Religion in a Scientific Age?

quote:

a fruitless exchange of entrenched opinions

Isn't that what Padded Cell is for?

It's makes for fun reading, especially where there is no chance of a conclusion.

I don't have any answers to the big questions, but then I'm comfortable with the inevitability of this lack of certainty. It doesn't stop you from developing civilised values designed to reduce conflict and increase tolerance.

Steve

"Voltaire's Bastards - The Dictatorship of Reason in the West" and "On Equilibrium", by John Ralston Saul, are very good essays on the limits of reason and the pernicious influence of the so-called "scientific age".

In my opinion, nothing has changed over the millenia with regard to humankind's love of fables and our willingness to let a few people define what is reality for the many. The only thing that changes over the eras is the methods we use to install these few. Currently those that define many of our accepted realities in the West are members of academia and they are picked according to a consensus reached by a select few - often university committees and the editorial boards of peer-review journals.

Scientists and other academics have value systems and are just as ambitious and prone to human foibles as any human being (yet it is the common perception that science is value-free).

So, our fables are different these days. Advance time 1000 years into the future and it is certain that today's view of the world will look very quaint indeed - perhaps even quasi-religious.

I am giving up on this imponderable subject. I started the Dawkins book, "The God Delusion," which I thought would be compelling. It is hard work for me. Give me a nice dry text on Baroque style for laughes any day!

On the other hand, I am sure that my daily attempts at kindness and fairness will not be hampered by the lack of religious guilt or my lack of militant atheism. I shall fail to be decent from time to time, be intemperate, be tired, be abrupt, but will regret it afterwards and try harder after the failing with only a conscience as a guide , and not philosophical props invented by others, religious or non-religious. I shall continue to pray for Christian friends, if not myself, to the Christian God. I expect that is entirely non-logical as well!

I am sort of on the touch-line watching as an uncomprehending spectator at a game I don't understand the motivation for, or the rules!

It seems that logic is a basis for all discussion except religion, where something else is brought into play. Till I can grasp the rules [just like in Bridge] I don't think there is a possibility of my joining in, or changing my own position to something easier to fathom...

Why do people get so hot under the collar about the imponderable? Russell was right: "Accept the Universe as a Brute Fact!" It saves a lot of brain ache!

ATB from from Fredrik

PS: Even in a scientific age I have to say that while Quatum Physics is fascinating, it is completely beyond me. I like Newtonian Physics, which fits with my own possible observations of the world as it is in daily life. I could not measure the predicted inacuracies that Einstien predicts. So it is enough. The real magic that fascinates me is the spell great music and great musical performance can weave! Just as imponderable, but the imponderable that grasps me daily, and relieves the tensions that are inevitable from living at all!

Deane is quite right when he says scientists and other academics have value systems and they also have beliefs without evidence which are almost religious in nature. Take Richard Dawkins, the high priest of the ultra darwinist church for example - much of his selfish gene stuff just does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny any more than the claptrap of the Intelligent Design Brigade does.

He writes brilliantly and cogently in 'The God Delusion' and I agree with much of what he says BUT he does get many things wrong. I do not believe in God but I cannot say that theistic religion can be so easily dismissed (I say theistic religion as Dawkin's wisely does not take a pop at Buddhism - he is not that daft). There is a deep commonality at the very core of all religion but it is the rigid and dogmatic interpretation of the experience that so muddies the water.

I do not doubt that some Christian mystics have experienced what Buddhists call the 'Clearlight Mind' but they have had to devote a lifetime to prayer in a monastery to achieve it. There is no clearly defined esoteric Christian tradition other than the monastic traditions so if you want to go somewhere in Christianity you can forget going to church once a week and singing 'all things bright and beautiful' and feeling smug about having found God through 'Jesus Christ our lord who died on the cross to save our sins' because you won't get far with that even if you think you will. You will have to devote your life to continuous pray shut off from the world like the chaps in this film Into Great Silence and good luck with that.

