Disqus - Latest Comments for joshourisman

Re: Who’s Celebrating HumanLight This Year?

Josh — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 20:26:11 -0000

And those 8 hours feel like even fewer as it's 8 hours in which even at it's zenith the sun remains pretty low in the sky. Much of those 8 hours of 'daylight' are actually a very much extended dawn and dusk.

When the sun sets at 4:30 (in Minneapolis, even earlier further north!), it just makes the day feel even shorter (and confuses the hell out of those of us form much further south!).

Re: Who’s Celebrating HumanLight This Year?

Josh — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:32:00 -0000

I think I have to disagree with you when you say that 'Celebrating the winter solstice makes as much sense as celebrating 12-12-12. You can do it, but you should know there’s nothing all that special about it.'

In fact, I'd say that the winter solstice (and related events) are some of the few days/events that actually do have something special about them. There's a reason that so many cultures, pagan and otherwise, have celebrated the winter solstice, and it's not (just) superstition: it really does mark an actual event, and an important time in the year.

Especially the further north you live (which I'm sure I don't need to tell you about :), this is a big deal. I spent four years in Minnesota, where the changing length of the days is vastly more evident and efficacious than it was during my childhood in New Jersey and California. The winter solstice marks the beginning of the end of days with only a few scant hours of sunlight, and thus represents a real reason to celebrate.

Re: Egg Shortages in the UK Due to End of Battery Egg Farms : TreeHugger

Josh — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:11:07 -0000

The farmers will be selling fewer eggs, but at a higher price. And they can also sell other things as well. Besides, this mostly affects the large-scale industrial farmers. That's the model that can only work when we treat animals like food production machines.

Re: Egg Shortages in the UK Due to End of Battery Egg Farms : TreeHugger

Josh — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:33:32 -0000

Basically: do you want it done cheap and fast, or do you want it done right?

I work in web development, and the same rules apply. Clients/consumers obviously want to spend as little as possible and get what they want as quickly as possible, but investing more time and money will almost always result in a better product. The question is where your balance point is, do you want less of a high quality product or more of a low quality one?

Re: Egg Shortages in the UK Due to End of Battery Egg Farms : TreeHugger

Josh — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:41:28 -0000

This should not be a surprise. For most of human history, eggs were considered a luxury item. It was only with the advent of antibiotics and the corresponding ability to raise poultry in high density situations that eggs became affordable as an every day food.

Increased prices will be the result of just about every change made to the food system that favors things like animal welfare. As with eggs, meat also used to be a fairly luxurious thing to have; most people didn't get to eat it at every meal of every day.

If we're going to get rid of CAFE style meat and egg production, we're also going to have to revert to an earlier style of eating, one that involves far less meat and eggs. We're also going to have to accept that fact that such food items are going to become much more expensive.

Re: On the other hand | Dynamic upload path for Django FileField/ImageField

Josh — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:08:15 -0000

An empty directory? I don't think you'd want to do that in the same way. Instead you'd probably just want to call an os.makedirs(whatever_path) at initialization to ensure that the directory gets created if it needs to be as soon as the site is loaded into memory. You could probably do this in your models.py folder, just put it at the top or bottom outside any functions or classes so that it gets run immediately. Although to be certain that it gets run when you want it, I'd probably put it in a function in a file of its own then import and run that function in a file that you know will get loaded immediately like settings.py or even urls.py.

Re: On the other hand | Dynamic upload path for Django FileField/ImageField

Josh — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:03:00 -0000

There you go!

Re: On the other hand | Dynamic upload path for Django FileField/ImageField

Josh — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:54:36 -0000

Huh. It actually is in one, but I guess it's not playing nice with Bootstrap...

Re: OPINION: A good use for "don't ask, don't tell"

Josh — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:26:02 -0000

For someone who has 'no interest in the sexual practices of the people in the pews around me on Sunday' you sure seem to care an awful lot about the sexual practices of the people in the pews around you on Sunday.

