How it is and how we want it to be (Science and religion)
By definition it is clear that religion is the search for a supernatural concept, which explains why certain happenings occur or how to behave ideally. Whereas science is mainly focused on investigating the natural world and everything evolving around it, so that we can adjust our behaviour logically.
But is there actually a fundamental difference between both? When we look at how religion was taught as the answer to thousand of problems and we now can't grasp how so many lifes could get lost due to lack in knowladge, why are we so sure that we aren't in the same position? Or different said, do you believe what we now percieve as accurate could be handled similar to conscience in the future? Maybe already is? And if you say this can't be, don't you copy the same behaviour of the formar religious people, we know think of as inadvanced?
Of course first we might think that with our current knowladge we have made it as far as we could and adapted individuals to society and life, but is it really right to believe this is the one advanced way? Why are we so sure that the answers of science are valid, when validation doesn't last forever?
And even if we find pretty words to describe science, is it not a believe of how the world is made out of, but more - similar to religion - what we want the world to be made out of? Is this idea of »it is how it is«, not actually how we want it to be, because it makes us feel safe and understood or maybe even free?
But is there actually a fundamental difference between both? When we look at how religion was taught as the answer to thousand of problems and we now can't grasp how so many lifes could get lost due to lack in knowladge, why are we so sure that we aren't in the same position? Or different said, do you believe what we now percieve as accurate could be handled similar to conscience in the future? Maybe already is? And if you say this can't be, don't you copy the same behaviour of the formar religious people, we know think of as inadvanced?
Of course first we might think that with our current knowladge we have made it as far as we could and adapted individuals to society and life, but is it really right to believe this is the one advanced way? Why are we so sure that the answers of science are valid, when validation doesn't last forever?
And even if we find pretty words to describe science, is it not a believe of how the world is made out of, but more - similar to religion - what we want the world to be made out of? Is this idea of »it is how it is«, not actually how we want it to be, because it makes us feel safe and understood or maybe even free?
Comments (36)
We are not. Fallibilism is built into the very idea and method of science. So if your thesis is that science is just like religion because both are dogmatic, then you are missing the mark. And I don't think it's fair to characterize religion as essentially dogmatic either. At least in some religious practices there is a place for searching, doubt, dispute and progress.
Quoting Anna893
That may be so, but I would go even further and ask: is there a uniquely and objectively true statement about how the world is?
Well said but I wondered how you are defining religion there. All religions reference a higher power, if not an outright god then at least some form of enlightenment. I would say that is essential to religion (higher beings, higher realms of existence or states of being). I think that by the nature of that belief itself there is inherent dogmatism so even if at lower tiers there is room for searching, doubt etc there is still the surrender to this higher power and its dogma.
Religion is stories someone made up. Science is stories someone worked out by looking around and checking.
It's an important difference.
The odd thing about the descriptions in science, in contrast to the title of this thread, is that it doesn't much care what one wants. Wishing it so will not keep the weight from falling.
I don't think anyone wanted general relativity to be this complicated or Quantum Mechanics to be this weird. So no, science has very little to do with what we want to be the case. Of course, given 2 theories that make the same predictions, we can make a choice, but if a third theory is found that makes better predictions we immediately abandon the old 2. No matter how much we liked them.
I think the first sentence raises an interesting point - could there be such a thing as a ‘supernatural concept’? I would argue not, because concepts operate according to certain parameters. I mean, you can come up with an endless range of concepts across all kinds of subject areas, but conceptual thought is confined in some basic respect to what is conceivable (even though I know that’s a tautology). Ergo what is beyond or above nature is also beyond conceptual or discursive thought - something I think was implicit in a lot of Kant’s musings on this matter.
The distinction between the discursive and the unconditioned is made explicit in Zen Buddhism, in particular, which gestures to the dividing line between them, and also indicates a way of discerning that division through the practice of zazen.
I don't think it seeks out something supernatural but it does often settle on this. What exactly a supernatural concept is is unclear but I guess you mean outside of physics and the scientific method. Where and when this is applied is also unclear. In the West, few people today would ascribe a lighting storm to an angry God, but some might.
Quoting Anna893
Not many people would say we have made it. Science is a method, not Truth. It provides the best model we have, based on the available evidence. It's useful and has practical application, so for that reason we can claim it is the best we can do (for now) and that is no trivial matter. This may not appeal to the kind of person who wants that transcendent and immutable foundation - which some of us don't accept as a thing.
Science is infinitely superior to superstition or magic if you want to treat illness or deal with nature or create technology. It's faintly amusing when people say science is primitive nonsense as they use their mobile phones, watch Netflix, catch planes, wear contact lenses and take insulin for diabetes, etc. Science is not magic and it is limited and it does change and improve over time, but the germ theory of disease did a lot more for human health than prayer.
