Leo D.M.J. Aurini - December 12, 2012


The Difference Between Science and Religion

Topics
luck faith
Hosted by
Leo D.M.J. Aurini
Mentioned
SF Debris Johnny Luck
How to Govern Through a Depression On Dogs and Wolves

Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

108.96

Word count

2,920

Sentence count

228

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

17

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What's the difference between science and religion? This is a question I've never seen handled well, and I've often seen it handled in a way that is demeaning to both realms of magisteria. Science and faith are not concepts that are at odds, and neither are religion.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 What is the difference between science and religion?
00:00:08.000 This is a question I've never seen handled well and I've often seen it handled absolutely terribly.
00:00:18.000 Now what sparked this video was a review by SF Debris of a particularly ham-fisted episode of Star Trek Voyager
00:00:28.000 where they utterly mangled the question.
00:00:31.000 Where scientists believe in science the same way that religious people believe in religion.
00:00:38.000 And SF Debris does a great job eviscerating this episode and explaining what science is.
00:00:47.000 If you don't know who SF Debris is, he is an excellent science fiction reviewer
00:00:52.000 mainly focusing on Star Trek and the link is down below to the episode in question.
00:00:57.000 Now that said, he really dropped the ball when it came to explaining what religion was.
00:01:07.000 For very understandable reasons which aren't due to him having a lack of intellect.
00:01:14.000 But we'll get to that in a bit.
00:01:17.000 Typically, when you see this question, the way it's phrased, the answer is that science is what we can prove to be true
00:01:29.000 and religion is what we believe to be true.
00:01:34.000 Which, right on the face of it, falls to pieces.
00:01:41.000 Science, and rationality in general, can prove very, very little.
00:01:47.000 For instance, I believe that the car I parked in my garage tonight is still there and hasn't been stolen.
00:01:55.000 Is that a form of faith?
00:01:57.000 Of course not.
00:02:01.000 Bayes' theorem undermines that definition of science.
00:02:05.000 And then you have the matter of what I like to think of as the low church theists. 0.92
00:02:13.000 What always comes to mind when I think of these people, and I'm willing to bet that 50% of my audience thinks of these people whenever they hear the term religion, 0.96
00:02:24.000 is this utter fool on the Penn & Teller show yelling about how he don't want his Bible taken from the courthouse steps. 0.95
00:02:34.000 And you can have varying views on it, but these retard religious people that quote convenient sections of the Bible have never read the entire thing and believe in Jesus. 1.00
00:02:48.000 They know that Jesus exists.
00:02:54.000 Both of these definitions are demeaning to both realms of magisteria.
00:03:03.000 The fact of the matter is that science and faith, and in fact I'm going to replace that word science,
00:03:11.000 rationality and faith are not concepts that are at odds.
00:03:20.000 Atheist cult and low church religion definitely are, but not faith and rationality.
00:03:30.000 And incidentally, this is why SF Debris skimmed over the part on what religion is.
00:03:39.000 Because the dominant religion of our modern era is multiculturalism, is accepting other people's beliefs. 0.95
00:03:49.000 See, it was bad enough when we had a single religion in our society, all these idiot low church people running around proclaiming whatever nonsense that they interpreted from some words that were translated. 0.99
00:04:04.000 No, we now have a multicultural society with multiple religions, each of them full of low church retards believing retarded things. 1.00
00:04:13.000 And so as not to offend anybody, you can't actually discuss what faith actually is. 0.94
00:04:21.000 Because it undermines the majority of church goers.
00:04:26.000 And SF Debris, even though he runs an extremely intelligent and entertaining channel, which I highly recommend, is an entertainer.
00:04:35.000 He is a television and science fiction critic.
00:04:42.000 He does not want to have a giant religious flame war going on in his comments section.
00:04:52.000 So, science, rationality, and reason.
00:04:56.000 This one shouldn't take too long.
00:04:58.000 First of all, because you've heard this a million times before.
00:05:02.000 We live in a materialistic age, and so we know how to study material.
00:05:07.000 Not to mention I've discussed it before.
00:05:10.000 Science is an investigation of the material world. 0.99
00:05:17.000 It's an idiot proofing, because we are highly biased creatures. 0.98
00:05:25.000 The same brain that can very rapidly figure out a political situation or figure out how to catch a baseball is so good at thinking quickly, that's very bad at thinking slowly. 0.99
