularly relevant/interesting to me personnally. However, I wanted to comment on the intro.
The beginning talks about how this issue tears communities and friendships apart. People are turned against each other in an epic battle of epic of proportions..... to use the technical term "epic." People can end up hating each other because of their various beliefs about the origin of the world. This can create... tensions, to say the least. It can be a serious problem, though. People can turn on each other and friends can be seperated.
That's all I wanted to say, this whole debate is tearing people apart. In my opinion, this is because people on both sides will not give up their position. People advocating for evolution will not give it up as they believe it is the way the world is. Truth. People advocating for ID believe that God created humans in his image. Truth. They are both essentially campaigning for their version of the word "truth," and they believe that compromise is unacceptable.
The beginning talks about how this issue tears communities and friendships apart. People are turned against each other in an epic battle of epic of proportions..... to use the technical term "epic." People can end up hating each other because of their various beliefs about the origin of the world. This can create... tensions, to say the least. It can be a serious problem, though. People can turn on each other and friends can be seperated.
That's all I wanted to say, this whole debate is tearing people apart. In my opinion, this is because people on both sides will not give up their position. People advocating for evolution will not give it up as they believe it is the way the world is. Truth. People advocating for ID believe that God created humans in his image. Truth. They are both essentially campaigning for their version of the word "truth," and they believe that compromise is unacceptable.
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