Deep subjects on the scientific Web

TheFallibleFiend, LORTON, VA — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:15:30 GMT

Regarding the Babel Translator: Of course the accuracy decreases with a full vocabulary. I'll be it decreases even more sharply as the complement of grammatical structures increases as well. OTOH, such a device doesn't have been perfect - or even particularly good - to be very useful. That's a good lesson from biological evolution and it's also a good lesson from history of technology and science. This sounds like a good technology in which to invest - strategically for scientists, not necessarily economically for speculators. Observation: my spouse is chinese and I know a lot of chinese people. Even when they're speaking chinese, they often intersperse it with english for technical terms, particularly jargon. Somehow I don't think translation of words is the key to success in this situation. Regarding the 'new' atheism: This isn't new atheism. This is 'empowered atheism. ' Despite all the complaints, there really is no penalty now for being an atheist. We get called names, our kids get harrassed, we can't join the boyscouts. George Bush thinks we can't be good americans. But considering the kinds of harrassment that, say, homosexuals or blacks endure, this is pretty small potatoes. This accreted freedom of expression is not the reason for the new abnoxiousness; it's just the enabler. There is a sense in which I agree with these fellows. To wit, Magical Thinking is the bane of human progress. However, the lack of magical thinking won't automatically make a person more moral, and the presence of it doesn't automatically make a person less moral. Contrary to what C. P Snow suggests in The Two Cultures, fundamental values (which are always individual values) are not derived from reason. I do not agree that religion has been the source of the greatest suffering the world. It has been used to abet in the cause of suffering - and so has atheism. Moreover, it's not sufficient to humiliate or punish people who believe. Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, the amount of pseudoscientific blather coming out of the Soviet States has increased dramatically. See:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/
mi_m2843/is_4_26/ai_88826367

... for confirmation.

While China is officially atheist, there are a lot of people who actually believe in God, but won't speak it, and there is a FLOURISHING of all kinds of weird beliefs that involve magical thinking, e.g. children who can read print with their fingertips or with their behinds. (No, I'm not making this up, though my support for it is purely anecdotal.) On the one hand, I consider the idea of god so stupid, as to be unworthy of conversation. To me, the mention of God as a real entity destroys the intellectual value of any conversation. Nevertheless, I don't feel obliged to mention this to believers unless they persist in pestering me, which is usually not a problem.

On the other hand, I think we atheists have made and continue to make a serious mistake in not fully recognizing the importance of religion in values. I suspect that the ring-leaders among the atheists leading this charge are highly intelligent. They make the mistake of assuming that, because they can develop a moral sense absent God, that anyone can do it. People won't or refuse to do LOTS of things that they theoretically COULD do. It's not enough to tell people "You can be moral without God or religion. And it's utterly inappropriate to replace one authority for morality (like the Bible) with another one (the Humanist Manifesto, say). A more reasonable approach, reasonable, because I think it could actually work, would be to find areas of commonality, state these as common values and indoctrinate kids thoroughly throughout the education process into those values. I'm not sure what "intellectuals" think, but I'm pretty sure that most teachers realize that failing to convey values to children has really bitten us in the backside.