Nowadays, 'sensible folk' are guided by science in their judgements. And that is quite sound advice in many ways, except for the fact that science deliberatlely excludes many of what are deemed 'value judgements' from its scope. That shows up in the many debates about the is-ought problem (although a lot of them are muddled.) So even despite the atrocious grammar, this sentiment has an element of truth in it:
Quoting Anna893
Sure, science is 'testable hypotheses' and 'falsifiable' and the like but some elements of the scientific worldview are not so easily amenable to that kind of pragmatism - for instance the idea that life arises by chance, that, as Gould said, 'any replay of the tape of life would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken.' We'll never know, of course, but it practically amounts to an article of faith.
It makes sense to say something arises by chance in absence of anything that could be guiding it. It would be article of faith to say it was guided by this or that, unless you can show it was.
that appears the two only options, right? So in the Old Worlde, it was assumed everything is guided by a divine intelligence. Now we know better!
All well established arguments and I don't disagree too much. A lot depends on what questions you are wanting answers to.
I am not especially interested in the origins of life or higher consciousness. I'm more concerned that we improve the quality of our questions about such matters.
The answers I want are ones which will get me through the quotidian. Science is the only thing I find works and I spent years associating with Buddhists, Gnostics, yoga practitioners, theosophists, spiritualists - you name it. Most of them as wracked by anxiety, ambition, neurosis and substance use as anyone else. One person did die of a treatable cancer because they said alternative treatments and meditation would cure them. Some science would have saved them. But I don't wish to dwell on this.
Quoting Wayfarer
You make that sound like a bad thing. Science versus religions is a no brainer. But I see your deeper point. Don't think I have ever said science deals in truth. Just stuff we can use. You might consider this lazy but I'm not looking to explain or understand Reality, just my reality. I am not so sure it is wise of anyone to try to do anything more.
Well It is a philosphy forum. Philosophers do aspire to something more.
I wondered if you were going to say something like that. Fair enough. But I think perhaps philosophy goes wrong when it gets too ambitious. It's complicated enough trying to understand life in the trenches.
Either there is a guiding force to evolution, or there isn't. Those are logically the only 2 options. A or !A.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the Old World, there was no guiding, one day God just created earth. Then we discovered it's a lot older than we thought. And that species weren't created spontaneously. We have yet to discover any guiding force to the process though.
Do you think there is one? If so, what is it?
There are a host of questions considered signicant in philosophy that fall under that description, around the nature of reason, purpose, meaning, order and chaos, and other such broad and general subjects.
You're right logically speaking, but there's a third option: we don't know. Can we ever hope to know? Now that's a question.
First off, I didn't suggest that the guiding force has to be supernatural, do you think it is?
Quoting Wayfarer
If it can cause an effect of some sort, then we can test for that effect and scientifically theorize about it. If it can't cause any effects, well, no one cares about it...
So sure, there may be factors beyond its scope, that no one would care to investigate.
Quoting Wayfarer
Until it "consumes" it. The border between supernatural and natural has been shifting. At first, things you couldn't touch see or hear but that still caused change were "ghosts" or "spirits". Now physics deals with things you can't touch see or hear all the time, like electromagnetic fields. At first, thunder was "the anger of the Gods", now it's just electrons moving. Etc...
Quoting Wayfarer
How are any of these things supernatural? Reason, Purpose, and Meaning aren't special incomprehensible entities or powers.
For sure. I am in the 'no' camp as I have yet to hear a reason in defence of a guiding force that works for me. But more properly I don't and can't know. I suspect people often choose their answers for aesthetic reasons. In other words, the world seems more beautiful if there is a guiding force. In so many arguments against physicalists or atheists, the critique is actually about the view's ostensible ugliness, its randomness, emptiness, inadequateness, stuntedness. By contrast, higher purpose belief fans self-describe with words like union, integration, balance, transcendence, meaning. There's almost a virtue signalling element to it.
That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? How would we find out?
Quoting khaled
However, naturalism tends to disregard the sense of there being a reason in any general sense. For instance, the belief that evolution develops towards any particular end, like higher levels of intelligence, is rejected by naturalism on the grounds that it's orthogenetic.
Whilst I agree with you in a general sense I would like to clarify my thoughts on the matter. I don’t believe the boundaries of religion and science are as clear cut as that. There is significant overlap with religion and philosophy and lifestyle.
We have a tendencies in western and near eastern societies to reduce religions to a belief in a mythical god/ deity.
However Buddhism is also a religion yet it has no supernatural being. In fact it is quite grounded in nature and the natural cycles of existence. It deals more with the psychological states of peace and suffering than with any presiding authority figure.
Taoism is also another cross-over and is often categorised as both a religion and a philosophy and deals with the interactions of passive and active phenomena - something it shares with science in topics like dynamics, kinetics and energetics as well as information theory.