Re: Flawed Diamonds Could Store Quantum Data

Josh — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:12:53 -0000

Actually, Tiffany's typically has rather low quality diamonds...

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:17:53 -0000

I agree, this doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I do think I've gotten a
better understanding of your position though, and I suspect my own is more
similar to yours that it might appear.

Basically, it seems to me that you're taking an essentially theosophist
position: that many/all of the religions of the world are expressing the
same basic truths in different ways. The God concept, that in Western
culture is usually defined as the rather anthropomorphic God of modern
Christianity, exists in all of them but can can be expressed in very
different ways.

I think this is all true. I have also spent quite a lot of time studying
various religions and trying to understand them, and have seen the same
thing. I have also experienced at least some of the 'transcendent'
experiences that people find through various religious practices. There are
real experiences and phenomena that are described in religions and that can
be reliably reproduced by probably anyone if they just follow the
instructions that are laid out in pretty much every religion.

The difference between your position and mine, I think, is that I do not
assume that the fact that religious practices can lead to these experiences
points to there being any sort of supernatural element out there. I think
they can all be quite easily explained neurologically as a side affect of
certain mental activities, which are common to the practices of pretty much
all religions in one form or another (prayer, meditation, &c.). Having
experienced these things, I can definitely understand why some people would
be inclined to see them as proof of the divine, the supernatural, nibbana,
or whatever other cultural artifact they think best matches up. Because we
all live in cultures that evolved from a primitive past in which the only
conceivable explanation for many things was a supernatural one it is quite
natural that when we find something that we don't understand we fall back on
those old ideas. However I don't think it's necessary, and, as with just
about everything else, I think that eventually we will most likely have a
consistent scientific explanation for, literally, everything. 'Eventually'
might be thousands of years from now, but that's irrelevant. Essentially, I
think it is the case that we live in a purely material universe and that
there isn't anything out there that can't be explained through simple
physical equations (when we finally discover them).

Basically, I don't think that you're wrong and I'm right. I think we're both
saying the same thing from a different perspective (as, I believe, you've
been saying the different religions do). However I also think that for the
purposes of furthering understanding it's most productive to try and divorce
our understanding of phenomena from their historical trappings in order to
avoid falling into old biases and flaws of understanding. I think I do
understand what you're describing, but I think it's a mistake to
characterize it as outside the realm of science; if we can perceive it, we
will eventually be able to study it scientifically; if we can't perceive it,
then I don't see how we can meaningfully say that it exists at all.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:12:31 -0000

I agree, this doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I do think I've gotten a
better understanding of your position though, and I suspect my own is more
similar to yours that it might appear.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:47:27 -0000

I'll be honest, it sounds like you're just making stuff up to justify your own beliefs. You're claiming that you have a true understanding of what religion is, but why should I believe you? Most people's conception of religion seems to be different, so why should yours be authoritative?

And I (clearly) disagree with you that science does not cover everything. Our current science might not be advanced enough to explain everything, but that is not the same thing. What things are there out there that you think are 'not empirically or mathematically observable and verifiable', and on what basis can you claim to know that they exist? What phenomena are there that do not arise due to the fundamental physical forces and the interactions they cause between matter any energy? And how do you know that these things do not have a scientific explanation that will be discovered some day?

Your argument is tantamount to the 'god of the gaps' argument whereby all gaps in current scientific knowledge are pointed to as evidence of god(s). The problem is that those gaps are constantly getting smaller and closing and so, therefore, must the purported god that explains them. I see no reason to believe that this trend will not continue, nor do I see any reason to believe that so-called immaterial phenomena such as consciousness do not have a perfectly mundane, physical explanation.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:15:57 -0000

Assuming, of course, that morality does not have some sort of evolutionary basis which would, of course, be common to all people. Of course this would be just as vague as religions are, leaving it open to some cultural interpretations, which it clearly has been.

