They aren't truth in made up circumstance, well done.

if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.
and Yes science seeks truth, but science can never be absolute because previously unknow variable may modify the result.

Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."

This is such a weird north American perspective, since most "religion" doesn't even pretend to be providing scientific answers to any questions, so in most cases there's nothing for science to "destroy".

"Young Earth Creationism" and similar attempts to turn religion into "scientific theory" were derided as laughable by Christian thinkers themselves 1600 years ago.

>“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

>Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

It's not a new issue, and religious thought has generally focused on the cultural, ethical, value-based and institutional issues of religion for exactly that reason.

It's only in the modern-day US where you see that weird attempt to revive readings of the Bible that have been laughed at for thousands of years by Christians themselves.

Because they're either falling for typical pseudo-history of philosophy nonsense or are making fun of those who do.

>Rousseau framed the house, Hegel finished it!

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> Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?

I consider truth seeking a colossal waste of time. Since not only is there good reason to assume we'll never find it, but also very good reason to assume it is fundamentally impossible to find. If we all live in a simulation, how can you ever hope to find that out? All we can do is describe the rules of that simulation, since that's what we can observe and interact with. What's outside that simulation is completely out of our reach.

And beside, it's not like any other form of knowledge seeking will ever bring you truth either. Most of them can't even describe the rules of this simulation.

Those pockets of religion and science exist because religious fanatics have no incentive to make their religion destructive. In the US, there is an incentive to use religion to control people and drag them toward their ideologies. In Iran, religious fanatics hijacked the 1979 revolution to gain large amounts of power in the Middle East and have railed the Iranian people since.

Religion is so vague that it can be used by well-meaning people or ill-intentioned people. The ill-intentioned people in a few large and powerful countries will make it easier to accelerate the downfall of religion everywhere, which is a net good.

Edit: Typo

> And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?

Because it works. Simple as that. You don't even have to believe in it for it to work. Just look around you, look at the computer you are currently typing on. How do you think that came into existence? I have yet to see any other form of knowledge seeking produce anything even remotely as impressive as that. Heck, even if you take the Bible as literally true, there is nothing in there half as impressive as what science has produced. Having Jesus running around and making some blind people see is pretty unimpressive accomplishment compared to say the discovery of germ theory of disease.

Living in a way that is anywhere near to that of slaves is a state of poverty. From clothes to cutlery to tools or drugs there were plenty of things to have in the 19th century. In the South with no one to buy the stuff, there was no need for people there to make or sell the stuff either. That is a big part of why that region was a lot poorer than the North.

> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.

Sure, but what has that got to do with truth? What is meant by truth? That you have a coherent model of practical tinkering(like I said before) has little to do with truth, especially existential truths. If we are in an illusion, for example, the models and the experiments would still be useful and practical, but they would not be truth.

> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.

No. What is reality? Is reality accessible to sense-experience? How do you know? We have scientific evidence to the contrary. Naive realism is dead and it's not coming back. Science is useful for practical reasons, but the claim of truth or existential truths is just ignorant(I don't mean this in a rude way). It doesn't ask the questions nor posits to have answers, all the questions it makes are of an immediate sort to the sense-experience to gain control of the environment and from that we make models of prediction. Truth is not in-built into science, only observation, community trust, experimentation and on a later stage theoretical models around prediction.

Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?

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Yes, but it still maintains that it can find the truth and that understanding objective reality is possible.

Even then, you've arrived at your conclusion through begging the question again - we should use scientific reason because it is reasonable. The truth of science presupposes that the science will be correct because we have used scientific reason to understand the world.

And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?

> "science is the way for humans to gain an objective understanding of the world" is equally an ideological position?

No, because it works. It's a completely pragmatic position. If you don't believe in it, you are free to try to replicate and falsify it. Science does not claim to know the truth, quite the opposite, science being wrong is a fundamental part of it, but it has the mechanisms to slowly filter out all the things it gets wrong and replace them with something more accurate.

> I'm quite confused by your intentions, as you seem to be ranting against the article,

I'm not "ranting" against the article as much as I'm pointing out how vacuous it is.

>but only provided 1 instance on your position about Postmodernism, which is what my entire post is about?

Who cares about my position on postmodernism? What I'm really suggesting is that both you and the author of the article aren't informed enough on what postmodernism even is to adequately critique it.

> Im guessing you downvoted this also because you don't like the source? >

I don't up/downvote on reddit in general, so no.

> I encourage you to look at the beliefs of postmodernism, especially on Britannica, as they number the beliefs and explain them.

Why would I look at a generalist encyclopedia, or even worse, a wholly unrelated evolutionary biology blog that relies on unserious polemics against "postmodernism" like Sokal and Bricmont's work or the output of a known grifter like Helen Pluckrose?