I do not doubt that there have been Jewish adepts of the Kabbalah who have achieved the Clearlight Mind also and I do not doubt that there have been Sufis and Hindus too as I have read many authentic testimonies that all show the same experience. All of these adepts interpret the manifestation of the Clearlight Mind as Union with God and that the experience defies description hence all the mystical mumbo jumbo whereas in Buddhism the experience is said to be the manifestation of the very subtle or root mind that we all have and has nothing to do with a creator God at all! When the Gross minds (our normal waking minds) dissolve into the Subtle Minds (as they do in deep mediation and dream sleep) and then dissolve still deeper into the Very Subtle Mind all our usual conceptual minds dissolve too and therefore no longer manifest conventional reality but an ultimate reality that is beyond words, thoughts and expression.

The descriptions of ultimate reality in the esoteric traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Islam are remarkably similar. Take this book for example Christian Insight Meditation which clearly shows the similarity of technique and experience between two different religious practices.

With so much similarity between the esoteric traditions - which in my view are the REAL forms of these faiths can there be any room for the arrogance and intolerance manifested by those practitioners of the much LOWER forms of these faiths, especially Born Again Christianity and fundamentalist Islam?

As for science we can see that Dawkin's Darwinism dissolves into biology which dissolves into chemistry which dissoloves into physics which dissolves into quantum theory which is interpreted in a variety of different ways without any consensus and debated almost as hotly as religion and yet all the problems of interpretation and all the problems of collapsing wave functions, wave-particle duality, anthropic principles, inverse zeno effects, consciousness, Creator, cosmology and evolution and even life's meaning are completely resolved by the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy without the need for faith of any kind just clear, precise, logical thinking. (you can read about it all next year when 'Dancing in Emptiness' is published and wins the Templeton Prize!

I agree with Droodzila 'There is a
historical link between such experience, and organised religion, but this
gets more tenuous as the level of organisation increases, and the religion
is dumbed down to compete in the meme marketplace'.

This happened the moment the four gospels were chosen over all the other available gospels some of which included details of esoteric practices. Organised religions (most notably Roman Catholicism)have long practiced Noble Lies just as governments do here .

An interesting thread and very enlightening posts.

Acad,

You should write a book, why waste your talents for free.

Maybe the Koran and the Bible were the ancients way of making sense of the world around them. Today we use modern science, less poetic if more 'accurate'.

I fear we're in danger of creating a false choice - either religion or science. Both search for truth (I hope we're not going to start talking about Galileo here), both are capable of nobility or perversion.

Put another way, if I reach out my arm to give money to some unfortunate in the street, is it because of a combination of nerve impulses and muscle movement acting on messages received via the optic nerve (the view scientific), because a fellow human is in need (the view humanist) or because of Christ's injunction to help the poor (the view Christian)? All are entirely reasonable interpretations, and each can be legitimately held at the same time as the others.

I'd also like to make the obvious but often overlooked point that there is a huge difference between religion and what is done in its name - the same holds for science.

Lastly, and because I am in danger of becoming serious, may I finish with my beloved Chesterton? It's not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting - it's that it has not been tried.

Chaliapin

A few replies...

Deane F:

quote:

In my opinion, nothing has changed over the millenia with regard to humankind's love of fables and our willingness to let a few people define what is reality for the many. The only thing that changes over the eras is the methods we use to install these few. Currently those that define many of our accepted realities in the West are members of academia and they are picked according to a consensus reached by a select few - often university committees and the editorial boards of peer-review journals.

Scientists and other academics have value systems and are just as ambitious and prone to human foibles as any human being (yet it is the common perception that science is value-free).