If the claims by religions are no important to those religions, than on what basis are we to understand and judge the validity of those religions? Yes, I'm sure we can find kernels of truth in any religion out there, so what? I agree with you entirely that the stories told are 'fantasies to cure curiosity of people', and I agree that within those stories are kernels of truth. But these truths can be found without religion and transmitted without fantasy. So what is the value of religion beyond the codification of the social norms of a particular time and place?

You have mentioned that science does not cover 'all these areas'. However I honestly do not see what areas there are that science does not cover. It seems to me that most attempts to define them are just as much fantasy as the stories told by religion; they are pointless, self-serving, conservative attempts to hold onto the outdated and outmoded ideas, beliefs, and practices of the past.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:58:19 -0000

Again it seems unlikely that we're going to agree, but I do think that a complete and consistent morality can be derived logically. It's how I live my life, and I think I would qualify as a good person by pretty much anyone's definition (except, of course, for those people who mandate a belief in god(s) as a condition for being a good person...). This isn't the same thing as saying that morality is 'scientific', in fact to say so would almost be meaningless. Science and religion are not really similar things. They may start off with similar goals, to help us understand reality, but that's all that science does while religion goes on to do many other things that science is completely unconcerned with. Science ONLY describes, while religion also proscribes. That science does not fill all the same purposes of religion is not a failing, in fact I would consider it an advantage because that is part of what helps keeps science objective and therefore trustworthy.

To put it more clearly, no one is arguing that morality comes from science. All I was saying is that it also doesn't have to come from some divine authority.

That passage is indeed in Psalms, but so what? Just because the religious have been saying the same things for thousands of years doesn't make them right. In fact that's an excellent argument AGAINST them, because the different religious have been saying different things consistently for thousands of years, while science has been getting provably more and more accurate.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:47:46 -0000

To be honest, I don't see how 'he can make anything that is possible happen' could be considered omnipotence. If God is constrained by rules beyond His control, is He really God? Of course I'm not really sure there's much scriptural justification for believing that God is omnipotent; it's seems pretty clear that as your progress through the Bible the conception of God changes from something more like henotheism in the very early books to the true monotheism of slightly less ancient Judaism, to the odd triune-theism of modern Christianity. So maybe the answer to my questions is simply that, of those four characteristics, God only exhibits three of them and lacks omnipotence.

Here's the thing: I have experienced those things (except for the increased faith). However I achieved them through nothing remotely resembling or involving a belief in God or the supernatural. If you look at the mystical literature of pretty much any religion (such as St. John of the Cross' writing for Christianity) they all, regardless of what religion they subscribe to, end up describing extremely similar phenomena, though they tend to use different words for it and couch their descriptions in the context of their own beliefs. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, &c. all describe experiences so similar that it's extremely difficult to believe they aren't probably the same thing. Prayer is one of the avenues by which people often achieve these experiences, however if you look at the mechanics (for lack of a better word) of prayer, it is essentially the same thing as Buddhist meditation; the difference is only in where the practitioner thinks the feelings and experiences are coming from (themselves for Buddhists and similar, or God for Christians/Jews/Muslims/&c.).

I truly do believe that the various prophets of the various religions really were relating true experiences, however I think they misinterpreted the origins and meanings of those experiences based on their own cultural and personal biases. As with everything else, I think that God is provided as an explanation for these things unnecessarily. These experiences arise from within ourselves, from quirks of human neurochemistry that are triggered through certain mental activities common to the practices of probably all religions and even some secular philosophies. These things are not evidence of God, God is merely one explanation that is proffered to explain them.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:49:50 -0000

This is the typical answer to this question. However I believe it fails to adequately address the question. My criticism gets back to the benevolent/omnipotent/omniscient conundrum when specifically applied to a creator. If God created the universe and is omnipotent, then that should mean God is capable of creating a universe in which suffering is not necessary. You are arguing that suffering is sometimes necessary because it will lead to a greater good, but if God is omnipotent it was within His power when He created the universe to do so in such a way that suffering would not be necessary. If He is omniscient, He would have known whether or not the manner in which He was creating the universe would require suffering. If He is benevolent He would not have created the universe in such a manner as to require suffering.

