Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[accelafine]

..and they wonder why men insist on having Mens Clubs & why men sometimes come across misogynistic.

Who's 'they'?? Men are welcome to their spaces. They just need to stay the f out of ours. Oh how typically 'misogynistic male'. Blame women for everything--including your own bad behaviour.

[BigMike]

The most central "meaning" to humans is survival. Stripped of the layers of culture, philosophy, and subjective interpretation, every human action, thought, and feeling can be traced back to this fundamental drive. From a deterministic standpoint, survival isn't just about staying alive—it’s about meeting the needs that keep the human organism functioning, both physically and mentally. Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a useful framework for understanding this: it illustrates how survival operates not merely at the biological level but across the entire spectrum of human experience.

At its base, survival begins with physiological needs: food, water, shelter, and rest. These are the non-negotiables without which the body deteriorates and, eventually, ceases to function. Moving upward, safety becomes critical—security from threats, stability in one’s environment, and freedom from harm are extensions of the survival imperative. Without them, the mind and body fall into chaos, manifesting as anxiety, fear, or physical vulnerability, which further threatens health and existence.

As Maslow described, social and emotional needs—love, belonging, esteem—are just as critical. Humans are deeply social creatures; isolation, rejection, and a lack of meaningful connection harm mental health, sometimes to the point of severe depression or suicide. Even the pursuit of self-actualization, the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy, is a reflection of survival. It is not a departure from it but an advanced expression of it—fulfilling one’s potential to achieve meaning, purpose, and psychological stability, all of which are required for long-term mental resilience.

From a deterministic view, these needs are not "chosen." They are hardwired into us by evolutionary processes, shaping behavior, culture, and even abstract concepts like morality and justice. Every endeavor—whether it’s building shelter, forming relationships, pursuing careers, or creating art—can be understood as an attempt to meet one or more of these needs. Even altruism and self-sacrifice, which may appear to transcend survival, often serve to secure the survival of others, particularly kin or communities, whose flourishing indirectly supports one’s own genetic or social continuity.

In this deterministic light, survival is not merely a biological imperative; it is the engine of human behavior. It shapes everything we do, feel, and aspire to. The illusion of "higher meaning" often arises from our inability to see how deeply intertwined all human endeavors are with this primal drive. Survival isn’t just the foundation—it’s the thread running through every level of human existence, ensuring that, at every step, we remain tethered to the reality of our needs and the causes that fulfill them.

[attofishpi]

Mike...dude, stop talking to yourself, you'll end up with a reputation like iambiguous.

[attofishpi]

The reason I am so successful as a solvent to the stultifying is due, as I have alluded, to my culinary secrets!

Another reason to invest in The Course. It’s all there. A ripe fruit ready for consumption … and revolutionary change!

Jacobi, next time you are in Adelaide we must have a cook up. I think I am going to start up a link on my website for my favourite recipes.

[Age]

..and they wonder why men insist on having Mens Clubs & why men sometimes come across misogynistic.

Who's 'they'?? Men are welcome to their spaces.

Oh I bet the "men" enjoy and like you PERMITTING and ALLOWING them 'their own spaces'.

They just need to stay the f out of ours.

Do women ALSO NEED to stay the fuck our of 'men's spaces', AS WELL?

Oh how typically 'misogynistic male'.

Is this one being a typical 'misandry female', here?

Blame women for everthing--including your own bad behaviour.

Do this one, also, blame "men" for everything, or most things including its own bad behavior, as well.

From "accelafine's" own words throughout this forum it could be said and argued that "accelafine" comes across as MORE 'misandry' than how some of the "men", here, come across as "misogynistic".

[Alexis Jacobi]

Jacobi, next time you are in Adelaide we must have a cook up. I think I am going to start up a link on my website for my favourite recipes.

Count me IN!

It is after all a matter of survival.

[Age]

Your critique is eloquent,

Thank you. And thank you for your thoughtful replies.

... but it overlooks a crucial point: determinism doesn’t render cognition meaningless; it explains the mechanisms behind it.

I'm not "ignoring" it. I'm refuting it. Determinism does not at all explain the mechanisms behind cognition. Instead, it attributes them to a kind of just-so-story, an imagining (as you have called it) that cognition means nothing but physical causality. You've killed the "person" behind the cognition, imagining him or her to be no more than an electrical cord connnecting physical cause to a physical result. But that's wholly imaginary, and totally devoid of demonstration or even evidence.

