It's sorta hard to do it the other way, since after all, how do you verify which religious truths are true or not? Also, which truth from the myriads of religions should science choose to dispense?
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do they go together?
- Thread starter assyrianpride
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It's sorta hard to do it the other way, since after all, how do you verify which religious truths are true or not? Also, which truth from the myriads of religions should science choose to dispense?
Ah, but this is treating religion like science, "which one has verifiable, peer-reviewed credence". This is exactly why religion has something to offer that scientisim cannot offer itself. My point.
Since you believe religion can benefit from science, than you should be able to say religion has something to offer that science cannot. Both means both. Unless you think it should be science only to replace religion?
I never said that religion has nothing to offer people. My point was that it really has nothing to offer to science.
But my original response was to Kilogore Trout's statement that,
"They certainly should not be kept separate. When religious institutions accept and communicate scientific truths to its adherents, everyone benefits. For example, the Catholic church acknowledging that the Earth is not the center of the universe or that biological evolution is a factual and verifiable process."
To which I asked what about the other way around too? Clearly, since the context was not about science teaching religion about religion, but that how scientific knowledge can be of benefit to those with religious views, and KT acknowledges that everyone in religion benefits from this, then it should follow that religious teaching benefits those who are science-only thinkers, right? It has nothing to do with religion teaching science, but religion bringing the insights of religion to those of a science bent. So my question then to him, and you as well, is in what ways that is true.
If religion and science are compatible, then shouldn't religion be embraced as well as science? What does religion offer than science can't? That's my question.
I was taking the analogy literally, as in, science provides this piece of information, that is demonstrably true, and religion can aid science (and therefore people) by helping disperse this information.
Hence my reply. What analagous sort of information does religion have to offer, that is a demonstrable universal truth for all people? While it is possible that there are such universal truths out there, accessible only by religion, how are we to know which they are? How are we to separate the chaff from the wheat?
That doesn't really follow. I mean, dogs and cats are compatible in the same household, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have both a dog and a cat.
For some, a cat might suit their lifestyle better. For others, a dog might better match their personality.
I think that religion offers people a sense of legacy, of continuity. I am struggling to find the word that fits what I am thinking: It's the sense of being a part of something that is eternal, something that existed before you and will exist after you, in which you were and are an integral part.
I think this is important for humans, with our knowledge of death, and our desire for meaning and purpose.
I think religion is one of the main ways, and maybe even the easiest of ways (and I don't say that in a derogatory sense; I mean it more like "efficient"), to gain that sense of place, purpose, and meaning.
But I do not think that religion is the only way in which to gain this. Mythology can evoke those feelings, and used to provide an extremely important facet of ancient civilizations. Occupation, particularly one in which you are a part of something bigger, can provide this. Philosophical thought, spirituality, art, science (ever watch Nova?), communing with nature, etc, I think all these can be avenues, provide glimpses.
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This is true in that religion can translate that knowledge into potentially practical ways of living, or integrating into ones own spiritual path (I'm fully acknowledging the dysfunction that also exists in it). As a bit of an aside, but related, philosophy and culture also does this, which is why today science in the popular imagination through the advent of the Internet has taken on the flavor of Scientism, or what was once popular in science a couple hundred years ago Positivism.
This dissemination of knowledge of the power of science is taken to philosophical, and I'll add religious dimensions through the medium of the Internet and other popular authors of the neo-atheist camps. This too is a sort of ad hoc institution for religious/philosophical views for the masses, like religious institutions are in dispersing social interpretations of things like science. "Science has the answers!", is really just a replacement for "God has the answers!" of many religious organizations. In many ways, it's just like many of the offshoot Protestant religions where they disperse loose interpretations of highly complex issues as simple facts.
I digress, for the moment. The point is that it really is going to require knowledgeable leaders, well-rounded educations on many levels in religious institutions to offer anything meaningful to the understanding of what science is revealing on a human, social, cultural, and spiritual level. And that holds equally true in camps of philosophy in disseminating knowledge to the masses, intellectuals, as opposed to the likes of Richard Dawkins and company.
Well, that comes to what I said originally to you. You, and you are certainly not alone in this, are expecting religious truth to follow the same sort of objective analysis that is used in science. That's the failing of religion to try to play on that same field! They are not seeing what they have, and instead are trying to compete, to accommodate that sort of mindset, as opposed to showing that truth in the religious context is an internal truth - not some objective "out there" sort of thing you can call "true" as you test it in a lab!