So is it possible for God to be all of 1) the creator of the universe, 2) benevolent, 3) omnipotent, and 4) omniscient? Take away any one of those aspects and there is no conflict, but I simply cannot see the feasibility of a god that can be described as all four of those things if we live in a universe where suffering is not only possible, but sometimes necessary.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:53:57 -0000

Ah, I see what you're saying about the 'why' now. But I still disagree. We can derive a consistent moral system logically based on evolutionary principals. Being group animals rather than solitary ones was beneficial to us, therefor evolving patterns of behavior and modes of thought that support smooth social operation was beneficial. It's hard to maintain a stable society in which people don't feel constrained from randomly killing and raping each other wantonly, so humans that behaved thusly would be selected against and such traits would be bred out of the population (to some extent, it actually does make very good sense that it wouldn't disappear completely, but I don't know how deeply we want to get into this topic). This can be taken out of the evolutionary context as well. Now that we are intelligent, thinking animals, we can see for ourselves that we are well suited to social living, and that we typically do better individually when we create and maintain a stable society, thus is it logical for us to consider it immoral to kill and rape and to construct societies revolving around these ideals. Obviously this is a very shallow and brief treatment of the topic, but there is quite a lot of work out there on how morality can arise without the need for an absolute authority such as a god or prophet.

There have been many, many, many debates over the past several thousand years about the exact meaning and consequences of the phrase 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' (the Hebrew phrase typically rendered as 'I am that I am'). A tangential, but somewhat relevant and interesting article can be found here: http://www.newenglishreview...

But I think this reveals a big problem with looking to scripture for any answers. Pick up any Bible at a store today, and it's a translation. Depending on the specific version it might have been translated hundreds of years ago, and is probably a translation of a translation of a translation, and even then is completely divorced from it's original social context which is essential for truly understanding what the original authors intended.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:30:09 -0000

I understand your frustration, and agree with it (I generally subscribe to the position that was labelled by Rabbi Sherwin Wine as ignosticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wik.... However in this case (as I just pointed out in a reply to another comment of yours) I think we actually do have a sufficient working definition of 'god' to be used. I won't harp on that, as I've already spelled it out elsewhere, but I'm happy to hear any criticisms you might have as to my position on this.

However I must reject your broad dismissal of 'every Atheist or Scientific theory disproving God'. There simply is no such thing! I do not claim to know that there is no god, nor do I claim that it will ever be proven that there is no god. It is, quite literally, impossible to disprove the existence of something; even if we could prove that there is absolutely zero evidence of the existence of a god, that would not prove that there is no such thing, merely that we are incapable of proving there is. This is the way science works, and anyone who claims to have proved that there is no god has either been misled or is being misleading. That said, I do not, however, think it is meaningless for an atheist to assert that there is no god, though I do think that it is a form of shorthand that could be misconstrued by people to mean things that it does not. To me, saying 'there is no god' is the same as saying 'there is no evidence that I find compelling as to the existence of a god or gods'. If you're not already familiar with it, I recommend you look up Russell's Teapot for an further explanation of what I'm getting at here.

As for what it means to 'install a "why" into the universe', you were the one who claimed that 'religion deals with the WHY'. What I'm saying is that before you can make that claim you have to first justify you believe that there IS a why. If Hawking is correct (and I believe that he is), it is completely meaningless to ask why the universe exists; there was no intelligence or agency behind 'creation', it simply happened in the same way that a water runs downhill. Essentially, it seems to me that you're saying that there is more to the universe than what science described and attempts to understand, and you're describing that as a way of answering the question of 'why?' and calling it religion. I am simply saying that I do not believe there is anything more to it and that the only reason it seems that way is that we have an incomplete understanding of the science coupled with a brain that evolved to fill very specific evolutionary needs that can very often result in misperceptions and misinterpretations (viz. pareidolia). We have developed the scientific method as a way of overcoming these limitation and complications in the way we interact with the world.