My early education is steeped in science, and I have great admiration for the achievement of scientists over the ages. I believe that these great minds have enhanced our understanding of the universe immeasurably. I watched the first episode of BBC4's new documentary "Atom" this week, and it revivified the sense of intellectual excitement I experienced when I first encountered these ideas. Yes, scientists are human, and prone to the same weaknesses as everyone else, but there is also a commitment to an ideal - the impartial pursuit of scientific understanding. Yes, there are fashions in science (e.g. String Theory - I'm looking forward to reading Lee Smolin's polemic about that), as in other academic disciplines, but, again, in the long term, the truth will out. I am pro science, but against *scientism* - the belief that science is the only way to come at reality. Religious and aesthetic experience are equally important, in their respective domains - neither accumulates a pile of "facts" to rival those of the sciences - I cannot emphasise strongly enough that there are no supernatural facts - but both enrich our experience in other ways.


Fredrik:

quote:

I am giving up on this imponderable subject. I started the Dawkins book, "The God Delusion," which I thought would be compelling. It is hard work for me. Give me a nice dry text on Baroque style for laughes any day!

Don't give up! See my reply to Deane on the relevance of aesthetic experience for appreciating the idea of religious experience - both provide alternative modes of experiencing reality to the way of science - that put us in touch with what's hard/impossible to articulate, but which still has value. And yes, aesthetic experience includes the enjoyment of great music (who was it who said "All art aspires to the condition of music"?) - perhaps especially so, as music is the least representational or concept-bound of the arts.


Acad:

quote:

He writes brilliantly and cogently in 'The God Delusion' and I agree with much of what he says BUT he does get many things wrong. I do not believe in God but I cannot say that theistic religion can be so easily dismissed (I say theistic religion as Dawkin's wisely does not take a pop at Buddhism - he is not that daft). There is a deep commonality at the very core of all religion but it is the rigid and dogmatic interpretation of the experience that so muddies the water.

I think we're on the same page. I think that Dawkins takes the easy way out in ruling Buddhism out of scope. He simultaneously underestimates the extent to which Buddhism is a proper religion (as opposed to a self-help system), and the degree to which other religions resemble Buddhism, when the accretions of tradition are blasted away.

I'm less keen on the drawing of parallels between eastern mysticism/philosophy, and our best scientific understanding of the world, as represented by quantum mechanics - most of which strike me as superficial and/or coincidental.

Chaliapin:

quote:

I fear we're in danger of creating a false choice - either religion or science. Both search for truth (I hope we're not going to start talking about Galileo here), both are capable of nobility or perversion.

Agreed - my original post was an attempt to get people to think beyond this false dichotomy, which appeared to have become entrenched in the other thread. Yes science and religion both search for truth, but in different ways. Science's truth is the truth of facts, the construction of models and theories that accurately predict the behaviour of the universe. Religion's truth is harder to pin down. It resembles the notion of authenticity - being true to oneself - but takes that idea beyond the merely personal level to a general respect and honouring of how things are.

Enough demented raving for one night!!

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:


I'm less keen on the drawing of parallels between eastern mysticism/philosophy, and our best scientific understanding of the world, as represented by quantum mechanics - most of which strike me as superficial and/or coincidental.

If you are talking about books like the well known campus cult classic 'The Tao of physics' and/or 'Dancing Wu-Li Masters' or the perfectly dreadful film 'What the bleep' then I agree with you - they are simplistic and impressionistic and lack the philosophical rigour of the Madhyamaka which is not mentioned in any of the above offerings. When 'Dancing in Emptiness' is published I will happily send you a copy signed by the author!

"There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter -- not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts."

- Sir James Jeans
knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).


"It has occurred to me lately -- I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities -- that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology. In them the universe begins to know itself."

- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University)
wrote this in an article entitled "Life and Mind in the Universe" which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the
International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:

My early education is steeped in science, and I have great admiration for the achievement of scientists over the ages. I believe that these great minds have enhanced our understanding of the universe immeasurably.

Droodzilla

They have given us a model of the universe that is mechanistic and extremely deterministic.

quote:

Yes, scientists are human, and prone to the same weaknesses as everyone else, but there is also a commitment to an ideal - the impartial pursuit of scientific understanding.

An "ideal"? That one word alone should make anybody extremely wary.

quote:

...in the long term, the truth will out.

