The Great Debate: "Has Science Refuted Religion?"

[punshhh]

These statements contradict each other.

The second statement is speculation, the first is logical fact.

 

[Donn]

What a kindergarten level of understanding. What kind of world would it be to examine phenomena objectively?

Truth. There are the little yellow fuzzy ball phenomena. Those are sooo cute. They make my heart go bippety-boom.
And those leathery crackly ones? Ooooh scary.
The mysterions. Those leave me all puzzly. Like ????

Science! It's a Faith! It's a Feeling.

 

[annnnoid]

I can't believe I'm gonna quote Heinlein, but here it is:
"The universe is what it is, not what we want it to be." - Starship Troopers

Your feelings, my feelings, they make not a bit of difference to reality. The whole essence of science is to get our feelings out of the way.

...then I'm sure you'll enjoy (or whatever...since you seem convinced that 'enjoying' anything is utterly irrelevant) this delightful quote from Bertrand Russell:

“Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way."

Your lack of anything relevant to say has now reached the point where I have to admit I have no more interest in responding.

 

[Donn]

Your lack of anything relevant to say has now reached the point where I have to admit I have no more interest in responding.

Ok.

 

[Limbo]

Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to read her. I picked up a used copy of Practical Mysticism last night.

I'd say that the only way to know what it's like to be aware of God's presence is to be aware of God's presence. Mysticism isn't anything special. Everybody is a mystic to some extent. Even the non-believer is in touch with the Divine at the most basic level of existence. In this sense the atheist glorifies God in the same way a rock does, by the simple fact that they exist. They just don't realize or don't want to realize that they are doing this.

Yep, and everyone is also a scientist to some extent. Even the believer is in touch with science at its most basic level. In this sense the mystic glorifies rationality and empiricism but few realize it.

 

[Peterson]

There is a continuum. Mysticism is, ultimately, an integrated part of that continuum. Like every other part of the continuum…it can, and often is, experienced in isolation…and thus, like every other part of the continuum, can be distorted and / or misinterpreted. Is it something special? …indescribably so. But I think far more so when it is integrated with everything else (‘balance’ I think is the correct term). As you point out….life itself is immeasurably special (even for those who are convinced it isn’t). I think it’s simply a matter of when you get the inside right, you discover the outside (for anyone who gives the slightest crap about the evidence, there is much to support this POV).

….but as they say…I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

Just for clarification, what I meant by "nothing special" is that it's not only certain gifted people that have access to this awareness. I believe that everybody does. When you do become aware of God's presence, it is indescribably special. The indescribable nature of it is a blessing because if we were able to describe it, it could lose it's intimacy.

 

[Donn]

When you do become aware of God's presence, it is indescribably special. The indescribable nature of it is a blessing because if we were able to describe it, it could lose it's intimacy.

How do you know you are aware of the same thing some other person (say Limbo) is aware of?
What if it's just your brain?
If you can't describe it, how can you compare notes with someone else?

How do you go from this intimate, perfectly private affair to something arranged like a religion?
How does this intimate affair drive your day to day actions and decisions?

If you make an excuse for this mystical affair, you also give cover to those more toxic upstream users of the same excuses. You may be benign (I assume) but they want to curb freedom of mind and body.

Anyway, in the context of the OP, your private insight is so insular that you can only hint at it obscurely. This puts the whole thing into the unlikely - and is thus refuted as a system that describes reality.

 

[westprog]

I gather you mean, by this,

I've noticed that when somebody says this on JREF - along with "so what you're really saying is" - the next statement has rarely anything more than the most tenuous connection to what was actually said. As in this case.

Another popular one is - say someone discussing the Balkan wars says "There were terrible things done on all sides, it wasn't just X" and the response is "so you're saying that genocide is all right, then".

Whenever I've heard "so you're saying x is all right" it involves a distortion.

 

[Donn]

I've noticed that when somebody says this

In this case you notice wrong.

 

[Limbo]

How do you know you are aware of the same thing some other person (say Limbo) is aware of?
What if it's just your brain?
If you can't describe it, how can you compare notes with someone else?

It's amazing how clearly comparative mysticism shows that yes indeed throughout history mystics have been 'aware of the same thing'. Spend some time studying comparative mysticism, comparative mythology, and comparative religion. You'll see that there is a transcendent reality that informs world religion & myth.

One Song

'Every war and every conflict between human beings
has happened because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.' -Rumi

 

[Resume]

It's amazing how clearly comparative mysticism shows that yes indeed throughout history mystics have been 'aware of the same thing'.

Well of course. P.T. Barnum was aware of this too. "The bigger the humbug the better people will like it."

 

[Resume]

One Song

'Every war and every conflict between human beings
has happened because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.' -Rumi

this poem
if we shall call it that
or concert of one
divided among himself
this earthward gesture
of the sky-diver, the worms
on his back still spinning forth
and already gnawing away
the silks of his loves, who could have saved him
this free floating of one
opening his arms into the altitude
of flight, who obeys this necessity and fails . . .

Galway Kinnell.

Or

Of these myths
what cares the singular?
Or later the peat, the loam,
the dirt that conceals?
Or all the below that comsumes and converts?

Anonymous.

 

[Brainache]

I've got a luverly bunch of coconuts
here they are all standing in a row
...

 

[tsig]

Just for clarification, what I meant by "nothing special" is that it's not only certain gifted people that have access to this awareness. I believe that everybody does. When you do become aware of God's presence, it is indescribably special. The indescribable nature of it is a blessing because if we were able to describe it, it could lose it's intimacy.

Increased serotonin levels will do that.

