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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 23, 2015 11:09:52 GMT -5
I suspect that you are seriously misreading Tyson. I do agree with what I understand that meme to be saying and merely unpacked my version of its implications. I Googled around to verify the source of the meme quotation and found this in a Daily Beast interview: since we are a free country where belief systems are constitutionally protected—provided they don’t infringe on the rights of others—then how do you have governance over “all” when you have belief systems for the “some”? It seems to me that the way you govern people is you base governance on things that are objectively true; that are true regardless of your belief system, or no matter what the tenets are of your holy documents. And then they should base it on objective truths that apply to everyone. So the issue comes about not that there are religious people in the world that have one view over another, it’s if you have one view or another based on faith and you want to legislate that in a way that affects everyone. That’s no longer a free democracy. That’s a country where the few who have a belief system that’s not based in objective reality want to control the behavior of everyone else.
[discussion of status of Scientology as a religion]
The line I’m drawing is that there are religions and belief systems, and objective truths. And if we’re going to govern a country, we need to base that governance on objective truths—not your personal belief system.
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/31/neil-degrasse-tyson-defends-scientology-and-the-bush-administration-s-science-record.html
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Post by fauxmaha on Jul 23, 2015 12:03:36 GMT -5
The line I’m drawing is that there are religions and belief systems, and objective truths. And if we’re going to govern a country, we need to base that governance on objective truths—not your personal belief system. An expert epistemologist such as yourself can spot the circle there, right? |
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Post by millring on Jul 23, 2015 12:32:02 GMT -5
You're giving him too much credit for an agreeable establishment of what "objective truths" would be, when the very concept of "objective truth" is a concept you don't even accept. I suggest that perhaps you do so because you give him credit for wanting a system that you'd find superior to one unduly influenced by religious people, and you read that into his statement. Or not.
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Post by millring on Jul 23, 2015 12:55:56 GMT -5
...and curiously, I think Christianity at the time of the founding of the country was uniquely (as religions go) understanding of the need for, and capable of establishing the secular government it was so instrumental in creating here. Tyson purloins all good that has been established as government by philosophies and religions and claims it all for his "objective" sciency stuff.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 23, 2015 13:55:42 GMT -5
"Truth" is a property of propositions. (The world just is; we frame propositions that attempt to describe it.) "Objective" indicates a viewpoint outside of and independent of a subjective one. Given that for any entity capable of having a viewpoint, that viewpoint is necessarily subjective (that is, contained entirely by the entity's neurophysiology and perceptual processes). That makes the phrase "objective truth" troublesome, since there isn't any subject around to possess such objectivity. (The existence of a god's-eye view is an untestable and unfalsifiable proposition and thus a matter of faith.)
I take Tyson's use of "objective" to indicate not absolute objectivity (what single mortal entity, after all, would possess it?) but something more like "a view formed in such a way that multiple entities can verify it"--it's a shared, synthetic view, constructed (as are all viewpoints, including individual subjective ones) in such a way as to allow agreement, verification, testing and retesting. Such viewpoints or worldviews are to some degree necessarily provisional, subject to revision when new data or improved data-wrangling protocols become available. In the meantime, one treats the most robust working model as though it were "objectively" true and frames policy accordingly. (Sounds like a sciencey protocol to me.)
The crucial distinction in the Tyson snippet is between "personal" and "objective," and if "objective" is understood as outlined above, then there's no circularity in his argument, only a suboptimal (if common) choice of terms. (I would contrast "private" and "subjective" with "publicly testable and verifiable" and substitute "reliable working model" for "objective truth.")
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 23, 2015 14:04:00 GMT -5
BTW, the proposition that Christianity gave rise to secular government dodges the facts that 1) a number of the Framers were not Christians but Deists of some stripe; and 2) the previous couple centuries of warfare and strife generated by the confluence of religion, geopolitics, and various socio-economic transformations finally convinced some Christians that some kind of interfaith accommodation was necessary to keep the peace, if only because nobody wants to be on the sharp end of faith-based intolerance and suppression. And for a long time the limits of actual social tolerance were not infinitely elastic, viz. the treatment of Mormons, the position of Catholics and Jews, and the persistence of blue laws and other hangovers of theocracy. We only started to construct a thoroughly secular polity in my lifetime, and (as current anti-Muslim sentiments demonstrate) it's a work in progress.
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Post by RickW on Jul 23, 2015 14:05:08 GMT -5
I'm not sure I believe in objective truth. Our beliefs have changed over time to match the situation. The situation we are in now is complex, because not only do we have our personal beliefs, but rules defined by constitutions, and laws based on constitutions, and interpretations of constitutions and the wording of said laws. We hope to base our behaviour and rules on universal truths, but different folks interpret those differently, and have different ideas of acceptable behaviour. In the end, it does come down to majority rule, and the losers are angry, and the winners pleased, until the next interpretation.
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Post by patrick on Jul 23, 2015 15:18:44 GMT -5
...and curiously, I think Christianity at the time of the founding of the country was uniquely (as religions go) understanding of the need for, and capable of establishing the secular government it was so instrumental in creating here. Tyson purloins all good that has been established as government by philosophies and religions and claims it all for his "objective" sciency stuff. AT the time of the founding of the country, it was precisely because of the intolerance of various Christian sects of each other that secular government was needed. During the first Great Awakening Baptist preachers in Virginia were attacked and dragged from their pulpits, beaten and jailed. There was a lot of religious intolerance among Americans, such that George Washington feared that he would not be able to keep the army together. Furthermore, the Americans had dreams that they could separate mostly Catholic Canada from Britain, but the anti-Catholicism so rampant in the colonies made that idea unfeasible. Until after the civil war and the passage of the 14th amendment, many states had laws that prevented Catholics, Jews and other non-Protestants from running for office and other civic activities. It isn't secularists trying to take credit for what religion created in the US, its religionists trying to take credit for what secularists created. |
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Post by Doug on Jul 23, 2015 18:42:55 GMT -5
Gravity is an objective truth.
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Jul 23, 2015 19:23:57 GMT -5
Pizza. I really like pizza. Not just any old pizza. There are two kinds of pizza. Good pizza and bad pizza. I like good pizza.
And speaking of selling ones self into slavery; I tried to sell myself into slavery for a Porsche 911, but my wife would not let me. I had to settle for an Airstream and a Chevy Silverado.
Saturday night we are going to see Brian Wilson. I think I'll get some popcorn.
Mike
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Post by drlj on Jul 23, 2015 20:20:26 GMT -5
Pizza. I really like pizza. Not just any old pizza. There are two kinds of pizza. Good pizza and bad pizza. I like good pizza. And speaking of selling ones self into slavery; I tried to sell myself into slavery for a Porsche 911, but my wife would not let me. I had to settle for an Airstream and a Chevy Silverado. Saturday night we are going to see Brian Wilson. I think I'll get some popcorn. Mike You, my friend, know what life is truly about. |
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Post by david on Jul 24, 2015 0:01:21 GMT -5
Jeff,
Sorry, I think I am missing your point. Are you suggesting that without religion there is no humanity?
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Post by david on Jul 24, 2015 0:17:14 GMT -5
Mike, Please let me know if your rent out the airstream and Silverado.
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