Depends what you accept "truth" to mean. Does it mean our descriptions and models are as close as possible to what is observed?

Quantum Mechanics is neither mechanistic (mechanisms can be visualised, the quantum world cannot be) nor deterministic (it's intrinsically probabilistic nature frustrated Einstein, the last of the great classical physicists). I have no objection to use of the term "model" as long as it's not taken to support an "anything goes" view of science - some models are better than others.

Ideals - yes, they are subject to abuse, and we should be wary; doesn't mean they aren't valuable, or worthy of our aspirations.

Truth - difficult one. Naive realist notions of correspondence with a reality that transcends any possible experience, are flawed, but so are any doctrines that lead to the conclusion that everything/nothing is true. I believe there's a pragmatic middle way, but I'm not clever enough to articulate it!

Hi Acad

Sorry I missed your post and skipped straight to Deane! Yes, my comment was aimed at Capra, and his ilk, so apologies if it came across as dismissive. I have a book on Nagarjuna - a commentary on his work on emptiness, published by OUP. It's clearly a work of great philosophical rigour, though I suspect that it's conclusions are accessible only to someone with experience of meditative practice. It's not a light read, and I fear that I will never be able to give it the attention it deserves. I'm still a little sceptical of the prospects for marrying the two notions of emptiness, as they seem to occur at two different, incompatible levels - macro & phenomenological in the case of meditative experience, micro and non-phenomenological in the case of quantum mechanics. Still, I'd be interested to read your work

A couple of good quotes in your follow-up post - if hardly representative of (current!) scientific orthodoxy.

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:

Quantum Mechanics is neither mechanistic (mechanisms can be visualised, the quantum world cannot be) nor deterministic (it's intrinsically probabilistic nature frustrated Einstein, the last of the great classical physicists).

Granted. But physics is not the whole of science - or even a large chunk of it. Neither is quantum physics the whole of physics.

quote:

I have no objection to use of the term "model" as long as it's not taken to support an "anything goes" view of science - some models are better than others.

Science is all models. Any symbolic system is a model. A mystical, non-scientific view of the world is also a model. Some models are better than others depending on the rules of the system you're using to appraise models. Quantum physics is so counter-intuitive because the real world just does not fit the human perceptive system.

quote:

Ideals - yes, they are subject to abuse, and we should be wary; doesn't mean they aren't valuable, or worthy of our aspirations.

In the end, any ideal that becomes preeminent is abused.

quote:

Truth - difficult one. Naive realist notions of correspondence with a reality that transcends any possible experience, are flawed,

Show me a theory that isn't flawed.

Dear Droo!

I have a real problem with what the truth is when we are dealing with what must remain for most, conceptions.

By this I mean most of us will never test Quantum Physics, Relativity and so forth, or even Religious Philosophical ideas. If a boy is seen pulling the wings off a fly by his teacher how the boy responds to his teacher about the wretched act is easily defined as truthful or not, but with Quantum Physics or Christian doctrine, for two examples, how can there be any truth for the general man like myself? I cannot know whether a person is spinning me a line or if he or her is right. I cannot possibly test the evidence as such, so it becomes an act of faith to believe his or her words. Lies are so related to words.

For simpler people like myself we cannot know without a belief, a certain faith, that we can accept the truth of such ideas. I easily accept the Newtonian Physics [because it fit with the known world I live in] if not Quantim Physics, necessarily, as being more than an act of faith to believe, and can easily remain sceptical if not antagonist to the doctrines of religions, and so effectively the result is not different for belief in post classical science or religion for many.

Where music scores is that it has no consequence! It can be both beautiful and completely abstract! Uplifting, but without any seemingly definable message! Emotional, but without words to adequately define how or why...

I am a recidivist music lover. It is my escape from the philosophical problems that I can understand exist, but am too inadequately equipped, intellectually, to ever undestand beyond understanding that they exist.

This is why I say I give up on troubling myself with doing more than analysing the concept and the impossibibilty of me ever knowing the truth without faith. Blind faith is an anathema to me!

