Design your new age religion

Nah that's not a hijack, he created that. More importantly, I don't think he was thinking "how can I write something that will help me expand my wealth" like Constantine or Othman who literally brought the remaining living scribes or their kids into a secret room and came out with the defining book of the religion that's heavily skewed towards their rulership. Those guys had serious plans, the hijacking always happens after there's no founder to debate, it's too messy otherwise.

 

Of course, you're talking about what would effectively be a president and commander in chief. He's going to get greedy with his benefits, but I think his skill was in the writing and being a military tactician, and Othman is the one who turned it into what we know today.

Can you please not taunt the Muslims in this thread? I know you like doing that, and it's going to hijack this thread (ironically).

 

There is certainly a difference between taunting and objective criticism, but this thread is neither about taunting or objective criticism of Islam or Abrahamic faiths. Maybe you can start a thread for that.

Who's the new god? Who's the new Jesus/Mohammed? Who are the new disciples? Which are the new Qurans and Bibles? What's forbidden now?

 

Relatively harmless, but it's a great example of what I was explaining to DD: if you treat it like a belief system, then you can be manipulated in the same way a religious person would.

At the moment, the peer reviewed evidence for veganism and non-veganism is roughly equal so there's no scientific reason to choose one or the other. It's faith-based, so it will end up with faith based institutions like:

Rituals
Magic Concoctions/Potions
Tribalism
Ceremonies
Anxious Smiley Proselytization
Prophets
Holy Books and Books
Basing actions on feelings ("but I just feel better" etc)

Then once you have all that stuff you've basically self-installed the channels through which you will be influenced.

Again it's harmless, but a good micro example I think.

 

Science is science, there's no conflicting science there are just conflicting hypothesis. No one is going about the research with a different methodology.

The issue with science is most can be manipulated with weak scientific EVIDENCE because:

1) A staggering % of humans don't understand the hypothesis testing, peer review parameters, independence of studies and most critically how to assess the current scientific position (for example, anyone who says "there are studies" to prove something, doesn't know what they're talking about). A good example of this is when people say things like "but there was a study that showed XYZ" when they have no context of how many total studies they are and how they're broken up - this is classic anecdotal evidence that goes viral, because the people who don't understand these two things have nothing left to say.

2) Here is where the publishing part becomes critical: no one understands logical fallacies and they will get twisted and tied up in it. These are the people who are quick to reach for the "Agree to disagree" card when there is still a lot of garbage to sift out to get to the core discussion.

With these two patterns rampant everywhere in the world, you are right, it's possible to hijack science so that those who are following its rules become a minority and hence uninfluential. I suspect this goes on a lot in the agreements between large corporations/institutions/states and universities.

 

Each individual study you're referencing followed a scientific method, however the collective belief that it is better for us is faith-based because the evidence is about 50-50. All the things you're citing are pieces of evidence. Right now, you simply can't amass a greater quantity or quality of evidence than the competing argument.

Does that make sense? If you cite 50% of the total peer reviewed evidence for veganism, it will be more information than you can share in one debate, but it is still just 50%, and someone else has 50% too (if it's two sided, which it rarely is). At that point, anyone who chooses a side is not being scientific, it is a coin flip, faith based.

If one day we reached a point where 90% of peer reviewed studies are saying it's better for you to be vegan, then you can say: what I practice is not faith based. We are certainly not at that threshold yet, even if you believe someone is influencing the science by X%.

When the day comes that the evidence you list constitutes most of the peer reviewed science, on that day, you are not faith based anymore. Right now, however, your source/root belief is faith based, and that's not my opinion.

 

Has nothing to do with ethics. You are taking what you see as a likely scenario (i.e. ethics: we will all be better off) and calling it ethics. That is just a theory that hasn't been tested because there's no vegan society, and then the next step would be for that vegan society to demonstrate your theory in a representative sample.

Ethics are about what humans think they should do in the absence of science. It is non-scientific all around.

There's a really easy test you can run here. If 90% of the peer reviewed science said you should eat meat, would you change or would you assert something must be wrong (i.e. corruption or bias or lack of foresight, etc)? The answer to that question will tell you if you're faith based or not.

I don't see the issue honestly. If there's no data, we're all going by faith, instinct and anecdotal evidence. It's not a smear when there's no solid science to begin with.