To say that cognition is "unrelated to truth" under determinism is to misunderstand how truth functions in such a framework. Truth, as we understand it, is a correspondence between internal representations and external reality.

Determinism, and the physical causes it implicates, have no views about truth. That's definitional, in fact: a physical force has neither personal identity nor will of its own. What it generates, it generates...regardless of the relation to truthfulness.

Magic mushrooms are physical, and use physical and chemical processes. But they produce hallucinations, delusions, confusions...How do you prove that Determinism does any better than that?

The fact that some physical processes produce accurate models of the world while others produce errors is a testament to how determinism works in shaping cognition, not evidence against it.

There it is again. Every contrary fact is returned, by the Determinist, as merely confirming his model. But that's only because he's just-soed it into place. He's given no evidence, no demonstration or proof of his claim...he's merely adopted an unfalsifiable imagining, and now can't see things any other way.

But in trusting his own cognitions, and in appealing to those of other people, he's actually effectively abandoned what Determinism logically would require of him.

Saying that cognition arises from prior causes doesn’t negate its validity...

"Validity"? It has nothing whatsoever to do with the formal logical property known as "validity." Rather, the vexed question is how to show that Determinism is in any way true.

The brain, shaped by evolution and experience,

Wait.

Now you're attributing to the allegedly impersonal and purposeless force called "evolution," the inclination and ability to aim at truth? Why would we assume that truth has anything to do with survival? False beliefs are often more survival-serving than true ones.

If the will initiates causal chains, what determines the will?

The person. This is what "volition" means: it means that humans are not just dumb terminals in a Deterministic chain of forces, but are rather agents...persons capable of inaugurating actions upon the world by way of their own volition. The only reason you can't descibe "causes" for that is that they are not the mere product of mere physical precursors. So you will NEVER find an explanation for volition in Determinism, because Determinism is wrong.

To say "I felt like it" as an explanation only works if you stop digging. Once you do, you find that the "feeling" arose from prior causes...

That is precisely what we DO NOT find. We have no such knowledge or ability, and never have had. The closest science has ever come is to identify some environmental and genetic markers as somewhat contributory to the agent's selection of options...never anything close to Deterministic closure.

Your toast analogy is clever but misses the mark. Determinism doesn’t reduce explanations to molecules in toast;

Not literally, of course. But it has to say things that, if unpacked, are every bit as reductional and silly.

Why did Mike write? Well, we could say "toast," or we could say, "unknown physical forces for which we are unable to test." But the latter answer, though longer, isn't any better. We should save our breath, and just say, "toast."

Finally, to argue that determinism is a "supposition" rather than a conclusion derived from evidence is to ignore the entire scientific enterprise.

No, this has zero to do with science denial. In fact, Determinism, by implication, denies that the scientist has any cognitions he can trust, which is a huge attack on science.

The predictive power of physics, chemistry, and biology rests on the assumption of causality

Yes, but also on the reliability of the cognitions of the physicist, the chemist, the biologist, and everybody to whom they address their research. And that's a thing which Determinism would induce us to believe is nothing but the accidental coming together of impersonal, physical forces with no regard to truth.

Your problem in that is jumping from mere physical phenomena, and assuming (without proving, of course) that human volition just another case of physical causality. But what if, as we all naturally believe, physical causality is not the only kind of causality; volitional causality is every bit as legitimate, every bit as much a node of decision for a person, and every bit as legitimate a starting explanation as "physical causes" are for merely physical phenomena?

The accusation that determinism is unfalsifiable misses the point.

Hardly. Any unfalsifiable belief is not scientific.

Determinism doesn’t claim that any belief is "true" merely because it exists; it claims that beliefs arise from causes and can be evaluated based on their correspondence to observed reality.

And yet Determinism is not based on observation, but on the gratuitious supposition that human beings are just another kind of physical effect of physical causes.

The fact that we can discuss and critique determinism itself is evidence of the deterministic processes enabling rational discourse...

Determinism isn't at all contributing to that. In fact, Determinism would induce us to suppose that maybe we're both crazy, and just squirting irrational thoughts to which we are induced by the impersonal forces of chemical, physical, physiological pressures.

