In an attempt to reduce the explosion of paragraph responses, I've chosen to not break my response up into multiple paragraph responses, even though I will be responding to each paragraph, nonetheless. I hope this won't be confusing...
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Originally Posted by levite
That would seem to depend: you are using the term "real" in a way which seems to make it synonymous with "provable in a laboratory," which is the scientific way. I am suggesting that there are other ways to interact with the universe, which present different criteria for the realness of phenomena.
Let me first of all clarify that when I use the term paradigm in this context, I mean "a framework for understanding and interacting with the universe." The scientific paradigm is that which establishes parameters requiring that nothing is real save that it be proven by certain rules, and nothing is acceptable for use in one's system of reasoning save that it be rational. The alternative paradigm that I am referring to has different parameters for gauging realia, and is founded to one degree or another in systems that combine the rational and the arational.
In other words, science interacts with the universe by gauging all truth in reproducible effects that can be measured and recorded in ways deemed reliable by current technologies. Religion permits truths that are not always reproducible, nor are always measurable by technology, but are able to be experienced nonetheless through spiritual awareness and faith.
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I think it's important to find some common ground on what constitutes "truth."
I wouldn't characterize my notion of "real" with "provable in a laboratory," since much of science isn't literally done in one, unless you mean it as a metaphor for something that is demonstrable. Have you thought about
why science has such a requirement? It's an attempt to distinguish things that are real from shit people make up. How do other "paradigms" distinguish the two aside from arbitrary choice?
Your use of the term "arational" is a curious attempt to avoid using the term "irrational" in fear of it weakening your argument. This should be an obvious sign to you because it indicates the weakness of your position. If something is not rational it is, by definition, irrational and if you mix the irrational with the rational you still get something that's irrational...
I don't know what you mean by "spiritual awareness" but faith is not indicative of truth. By definition, faith is independent of truth so I'm curious to hear how you think the truth can be constructed with it... How would you even know if someone is spiritually aware? How would you distinguish someone's spiritual awareness with shit someone made up?
It sounds like you're setting up a system of belief that disallows anything to be false. If nothing else, this is not a useful approach to truth...
I think it's important to distinguish "truth" with something that one sees value in. Something can be valuable or even useful and not be true. I don't think it's a shortcoming to understand this...
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I am in no way suggesting that science ought to change or be different, or that it ought to be in any way subservient to religion, or that public schools should teach religion alongside science, or any kind of crap like that. I am only saying that it might benefit scientists to realize that there are other ways out there to approach asking questions of the universe, and some of those ways can lead to truths.
What is important-- and I would never say otherwise-- is for all concerned to be clear that for the most part, science and religion are useful for answering different questions, and they tend not to do well when their areas of inquiry are made to overlap. So for example, if you want to know how to calculate centrifugal force or know what happens when you mix certain chemicals, religion will prove singularly unhelpful, and science will give you answers with no trouble at all. But if you want to know what spiritual or moral meaning there can be in experiences of joy or suffering, science will prove just as unhelpful, and religion will offer you answers (though a wider range of answers than those to chemistry or physics problems).
I have always said, and will say again, religion is not supposed to be science. The bible is not a textbook, and the people who attempt to use it as a textbook-- be it of geology, physics, biology, sociology, or what have you-- are simply misusing it. Religion is supposed to be a spiritual guide to help you deal with living in the universe, and to bring you closer to God. For religion to be successful presumes other education, because the Bible is really mostly concerned with a comparative narrow range of interests: ethics, morals, law, and ritual practice. Not even the last two, if one is a Christian.
But that said, presuming that one is not equating religion with fundamentalism, I do think that there is value in religion, and in systems founded in the arational in general, and the truths that they can help us perceive are, if different than those we come to through science, in many ways no less valuable.
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I didn't really think you'd think science should be done differently. Very few people on the TFP would think this although there are
many people in the US who do. I wonder why they don't hang around here?
I contend that religion isn't really for answering questions. Science doesn't answer questions of morality because that's a question of desire. How do you
want people to behave? Science doesn't dictate to you what you want. It describes what is. Religion makes ludicrous claims and pretends they're true. There's always a deity and He wants things from you, including acts to do and desires to have. I suppose these are answers to some questions but they're not answers to specific questions. When the pious experience joy or suffering, they usually have to shoehorn some bizarre interpretation of their religion to fit some specific scenario to give it "meaning" for themselves. I think this has more to do with them than their religion. That is to say, they could have done this without their religion...
I'm pretty sure Christians follow ritual practice...
Religion is useful for many people. That doesn't make it true...
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OK, maybe it wasn't the ideal analogy. But let me put it this way: the kind of scientist I was referring to in that analogy would, if he had a sudden experience of spiritual awareness and connectedness, dismiss said experience as a momentary hallucination, or the effects of transient hypoxia, or, in the words of Scrooge disdaining Marley's ghost, "a bit of undigested beef," the ill-effects of a bad lunch. Such a scientist, if he heard a silent voice urging him to a more moral life, would instantly diagnose himself as a latent schizophrenic, and submit himself to a psychopharmacologist for a prescription for anti-psychotics. In other words, these individuals are so enmeshed in the idea that their paradigm is the only way to interact with the universe that, faced with phenomena that are clearly not duplicable nor are they rational, they will dismiss them as illusion or illness rather than confront the possibility that, as Hamlet chides, "there are more things...in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of your philosophies."