How are to separate the wheat from the chaff? Look within. Oh, that religion would find itself enough to teach that.
Oh, but they are not animals outside of you. They are part of yourself. It's trying to find inner balance, mind and spirit; objective and subjective realities in every living individual. I, we, and it. Subject, intersubjective, and objective realities. Every one of these exist within us. We are dogs and cats, not one or the other. How much we feed one over the other does not mean it doesn't exist. It just means we're out of balance. All reason and no heart makes Jack a dull boy.
It does offer that in way of it playing a part of social structures. The word you might be looking for is lineage, BTW. It is true people try to use these structures to create a sense of continuity for themselves. But that is not unique to religion to be sure. All manner of things, such as creating a legacy for oneself through their family name does the same thing. There is a term for this in Existentialism and it's called immortality projects.
The one thing that religion offers that nothing else does is the contemplative path - if they offer it at all!
One could argue its a substitute for self-realization.
But art and spirituality give glimpses into the eternal and timeless. Therefore it is more than just an immortality project. It's a glimpse into our Self, beyond time, beyond culture, beyond all those things we normal identify with and seek to preserve through all these projects as substitutes.
That's what religion could offer, if it could find itself. That's what it offers that science cannot, nor should try to.
Odi Brassicum
Unicorn trainer.
I'd like to suggest that art and spirituality be considered separately. Art, such as a painting or statue of piece of music can give a feeling of awe and wonder and a glimpse beyond the present time and culture. I have seen various definitions of spirituality and the feelings and emotions attributed to or associated with it but they do not correspond with my understandings of reality. For this reason I'd say that religion can offer spirituality and those feelings associated with it but should not be allowed to claim the feelings invoked by art.
As for science, it too can provide feelings of awe and wonder as it reveals the beauty and complexity of the nature of the natural universe.
I do realize they are different, but they are similar in the way that they do what I say which is to reach beyond the mundane, and are themselves not immortality projects, trying to create substitutes for that knowledge of oneness and unity in ourselves - the spiritual. Art is is a vehicle for spiritual transcendence, or an expression of the spiritual.
I am curious what these definitions you are hearing are? I would definitely disagree that it's not the same. Will you please elaborate for me on what "spiritual feelings" are that you understand?
BTW, what do you think the Sistine Chapel is all about?
It can of course. I agree. But those feelings transcend comprehension. And comprehension is what science is about. Something else, not reason, is happening. And that is the spiritual.
"The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness."
~Albert Einstein
~Albert Einstein
Odi Brassicum
Unicorn trainer.
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I do not know what "spiritual feelings" are. I have heard them described as feelings which affecting the soul and as feelings caused by a holy place.
I do not know what "spiritual feelings" are. I have heard them described as feelings which affecting the soul and as feelings caused by a holy place.
I visited the Sistine Chapel last August. It seems to be mainly about taking money from tourists. Looking at the faces of my fellow visitors it was impossible to tell whether they were marveling at Michelangelo's 500 year old art, as I was, or experiencing something spiritual, which I was not.
I disagree. The study of human emotional responses to stimuli are definitely part of what science is about.
I was asking him as he used that expression. To me spirituality may or may not have feelings, or emotions, as part of it. I consider it more as awareness, and through that there may have certain types of emotional responses, or not.
Yes of course, I should have realized that would be there too. I was just at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan a few months ago, and it was beyond annoying to see the tourists (which I was too mind you), having their friends take photos of them next to these works of art. I mean seriously... just take the moment in, in silence, for god's sake. Anyway, my point is that what Michelangelo painted, at least originally was about the images transporting the spirit to the heavens, to take one beyond the mundane, ordinary, and to see a glimpse of something higher. That is true of all true art, religious or otherwise.
I suppose, I would have had a hard time have my consciousness expanded with the clueless tourists swarming around me. But still, even at MoMA I had such moments being face to face with the grand work of Jackson Pollock, my favorite artist. I literally entered into his work, taking me somewhere within. And that is the point of art. That is the spiritual experience.
Is science about the inner knowledge of the experience through direct insight, or trying to talk about it by analysis. Tell me if someone describing that Pollock painting I saw would ever do what the art itself does?
If you read Einstein's quote I added earlier, you will see he says that science cannot do that, not even close.
"To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms..."