As for religious scientists being confused human beings, I rather suspect that many are! For the ones that aren't, if they do exist, so what? We know that humans, even scientists, are capable of believing false things, and even of failing to perceive the plain truth in front of them when it contradicts the things they believe. We are, to be honest, masters of self-deception and cognitive dissonance. I cannot claim to know for certain that I am right and that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong, but it is absolutely possible for people to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, so to point to religious scientists as evidence that religion and science are not in conflict is misguided in my opinion. I don't want to step too far outside my own area of knowledge, but these points have been addressed many times in various pieces of atheist literature (even the big, popular names like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris address this and, in my opinion, do a good job of it, even if you don't agree with them I would recommend reading them if for no other reason than to get a better idea of where they are coming from with their ideas; I, personally, find it quite interesting and enlightening to read religious literature for that same reason).

'In the beginning the Earth was without form, and void, and God said "let there be light", and there was light'. God then goes on to create the firmament of the sky and the firmament of the land and to separate them by waters and create plants and animals and man and woman. This is entirely from memory and I haven't read it in a while, so I'm well aware that this is not a perfect rendition, but it is certainly accurate enough for this discussion. I am not aware of any branch of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam that would not accept the statement that 'God created the universe' as true. I am certainly aware that it is possible to read the teachings of Jesus and find meaning in them outside the norm of Christian or Jewish thought, however I do not think it valid to say that Jesus did anything remotely like overturning the previous several thousand years of Jewish theology (Paul, sure, but not Jesus). But how is that relevant? What Christians believe is what Christians believe, not what your or I think is the proper interpretation of what their book says.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:02:31 -0000

This entire discussion is derived from Stephen Hawking's comment about whether or not the universe requires the existence of a god to create it. Ergo, in this discussion it should be reasonable to assume that 'god' refers to a creator that exists outside the confines and laws of our universe and which created the universe intentionally and not at random or as a natural result of some other action. This is all implied by statement that Hawking made, and therefore is included in the context of this discussion. No other information about the nature of that god is required, because we are talking solely about the creation of the universe, or lack thereof.

It is irrelevant whether or not you think that this properly describes whatever god you believe in, because what we are talking about here is the merits of a very specific statement made by a very specific man in a very specific context. It is irrelevant what other attributes this or any other god might have, as we are, for the purposes of this discussion, interested only in the cause of the universe's existence.

If you want to define 'god' more subtly than that, for example if you wanted to say that the laws of physics are themselves attributes of god and that, therefore, anything that happens naturally by definition could be defined as 'the will of god' or something along those lines (I'm not trying to define your beliefs here, just explicate one possible viewpoint of god that would complicate this discussion) that's fine, but that's not the sort of god that Hawking was denying the existence of.

Clearly there are many different definitions of god and many different personalities that are ascribed to individual gods. It is unreasonable to try and claim that we should address each and every one of them in every single discussion about the divine or lack thereof. We are talking here about a creator and the fact that Stephen Hawking does not believe one is necessary to explain the existence of the universe. The fact that you think there might be some other sort of god out there that is separate from this is irrelevant.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:49:29 -0000

I realize this wasn't addressed to me, but simply asserting that your opponent isn't defining 'god' appropriately does not win you any arguments. If you want to claim that you have a better definition of the word then provide it!

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:48:08 -0000

Again, you seem to be inventing conflict by putting words into my mouth that I did not say. Everything in this discussion has been about the god concept, specifically the idea of a creator god, and it's relation to science, and that is what I have been addressing. If we want to get into a more broad discussion about religion in general, the different kinds of gods posited by different religions, religions that don't contain the concept of a creator god (or any god at all), &c., I'm happy to do so, but I fail to see how it is germaine to the discussion at hand.

