Science is incapable of disproving the plot of The Matrix. We do not know if our senses represent an underlying reality, or whether we live instead in a kind of dream state. We might all be totally alone, our minds talking to themselves.

We simply have to trust that other people are other people, not imaginary figments conjured by our subconscious. It's a belief.

A belief very similar to the belief in God. You can't prove the existence of other minds. You can't prove the existence of God, either. If you believe God exists, this is no more or less legitimate than believing Barack Obama exists.

One can prove that Obama exist so your example is bogus.

I agree with you 100% we don't know anything'. But talk to the vast majority of religious people and they clearly think they know a lot! They know there is a 'god', then know there is a heaven, or hell, they know XYZ etc....

I understand why many feel they have to believe in what label as myths. So while it is true no one can say if these myths are true or not, if we accept 'we don't know anything' than why claim to know things that are unknowable.

I think we can safely say the myths are true because they've survived this long and still have something to teach us.

I've always admired the notion that for Jews, traditionally, the historical factuality of the scriptural stories was never important. That to me is a mature apprehension of their religious practice. You can find analogs in strains of Catholic and Protestant tradition, though they are not so evident. This is what is missing from the practice of fundamentalists and some evangelicals.

Yes yes, but this is freshman semantics class all over again. But we define faith more clearly and concretely as unmoored from shared empirical reality. No you can't 'disprove the matrix but then again, As the movies themselves demonstrate, the matrix might itself be a figment of a meta-matrix

This is just the Prime Mover recursion and not a very sophisticated nor interesting philosophical discussion.

The Difference is the religion evolved as a means of explaining the otherwise unexplainable. And it was replaced by science which posits (and so far 100% succesfully) that it can offer explanations grounded 100% consistently with empirical "reality".

If you believe God exists, this is no more or less legitimate than believing Barack Obama exists.

False. I can construct an empirical test that is mutually agreed upon by multiple individuals who's outcome is validated by multiple individuals RANDOMLY chosen as to the existance or non-existance of Obama.

You cannot do the same for God. God fails the Zombie Philosophy test.

Solipsism Rules!

..and Don Fincher is right.

I'm talking about solipsism, not a Prime Mover.

Degesme's "empirical truth" relies on finding other people who can agree with an observation.

My point is that we don't know if there are any other people. Any more than we know there is a God. We just choose to believe so.

If Reality was on the same plane of illusion that religion is, then it would be possible to make predictions from religious belief.

An trained inspector of an aircraft can tell you if a wing is about to fail and in so doing predict a plane crash and the subsequent deaths of those on board.

A priest can not do the same by praying to god.

Whether this is a seperate reality or not, there is a distinction in this reality between scientific method and religious belief.

Like I said, this is the same freshman year philosophy arguement and at its core is the notion that if there is a god, what existed before god's creation? And what existed before that? recursively ad infinitum

Similarly, its the notion of needing a meta-cognition to prove the true existance of us, but then you need a meta meta cognitor to prove the existance of the meta cognitor etc.

Both are recursions and both suffer from Goedelian incompleteness,

The myths are true? I assume you mean that since these myths have been passed down from generation to generation that they are 'true' in the sense they are widely accepted, but of course they are neither true or false. For all we knowing killing an infidel realy gets one virgins in the afterlife or there was a virgin birth.

I also admire those Jews that don't place much importance in the historical factuality of sciptural stories but they should even take it another step and not place any importance to what happens after this life is over.

degsme, please explain what on earth Gödel has to do with arguments for or against an Aristotelian Prime Mover? 100 words or less, please.

Hellzapoppin:

I think we can safely say the myths are true because they've survived this long and still have something to teach us.

I've always admired the notion that for Jews, traditionally, the historical factuality of the scriptural stories was never important. That to me is a mature apprehension of their religious practice. You can find analogs in strains of Catholic and Protestant tradition, though they are not so evident. This is what is missing from the practice of fundamentalists and some evangelicals.

Very well said, Hell. I would be described as a fallen Catholic (who really appreciates the Church and having grown up in it) and I relate to Judaism for the reasons you state above far more so than I do fundamentalist Christians. For Catholics the lesson the BIble teaches us rather than the actualities the Bible describes is most important. (Having said that, the belief in the Virgin Birth, Jesus's walking on water and other miracles, transsubstantiation and the like, is very important to Catholics. That has less to do with a strict adherence to the word in the Bible but other traditions.)

What Catholics, and I think Jews, get very well is the built-in relationship between the unknowable, doubt and faith. You can't have faith without some underlying uncertainty or you only have well recited dogma. Catholics will say that is the act of having faith is what interact with Spirit and impacts realites here on earth.

Godelian incompleteness essentially says that in any finite set of axioms, there will be things that are within the set that are not provably (via the set's axioms and formal logic) in the set and things that are outside the set that are not provably outside the set.

IE there are things that are going to be true that cannot be proven true

The existance of the "Prime Mover" is one such example because by definition it transcends the axioms of the "real world".

Now you might argue that the real world, being infinite, is not a finite set of axioms. You might be right, but the infinity of the set itself doesn't mean that the axioms operating on the set are infinite. IOW the laws of physics may very well be 100% finite (in fact phsycists kinda rely on that) while the phsysical instantiation of those laws can still be infinite.

degsme, Did you really take a freshman course on semantics?

FBH:

degsme, Did you really take a freshman course on semantics?

Huh? Where does that question come from in this conversation?

Solipsism - the philosophical idea that my mind is all that exists.

It is the most sceptical hypothesis known to science. It is a theory with perfectly consistent internal logic and it is unfalsifiable. (Wittgenstein's 'private langauge argument' is very easily dealt with).

However, I do have evidence against solipsism.

I feel at an emotional level that other people exist (otherwise I wouldn't bother typing this!). If I assume solipsism, I have no reason to subordinate this feeling - this hunch - to any other of my sense data. Feelings are evidence.

I have this hunch you exist, which makes interacting with you worthwhile, even from a position of extreme epistemological scepticism. I have exactly the same hunch that God exists, so interacting with Him makes every bit as much sense my as interacting with you.