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I start with a quote I just read from an Muslim philospher. Averroes(Ibn Rushd) was a Muslim philosopher, physician and astronomer from Cordoba, Spain. He had a theory for interpreting the Quran:
Quote:“If the apparent meaning of Scripture conflicts with demonstrative conclusions it must be interpreted allegorically”
I love it!
Next up, try watching this guy. The first 40 minutes are worth watching. The audio cuts out after than and then it becomes Q&As.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EjhVk-0Vhmk If you prefer to read my notes from it, I’ll post them in a reply to this.
It seems too simple to say life and the world can be described one way on Sundays for religious purposes and another day on weekdays for all other purposes. Acquiring a belief in God is more like falling into or out of love than winning or losing an argument.
Scientific beliefs give us the ability to predict space and time in a practical useful way. Religious beliefs give meaning to our lives in an emotionally satisfying context.
Science oversteps its bounds when it tells us we have no right to believe in God now that we have better explanations for the phenomena that God was previously used to explain.
Abandon the idea that there is one way the world really is and Science & Religion are competing to tell us what way that really is.
There is no such thing as the search for truth if that search is distinct from the search for greater human happiness.
We call a belief true when no competing truth serves the same purpose equally well.
We want prediction and control and scientific beliefs give us that. We also want our lives to have significance. We want to love something with all our heart and soul and mind and philosophical and religious beliefs sometimes help in that attempt.
Different human needs give rides for different beliefs. One description is satisfactory for one human need but not satisfactory for all human needs.
Some suggest that if belief is established on insufficient evidence the pleasure is a stolen one. It is sinful because it is stolen in rejection of our duty to mankind. It is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence.
Is evidence something that floats free? Or does it satisfy a human need? It’s reasonable to demand evidence when in a common enterprise. But when searching for meaning it’s not clear that we have an obligation to produce evidence.
Our passional nature must decide an option between propositions whenever it is a genuine option that cannot, by its nature, be decided on intellectual grounds.
There are certain live, momentous and forced options which people face and can’t be decided by anything that some would be willing to call evidence. An option is live if we can’t help thinking about it; if we can’t help feeling it’s important. Options that are live for some people are not live for other people. People’s sense of importance differs.
It’s momentous if, unlike the live option of going to the movies or staying home and working, decision between the alternatives will have far reaching effects. It’s forced if there’s no way of splitting the difference, no way of fudging the issue. It cannot be decided on intellectual grounds if there is no consensus in the relevant community of what criteria should be used for arriving at a decision.
What counts as a live, forced and momentous option will vary between cultures and individuals. Some people raised agnostic will not think about religion at all. The option of becoming a religious believer is not live. It may become “live” if they fall in love with someone who refuses to marry a non-catholic.
There are no options that all of humanity has the responsibility to confront because options vary with each physical location. Should we withhold belief in the absence of evidence and be bound to belief when consensus of evidence is reached?
To search for truth is to search for beliefs that work. For beliefs that get us what we want.
One human pleasure is in finding beautiful comprehensive theories. We have no responsibilities to something called truth but only responsibilities to other human beings.
The question of whether there is evidence for a belief is the question of whether there exists a certain human community which takes certain relatively non controversial propositions as providing good reason for that belief.
(25:34) Where there is such a community to which we want to belong we have an obligation to not to believe a proposition unless we can give some good reasons for doing so; reasons that the community takes to be good ones. Where there is no such community, we don’t.
Nobody knows what would count as non-question-begging evidence for the claims of the Catholic or Mormon Church to be “the one true church.” But that does not and should not matter to the Catholic or Mormon communities.
Some see it as a question between intellectual grounds and emotional needs. That suggests humans having two distinct faculties with two distinct purposes; one for knowing and another for feeling. This picture has to be abandoned, once one gives up the idea that there is a special human purpose called “knowing the truth;” or getting in touch with the intrinsic nature of reality.
Instead we should see human minds as webs of belief and desire; so interwoven with each other that it’s not easy to see when a choice has been made on purely intellectual grounds or on merely emotional grounds. Nor is it useful to divide areas of culture or life into those in which there is objective knowledge and those in which there is only subjective opinion. These traditional epistemological distinctions are misleading ways of making a distinction of areas where we do have an obligation to other people to justify our beliefs and desires and areas in which we don’t have such an obligation.