If I really wanted to deep-dive into postmodernism (something I'd have to do before critiquing it), I'd start with the SEP article on it. Or some threads on /r/askphilosophy. Or selected chapters from Garry Gutting's French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, or Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, or Cuck Philosophy's Postmodernism FAQ.

>I also would like to know your position on Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a vacuous term that serves more as a bogey man for reactionary pundits than as a meaningful umbrella term for philosophical positions. Instead, why don't you pick out a "postmodern" philosopher -- either someone who embraced the term like Lyotard or, to a lesser degree, Richard Rorty) or one of those that get regularly accused of being postmodernists, like Derrida or Foucault -- and work through their output?

>And I also do not have any comment on Karl Marx, the Enlightenment period, how Postmodernism began, World War 2 technology, or anything other than Does Postmodernism make sense? Provide your explanation" I have already posted my answer, twice.

Why do you think it is wise to divorce a supposed set of assumptions and conclusions from the historical context out of which they arose?

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> What do you mean by truth?

Here is the experiment I ran, here is how to reproduce it, and here are the numbers I got. This formula is the best way to approximate the results and this is how tall my error bars are. That kind of stuff. The numbers aren't fudged, the math doesn't contain any deliberate mistakes, stuff like that. That doesn't mean the formula always gives the right predictions or that the experiment was free of mistakes. But it means you can go and try to replicate it. You don't have to believe the gospel. It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.

> But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science.

That is utter bollocks. Humans like to hear pleasurable stories, they don't care about gaining an understanding. If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.

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I mean, don't you think "science is the way for humans to gain an objective understanding of the world" is equally an ideological position? The idea that science is truth begs the question - look at all the truth that science has given us... as long as we accept that science is the only way to understand truth and that non-science is not the truth.

What do you mean by truth? What has science to do with truth? Science is not aimed for truth. It is aimed at models of prediction and practical tinkering. At best it may speak a very limited, localized and shallow truth. But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science. They have different goals in mind. Science never says "this is true" because it doesn't seek it

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Isn't that mostly a marketing issue? It's easier to sell lies than selling the truth. And science isn't even doing a good job at marketing itself. Meanwhile religion has hardcore indoctrination from young age. On top of that humans seem to have a hard time shaking of that indoctrination later in life, you have to wait a couple of generations before science and technology can have any real effects.

That said, I have a hard time seeing religion continuing without major changes. The wonders science and technology has brought us far outpace anything religion could even imagine. And that's going to get a lot more clear in the near future with the rise of AI systems, when your magic human soul turns into something your iPhone can run. The last bit of magic will vanish from this universe and we'll have a reasonable good explanation of almost everything. Religion just isn't compatible with that, you need some mystical unknown and science has been pushing that further and further away.

The art world is already facing that problem, where the magical human creativity is not just getting replaced by AI, but completely outpaced. Paintings that takes a human hours, the AI can crank out in 10sec. Give it another few years, and we'll have completely AI generated movies, with AI written scripts, AI generated voices and video.

Mathematicians didn’t decide that 5 is a number.

The fact that you can pick up one rock, then another rock, then another, then another, then another, then stop, means that five is a number.

If some government decided that they were only going to register numbers in binary, or base 3, or base 4, then 5 would still be a number, it would just be written differently (say, as 101, or as V, or as ○, or 五… but it’s still the same number).

Physicists, artists, whoever you’d consider the “authority” on color didn’t decide what wavelengths of light are visible to the human eye.

When light enters the majority of human eyes that are considered “healthy”, the rods and cones in those eyes notice things about the wavelengths of the light, and send signals to the brains they’re connected to, and call it “colors”.

Doctors could decide that actually, colorblind people are the healthy ones, and seeing color is a disease. That wouldn’t change the fact that the majority of human eyes recognize light with 550nm wavelengths as a thing that English calls “green” (some languages don’t have a separate word for “green”, and use the same word for 470nm (“blue”) light as green).

(Tipping point of human biology after which point, humans who can’t detect red outnumber those who can).

"Writing more convincing histories" is a bit suspect.

Fiction always makes more sense than reality, which is full of accidents, luck, and human irrationality.

It’s not about what I say or what they say, or what anyone says, it’s about the effect that it has on others.

I don’t think 2022 standards are that much better than 1940 standards or 1840 standards, or 740 BCE standards, or Ancient Roman standards or Tang Chinese standards or Viking standards or Aztec standards or whatever else.

I think all the systems are broken — still, today, everywhere. and need to be reevaluated.

Elephant parable.

They’re all broken in a lot of different ways. Only by bringing the whole world and the present and the past together and honestly examining without bias and without discomfort, can a positive system be built.