My question is why push the search for certainty in truth beyond what any us have [at different levels] have the capacity to comprehend except where there is no inherent beauty in the result? Art is capable of being largely incomprehensible, but at the same time uplifting to the mind. I hate the idea of the soul, as I struggle with the concept of mind body dualismus. I reject the idea of the independant soul. When my chemistry fails and I die, I can see no reason to believe in an entity which is Fredrik's soul! I am responsible for my actions today, and answerable for them until I die. I am rsponsible for my actions, so long as I live, and not afterwards. In this way religion and faith generally breeds irresponsibility, and is a bad thing, more than potentially [and this is demonstrable for what is done in the name of faith]. Clearly this in only my opinion, and not a testable truth.

Fortunately I am in no position to have any effect on science, let alone religion! I can accept that others will hold views I entirely dissagree with without worrying out of proportion to their significance, so long as I can dive into a Bach Fugue! Otherwise life would be overwhelmingly unbearable with its complexity and difficulty. The fact that I cannot ascertain what is true in fairly advanced cases does not deny that the truth exists, but that is no help to me or many simple people like me, and his leaves some people very prone to brain washing and the evil intents of some others, whether scientist or religious people...

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Music, the special case...

Where abstract music scores is that there is absolutly no moral code in it. I used to count this against music as it is only neutral in its funcion on a measurable level, but every effort with a moral code is subject to human corruption! Science or Religion are two very significant examples, and this corruption must be fought with every fibre!!

Of course there is propogandist music, but I am describing the purely abstarct music which never has words, only notes, and means nothing beyond what the listener finds individually. The very fact that individual listeners find different understandings of the potential message proves that there is no absolute message at all. Very reassuring in terms of propogandist imaginings, or corruptibility.

Of course some music survives for hundreds of years because its undefinable message speaks to enough people over the generations for it to remain relevant! So there is something very humain in it, which fortunately is undefinable, or else it woulf be corruptable! It is a refuge for the haggard mind!

Kindest regards from Fredrik

No man or woman is better than another simply because he or she brighter. Only because he or she stives to do the right thing. This is essentially to be fair and as kind as possible to others. We are all born equal, and meet the same end. What is done inbetween easily defines the better human, but not birth or talent. Some of the best people are utter failures in the material sense. That is not very scientific or religious is it!

Thought for an early Sunday morning!

ATB from Fredrik

I wrote two over-long posts above, for which sorry! [No apology for the middle one!].

Basically, for many, post classical science and relilgion are unprovable and are thus, if accepted without a doubt, are taken as truth only as an act of faith. Faith can be a very dangerous thing, being potentially the result of wrongful indoctrination!

Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
...I started the Dawkins book, "The God Delusion,"

Fredrik -
You might also like to try Alister McGrath's "The Dawkins Delusion".

For those with an unquestioning loyalty to St Dawkins, there are SIGNIFICANT flaws in his hypotheses (which are his hypotheses, not facts) which he hedges round with so many get-out-of-jail-free cards...

Not least, he starts from his unvarying position, and seeks to build up evidence to support it - which is, ironically, one of the things he criticises about faith! Being, as it is, so biased, such an eisogetical approach is very poor science. But he's good at colourful showmanship.

More replies...

Deane F:
Fair enough, QM is not the whole of science; but I presented it as a counterexample to your claim that scientists have given us a model of the universe that is "mechanistic and extremely deterministic". I suspect that other areas of science have their own counterexamples, but I'm not an expert. I think that your claim would have been true 100-200 years ago in science's post-Newtonian classical period, but it's less clear-cut these days. One final thought - if a certain aspect of reality is deterministic, there's nothing wrong with a deterministic model of it.

On ideals - I'm not sure that we disagree, as I accept that they should be treated with caution, and can even go along with your rather stark claim that "any ideal that becomes preeminent is abused". This has surely happened to the Christian ideal, as it is now implemented in many churches. However, your first post seemed to suggest that ideals were of no value whatsoever, and I don't think I agree with that.

