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levite · 02-02-2008, 04:15 PM

Well, seeing as how I'm studying to be a rabbi, I would have to say I don't agree with the premise that Theism should be eliminated.

While I'm not at all troubled by people not believing in God, I am somewhat troubled by people deciding that the beliefs of others ought to be eradicated. What is the purpose to this? Why should someone else be harmed by the fact that I believe in God, unless I am trying to force them to believe what I believe, which I'm not-- since that would be both wrong and pointless.

I also am at a loss to explain what anyone hopes to gain by trying to explain religion scientifically. We don't take anyone seriously who tries to explain nuclear physics by using arguments from religious texts, and for damn good reason. What I don't understand is why the reverse should not also be true. Science and religion are two completely separate phenomenological paradigms for dealing with our experience in the universe, and they can both have their place. As long as one does not interpret religion with a fundamentalist literalism, they are not even incompatible paradigms. But in any case, they are still different, and they address different questions, and look for different answers. Saying that science proves or disproves religion is like saying that a certain painting is excellent, because it was silky-soft when you had sex with it; or deciding that the cigar you just like is terrible, because it is not a well-written allegorical poem in Middle English; or deciding that you really don't like the bottle of Veuve Clicqot you just opened, because it doesn't sound like John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme."

Naturally, the reverse is also true. But I have to say-- having spent quite a lot of time around very religious people-- that most do not try to prove or disprove anything about science using religion. It is only fundamentalists who try to merge paradigms, and the majority of people who practice religions are not fundamentalists. It just seems like that, sometimes, because the nuts get all the press.

You don't want to believe in God, great, don't believe. And if you want to say that religion or spirituality has nothing to offer you, do it. It's no skin off my ass, and it's a free country, you can believe what you like. But IMO, it is just as fundamentalist and narrow-minded to say that all religious or spiritual experience, everywhere, for everyone, is totally baseless and illusory as it would be to say that science and reason ought to bow to a certain group's interpretation of their religious texts.

A.

02-02-2008, 04:15 PM	#124 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	Well, seeing as how I'm studying to be a rabbi, I would have to say I don't agree with the premise that Theism should be eliminated. While I'm not at all troubled by people not believing in God, I am somewhat troubled by people deciding that the beliefs of others ought to be eradicated. What is the purpose to this? Why should someone else be harmed by the fact that I believe in God, unless I am trying to force them to believe what I believe, which I'm not-- since that would be both wrong and pointless. I also am at a loss to explain what anyone hopes to gain by trying to explain religion scientifically. We don't take anyone seriously who tries to explain nuclear physics by using arguments from religious texts, and for damn good reason. What I don't understand is why the reverse should not also be true. Science and religion are two completely separate phenomenological paradigms for dealing with our experience in the universe, and they can both have their place. As long as one does not interpret religion with a fundamentalist literalism, they are not even incompatible paradigms. But in any case, they are still different, and they address different questions, and look for different answers. Saying that science proves or disproves religion is like saying that a certain painting is excellent, because it was silky-soft when you had sex with it; or deciding that the cigar you just like is terrible, because it is not a well-written allegorical poem in Middle English; or deciding that you really don't like the bottle of Veuve Clicqot you just opened, because it doesn't sound like John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Naturally, the reverse is also true. But I have to say-- having spent quite a lot of time around very religious people-- that most do not try to prove or disprove anything about science using religion. It is only fundamentalists who try to merge paradigms, and the majority of people who practice religions are not fundamentalists. It just seems like that, sometimes, because the nuts get all the press. You don't want to believe in God, great, don't believe. And if you want to say that religion or spirituality has nothing to offer you, do it. It's no skin off my ass, and it's a free country, you can believe what you like. But IMO, it is just as fundamentalist and narrow-minded to say that all religious or spiritual experience, everywhere, for everyone, is totally baseless and illusory as it would be to say that science and reason ought to bow to a certain group's interpretation of their religious texts. A. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)