However, I fail to see how anything I said about religion was so specific as to exclude any religion that I'm aware of. If you know of a religion that does not attempt to instill a 'why' into the universe, please tell me what religion you're talking about so we can discuss this openly. I do not claim to be an expert on all religions, but I do think that I have a broader base knowledge about religion in general than most, haven't dedicated quite a lot of time to researching and studying a large variety of religions and cultures.

And again, I disagree with your assertion that science and religion are not in conflict. I have explained why I think what I do, but you have not done the same. Instead you merely tell me that I am wrong, but not why. You seem to take issue with my description of religion, but I was basing it entirely on your own! You claimed that religion 'deals with the WHY'. I responded that from a scientific point of view there is no 'why', and further that there is no need for one, and this is why there is, indeed, conflict between science and religion. Your only response is that I don't understand either. Explain to me why I am wrong and then we can have a discussion about this. But simply telling me that I am wrong is a waste of both our times.

Additionally, for a non-Christian you sure do seem awfully arrogant in your position as to the true meaning of Christianity. I did not mention Christianity, you did, but you apparently did so only for the purposes of explaining why you are better than 99.99% of Christians, and have a better understanding of their own religion than they do. How is that relevant to this thread of conversation which, apparently, is between two non-Christians and has nothing to do with Christianity except inasmuch as Christianity is a religion which posits the existence of a creator god.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:34:55 -0000

How was it not explicitly stated? We're talking specifically about Hawking's statement about the necessity, or lack thereof, of a creator. Further, I never once even mentioned religion in general or a specific religion, I only talked about the god concept, the concept of a creator, and whether or not science requires such a thing. I see no way in which what I said could reasonably be construed as 'encompassing all religion under some blanket statements'.

My one more broad statement was about 'supernatural entities', but I never posited that they don't exist or that believing in them is wrong, only that science provides a 'compelling alternative narrative ... in which [they are not] required'.

The only one who seems to be trying to bring all of religion into this is you; I am addressing the very specific topic raised by the original post.

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:28:40 -0000

Ah, I see. Merely a misunderstanding then!

I do, however, take issue with you assuming that it's a given that 'God is discernible and communicates with man'. You have not demonstrated this in any way, and certainly not to any reasonable standard of evidence.

I understand that typically religious belief will require a 'leap of faith'. What I don't understand is what justification there is for that leap. Given that different people honestly, truly, and passionately believe in completely different and often contradictory things, all of which would seem to have exactly the same amount of evidence, I find it difficult to discern which particular faith it is appropriate to make a leap to. If the only way to know is to trust that God will guide you to the proper one, how do you explain that different people are apparently guided to different religions? Why would God guide some people to Christianity, others to Judaism, others to Bahai'i, others to Sikhism, &c. And how do you explain people who open themselves up to this divine guidance only to be lead away from religion altogether?

Re: Science vs. Religion

Josh — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:14:44 -0000

Ah, but your definition of knowledge does not appear to distinguish between correct and incorrect understanding. You are, essentially, saying that anything you believe should be classified as knowledge, while I'm saying that only things that are demonstrably consistent with observable fact should be. One's 'understanding of truth' might be strikingly incorrect, and therefore it can be incredibly dangerous to treat it as knowledge.

Our difference is not where we place our trust, we both place out trust in people—you trust that people who claimed to speak to and/or for God actually did so—I require evidence for claims before I'll believe them and trust the people who make them.

My only question to you is, how do you know that peace and joy actually come from some god rather than from the inner operations of your brain? It is a demonstrable fact that simple mental exercises can produce quite intense feelings of peace and joy, even for those who do not believe in any god, or in any sort of supernatural anything. It seems to me that the simplest explanation is that these are normal, biological phenomenon that our brains misapprehend as something external leading to misinterpretations and improper assignment of meaning and intent.