All theories may be flawed, but some are more flawed than others.


Fredrik:
Firstly, you need not accept Quantum Mechanics on faith - if you had the time and inclination, you could study the subject, perform some of the experiments yourself, and verify the accuracy of its predictions. QM is weird, but there is nothing speculative about the core theory - it is the most successful scientific models ever devised. Religion as traditionally conceived requires an act of faith, of an entirely different order - a commitment to the the truth of certain propositions, which are beyond the reach of any *possible* scientific proof. It's misleading, in my view, to suggest that acceptance of QM involves an act of faith in that sense. The distinction is between a sort of pragmatic faith (in QM), and absolute faith (in religious claims). In any case, QM is not so far removed from everday reality - the tranistors in Naim amps woukd not work if QM weren't true!

quote:

My question is why push the search for certainty in truth beyond what any us have [at different levels] have the capacity to comprehend

It dismays me when dogmatic religious believers present the Bible or the Koran as providing definitive answers to all of life's questions. In my view, religion does not provide answers - let alone definitve ones, of the kind one could then use to persecute people who disagree. Instead, the religious attitude should be about insisting on the importance of certain questions, and keeping alive a sense of the sacred, and the mysterious amidst the quotidian - a kind of re-enchantment of experience which, for all that, remains consistent with the enlightenment project, since it does not compete on the level of theories and model building. Which brings us finally to...

Music! The experience of listening to music has been an important catalyst for me in formulating these ideas.

quote:

Where music scores is that it has no consequence! It can be both beautiful and completely abstract! Uplifting, but without any seemingly definable message!

This is the very heart of the matter. You are quite right that this is one of the great joys of music. Religion, at its best, and at its heart, offers the promise of being able to experience one's whole life in a similar fashion. I'm finding it hard to describe what this mode of experience is like, but phrases like - "free of one's individual concerns" , "uncalculating - absence of this-gets-me-that mentality", "appreciative of things in their own right, rather than as functional parts" - all come to mind.

quote:

Otherwise life would be overwhelmingly unbearable with its complexity and difficulty.

Life is not complex and difficult from the above perspective - or rather, it remains so, but the expanded perspective afforded by the religious attitude makes its complexity and difficulty recede, and become tolerable.

Dear James and Droo,

The more I go on the more I realise that I am not exactly militant at anything. I enjoy musical moments above any human and spiritual experience, but I am not against religion or against science at all though it mistifies me rather often! When I was studying Physics and Electronics at A-level I really enjoyed it and was quite good at it! All through my RE and Scripture at achool I had an unfortunate habit of asking very awkward questions, which very much annoyed the masters, but it was not for devilment.

I will try to make nice replies later to you both, likely to be characterised by meekness.

As for life having great difficulties, it certainly does in my experience - not least because one is not always in a position to take e high perspective. Life's vicissitudes can easily drag a person down on a very practical level!

ATB from Fredrik

Fredrik,
I hope you're in good company - it mystifies me too!

James

Religion to me is a form of control and I am not for one moment saying that is a bad thing…

In general I think that human spirit, for one reason or another requires some sort of leadership…what better leader than one which never dies & can never be confronted nor refuted.

If chaos is the result of little or no guidelines then surely leadership brings unity and order. To me this is possibly the origins of religion, a need to prevent chaos.

Religion could be viewed as a comprehensive guideline to living a fruitful life; some lead fruitful lives without having faith in any particular religion. Having a belief in someone other than oneself forces one to at least think of someone else and how they may feel about a particular situation before acting on ones instinctive feelings.

Is that a form of control – Yes
Is it a bad thing – I happen to think not.

A rather simplistic view I will agree, but then I am a simple man with simple needs....

Macker

Doesn't one of your simple needs cost $8,000...?

Yes Deane, although it's now down to $7000...

Bless our exchange rate !

Well Macker, you must be happy that it finally got delivered in April - no sorry, June...

(Is it the new Vista-Nait?)