Will Science and Religion ever be Reconciled?

:smilielol5:

With this statement I think it is prudent to distinguish between what the practitioners of a specific religion teach and what the actual writings/scripture/what-have-you the religion is based upon teach.
They are two completely different things and until that is distinguished and unless it is clarified as to exactly what is being considered in this discussion; the actions of practitioners or the source material, this discussion is doomed.

As far as I can recall, the New Testament, upon which Christianity is founded, didn't have a lot to say about science per se', so I'm going to assume you are referring to the practitioners of said religion, and that is going to cover the entire spectrum of personalities, educational levels and intelligence quotients and in effect render that perspective mute.

As I said before, what makes it appear to be irreconcilable is simply our lack of knowledge. As knowledge increases, disparities decrease.

Meagain touched on this and if you consider it, throughout history as we have extended and enhanced our ability to take in sensory input; IE microscopes, telescopes, UV & IR sensors, etc, there has also been a corresponding shifting and reordering of the paradigm that encompasses both the sciences and religion, and each time the gap has narrowed.

The Hubble telescope changed our idea of how old the universe is and I'm sure the next space telescope to be launched (can't remember the name) will elicit further paradigm shifts.

There have been too many people throughout history who have had "mystical" "religious" "ecstatic" "miraculous" "fill in the blank experiences" to just simply discount them all as bullshit, so there has to be scientific explanations behind them.

I know I have seen and experienced things that at present fall outside of our capabilities to explain/describe it within the current scientific framework and paradigms, but I still saw it, felt it, experienced it and am certain of it's reality.
:sunny:

 

that's what I been sayin' all along....:devil:

 

<<As knowledge increases, disparities decrease.>>

There you go ~

<<I know I have seen and experienced things that at present fall outside of our capabilities to explain/describe it within the current scientific framework and paradigms, but I still saw it, felt it, experienced it and am certain of it's reality.>>

"Sorta grabs you by the boo-boo don't it?" - Tommy Chong

<<that's what I been sayin' all along....>>

Yeah

I sometimes wonder if most of the struggle to communicate these things come from those things being absolutes and our being vague, in flux....but I don't want to start a debate on that. Look how long it took to get this far y'all wore me out ~ ahahaha!

 

In the bold now we are suggesting two different things?

All things are already lawful but not all things are helpful and helpful is a matter of timing. Theories need conform to no thing and crisis is an abstract perspective not a fact of nature.

There is a christ teaching that the fathers house is a house of prayer for all nations/cultures. In the same turn as you do unto the least you do also unto me. This axiomatic statement is the starting place for the reason you espouse.

The new paradigm is already here and has been here since the moment doubt arose because of the nature of probability and the fact that everything happens at once. Evolution is a very sloowwww idea and doggedly determined but illumination is very quick.

 

:2thumbsup:

 

At this point to avoid the appearance that I am pitching a particular religion I put forward a definition of terms,
christ equals the anointed or well oiled authority in all of us. This authority is well oiled in the sense that it's authority comes from congruence with real things or reality supports it's constituents.

My joining is easy,

The whole question can science be reconciled with religion speaks not to real differences but to an identity crisis. We are the unit of every measure.

and my burden, light, as I tend to appearances.

 

:2thumbsup:

 

In wondering this myself I have noticed that although we speak the same words in terms of form of language, our meanings for each expression have been colloquially or individually impressed. It takes time to get to know someone by virtue of the fact that it takes time to develop a common vocabulary. We hit it off immediately with others on the basis of recognizably common experiences.

For example when i say the word world, what do I mean,

World is a common name for the whole of human experience,
anywhere on Earth or even universally.

World can also be a term referring to the planet Earth physically divorced from human involvement. we are in the world but not of it

The mind is naturally abstract.