Those dull faculties are science itself. It is only in transcending some analysis of it that we move into the actual reality of it, not just some conceptual model, some lines, some stick figures on a piece of paper.
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Odi Brassicum
Unicorn trainer.
I understand what you are saying and agree. I think it's the definition of "something higher" where we disagree.
I believe we experience the same types of feeling in response to great art but we describe them differently. I think you call them "spiritual" because you believe in the existence of spirits or a spirit realm and I don't call them "spiritual" because I don't think spirits exist.
Adding the word "inner" in front of "knowledge" makes no sense to me because all it suggests that some knowledge could be "outer". I understand all knowledge as "inner". Therefore a scientific study of knowledge and knowledge acquisition from experience are entirely normal. Is it possible to gain an insight to the artist's state of mind at the time of creation of a painting? Jackson Pollock seemed to think so. But can science study this process? Perhaps psychology might, if you consider it a science.
It does not matter what one scientist says that science can or cannot do. Quoting Einstein in this context looks like an argument from authority.
That would be an interesting discussion. Would say that the cognitive functions of the brain in humans is of a 'higher' order than that of a lemur?
That would be an incorrect assumption.
I recall one time with a good friend of mine who identifies with French Existentialism, that is atheistic Existentialism, reads Sartre and Camus as his idols. He and I were sitting outside at a restaurant alongside a river one pleasant early Fall afternoon. We were having an engaging discussion about human spirituality, speaking of works of art, sculpture, the pursuit of ideals, as opposed to simply living life in the mundane, a "stone breaker" who never contemplates the higher reaches of the human spirit in life.
As we were repeatedly using the term spirituality in our conversation, both he and I, a couple women sitting nearby overheard us and injected, "It's so unusual to hear to men speaking about spirituality. I'm really into spirituality too," then she came over and started talking with us. What followed was a conversation about her crystals and pyramids and channeling spirits, and whatnot. My friend and I laughed to ourselves afterwards how people so misunderstand what is meant by spirituality, and make these sorts of assumptions.
Those sorts of things are mere symbols, mythological cultural artifacts that point to something far deeper within us, something that transcends all categories or objects. It has nothing to do things like ghosts and whatnot.
By inner I mean as the subject, as opposed to as the object. Of course all knowledge resides in the brain, but I am referring to a knowledge of self, as opposed to a knowledge of the outer world. Introspection is different that looking at an object outside yourself. "Know thyself" is inner knowledge. Then, how does one go about this? By using the tools of an empiric-analytical science? No. That will only tell you surface features, not the interior landscapes.
Well psychology, yes.
What I espouse is an epistemological pluralism. There are different ways of knowing, different and more appropriate means of knowing. "Know thyself", is not going to be had through looking at my brain with a EEG hooked up to it, or understanding how it processes information. You cannot know me that way either. In order to know me, you have to interview me. Then you have to attempt to interpret that which I expose in an enormously complex layers of subjective frameworks within your own mind to get an approximate picture of me. To know yourself, can be even more muddy as we are constantly interfacing with self-projected models of out egoic-self identity created against a backdrop of the "other", and so on. In short, the tools of empiric-analytic science is woefully inadequate to look within. I'll just leave it there for now.
Of course it's not an argument from authority to prove some imagined spirit-world, but to show that there is something that even a true scientist like Einstein could recognize that science cannot do! I think my favorite quote from an author, Carl Sagan, appears in the movie Contact where Jodie Foster's character is propelled through a wormhole to see the splendor of the universe. She says in rapt awe, "No - no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should've sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea.".
Argument from authority, or a fact of human capacities to comprehend? Science is a tool for comprehension. The universe is incomprehensible, and is rather, reality that is, is apprehended - not comprehended. That is the thrust, the drive, the pull of human spirituality; to apprehend, to know, that which is beyond comprehension.
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Odi Brassicum
Unicorn trainer.
I don't know. I have not read any research comparing the cognitive functions of the brains of humans and lemurs.
I think I see our difficulty here. It appears to me that you are describing introspection in a spiritual context but I can only understand introspection in a psychological context. Whilst I don't think that the process can be observed by an outsider, I do think that I can examine my own thoughts, metal processes and emotional states in a systematic, logical and scientific manner.
I agree with you.
My mistake, I meant to say it was an "appeal to authority" and I think you just did it again.