00:05:37.000 And we can often trip over mental errors.
00:05:42.000 The scientific method is meant to prevent this.
00:05:46.000 But, of course, the scientific method really only applies to a limited number of things.
00:05:54.000 It doesn't work very well with history, for example.
00:06:00.000 And certainly you won't use the scientific method when you're walking to work, when you're trying to figure out which girl to talk to at the bar.
00:06:13.000 You can certainly apply some of the methods to it, but ultimately not everything in our human endeavor is reducible to a hypothesis, a test, and a conclusion.
00:06:28.000 And that's not even getting into Bayes' theorem.
00:06:33.000 And I do trust that all of you guys out there are good Bayesian conspirators.
00:06:39.000 The fact of the matter is that science isn't even the best way to achieve knowledge.
00:06:46.000 It's the best way to make sure you have accurate knowledge.
00:06:49.000 For instance, for most of human history, we all knew that when you dropped something, it fell at a consistent velocity until it hit the ground.
00:06:58.000 Until we proved otherwise.
00:07:02.000 This is a highly unintuitive conclusion.
00:07:07.000 There are certain aspects of the natural world that are highly unintuitive.
00:07:12.000 And science is very good at discovering these.
00:07:15.000 But for life in general, the Bayesian method is far, far better.
00:07:21.000 And if you aren't already, again, link down below to a quick and dirty introduction to Bayesian probability theory.
00:07:32.000 It is a must-read.
00:07:37.000 And by the way, there's some irony you mentioned in Bayes' theorem that will come up shortly.
00:07:45.000 So, science, rationality, logical thinking, this is how we approach the material world.
00:07:51.000 This is how we figure out the world around us.
00:07:58.000 And it undermines a lot of religion.
00:08:02.000 No, the rain dance doesn't work.
00:08:06.000 No, that's not faith.
00:08:09.000 That's what you think is knowledge being proven wrong.
00:08:16.000 As SF Debris said, science is like looking through a dirty window.
00:08:21.000 You know, you think you see a tree through the dirty window, but you clean it a little bit, you get some more information.
00:08:27.000 You say, oh, I was wrong, it's actually a telephone pole.
00:08:31.000 That's what science is.
00:08:33.000 Now, what about faith?
00:08:38.000 Because I know what's coming to mind.
00:08:41.000 There's a lot of examples that are labeled faith that contradict science.
00:08:47.000 Even simply having faith in Jesus, well, that's a scientific question.
00:08:53.000 Did Jesus exist or not?
00:08:57.000 And if that's the way you're looking at it, you don't have faith in Jesus, you have low church belief.
00:09:06.000 Faith involves the supernatural.
00:09:14.000 And the supernatural does not exist in the natural universe, thus the bloody label.
00:09:23.000 When people hear supernatural, the first thing that comes to my mind anyway is a ghost or telekinetic ability or something like that.
00:09:35.000 And the simple fact of the matter is if you saw a ghost, if you interacted with a ghost, that ghost is now having an effect on the natural universe.
00:09:47.000 The ghost is a part of the natural universe. Period.
00:09:57.000 Go read Thermodynamics. It's right in there.
00:10:01.000 That's not what the supernatural is.
00:10:06.000 Supernatural is that which is not part of this reality.
00:10:11.000 And in fact, it very much exists.
00:10:17.000 Just not in the way things exist in the natural world.
00:10:21.000 Down below is another link for you.
00:10:25.000 It's a philosophical proof of the supernatural which has been bopping around the philosophy departments for the better part of a century and nobody has an answer to it.
00:10:36.000 Aside from saying, well, yeah, I guess the supernatural does exist.
00:10:42.000 I'm not going to ruin it for you.
00:10:44.000 You might need to read it a few times and there's further links in the article to give you some background if you need it.
00:10:50.000 But the fact of the matter is the supernatural does exist.
00:10:54.000 It is a reality.
00:10:56.000 It's not quite what you're thinking.
00:11:03.000 This isn't a proof of ghosts and goblins.
00:11:06.000 And quite frankly, anybody out there that actually understands what mathematics is, won't be surprised by this conclusion.
00:11:17.000 Because in addition to this philosophical proof, mathematics is the supernatural.
00:11:24.000 So if you have two oranges and you add two more oranges, how many do you have?
00:11:34.000 That is not mathematics.
00:11:38.000 There is no such thing as a orange or two oranges.
00:11:45.000 You have two unique events going on in space-time there.
00:11:50.000 They are not identical.
00:11:52.000 Even if their cellular structure were identical, they're happening in different physical locations with their own relativistic reality.
00:12:04.000 Math does not exist anywhere in the natural universe.