LOL people like "immanuel can", here, that is those who HOLD ABSOLUTE FAITH and BELIEF in a God Creature, still, can NOT YET recognize and SEE that they HAVE, under there OWN DELUSION, NO ABILITY TO CHOOSE ABSOLUTELY ANY thing, AT ALL, other than what 'their God' has PLANNED, FOR 'them'.

LOL So, the VERY thing they 'try to' argue and fight AGAINST, here, IS the VERY thing they BELIEVE, ABSOLUTELY, IS the Truth of things.

Therefore, they are FREELY CHOOSING to GO AGAINST their OWN RELIGION, BELIEF, and FAITH, here, by 'trying to' argue AGAINST what they ADAMANTLY BELIEVE IS TRUE, OR, they are 'trying to' fight AGAINST God's OWN PRE-DETERMINED and DETERMINISTIC PLAN, FOR 'them', which by their very OWN ADMISSION, and which they WILL READILY ADMIT, they have NO CONTROL AT ALL over. Which, therefore, MEANS they are JUST DOING what God had HAD PLANNED, FOR 'them', ALONG, anyway.

Also, 'they' ARE FIGHTING and ARGUING AGAINST what they BELIEVE IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE, and WOULD OPENLY ADMIT this, that is; if they were NOT SO CONFUSED and were OPEN and Honest, here. But, EITHER WAY, what they are DOING, here, IS so that 'I' CAN SHOW and PROVE HOW, and WHY, the human brain, along with the BELIEF-system, WAS SO LOST and CONFUSED, back in the 'olden days' when this was being written.

These ones, here, are PROVIDING the ACTUAL PROOF NEEDED so that I CAN and WILL ACHIEVE what I AM DOING, HERE, and what I had SET OUT and PLANNED TO DO A LONG TIME AGO, relative to you posters, here.

ONCE AGAIN, 'I' AM USING 'you' TO ACHIEVE and GET WHAT I WANT and HAVE SET OUT TO ACHIEVE, and GET.

And, AGAIN, future peoples, (to you posters, here,) WILL THANK you PROFUSELY, for PROVIDING ACTUAL EXAMPLES of the ACTUAL MISTAKES, which HAVE BEEN the MISTAKES that have been HOLDING human beings BACK for SO, SO, LONG, now, and which 'we' NOW NOT WHAT TO DO, EVER AGAIN.

Determinism doesn 't "make discussion possible" so to speak: its stultifies it. It leaves us with no basis upon which to take discussion seriously at all.

And, let 'us' NOT FORGET that this one's God HAD PLANNED for this one to SAY, CLAIM, and WRITE, this.

OBVIOUSLY, EVERY thing that this one says, writes, claims, and does is ALL just a part of God's PRE-DETERMINED, DETERMINISTIC, PLAN. And, which this one could NOT even BEGIN to 'try to' COUNTER, nor REFUTE, without CONTRADICTING its ALREADY OBTAINED and ALREADY STRONGLY HELD ONTO BELIEFS.

[attofishpi]

Jacobi, next time you are in Adelaide we must have a cook up. I think I am going to start up a link on my website for my favourite recipes.

Count me IN!

It is after all a matter of survival.

Yum. Kangaroo is one of my favourite meats, have you tried it?

[Atla]

He speaks so eloquently about his misguided ideology, either he's a genius to come up with such eloquent sentences on the fly, or he must have practiced them for years?

He obviously has the writing gift--something that would be alien to you. I'm sure you can do 'something' well. Everyone has 'something'--even you.

Pretty sure you can't do anything well so there goes that theory. Also I'm not sure if Mike's ability is a gift, speaking very eloquent nonsense.

[accelafine]

He speaks so eloquently about his misguided ideology, either he's a genius to come up with such eloquent sentences on the fly, or he must have practiced them for years?

He obviously has the writing gift--something that would be alien to you. I'm sure you can do 'something' well. Everyone has 'something'--even you.

Pretty sure you can't do anything well so there goes that theory.

I'm pretty sure you don't believe that

[Atla]

He obviously has the writing gift--something that would be alien to you. I'm sure you can do 'something' well. Everyone has 'something'--even you.

Pretty sure you can't do anything well so there goes that theory.

I'm pretty sure you don't believe that

Well you would be wrong then.