Replace the intellect/passion distinction with what needs justification and what doesn’t. A business proposal needs intellectual justification, a marriage proposal doesn’t. This makes possible a less rigorous ethics of belief. This pragmatist ethics says our right to happiness is limited only by others rights not to have their own pursuits of happiness interfered with. This right to happiness also includes the right to believe. It includes the rights to faith, hope and love. These often cannot be justified and shouldn’t need to be.
This ethics of belief is an extension of utilitarianism. The only time we can criticise another person’s belief is when that person’s belief is made an excuse for interfering with other human projects.
Some will call this a godless creed. Beware of pragmatists baring gifts. They may say beware of the belief that anyone has the right to believe anything as long as their doing so doesn’t compromise any co-operative enterprise to which to which they have committed themselves. They may suggest that utilitarianism can only be accepted by someone with no religious feelings.
If Christ taught that “love is the only law,” then all other beliefs and creeds are secondary to this overriding obligation. A life that rejects such service, no matter how many sacraments are received, does not meet the obligation.
It’s possible to include utilitarianism in this idea. All humans suffer pain on a moral par. They all deserve to have their needs satisfied in so far as this can be done without harm to others. Humans have been taught for centuries that God’s will was for humans to love one-another; that all men are brothers.
Science. I’ve never understood why religion and evolution have to be in conflict. Sorry BRM, but Talmage and Eyring were right…and you were WRONG.
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cwald wrote:Science.
I’ve never understood why religion and evolution have to be in conflict. Sorry BRM, but Talmage and Eyring were right…and you were WRONG.
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Another on the list!
Science and religion work best when they are complimentary sides of the same coin. Science searches for answers to “what” and “how”, while religion searches for answers to “why” and “so what”. It’s when the purposes get mixed-up and one starts bleeding over onto the other side that things get wonky. It’s yin/yang – not yan or ying.
Old-Timer wrote:Science and religion work best when they are complimentary sides of the same coin. Science searches for answers to “what” and “how”, while religion searches for answers to “why” and “so what”.
It’s when the purposes get mixed-up and one starts bleeding over onto the other side that things get wonky. It’s yin/yang – not yan or ying.
Yes I agree. Rorty’s video in the OP says much the same thing about half way through or so.
mackay11 wrote:Instead we should see human minds as webs of belief and desire; so interwoven with each other that it’s not easy to see when a choice has been made on purely intellectual grounds or on merely emotional grounds.Nor is it useful to divide areas of culture or life into those in which there is objective knowledge and those in which there is only subjective opinion. These traditional epistemological distinctions are misleading ways of making a distinction of areas where we do have an obligation to other people to justify our beliefs and desires and areas in which we don’t have such an obligation. This really rings true for me. My web is pretty messy right now.
[attachment=0]pew-research.JPG[/attachment] On a slightly related topic (Science>Education>Religion…), I was looking into the Pew Research done in 2011 on American Mormons.
Pew Reseach did a survey of US Mormons. It showed, as a headline, that Mormons with a higher education were less likely to have doubts about the church. Strong belief in the church teachings declined in line with levels education.
But this again is simple correlation that might not be causality. Those who are raised mormon are less likely to have doubts than converts. But people raised in the church are also more likely to be in an environment that encourages and celebrates getting the highest possible education (not shown in the attached image, it’s in the full report online). Education is a part of Mormon theology and our culture. Especially in Utah/Idaho with the ingrained BYU culture. Going to university (and finding a spouse there) are a right of passage.
Converts, who are more likely to have some doubts, are also more likely to come from a more diverse demographic background which includes those who are less likely to have gone through a university. Given the majority of converts join after University age they have also missed the opportunity, even if the teachings of the church inspires them to do so.
Simply put: data can be cut twice very easily to create a headline.
I never trust research in the press. I’ve seen some absolute junk research that was intentionally designed and engineered to create a headline (I’m not saying this IQ research was).
The intent of the research will almost always affect the outcome of the research. For example, the % of global population who are homosexual will vary hugely from 1% to 10% – usually depending on the organisation that has done the research. Not that they fraudulently ‘rig’ it, but because the intent of the question and questioner will always influence the outcome of the answer.
One challenge for both science and religion (aka yin and yang) is that humans on both sides of the coin can become dogmatic. When scientists say there is no value in religion or spirituality and when believers say doctrine trumps science. I try to think of science and religions as parallel paths stretching towards the horizon looking for truth. That being said, it seems that the god of the scientific gaps is getting smaller.
Roadrunner wrote:One challenge for both science and religion (aka yin and yang) is that humans on both sides of the coin can become dogmatic. When scientists say there is no value in religion or spirituality and when believers say doctrine trumps science. I try to think of science and religions as parallel paths stretching towards the horizon looking for truth.
