On 12/01/2021 21:38, TimS wrote:
> And that what appears to be the case is likely actually the case, and not
just
> made to appear so as an almighty joke played on us saps by an Almighty trying
> to be witty.

That of course is why you need to really understand the Matrix proposition.

That what appears to be the case could actually be utterly and
completely wrong.

And that is why Einstein smashed materialism unwittingly. He came up
with an equivalent narrative that was utterly different from Newtonian
metaphysics.

Which was true? They couldn't *both* be true. And that shattered the
assumption of materialism, that the world in facts was pretty much the
way it appeared to be, with all the secrete hidden Laws swept up into a
tidy bundle of linear differential equations..we kept the linear
differential equations, but we traded in absolute time and absolute flat
space for accuracy of prediction.

And now with quantum physics, we are trading in strict Causality as well.

And that is why philosophers of science have retreated from the position
that you espouse, to a more useful working relationship with science,
not as revealing facts, but as the construction of efficient models that
work and give accurate predictions

God theories work, but not to give accurate predictions. They work to
bring meaning to peoples lives and to regulate the behaviour of societies.

Once you abandon the idea that science or materialism and its underlying
assumptions, its 'a-prioris',  are the One True Stick, and see them just
as another set of assumptions that need to be made to achieve certain
things then you realised religion is no different except in its purpose.

Neither has any monopoly on the Truth. Both are in the end inductive
hypotheses - working from effects to causes -  and therefore subject to
the Problem of Induction', namely that given an effect, the here and now
experience of your life, you cannot unequivocally say what *causes* it,
and indeed the notion that *something must have*, is another unwarranted
assumption that you are making.

That the material world, space time,  and our normal reasonable
assumptions of cause and effect *work*, especially in physics (though
less well in politics) is, in the end *not* 'strong evidence' that they
are *correct*. Newton could have said the same about his forces, Neo
about the Matrix.  Galileo did say that about his heliocentrism, and yet
all of them proved to be only limited approximate *models*. Which is
precisely what the Catholic church tried to tell Galileo.

To say more than that is to claim certainty where none exists, We appear
to be beings that do not have unlimited computing power at our disposal,
and the approximation of a 'real solid objective world out there,
comprised mostly of 'things' we can ignore because 'they don't eat us
and we can't eat them'' is a *useful* way to handle it. A good ad hoc
working *model*. And if you can't handle the loneliness, and absolute
lack of any hint as to what you ought to be doing about it,  by all
means shove an omniscient-creator-that-gives-a-shit in there, if it gets
you through the night.

Religion and science have their place. But neither is demonstrably true
or indeed can be said to have any decidable truth content.

My argument is to dethrone *both*, and see them for what they are.
Useful *models* that in their own way work, but neither of which should
ever be held up to the the One and Only True Stick.


--
“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

    - Bertrand Russell

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