[Starboy]

Originally posted by Technosoul, What is the correct philosophy about honesty?

I am not sure exactly what you mean by this.

Should we present apparent facts that would direct a person towards a particular opinion when we know (based on past experience) that new evidence or a new discorvery might void that opinion?

Sure, why not. As long as everyone agrees that the opinion are held tentatively. It is done all the time. It is called a working hypothesis. Religion is not about working hypothesis, it is about the “truth”.

Is it then the main goal of science to state "we don't know but this is our best guess to date"?

That is pretty much what they do. Please understand that science is a human endeavor just as any other human endeavor with all sorts of characters making all sorts of claims but if you examine the history of science it is a history of explanations that change based on what is discovered. Sometimes it goes smoother than other times but over time the explanations get better at prediction phenomenon before the fact and better at discovering new science (reality).

Under such a principle we must always doubt our opinion whiich would always be founded on the shifiting sands of data that can be added too or rebuked by additional interpretations of it when ever some new fact pops up. And is it a honest purpose to seek to know when we know we must remain forever in doubt as long as new information is possible.

Yup, that is it. Only those that had a god’s eye view of reality could ever claim to know reality in its entirety. We are very finite creatures in both space and time. What amazes me is how much of reality we have been able to discover. With my personal telescope and a CCD camera I can observe objects as far a 10 billion light years from earth, this is 2/3 the distance to the big bang. Not bad for a country field on a dark night. But even so, as good as we think we are we can never be sure if we would ever have a god’s eye view of the universe.

Seeking to know then would be like looking for fantasy gold at the end of a rainbow. Where the only taboo is belief in anything we think we know.

If you take the philosophical view I agree, because the philosophical view presumes the possession of a god’s eye view of reality. But that does not preclude us from having a working knowledge of what we can observe that is refined or changed as we learn more. This is essentially the enterprise of science. And of course it is not only philosophers that presume the gods eye view. If anyone is guilty of that sin it would have to be the supernatural religious. They not only claim to posses the gods eye view but to know the mind of god. I am amazed that the adherents of these religions have not all stood up and walked out on these liars long ago.

None the less, I would agree in all honesty that IS our present status but I must ask if we can, under that guideline, at least have faith in the belief that someday the human momentum towards seeking the truth will result in the final manifestation of something "all knowing and absolute"? Technosoul.

Faith, as I have pointed out has definitions and uses that are obviously dishonest. But hope is perfectly honest. You can hope that there is a god. Hope that it loves you, hope that it listens and answers your prayers and hope that there is a heaven and god is going to send you there when you die so on. But to claim as so many of the supernatural religious do that all of those things are real and are going to happen when they do not even begin to pass the tests for reality that we posses, as crude as they are, is just dishonest. It abuses its adherents and makes liars out of all of them. It also creates in them such a confused state of thinking that most of them will commit all sorts of dishonesties in the name of Jesus at the bidding of their religious leaders simply because their leaders have told them to do it. And they believe their leaders because these people have convinced them that they know the mind of god.

As you may have seen in an earlier post in this thread from a Christian adherent, the poster thought that there was no evidence for the theory of evolution. His thought processes are so muddled by what he has been taught by his religion that I am not sure that he even understands what evidence is. What amazes me is that we let these people teach this crap to our young. I have had more contact with these nutcases than I care to admit. These pastors and ministers deliberately tell their adherents to ignore science, to completely discount it. It happens because these pastors and ministers are able to convince them that they are privy to a god’s eye view. That they understand reality in ways that are beyond verification and require and demand that people must take it on faith. It goes well beyond basic dishonesty. If such behavior were found in any other part of our society such as business or government people would be facing jail time but is has been practiced by religion in our culture for so long that no one gives it a second thought.

Starboy