Re:Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes
by loup-vaillant on Saturday January 22, 2011 @11:25AM
(#2130562)
Err… I agree. I said that choosing a morality is outside the scope of science. But I agree that science can (and probably should) study morality. See Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is trying to build a Friendly AI. He will probably need a complete theory of Intelligence and Morality to do that.
Your other points are related to http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Anti-epistemology and http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/ (I suspect you know about these, but others may find them interesting.)
I agree with your real point, though; what I'm saying is that religion in a class of its own, because the religious make it (or should I say 'make it up') to be that way.
(Related to this point, I do think that one day religion will be explained: when we fully understand the brain, how thoughts develop etc.; at that point, religion will be shown to be just a figment of our (rather, 'their') imagination. Maybe it served an evolutionary role once, who knows. Of course it won't give us insight in the nature of 'god', it will merely show that 'god' is a fabrication of our unconsciousness).