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This is not true. While the first line of investigation will be rooted in what is already established, they will (or should) always allow for the possibility that what they experienced was somehow real. Indeed, illusions and illnesses are real and are thus real possibilities but who knows? Maybe there is some "spiritual awareness" and "connectedness?" (whatever you meant by those terms) It's true that they wouldn't immediately jump to this conclusion but is that closed minded? Some would call it skeptical or cautious or even contemplative. Can't one be open minded without being gullible?
I think you might need
!
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This is entirely dependent upon what "claims on reality" people are making in the name of their religion. For example, if they are saying that because they choose to read the Bible literally, that must mean the Earth is precisely 5759 years old, then they are wrong. If, however, they are saying (for example) that their religion has taught them greater spiritual awareness, and they have been able to experience God, then perhaps they are right.
Religion is not supposed to be science, and more than science should be religion. God is not a chemical experiment or an electron field effect: the experience of God is not something one can have and duplicate in a laboratory, nor will His existence be proved by a handy set of equations. Not because God is not real or because we don't have adequate technology, but because that is using the wrong paradigm: it is like trying to do algebra by baking brownies, or paint a still life using a microscope instead of a paintbrush. By the same token, those who use the Bible as a geology or physics textbook are behaving just as sensibly as anyone trying to get orange juice by milking a cow, or seeking out a mathematics professor for pastoral counseling about one's bioethics quandary.
What I am saying is that for 90% or more of the time, religion and science are either asking different questions, or they are seeking different answers, and it is not fair to try to make them overlap. The different questions are best addressed in their different paradigms.
A religious person can believe whatever they like, but when they step into a geology classroom and say that the universe is 6000 years old, they are grossly in error, and should expect to be told so. And the religious person should be content with that, since it is not right for them to tell others to believe otherwise, based only on their understanding of their own sacred scriptures.
But by the same token, a skeptical person can believe whatever they like about the existence of God, but when it comes to the beliefs of others, IMO the most one ought to be prepared to say is, "I have not yet experienced anything to make me believe similarly."
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I'm assuming you're referring to a passive believer in this last paragraph. After all, many people say all sorts of demonstrably false things in the name of religion and you agree that they should be told how wrong they are.
However, even if we're talking about someone whose belief is based upon personal experience. You don't think a skeptic can have experiences that allows them to say "I think there's no God?"
Sadly, believers are rarely so passive. Their religious beliefs come with all sorts of bizarre emotional baggage. It's one thing to believe in a vague deity, like Einstein did, but to believe in one that has specific demands on us? For example, even moderate Christians believe that God cares about their sex life... and mine! If you're going to care what I do then I think it's fair for me to question why you care. It's called "discourse" and I think it's valuable, much more so than "I have not yet experienced anything to make me believe similarly..."
---------- Post added at 05:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:31 AM ----------
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Originally Posted by Polar
Funny thing about God.
If He is God (and I believe He is) then any discussion we have about what he would or wouldn't do, could or couldn't do, should or shouldn't do is like a couple of first graders trying to discuss quantum physics.
Who are we to think we know all the boxes that God should fit into?
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Who are you to think there's anything to fit into boxes?
Your claim is a rationalization. Your concept of God doesn't make any sense so you say "well of course we can't make sense of it. Who can make sense of God?" If you could make sense of God, you'd be using that sense to claim that God existed. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Whatever happens, you can't lose! You're ignoring the obvious (and very likely) possibility that the reason the concept doesn't make any sense is because it's false. You're rationalizing your desire to continue believing something that's ridiculous...
---------- Post added at 05:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:42 AM ----------
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Originally Posted by Poppinjay
I'ma come over there and hit you.
I can't begin to say how many times I've higlighted certain parts of this discussion only to discard it for other parts.
First off, let me state I'm one of those dirty believers. Shame on me.
I'm also educated enough to talk about flagellants and the history of faith with the same acumen as an Ivy league scholar. I don't mean to brag, but this was something important enough to me to study it in-depth. And I have.
That is not to say I have better knowledge than any other internet genius, but I'm pretty comfortable with what I've learned, from kudzu league scholars, at a decent university.
Essentially, my understanding has waved to this, I don't care what you think about what I think and shut up about what you think. Every juvenile concept has been argued on this board and it takes the patience of Bruce Jenner to withstand it. All for some stupid ass Kardashian booty.
I attribute it to the Schrödinger wave. Some say it's because of Disney. I don't give a fuck. Shut up.
Please don't take this a s a close minded response to a genuine inquiry. No question of the existence of God is a genuine inquiry. Everybody comes with superior knowledge. I know best. You know best. He knows best. My bagwan knows best. The flower guy at the airport knows best.
We will always be what we are. Unconviced atheists. Sheeple. When the bridge is gapped, I'll bring the potato salad.
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If all this talk bothers you so much then... why are you here? Why did you read this thread? Why are you complaining?
Seriously, if you want us to "shut up" you can do that by simply not reading the thread...
Your complaint appears to be based on a false premise. We will not always be what we are. People change...