00:12:10.000 Saying that two oranges plus two oranges equals four oranges is the equivalent to telling little Johnny that if you're nice to people, people will be nice to you.
00:12:25.000 It's that same low level of childlike reasoning to introduce them to higher truths.
00:12:35.000 And yet, nowadays we don't even want to admit that mathematics is a higher truth.
00:12:41.000 Why do you think people are turning away from it in droves and feminist publications are talking about how mathematics is poisoned by the patriarchy? 1.00
00:12:53.000 Because it is one of those supernatural truths.
00:12:55.000 And the thing about supernatural truths is that you can't see them until you see them.
00:13:10.000 Let me tell you a couple of riddles.
00:13:13.000 One is a very bad riddle.
00:13:16.000 And the other one is a very good riddle.
00:13:21.000 Actually, it's not a very good riddle.
00:13:23.000 It's an okay riddle.
00:13:24.000 I'm going to have to ruin these for you.
00:13:26.000 I don't want to ruin any good riddles.
00:13:28.000 Really good.
00:13:30.000 The first riddle goes something like this.
00:13:34.000 What travels with a car goes at the same speed as a car and never leaves the car, doesn't make a sound, never travels on its own, and disappears every night.
00:13:52.000 The answer to this is its shadow.
00:13:57.000 Or it could equally well be the displaced air in front of it.
00:14:02.000 Or it could be just about anything.
00:14:06.000 I remember running into that riddle years ago.
00:14:08.000 And I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure it out.
00:14:11.000 And then when I read shadow, I felt like I'd been slapped in the face.
00:14:16.000 And the reason is, I'm going to tell you a good riddle.
00:14:21.000 Not a great riddle, but a good riddle.
00:14:27.000 There are two switches on the outside of a room.
00:14:32.000 And one of them controls the light bulb inside the room.
00:14:36.000 The other one doesn't.
00:14:38.000 You're only allowed in the room one time.
00:14:41.000 How do you figure out which light switch controls the light bulb?
00:14:48.000 Now the answer to this one is beautiful.
00:14:55.000 What you do is you turn on the light switch.
00:15:00.000 And you leave it on for a good few minutes.
00:15:03.000 And you also have to turn it off before you go inside.
00:15:08.000 I forgot to mention that part.
00:15:10.000 And then you touch the bulb in the room.
00:15:13.000 If the bulb is hot, you know you have the correct switch.
00:15:16.000 If the bulb is still cold, you know you've had the wrong switch.
00:15:20.000 Now I say this is a good riddle, not a great riddle.
00:15:25.000 Because, you know, now we have light bulbs that don't make heat.
00:15:29.000 There's certainly a question, are you supposed to try and peek under the door or what have you.
00:15:34.000 But the reason it's a good riddle is because when you come up with the solution,
00:15:40.000 when you sit there and ponder how do I figure out which is the correct switch,
00:15:43.000 and you eventually stumble upon the idea of touching the light bulb to see if it's hot, 0.98
00:15:49.000 you know that even if that's not what the jerk that wrote the riddle says the answer is, 0.97
00:15:56.000 you know it's the right answer. 0.99
00:15:57.000 You hit the nail on the head.
00:16:00.000 And riddles like that, where you can feel the right answer,
00:16:05.000 you will sit there for half an hour, 45 minutes, pondering this thing,
00:16:09.000 and then bam, the answer pops into your head.
00:16:12.000 And you know it's the right answer.
00:16:19.000 Supernatural sort of like that.
00:16:23.000 You can't actually see it until you see it.
00:16:31.000 But we really haven't got that close to explaining exactly what faith is.
00:16:37.000 The fact that mathematics is an entity that exists,
00:16:41.000 that numbers exist in and of themselves and not within this reality.
00:16:46.000 Not to mention the philosophical proof, which is again down there and I hope you read.
00:16:51.000 We're not really getting to faith yet, are we?
00:16:57.000 Well, let's take another, another aside, another divergence off of this.
00:17:05.000 I'm sure most of you have seen those cats in the Chinese restaurant with the one paw raised up.
00:17:18.000 And you've all heard about the Chinese obsession with luck.
00:17:24.000 Lucky happy go berry juice bar.
00:17:29.000 They, you see luck coming up a lot in the Chinese culture.
00:17:35.000 Alternatively fortune, fortune cookie.
00:17:39.000 And really this is a terrible, terrible translation of the actual concept.
00:17:46.000 For one thing, nobody in Western culture believes in luck aside from a few sad gambling addicts.
00:17:56.000 Luck is a flip of the coin.
00:18:00.000 It's one of those things that happens.
00:18:04.000 The most iconic believer in luck that we have is Two-Face from Batman.
00:18:11.000 And his belief in luck isn't an actual belief in fate.
00:18:17.000 It is, it isn't, it isn't a faith in luck.