 

[Leumas]

It's amazing how clearly comparative mysticism shows that yes indeed throughout history mystics have been 'aware of the same thing'. Spend some time studying comparative mysticism, comparative mythology, and comparative religion. You'll see that there is a transcendent reality that informs world religion & myth.

One Song

'Every war and every conflict between human beings has happened because of some disagreement about names.

Unfortunately in reality is most wars and conflicts happened, still happen and will always happen due to human viciousness and greed....not over words.....words are EXCUSES to dupe the cannon fodder into fighting the wars for the alphas.

 

[punshhh]

Yep, and everyone is also a scientist to some extent. Even the believer is in touch with science at its most basic level. In this sense the mystic glorifies rationality and empiricism but few realize it.

Quite, the diligent mystic is the most rational of all.

 

[Donn]

It's amazing how clearly comparative mysticism shows that yes .. mystics have been 'aware of the same thing'... there is a transcendent reality that informs world religion & myth.

Does not chime with:

When you do become aware of God's presence, it is indescribably special. The indescribable nature of it is a blessing because if we were able to describe it, it could lose it's intimacy.

All the "comparitive mysticism" you do are simply prose and poetry.
Nothing wrong with that, but here's the irony: you mystics are doing a form of proto-science.

You are trying to locate common elements. This involves gathering evidence. You do this by collecting stories and anecdotes.
Then you sift through them, each of you in scattered groups so there is little concerted progress.

Then you assign "points" of clarity or truthiness to common themes, images, emotions and ideas. Each story is laid atop the others, upon a metaphorical light-table, and you trace the most dense clumps.

You attempt to find the source of all those individual experiences.

You are doing science. Badly, arrogantly, blindly, but it's scientific all the same.

Here's the kicker. You would never admit this to yourselves because your whole raison d'être is to continue the intensity of the mystery. You want it occluded even as you shine light upon it.

No wonder you lot are so confused when you come here.

 

[Limbo]

All the "comparitive mysticism" you do are simply prose and poetry.

Sorry, but I don't accept the opinions of motivated skeptics who don't know what they are talking about because they haven't spent years studying that which they are skeptical toward. In other words, armchair pseudo-skeptics.

So I say, stfu and go study comparative religion, comparative mythology, and comparative mysticism for about a decade, as I have, and then experience mysticism first-hand as I have. Then I'll be interested in your opinions. Until then, you are an uninitiated thrall. You are the metaphorical equivalent to copper-tops trapped in the Matrix.

"No one, as far as I know, has yet tried to compose into a single picture the new perspectives that have been opened in the fields of comparative symbolism, religion, mythology, and philosophy by the scholarship of recent years. The richly rewarded archaeological researches of the past few decades; astonishing clarifications, simplifications, and coordinations achieved by intensive studies in the spheres of philology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, folklore, and religion; fresh insights in psychological research; and the many priceless contributions to our science by the scholars, monks, and literary men of Asia, have combined to suggest a new image of the fundamental unity of the spiritual history of mankind.

Without straining beyond the treasuries of evidence already on hand in these widely scattered departments of our subject, therefore, but simply gathering from them the membra disjuncta of a unitary mythological science, I attempt in the following pages the first sketch of a natural history of the gods and heroes, such as in its final form should include in its purview all divine beings--not regarding any as sacrosanct or beyond its scientific domain. For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science." -Joseph Campbell

 

[Donn]

So I say, stfu and go study comparative religion, comparative mythology, and comparative mysticism for about a decade, as I have, and then experience mysticism first-hand as I have.

So, nothing much then?

Then I'll be interested in your opinions.

I'll take that as resignation.

Until then, you are an uninitiated thrall.

Thanks for a fine addition to my sig!

You are the metaphorical equivalent to copper-tops trapped in the Matrix, and you presume to tell Neo about the nature of reality.

Right-ho Morpheus. You don't presume anything at all! Not at all.

.. astonishing clarifications, simplifications, and coordinations..

Go ahead, astonish us.

For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science.

Sure, but what is the "visionary world of gods"? The bottom of a bong?

 

[tsig]

Sorry, but I don't accept the opinions of motivated skeptics who don't know what they are talking about because they haven't spent years studying that which they are skeptical toward. In other words, armchair pseudo-skeptics.

So I say, stfu and go study comparative religion, comparative mythology, and comparative mysticism for about a decade, as I have, and then experience mysticism first-hand as I have. Then I'll be interested in your opinions. Until then, you are an uninitiated thrall. You are the metaphorical equivalent to copper-tops trapped in the Matrix.

"No one, as far as I know, has yet tried to compose into a single picture the new perspectives that have been opened in the fields of comparative symbolism, religion, mythology, and philosophy by the scholarship of recent years. The richly rewarded archaeological researches of the past few decades; astonishing clarifications, simplifications, and coordinations achieved by intensive studies in the spheres of philology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, folklore, and religion; fresh insights in psychological research; and the many priceless contributions to our science by the scholars, monks, and literary men of Asia, have combined to suggest a new image of the fundamental unity of the spiritual history of mankind.

Without straining beyond the treasuries of evidence already on hand in these widely scattered departments of our subject, therefore, but simply gathering from them the membra disjuncta of a unitary mythological science, I attempt in the following pages the first sketch of a natural history of the gods and heroes, such as in its final form should include in its purview all divine beings--not regarding any as sacrosanct or beyond its scientific domain. For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science." -Joseph Campbell

A decade? I've studied it all for 40 years, had many mystical experiences so my conclusion is therefore 4 times more authoritarian than yours and I say it's all in your head.