RE: Asgard and Archaea
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Let me respond by stating I strongly agree that life isn't mechanical, merely the sum of it's parts. I personally consider humanity to be sacred.
Neither do I consider genes to be some kind of ultimate blueprint, particularly in view of epigenetics and the glimpses researchers are beginning to get of gene expression. Further, I also expect that numerous genes have more than one mode of action. In other words just because it can be shown that a gene affects some particular thing, that does not mean it doesn't also affect others.
Generally, I do not consider the sciences mature at all, but that we are merely beginning to grasp some potential in scientific understanding.
I don't consider viruses and bacteria as generally threatening either. Pathogens are subject to the fact of evolution, and one aspect of that is that any organism that degrades it's environment reduces it's prospects for survival. A virus that is immediately utterly lethal almost completely eliminates it's ability to spread by killing it's hosts before much opportunity to be transmitted can be taken. The more lethal a pathogen, the less virulent it can be (the less it can spread).
The vast majority of viruses and bacteria aren't pathogens, at least not human pathogens, and some, such as I discuss in the OP here, are beneficial. It is not commonly understood that bifidobacteria in our guts is critical to human health, for example, and without our gut fauna we'd just die, unable to digest food or prevent infections.
However, there are pathogens, and that is why we have immune systems. Evolution creates a tension between host immunity and pathogen virulence and lethality that has been ongoing since life arose.
I do not only consider material, mechanistic factors real, but reason is the basis for understanding. Rationality is not materialism. Regarding cognition, consciousness, or how persons relate to bodies, I have strongly criticized the view that we even have a word to describe it. We are at a laughably rudimentary state of understanding what it is, and it is provable that consciousness continues when we are unconscious, such as when we sleep. This exemplifies the absolutely inadequate understanding presently attained by scientists studying it.
It is very, very hard for most people to honestly state they do not know, and the more educated and specialized they are, the more difficult it is to overcome hubris and not overstate confidence in their understanding. People allow insuperable speculation to overcome superable reason. For this reason I consider humility to be the foundation of wisdom, and try to carefully differentiate between my speculations regarding what I believe or think, and what I consider factual and have confidence is real.
It is useful to keep in mind that science is based on falsification of what can be disproved, not proving some theory is true. Every scientific theory will be found to be false in some way, and science will progress in that field when that happens. That's how science progresses. Therefore I try to be open minded regarding my beliefs, and prepared to change my mind when something I believe is fact is falsified. If I do not do that I will believe what is not factual, and that will cause me to act contrary to what is right. I do not want to wrong people, so I strive to correct my understanding as reason allows. This is why I find criticism so valuable, because that is what best falsifies things I erroneously believe.
For the most part, I can agree with what I find as overriding statements in your comment.
I think it is a paradox, in a way. As I noted in the other comment, "facts" are a word that comes from the origin "to do ", they are therefore always open to attack.
The moment you accept a fact as disprovable, you are following a logic given by others (which coincides with your logic, otherwise you would not be able to follow it. However, all inner logic ultimately follows conscience and what one subjectively deems significant).
Our entire modernity prides itself on being fact-oriented when it comes to research and experimentation, but it shies away like the devil shies away from holy water from naming the role of the scientific experimenter (as observer and evaluator of his work) as a decisive influencer on the success and failure of his research and experiments. The objective observer does not exist. Objectivity is completely excluded in human social interaction. You would otherwise have to have someone observing the observer, who in turn is observed by an observer, and so on. (I assume you will name blind and double blind studies, but they are not saving from many other experiments where nothing is done blindly).
I am not negating your statement, I am merely mentioning its weakness, but also accepting its strengths. But I differ little in my own attitude from yours, I would say.
While we all have biases, these biases do not completely exclude objectivity. Objectivity should not be considered only an absolute, but is a range. We are all more or less objective regarding the variety of things there are, depending on our beliefs.
Some of us strive to be utterly objective, and some of us strive to be utterly faithful to a given dogma. I strive to eschew the latter because I believe we are incapable of ascertaining understanding of the reality we are part of due to our limitations. I may be accused of taking objectivity as dogma I am faithful to, just as I note that Atheism is as insuperable and dogmatic is every other religion. Every argument that faith in God is insuperable factually also can be turned around and apply to belief there is no God.
You are right there are weaknesses in my rationality.
But that is exactly what prejudices do, they preclude objectivity, because otherwise they were not prejudices, i.e. preconceived views, but an open result. A result remains open as long as you leave it open. If one "closes" it, then one has subjectively agreed, nothing more. There is nothing wrong with that, one should just be aware that it is so.