 

But mystically realized science is all about the devil. WIthout religion for this Mysticism, that is the religion which judges heart without the issuing of truth viz. contradiction, Science is about unreconciled sceptical bullshit. :sunny:

 

I recognize the fact that complex ideas about god are developed. I don't think the impulse toward god/good is a matter of need perceived at a later juncture. Complex thought forms are not needed and they really take a back seat or are led by more basic considerations, i.e., where da food at? As far as behaving instinctively and in concert with our environment at an early stage I think it may be an excuse for the idea of corruption later. That is we get the impression at some point that man falls into discordant relations because he had somehow violated the natural path. Infants can be as decidedly cranky as the most jaded and bitter about the sensations that are stimulated in living. We are hard wired from the beginning to find our good/god.

 

That's just your interpretation.

 

What is yours and how does this statement reflect on the question? I think both science and religion speak to the same impulse and there is no need of reconciliation but there is a tension between the ideas of the substantially fulfilling and essential fulfillment.

 

You are right---they do speak to the same impulse----and the truth is, what we label as witchcraft, or voodoo or witchdoctoring was the science of long ago. We may think we know so much better how things work and what is the answer to this or that. But the truth is, there is so much that we don't know. Medical science still struggles to cure cancer. But I have seen it cured quickly in a method that has been around for thousands of years---without the need to poison the patient or even cut her open.

Over the past several hundred years, several times people in the Pacific Islands have demonstrated to scientists and anthropologists that they can call the dolphins in time of famine. In each of these cases, the ceremony happens over night presided by the individual who has the gift, and the next day many dolphins appear and certain ones throw themselves onto the beach as if they are sacrificing themselves. There are other cases with other game. I forget the last time this was done for a Westerner---it was in the 1900's possibly as recently as the 1950's. But science has no idea how to do this---even if we could get dolphins to congregate, how would you get certain ones to sacrifice themselves.

But I do disagree with the conclusion you make of this. When Kant effectively split science and philosophy/religion, it enabled science to grow to amazing heights. (I even hear that by the 21st Century we will even be able to see the person we are talking to on our telephones...). But we are reaching a point with our culture where there is no unifying cultural values. I am not talking about the last 10 years, or the last 50 years---this is something that even Nietzsche picked up on in the late 1800's. But it is much more evident and progressed today than it was in, say, the 1950's.

Because Modern culture has become so eclectic, and is no longer a national culture by any means, but a global culture (even though it is largely based on the world's perception of the American consumer culture), we cannot return back to traditional unifying cultural myths or truths (sorry teabaggers). Likewise, just as in Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome, we have gone too far down the path of rationalistic objectivism to return to traditional religious values either (Sorry Christians----unless the Second Coming actually happens in the miraculous ways many of you preach it to happen).

We can only move forward, which would require some form of reconciliation between science and religion. We have gone as far as we can with this Kantian division in exploring the unknown. Without this, I think we shall face our cultural demise.


P.S. I am not talking about the end of religion, such as Christianity. I am saying that we will see a continuing evolution of values and understandings. And that science will actually give creedence to the nonphysical.

 

In my opinion, even as we are one with our environment and operate on a more purely institutional basis, that we instinctually experience a divine connection with the universe and start to ritualize that experience. Higher primates, for example, have been seen dancing around a pole, trunk, or tree, in ways that are surprisingly similar to ritual around the World Tree or Tree of Life in various tribal groups. The Neanderthals also made altars and built some kind of funeral site with cave bear bones.

I would say that the spiritual understanding of the universe is not born out of necessity or a sense of separation, but an existential experience of power and being. In some cases there is a belief of disconnected multiplicity---many different spirits---but in many cases there is still a sense of, or implication of, a connection to a single source. Even when it is personified as a God it is usually understood as a great mystery. But there is always a fundamental understanding of a multiplicity.

I feel that it is closer to the rise of the institution where the sense of separation actually begins. For example, in indigenous cultures you do not find the concept of religion or secular and non-secular. It is when man takes on the power of creation himself—he discovers that he too can plant, and breed animals---and that when he separates too far from his own understanding of being one with the universe, or of existing continuously in the realm of spirit/nature, that he begins to feel a fall from grace, and it is here that ritual takes on a new dimension---appeasing the spirits or god(s), and seeking to return to that state of one with the divine. This is the powerful message within the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden. When Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, she gained the knowledge of fertility. This is the rise of the Goddess cults in the early stages of the Planter and herder cultures. But this act with Adam resulted in their fall from grace and removal from the Garden.