Similarly science is not restricted to the natural external world but also the functionings of the mind and thus cannot ignore or omit theorising reasons for religious or spiritual experiences or to try and incorporate these manifestations into a scientific paradigm for consciousness.
As for a distinction between the real and ideal youre right. Philosophy and religion often focuses more on what ought to be than what is. But there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that.
Without idealism there’s no motive to change or improve what is.
I like how you compared science to a sort of religion of sorts because in essence it has similarities. It has a dogma by which to interpret the world. It follows a strict method. And like religions and philosophy it is grounded in observation.
The key difference is science works to unify observations and understandings based on repetitive and unchanging phenomena - laws and principles. Whilst religion and spirituality unifies observations based on subjective and emotive experiences which vary widely and are unique to the individual.
Both are tools to perceive and interpret reality and both have their own flaws.
Made a kill, Anna893! All by yourself! Very proud of you, if it matters that is.
If it's supernatural, and it is a force acting on the world, it just means we don't understand it. We'll call it natural soon enough. That is, if it exists.
Quoting Wayfarer
Really? Higher levels of intelligence seems to be very evolutionarily advantageous. I would doubt anyone that says evolution does not move towards higher levels of intelligence.
But not because God is pushing it. It can be totally random and still move towards intelligence.
That's how you know they don't have critiques.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree. I would say that whichever answer you choose, aesthetic and personal reasons play a big part. No one is 100% intellectually honest. Some (most) think they are though.
However, religion seems to be fully aware of how it should deal with science i.e. its aim is not to break free from scientific facts whatever they may be but to, in a manner of speaking, work within the system as evidenced perhaps by the maxim, ought implies possible: religion prescribes an ought only if that which it prescribes is scientifically possible. So, even if on the face of it, the two seem to diverge, they're in fact a happy couple.
Evolution could just has easily ended with blue-green algae if survival was the sole criteria. Conversely, if survival is the only aim, then man’s ability to question its meaning is utterly superfluous.
Evolution doesn't "end". And anything with a brain will be able to cook and eat said algae.
Quoting Wayfarer
Aim? Whose aim? Even if we say "evolution has an aim" what does that have to do with what humans should aim for?
I am not sure who said it, but someone argued that Quantum Mechanics is wired and thus after my thesis why is it not more easier, if we wanted it to be, what it is? I think that is a good point, but it maybe misses my question. We want Quantum Mechanics to be "how it is". So we abandon theories for the sake of accuracy, but doesn't this rather proof my point? If you think that people would change concepts, to again want it to be as accurate as possible? Quantum Mechanics is not an inherent principel, it is a human idea, we (humans again) proofed as valid. In short, it is flawed. It starts with the name, Quantum Mechanics is a made up name, it is not how it is, but how somebody shaped it.
The question also goes a bit into relativism, after which the world might be not how it is, but how we are. So, what one might connect with the color blue, might be different for someone else. But somehow we need to live and thrive and be understood, so we always rather accept a plausible story, then an improbable one. Just because it is wired or complicated does not mean it is improbable, maybe it actually means the opposite. That when we accept these principles as truth it gets more probable to believe.
The same goes for religion. When we say that religion is merely "made up", we miss the bigger picture. Nothing and everything is made up. You don't just walk around come up with the idea of Jesus. It is as well based on the observations and the nature. It's as well based on our behaviour as humans. It is science.
Now there is the point with, but atoms are real and Jesus is not. In my mind this is not the case. We percieve as the things we "made up" as something what is a picture of something else. So, there may be a person like Jesus, but supernatural abilities are not realistic. Thus the picture in which Jesus is portrayed is a flawed illustration of reality. But my point is, that science is too, because it is a human concept.
Someone else (I am sorry, I am quite new here so I don't know how the quotations work) asked if there would be the one ultimate answer of how the world objectivly is. I would say partly. There may be not an ultimate answer as what we would expect, but there may be an answer we settle down with, which actually might be the ultimate answer.
And that is what I somehow wanted to say. That both are human made beliefs, which spend hope and fear. But this very idea of something is better then the other, misses the point, as it only proves we have not learned anything from our past or future. (By the way do I make sense?)
Sorry Anna, I don't think I agree with your thesis. Sure, everything may well be made up (although who knows, variations of Platonic forms may be a thing) but ideas have different degrees of usefulness. I'm happy with that as a criterion of value in a life that is over very quickly.
Survival of the luckiest --> Survival of the brainiest.
It may be a hard pill to swallow for some, but it's equally hard to deny that brainier life-forms don't have an edge over the less intellectually endowed.
Enter random mutation and evolution being a non-purposeful process.
We can still insist that survival is the sole criteria, it's just that in the face of random mutation, beings adapt. Such as by philosophizing.