I state that objectivity is not needed to move in relationships. It is, radically speaking, even irrelevant, to want to establish objectivity within human relationships and to even try is the horse's mouth here. I must first completely destroy my belief in objectivity in human interaction so that, relieved of this burden, I can talk to each other on a reasonable basis. One cannot "be a bit objective", objectivity is understood as absolute and is also applied in this way, trying to beat another's arguments to death by bringing his or her "false" subjectivity into the field against one's own "correct" subjectivity (backed up by "objectivity").
I consider it a misapprehension to give objectivity this relevance.
HaHa! Yes, I must always laugh at the claim to be an atheist. :D chuckle.
Nothing could be less true, IME. A lot of things have almost killed me. Only one thing has ever made me want to die, that most dangerous of things, a relationship. The utter lack of objectivity produces behaviours that are obviously crazy. Those people are pretty easy to avoid. What's far more dangerous is people that claim to be objective and aren't. If I believe their claims and trust them to view their skills and work objectively, and instead they're arrogant and conceited, they can ignore dangers that put me at risk, cost me money, or do harm to people I am trying to do good for.
Objectivity is born of humility, and part of the foundation of wisdom. Bias is always a negative, and extreme bias is obviously irrational. Many scientific papers are not reproducible, and bias is a terrible problem that degrades the quality of research, clouds our understanding, and reduces the prosperity and felicity of humanity.
Pretty hard to overestimate it's cost, or of the benefits of objectivity.
Heinz von Förster once put it this way- I guess, it is mostly him who influenced my stance on the topic of objectivity (I watched all what is available about him and some books as well as texts and interviews with him):
What you say about "objectivity" actually is more telling about you as a person than about objectivity :) Same counts for me, of course.
While none of us can be perfectly objective, as von Forster notes, that does not preclude us from making observations that can usefully contribute. Bias is a terrible problem, stemming largely from hubris in science today, that does all too often produce irreproducible research. But it does not necessarily render us incapable of producing reproducible work. Not being 100% objective does not prevent us from contributing to understanding by creating falsifiable hypotheses.
Good science isn't necessarily right. Being provably wrong is really useful too, because it enables us to eliminate false hypotheses. We only need to be objective enough to be reproducible to be scientifically productive. Supposing that because we cannot be perfectly objective we cannot produce useful science is an impossible standard that demonstrably cannot apply to human endeavor. All we need to do is be reproducible, and that can be possible even if we are biased, as long as we are not so biased that we proceed to make assumptions that prevent testing our hypotheses.
A very significant point. What scientist or scientific assistant would openly admit to being biased?
This is why many say that today's science has acquired a sacrosanct status, according to which the concept of fact is used like sliced bread, and compare this with previous dogmatic views such as those of ecclesiastical sovereignties.
That being said, science alone, based on empirical data, is not the holy grail it is stylised to be. Analysis is not everything in life. Knowledge has limits and someone who does not want to humbly acknowledge this is not a good scientist in my eyes.
Apart from measurable fields, rays, frequencies, etc., etc., there are tangible experiences in the human context, such as those I described, which are based on singing, movement and music and about which you have said nothing so far. The arts (anything in the realm of spiritual consciousness) are, in my view, relegated to their own corner from school and university life and are not really considered (or their work published or funded) by natural scientists as influencers of health and disease (or more generally, "consciousness").
To put it bluntly and in terms of a stylistic exaggeration: art students go to an MRI and have themselves examined, they undergo surgical procedures, get on aeroplanes and use modern technologies. But do science students also go to a séance, have a phenomenological family constellation done, try the effects of LSD, hypnosis, are curious about metaphysics, philosophy?
All of them. Honest people should acknowledge they have bias. I follow Dark Horse on Odysee, the Weinstein's. I distinctly recall them noting that researchers need to ensure their research is reproducible, because that enables bias to be overcome. Different researchers have different biases in many respects, and these biases can be compensated for through undertaking the same specific actions to conduct experiments - or are universal and shared between all that conduct the experiment.
There are certain biases that are universal to humanity, and are therefore difficult to overcome experimentally, which limits the ability of the scientific method to advance in ways such biases preclude.
There are scientific means of measuring the health benefits of the arts. Both prayer and music (and probably more) have been shown to be beneficial to health through experiments that quantify health outcomes and contrast control groups with groups that use prayer or listen to music. However, this does not mean that artists' feelings about their art, nor religious dogmas, are verified. Experiments that differentiate and can falsify specific predictions have not been able to be designed for those purposes, AFAIK.
I doubt you would be able to conduct experiments that seek to falsify such dogma today in any academic environment. People get stabby over such things. Ask Salman Rushdie.