The codified rules and covenants then occur at this stage and are a part of the rise of the institution and the dawn of civilization---this is where religion actually begins to form out of what was before, only a spirituality. This is also accompanied by, and shaped from, a new group ethic as one families or communities fields and animals are understood to be theirs in a sense of ownership.

The rise of rationalism and objectivism gives rise to growing alienation from the subconscious mind---our connection to the irrational and the spiritual. This too is part of that understanding of separation. As we become more conscious-mind focused and grounded in physical reality, we need a more rational God to make sense out of this subconconscious alienated existence (which we could also refer to as a spiritual-alienated existence).

I will have to contemplate your last two paragraphs more. My thinking has been along the lines that a simple understanding that a nonphysical side to the universe is needed would reconcile religion and science without needing to speak to specific levels of religious understanding and especially in regards to the highly diverse and eclectic nature of religion in the modern world----i.e. there are so many beliefs, traditions, and religions.

The one point of common ground between all spiritualities and religions is that there is a non-physical reality.

From your next post:

I see trends in Modern Culture, and as a part of the Post-Modern Crisis, that represent a breaking down of the traditional dualistic zeitgeist and the planter culture group ethic. Even the internet and technology is breaking down these dynamics.

It is these two divisive elements of civilized culture that makes it so difficult to understand how religion and science could be reconciled. It is these two elements that give rise to reductionist thinking, and therein lies the tendency to get “hung up” at one level of understanding.

I think we are coming full circle though. That we are returning to a multiplistic understanding of the universe, and even the rise of the feminine, and the Post-Modern Crisis itself is a process of reconnecting with our own subconscious and returning us to some of the ethical understandings of the universe that our most distant ancestors held.

When indigenous people are introduced to religion by missionaries and the like, they see no conflict with their own beliefs. To them it is just another way of communicating with the Great Mystery—it is all good. They do not have a concept that one way is good and the other is bad until the missionaries teach them that.

It is a threat to the institution to think anything different than in terms of the in-group vs the out-group. But as we break down our group ethic and the ethics of duality, these institutions will have to evolve to understand that one religion or belief system is as good as the next. And there are churches around the country that are gaining that understanding. And here again---this is why I do not think that science needs to communicate to all of the various levels of religious understanding (---perhaps that is more up to philosophy?). Science simply needs to acknowledge the non-physical.

And like I said, even though we have a hard time breaking out of seeing ‘light’ as physical---it is a very non-physical element of our universe, and we already know that.

 

So it is Kant's doing! Seems like a contradiction of terms. We could avoid superstitious hierarchies like amazing heights. Nietzsche was as high as I am and I agree with a friend who suggests that philosophers are never so boring as they are in books. Did you know that if we stood in front of each other we could talk in person in the 21st century still? (humor or less)
Cultural values are not essential but a manufactured sensibility. Our common experience will never be in the guise of cultural values but in the fact of our common creaturehood. When your essential interests are identified as being shared with all other creatures. An essential element of cultural identity is how we are not like them.

Gone too far? What if some christian preached that the second coming is when the seed of empathy bears fruit in a man, that is when we see christ we shall be like him. In all that you do re-member me. No one know the hour of his coming because love does not wait on time but on invitation. Traditional values are not nor have they ever been essential nor do they need to evolve. Understand traditional valuations are the end of the perception of genuine or legitimate value. Traditional values are types of superstition.

Again evolution is slow, illumination very quick. I think all the we can onlys and musts make good fodder for books or discerning for ourselves an individual outlook but have not a lot to do with organic emergence. We move forward as we become familiar.

I think the continuing evolution of values would better include the recognition of our own reality with includes the naturally abstract province of mind. We doubt a legitimate function in reality, we doubt that we are in fact real.