No that doesn't sound right to me. The entire universe may be incomprehensible at present but an ever increasing amount of it is becoming comprehensible. I see no difference between the apprehension of the universe and the apprehension of reality, assuming you are using "apprehension" to mean "understanding" rather than "fear".
I will refer to things as "higher" when they are more complex, and subsequently have greater depth to them. They are more complex because the include and transcend the 'lower' levels. For instance a molecule is more complex than an atom, because it includes atoms but is a higher order in itself. The body is more complex that cells, it is of higher order, etc. The mental is higher than the material because it transcends, but includes the physical into its higher, more complex order. Subsequently there is much greater depth, inclusion in the mind, than there is in rock.
Introspection is looking within. Doing what you describe has a certain degree of value, but it too is only looking at the surface structures of those inner processes, and consequently, most often, and speaking from experience, fail to penetrate beyond those to see the nature of what is really going on. Reality is far, far more subtle than its surface structures. So when I speak of "know thyself", I do not mean looking in a mirror and examining your facial pours. It means to know who you are behind all the masks we identify as "me". All of them, even "me" itself.
You're right when you say if I mean it in the spiritual sense, as opposed to just an analytic, I am referring to the eye of contemplation. Stilling all the thoughts of the active mind and emptying yourself into the Void. It's there you become acquainted with what has always been there, laying underneath all that debris we clutter reality with which we assume is reality. At the very best, at the highest attainment of our reasoning and analytical glances at the world and ourselves, the best we get is a two-dimensional model, not a living breathing organism called Life, so to speak.
You invalidiate that a man of deep scientific mind has thoughts like this bears no value to this discussion? You may cite a logic fallacy if you like, but I see it as a valid recognition that someone who knows science on his level can recognize its limits better than you or me.
Please don't go the path of shooting logic fallacies to the point I have to pull out the logic fallacy 'argumentum ad logicam', or the "logic fallacy logic fallacy", which assumes that because an argument appears to contain a logic fallacy that the conclusion must be wrong. I think Eisenstein understands what science can or cannot do a hell of lot better than you or me. And that is my only point in referring to him here.
It will never be comprehensible, because we are not outside of it. We are within it and thus can never see it objectively. We are part of it.
Now to explain what I mean in saying the difference between comprehension and apprehension, I found this which explains it very well:
The words apprehension and comprehension refer to two different mental processes of grasping or taking hold of experience. Apprehension is the ability to understand something by relying on tangible or concrete experience. A simple example is when you touch the fire it will burn your finger. This experience can lead you apprehending that you should not touch fire. Whereas comprehension does not require concrete experience to understand, it is the ability to understand through reliance on conceptual interpretation and symbolic representation. Comprehension means the complete process of understanding, to perceive, interpret and process knowledge. In the examination point of view a comprehension means an exercise characterized by questions based on a short paragraph or text. A comprehension is to test the aptitude of the student.
Linguists tend to define comprehension as understanding and deciding. They define apprehension as understanding and hesitating. It is thus for sure that comprehension ends in decision whereas apprehension ends in hesitation. Comprehension at time paves the way for discussion too, whereas apprehension paves the way for imagination.
Read more: Difference Between Apprehension and Comprehension | Difference Between
Linguists tend to define comprehension as understanding and deciding. They define apprehension as understanding and hesitating. It is thus for sure that comprehension ends in decision whereas apprehension ends in hesitation. Comprehension at time paves the way for discussion too, whereas apprehension paves the way for imagination.
Read more: Difference Between Apprehension and Comprehension | Difference Between
Science is only, will ever only be, conceptual. It is nothing but relying on symbolic representation, mathematical formulas, etc. It it not about the experience of living itself. And that can only be done though launching yourself into it in direct experience. We can "know" the world beyond science and reason. In fact, we have to.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Yes, and no.
I think Windwalker is talking more about the actual experience of an emotion rather than the chemical/physical process.
Put it this way, if I had experienced a sensation or eaten some really good food or candy or something, and I would try to share that experience with you. Would a full description of all the chemical interactions and processes and what quarks flipped spin and collapsed at exact what relative time and space really tell you anything? Or would "it was amazing, it was like if you ..." In other words, by comparing to your own experience and have my experience shared through your own history and experience wouldn't I give you a better understanding of what I actually felt or tasted? Is there an algorithm for what you or I experienced or shared? No. Can't be scientifically formulated. The process can. The sharing even can be through linguistics. But the meaning is shared through experience.