00:18:21.000 It is a rejection of faith.
00:18:24.000 He is shouting that there is nothing but the material world and the flip of a coin.
00:18:30.000 And so to accuse the Chinese of believing in luck like a gambler or a self-destructive monster,
00:18:41.000 it infantilizes a culture which is far more profound than that.
00:18:48.000 The Chinese don't believe in luck.
00:18:53.000 Fortune is the better translation of that.
00:19:00.000 And it's not unearned fortune.
00:19:04.000 See, luck, luck of the draw, that's unearned.
00:19:09.000 Sometimes it rains on you, sometimes the sun shines on you.
00:19:14.000 It's just the way life works, right?
00:19:16.000 So, you know, sometimes you win the bet, sometimes you lose the bet.
00:19:20.000 That's not what fortune means to the Chinese.
00:19:24.000 Fortune means that if you run your business properly, you will have a successful business.
00:19:33.000 That cat with its paw raised is a reminder of that.
00:19:41.000 It's saying that despite the whims of fate, and yes, they will buffet you.
00:19:47.000 If you run your business properly, it will succeed.
00:19:53.000 Buddha spoke about the path, about walking the correct path.
00:20:04.000 Inspired by this, you see the, and of course, the Tao, the way, you see books like the Art of Warfare.
00:20:18.000 Know yourself and know thy enemy, and you will be victorious in a hundred battles.
00:20:26.000 Not exactly science, that, now is it?
00:20:32.000 All of these are things pointing towards the ineffable.
00:20:40.000 That thing that you can't measure, you can't prove, that you can't scientifically investigate, that is not part of this world.
00:20:54.000 And in Christendom, we call this grace.
00:21:01.000 It is the same concept that you can't point to directly.
00:21:12.000 You can certainly outline successful business strategies versus unsuccessful strategies.
00:21:19.000 But being a consistently good entrepreneur isn't just about having the strategy.
00:21:28.000 It's about doing the strategy, about walking the path, having the way, and moving with grace.
00:21:42.000 And this is why I told you those two riddles earlier.
00:21:51.000 It's very easy to mistake belief for faith.
00:22:00.000 All of these low church people that are shouting about their belief in the material because of some misinterpreted nonsense they saw.
00:22:12.000 Well, very few of any of them had any faith to begin with.
00:22:21.000 They used their religion as a blunt weapon to attack the material. 1.00
00:22:25.000 They are as materialistic as the worst of atheist cult. 0.95
00:22:35.000 But even those trying to pursue that faith, pursuing that ineffable path, that mathematical certainty that you can't quite put into words, that you have to illustrate through poetry, music, and art, that religion, that religious texts try and point you towards but can never really explain.
00:23:04.000 You know it.
00:23:05.000 You know it when you see it.
00:23:06.000 It's like the riddle.
00:23:08.000 When you get that answer, when you catch a glimpse of that light, of that grace, you know it.
00:23:20.000 And yet it's so easy to mistake your own false beliefs for that as well.
00:23:32.000 That's what faith is.
00:23:33.000 It's a supernatural aspect of reality and it's the pursuit of it.
00:23:39.000 Nowadays we have such a degenerate material morality.
00:23:45.000 There's no absolutes in our worlds anymore.
00:23:49.000 There's no flying buttresses on cathedrals reaching up and towards the infinite.
00:23:58.000 Instead, we've got a tawdry little god that we believe in and tawdry self-serving morals.
00:24:08.000 Well, if it didn't hurt anybody, then it must be okay.
00:24:12.000 What was the material results of this?
00:24:15.000 I don't think it was intentional, but every good character in Martin's Game of Thrones series.
00:24:32.000 Even though he punishes the good, all of the good characters, all of those with grace, all of those that walk the path, that understand the Tao, at least partly, do meet good ends.
00:24:52.000 And it's those that reject it that come to horrors.
00:24:59.000 Final word for the low church theists out there. 0.99
00:25:10.000 If you believe in Jesus, if you believe that there was a historical Jesus, that there was a resurrection, if you believe all these things, you are missing the goddamn point. 0.93
00:25:28.000 Having faith is understanding what that story represents, and that whether or not it exists in the material world, that that metaphor has a supernatural existence. 0.90
00:25:52.000 It is true, even if the literal facts described in that story aren't.
00:26:06.000 Faith is not about facts.
00:26:10.000 The real world is about facts.
00:26:14.000 Driving your car is about facts.
00:26:17.000 Studying history is about facts.
00:26:21.000 When you take your faith and decry, decry the material world, decry science, and then try and dictate what reality is, you're as bad as the Fourth Lateran Council.
00:26:44.000 And you attend a synagogue of Satan.
00:26:46.000 Irini out, folks.