That being said, it seems that the god of the scientific gaps is getting smaller.
I think some of the great points in the video above is that God used to be used to explain how the world works, because there were no better answers.
Nowadays religion is better placed teaching us how ‘to be’ and act. Science doesn’t need to answer that question.
Science is a way of looking for natural or rational things for all phenomenon. To record all the misses as well as the hits to see if there is something to it(the idea) or is it just a false patternicity in our brains. Not that science itself doesn’t have a belief but that before it becomes affirming they have to be sure it’s not a false positive. So as a result when you are looking at things you want to be sure before you say it is put of this world or supernatural that it first can’t be explained by natural phenomenon.
I recently saw on news TV that a church on Texas had a tree with water coming out of its leafs. People began to instantly say its a supernatural event, a sign from god. It was interesting because although it is uncommon for a tree, it wasn’t uncommon for certain trees and that one actually does it at the same time every year.
They are bit at odds with each other because they don’t compete I’m the same sphere directly.
But I’m happy there is a place for both. But before I go for supernatural explanations I am happy there are people who can give natural ones and conduct all the hits and misses to see of a pattern forms.
With religion I am happy that people common together and “hopefully” develop love and understanding to one another.
As well as search for questions that science can’t yet answer.
The problem begins when many answers that served early humanity become so entrenched that they feel they must defend there tradition against new answers as humanity intelligence progresses with new tech to discover it.
Believe it or not people as a whole are growing more intelligent by about 3% per ten years.
So there is a conflict not with religion per say but with Tradtions of religion, not religion itself.
Forgotten_Charity wrote:Believe it or not people as a whole are growing more intelligent by about 3% per ten years.
I question who and how this is quantified? Source?
wjclerk wrote:Forgotten_Charity wrote:Believe it or not people as a whole are growing more intelligent by about 3% per ten years.
I question who and how this is quantified? Source?
In average IQ test scores. Average 3% higher every 10 years.
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10000872396390444032404578006612858486012?mg=reno64-wsj ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10000872396390444032404578006612858486012?mg=reno64-wsj There are many articles and books for this if you look.
Quote:In average IQ test scores. Average 3% higher every 10 years.
It’s called the “Flynn effect.”
I don’t believe that religion in general is incompatible with science. Sure, they both try to provide answers but that’s where a lot of the similarity ends because science is mostly about what can be directly tested or predicted in a reliable way and mostly applies to the physical world but religion has no such limitation and will deal with faith in the unseen, value judgments about morality, etc. Ideally I think religion should mostly add value and serve the greater good and it seems to provide people with a sense of belonging, meaning, and purpose that hard science by itself doesn’t in many cases. Sure there are secular groups and ideologies that do the same type of thing but it seems like they are typically based on unproven opinions and personal preferences just as much as religion. However, I definitely think that traditional Mormonism is not very compatible with science and the main reason why is the general idea that revelation is the best way to know the truth. LDS Church leaders are not treated as simply being men that are trying to interpret scriptures and traditional ideas the best they can, they are treated as prophets, seers, and revelators that speak for God. Likewise the way the Church claims the Book of Mormon was received depends on significant confidence in revelation and divine intervention and members are expected to seek their own personal revelation that the Church is “true” as basically a package deal (all-or-nothing). This doesn’t mean you can’t be Mormon if you see conflicts with current scientific knowledge but you will definitely have to take much of what the Church officially teaches with a grain of salt because there is no shortage of problems that contradict what we repeatedly see and experience in the real world.
Unlike many disaffected members that permanently lost their testimony I didn’t read through so-called anti-Mormon material and quickly lose faith in the Church all at once. It was a long drawn-out process of increasing doubt because I ran into some anti-Mormon propaganda on my mission and it made me so upset that I denied it as anti-Mormon lies and had no interest in reading anything like this again until after I already didn’t believe the Church’s story anymore. What finally destroyed my testimony years after anti-Mormon propaganda and all my “sins” could not was simply reading the Old Testament in detail along with the comments of Church leaders and references to LDS scriptures that seemed to support a literal interpretation of it. I started to think, “Why does God sound so much like an ignorant man?” It wasn’t just problems with scientific evidence but the harshness of thinking that people should be killed over things that are commonplace now. Then I saw there were Christian apologists like CS Lewis that didn’t take all this literally and wondered why the Church couldn’t be more like that but because it has been depending on the idea that revelation is so important and reliable for so long it’s like they have painted themselves into a corner that is hard to find a way out of.
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