 

That sounds good, and it speaks to the Lakota concept of Mitakuye Oyasin (All my relatives). Unfortunately, I do not think that culture is as simple as that. Also I don't think cultural identity is a function of how we are different from others--I would say that is a result. To me cultural identity rises as people work together to find their place in the universe and how they find meaning and value in the universe, which in turn is meaning and value to themselves individually and with each other. It is the thread that weaves people together, provides a bond, and enables them to achieve and express those things that are important to them. I would also add that a key part of culture, that is the essence, is the collective unconscious. This is perhaps the human version of Sheldrake's biomorphic field (or whatever it was called).

Today we are seeing an ever-growing global culture, but this is most influenced by Modern Western Culture, and the motifs of that culture, more than anything else, are things like, Coca Cola, Michael Jackson, Denny's, McDonalds... It is motifs like these that are largely shaping global cutlural values. Your comment in response to my phone joke, is a good example of how things are changing. For example, everywhere I see couples out together, but instead of paying attention to each other, they are texting.

The bad thing about culture is that if it becomes more and more nihilistic, then the bonds that it is supposed to form, break down.

(By the way, when I wrote that about the phones, I remembered a futuristic picture phone I saw back in the 60's and had to laugh--I forget where, maybe at Disneyland. It had this 60's style futuristic sleek round style---an almost oval TV screen that sat on a thin stand. On the base was a rotary dial and the handheld receiver was, of course, connected by a chord.)

I would still say that we have gone too far. For example, there was the philosophical movement of Situational Ethics that was Christian based and embraced by certain churches and theologians back in the 60's. It basically had that very message, as I recall.

We have gone too far because this is not an issue about being an individual, it is an issue about being a culture in the modern world. We have gone too far because there is a split between science and religion, because modern culture has not only Christians, but Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, New Agers, and plenty of agnostics, and atheists, not to mention so many others.

As cultural values that give meaning to our lives, and our culture, crumble away, then what significance is that culture? We are buying time with modern culture, because we are quickly creating plastic values, as long as everyone believes that they consume, and that they are able to consume, or if they try hard, they will be able to consume, they will be happy. Modern culture is all about 'want' and convincing people to feed that want.

Every culture works on a dynamic of desire---but I think you can understand the difference when we are talking about consumerism.

That is true about the onlys and musts---and anything can happen. But history and nature tells us that along with emergence comes collapse. I do agree with your last paragraph.

 

Curious to me what you might consider unfortunate. Having complex considerations is having complex considerations but in order to get a handle on complex problems we simplify or go with the most prevalent common denominators.

The first and most easily recognized is motive but you cannot understand motive if you think cultural distinctions are meaningful beyond the simplistic constructions of ego, the simplest of which is I am a special case.
I am a special case, is the most basic description of error in perception. Every thing is in relationship and individual is not a meaningful term absent an individuals relationships.

The concept of all my relatives I can appreciate but not because it is a Lakota concept. It is a thought we share! All civilization in it's most meaningful estate is precisely equal to your relationship with the person standing next to you.

All things are lawful but not all helpful and helpful is a matter of timing, not of traditional practice. Form is defined by negative space and Lakota is equal to not Lakota, otherwise it is simply I am or we are. Common interest is common interest, weaving weaving. Culture is not the common bond obviously as you say we need a new cultural paradigm that includes all cultures. But the cultural, (of the cult) is a special or exclusive bond and it is the personal perspectives greatest defense against the truth that we are harmless as we are created. Certainly culture represents a longing for direction but in fact our direction is assured as all time is now and having and being are the same truth. Culture as it informs civilization is a fearful thought.

If it is a thing of culture then how can it be a bad thing of culture? Either make the culture good or the culture bad. If self destruction is the inevitable extension of cultural premise then what makes you think that banana trees bear apples? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind of the supposition.

The bonds break down based on the essential premise, as I said, that we are different than they.

What does your past have to do with our shared moment or with your future?
No one knows the hour of our becoming anything. Love does not wait on time but on invitation. Now is the only time of power and the miracle, (timeless interval,) of love is it's power not to change things in the future but to make all things right, right now! Illumination dispels darkness to the extent that we do not hide in the shadows of the past.

I cannot. The essential tension remains substantial reward vs essential fulfillment.

History does not. Absolutely nature does which is the existential tantrum that gives rise to but,the defense for exceptionalism..