[Immanuel Can]

Your critique is eloquent,

Thank you. And thank you for your thoughtful replies.

Ok, this “polite” crap has place but please pleeeeze don’t let it go to excesses.

Does it upset you when people are mutually respectful while disagreeing? And should it trouble you?

[accelafine]

Pretty sure you can't do anything well so there goes that theory.

I'm pretty sure you don't believe that

Well you would be wrong then.

So would you.

[Immanuel Can]

The conservation laws—most notably the conservation of energy and momentum—state that in a closed system, energy and momentum are neither created nor destroyed, only transferred or transformed. If human volition, as you argue, initiates causal chains independently of physical causes, it would imply the creation of new energy or momentum in the system without any prior physical input. This directly violates these foundational laws of physics.

You're assuming your conclusion, which is not legit. You're assuming that volition is a case of physics. You have no evidence it is, no reason to think it is, and no basis upon which to make that judgment. You've gratuitously precluded any case of volitional initiation from your understanding of causality.

However, you've misunderstood what volition is. You think it's an instance of physical motion of some kind. But it's not. And you can see this because volition all by itself isn't enough to produce a physical event; for that, a volitional being must do something, meaning translate that volition into an action. The volition is formed beforehand, and before any physical actions take place. This is why we can say, "I've decided to to..." just before we perform a physical action. The cognitive preparation is of a different order than physics. Only at the stage of action do we start again to have physics in the equation. Before that, we're only talking about intention which is a cognitive process, not a physical one.

So, to get to your key and repeated objection here, there's no violation of any physical regularity (which is what "law" really means, in that context). Such "laws" are, first, not inviolable; they are only observed regularities, not fiat rules handed out by the universe. Secondly, if physical laws are not already assumed to be the total story of volition, then that critique is simply misguided and a category error.

So the very first thing you'd have to do to get your proposed critique to work is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that volition is, in every case, simply an instance of very specific physical laws at work, and thus that what volition decides will have a perfect 1:1 relation to physical forces we can identify.

Can you do that? Or are you merely speaking like an eliminativist ? That is, are you merely prophecying that one day, you hope it will turn out to be true, though you know it's not provable now?

When you assert that "the person" or "volition" acts as an original cause, you effectively propose a system where causation occurs without an antecedent transfer of energy or information.

No, I only claim that causal chains can be commenced by volition...which is also what you are acting like you believe right now, by arguing.

This idea introduces a form of dualism that physics does not support.

That's a contradiction. You are demanding that everything real must be physical. What's your basis for thinking that?

Oops. Thinking is another case of non-physical reality. Gee...you can't seem to get your own case off the ground without appealing to things that are not exclusively physical in nature. Interesting.

You suggest that "volitional causality" is an equally legitimate form of causation, distinct from physical causality.

No, the relation between the two is complex and interactive. What we can be sure of, however, is that it's not strictly physical. If it were, then a purely physical account would be sufficient to give us absolute certainty about people's choices before they even made them. But we don't have such certainty. We hardly even have, from mere physical evidence, reasonable probability. All we can discern strictly from the physical evidence is which physical options are open to the chooser in a given situation, not which alternative the chooser will choose.

Your appeal to "unprovable physical forces" and the dismissive reduction to "toast" overlooks the empirical success of deterministic models in explaining complex systems, including human cognition.

They don't have success. They have overwhelming failure, actually. People very often behave in unpredictable ways, and physics can't seem to tell us a thing about how they do that.

Determinism doesn’t erode trust...

Right: it should eliminate it entirely. You can't trust any "truths" thrown up by an impersonal universe acting through physical accidents.

[BigMike]

The conservation laws—most notably the conservation of energy and momentum—state that in a closed system, energy and momentum are neither created nor destroyed, only transferred or transformed. If human volition, as you argue, initiates causal chains independently of physical causes, it would imply the creation of new energy or momentum in the system without any prior physical input. This directly violates these foundational laws of physics.

You're assuming your conclusion, which is not legit. You're assuming that volition is a case of physics. You have no evidence it is, no reason to think it is, and no basis upon which to make that judgment. You've gratuitously precluded any case of volitional initiation from your understanding of causality.

However, you've misunderstood what volition is. You think it's an instance of physical motion of some kind. But it's not. And you can see this because volition all by itself isn't enough to produce a physical event; for that, a volitional being must do something, meaning translate that volition into an action. The volition is formed beforehand, and before any physical actions take place. This is why we can say, "I've decided to to..." just before we perform a physical action. The cognitive preparation is of a different order than physics. Only at the stage of action do we start again to have physics in the equation. Before that, we're only talking about intention which is a cognitive process, not a physical one.

So, to get to your key and repeated objection here, there's no violation of any physical regularity (which is what "law" really means, in that context). Such "laws" are, first, not inviolable; they are only observed regularities, not fiat rules handed out by the universe. Secondly, if physical laws are not already assumed to be the total story of volition, then that critique is simply misguided and a category error.

So the very first thing you'd have to do to get your proposed critique to work is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that volition is, in every case, simply an instance of very specific physical laws at work, and thus that what volition decides will have a perfect 1:1 relation to physical forces we can identify.

Can you do that? Or are you merely speaking like an eliminativist ? That is, are you merely prophecying that one day, you hope it will turn out to be true, though you know it's not provable now?

When you assert that "the person" or "volition" acts as an original cause, you effectively propose a system where causation occurs without an antecedent transfer of energy or information.

No, I only claim that causal chains can be commenced by volition...which is also what you are acting like you believe right now, by arguing.

This idea introduces a form of dualism that physics does not support.

That's a contradiction. You are demanding that everything real must be physical. What's your basis for thinking that?

Oops. Thinking is another case of non-physical reality. Gee...you can't seem to get your own case off the ground without appealing to things that are not exclusively physical in nature. Interesting.

You suggest that "volitional causality" is an equally legitimate form of causation, distinct from physical causality.

No, the relation between the two is complex and interactive. What we can be sure of, however, is that it's not strictly physical. If it were, then a purely physical account would be sufficient to give us absolute certainty about people's choices before they even made them. But we don't have such certainty. We hardly even have, from mere physical evidence, reasonable probability. All we can discern strictly from the physical evidence is which physical options are open to the chooser in a given situation, not which alternative the chooser will choose.

Your appeal to "unprovable physical forces" and the dismissive reduction to "toast" overlooks the empirical success of deterministic models in explaining complex systems, including human cognition.

They don't have success. They have overwhelming failure, actually. People very often behave in unpredictable ways, and physics can't seem to tell us a thing about how they do that.

Determinism doesn’t erode trust...

Right: it should eliminate it entirely. You can't trust any "truths" thrown up by an impersonal universe acting through physical accidents.

Immanuel, your argument for volition as a "cause" independent of physical laws shares an uncanny resemblance to claims of psychokinesis—the supposed ability to influence physical systems with the mind alone, without any transfer of energy or matter. Both concepts involve a kind of causation that operates outside established physical principles, particularly the conservation laws. If volition can "commence causal chains," as you assert, without any antecedent transfer of energy or momentum, this would violate the same principles that psychokinesis would need to circumvent.

You argue that volition operates in a realm distinct from physics, forming intentions before translating them into physical action. This separation of intention from physical causality creates a dualism that is irreconcilable with the conservation of energy. For an intention to manifest as physical action, energy must enter the system at some point, and without a prior physical cause, this energy would have to emerge from nothing. That’s the very issue physicists reject in claims of psychokinesis—it demands an exception to fundamental, well-tested laws of nature.

You also suggest that volition's complexity makes it immune to deterministic explanation, but unpredictability doesn’t equal uncaused or non-physical. Weather patterns are notoriously hard to predict with precision, yet no one claims they result from non-physical forces. The same applies to human cognition—its complexity doesn’t exempt it from causality, just as it doesn’t for any other complex system.

Finally, your argument that physical causation undermines trust in cognition is self-defeating. If we can’t trust cognition because it is shaped by deterministic forces, why should we trust cognition under volitional causality? Your framework doesn’t offer a coherent alternative—it simply replaces established principles with an unverifiable assumption about the nature of thought and will. Like psychokinesis, it asserts a phenomenon that defies empirical scrutiny and foundational physical laws, offering no mechanism for how it interacts with the observable world.

In short, your model of volition-as-cause faces the same fatal flaw as psychokinesis: it proposes a causative mechanism outside of and contradictory to the physical laws that govern observable reality, making it a philosophical artifact rather than a credible explanation.