Unification of Science and Religion

[Nick_A]

As I wrote, I believe that Plato and Simone are right in their assertion that objective morality is not learned but rather remembered. You cannot build a house without the skeleton of what it will look like. A free society cannot be built without the principles and values necessary to sustain freedom.

As of now we are frightfully out of balance. Our scientific and technological advances are improving daily yet our emotional intelligence remains the same. Machines no longer serve Man but it seems like Man is serving machines. How long will it be before the most efficient forms of killing become property of people without emotional intelligence. In short it will be catastrophic. The union of science and religion is the union of intellectual knowledge concerning what we can do with the emotional knowledge of the human reason for doing it. What better union can there be?

[Skip]

Skip, objectivity begins when subjectivity ends.

How can you tell where that is? Or that subjectivity is even on a scale, graph or map on which its end can be located? Once located, who is qualified to read anything beyond that point?

Would values exist in the universe if Man became extinct?

Of course - as long as other conscious entities, with sufficient intelligence to tell desirable from undesirable, continued to exist.
You didn't think we were unique, did you?

.. But the point is that the depth of man’s being is attracted to what we don’t understand.

Man's being has a depth? And you can find it, question it and identify its attractions and repulsions?

You have a choice to deny it or become open to it. Plato defined Man as a being in search of meaning. Does a philosophrer or religious person respect this need by denying it?

That would be their individual choice.

Plato describes what I mean by objective. You can disagree but without efforts to “Know Thyself” your disagreements are without merit.

I see. An objective value-judgment, no doubt.

If you want to know if there is food in the fridge you have to open the fridge. It is as simple as that: “Know Thyself.”

Actually, what you describe is "Do Not Know Thy Fridge." Me, I happen to know exactly what's in there, in which drawer or shelf, how many and how close to use-by date, without opening the door. Something similar applies to self.

[Skip]

As I wrote, I believe that Plato and Simone are right in their assertion that objective morality is not learned but rather remembered.

From when?

A. How long will it be before the most efficient forms of killing become property of people without emotional intelligence.

Since approximately 4,000 BC. Mainly because religion and science have always been in the service of power; were, in fact, united in that service until the bifurcation of the Enlightenment.

Are you really suggesting a return to the Paleolithic?

[FlashDangerpants]

As I wrote, I believe that Plato and Simone are right in their assertion that objective morality is not learned but rather remembered. You cannot build a house without the skeleton of what it will look like. A free society cannot be built without the principles and values necessary to sustain freedom.

I believe that is nonsense. You are making a basic teleological mistake of inflicting design on a process of natural accretion.

As of now we are frightfully out of balance. Our scientific and technological advances are improving daily yet our emotional intelligence remains the same. Machines no longer serve Man but it seems like Man is serving machines. How long will it be before the most efficient forms of killing become property of people without emotional intelligence. In short it will be catastrophic.

That isn't a scientific question or a religious one. How can you expect either of those models to provide any kind of answer?

The union of science and religion is the union of intellectual knowledge concerning what we can do with the emotional knowledge of the human reason for doing it. What better union can there be?

"intellectual knowledge concerning what we can do with emotional knowledge of the human reason for doing it"?

We have established very easily that there can be no union between science and religion. You gave up on that point already.
If an incompatible union is your suggestion for fixing the world's problems, the best thing would be for you to leave the job to others.

[Nick_A]

FD, there are people far more astute who understand this far better than I do. That is why for example I posted the link to Einstein's letters. Have you ever wondered why we are sensitive to beauty? it is completely unnecessary for animal life. It suggests something of value yet we don't know what is behind beauty. Such questions are natural for the spiritual mind yet outside the domain of science. Science is unconcerned with value nor should it be. Just the facts mam. The essence of religion awakens us to human values we have forgotten. Imagine what the world would be like if they were remembered? Of course it is impossible. The World described by Plato as the "Beast" must reject values based on objective morality since the life of the Beast attached to the earth is sustained by imagination. The Beast doesn't want to die. But there are a minority of people who can open the natural relationship between science and the essence of religion and realize the necessity of them becoming balanced. I support these people.

[FlashDangerpants]

Again you are confused and sending yourself in a contradictory circle.
You refer to questions which are correctly outside the domain of science.
And then you want science to take them into account anyway.

[Skip]

He wants a Purpose. There isn't one.
He wants an Objective Value. There isn't one.
He wants Science to ratify Religion. It's not going to happen.

[uwot]

...there are a minority of people who can open the natural relationship between science and the essence of religion and realize the necessity of them becoming balanced. I support these people.

The natural relationship between science and religion was spelled out by Thales more than two and a half thousand years ago. As it happens, I wrote an article for the magazine on the topic, you can read it here if you are a subscriber: https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Ph ... d_Branches (Or here if you're not: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogI ... c=postname ) In a nutshell, it doesn't matter what metaphysics you apply; you can believe in any old supernatural being you fancy. The practical purpose of science is to discover how the universe works, so that we can moderate our behaviour appropriately, or, even better, manipulate our environment to our advantage. We do this in the belief that our own intervention, while not always 'good', is more efficacious than prayers and incantations.
There will be no unification of science and religion until a phenomena is discovered that can only be explained by the interference of some meddling deity. You could make such a case for the existence of the universe, life or consciousness, all of which are baffling, but the moment you stop looking for natural explanations, you stop doing science.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Does the essence of religion and the truths which reconcile the Ways having initiated with a conscious source contradict scientific truths or reveal them? I agree with Simone Weil that the eventual unity of science and religion is of enormous importance for Man's future. Perhaps the fact that they often seem in contradiction is proof of our collective stupidity. Do you believe that the unification of science and religion is possible and even probable or will we remain forever lost in contradictory egoistic misconceptions? Simone wrote:

“I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science.” Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

"To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing." Simone Weil

The first quote is total bunkum. There is no "truth of science" in these religions.
And the second quote is diametrically opposed to the truth of science which as at every step led away from those God os the religions mentioned above.

The only point of departure is the purest form of Buddhism which has not god at its heart. Yet ever here we see a wilful departure from the common sense of evidence, particularly in the matter of re-incarnation which abuses the most basic findings of science in all respects

[Nick_A]

Skip wrote

:He wants a Purpose. There isn't one.
He wants an Objective Value. There isn't one.
He wants Science to ratify Religion. It's not going to happen.

This just about sums it up for everyone here. Which is worse: blind faith or blind denial? It is hard to say. Yet these two failings IMO just makes the eventual logical unification of science and religion in pursuit of human meaning aned purpose all the more difficult. Yet I'm thankful for those who have contributed to the awakening that will come if our species survives that long. Take Basarab Nicolescu and CIRET for example. What does it mean to find open minded scientists, artists, and mechanics who realize they all have a piece of the great puzzle and work to unite them. Of course it would be impossible here. But it does seem to happen.

Atheists worship fragmentation or the way of science. Those like Simone, Einstein, Prof. Needleman, and Basarab Nicolescu all know that this obsession leads us from the experience of the wholeness necessary to experience human meaning and purpose. Can the wholeness sought by the essence of religion exist with the fragmentation sought by science? Maybe so but I believe only amongst those free from blind belief and blind denial Consider Transdisciplinarity for example:

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Reviews/NicolescuReview.htm


After reading Nicolescu's Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity, it is hard to imagine how any thinking person could retreat to the old, safe, comfortable conceptual framework. Taking a series of ideas that would be extremely thought-provoking even when considered one by one, the Romanian quantum physicist Basarab Nicolescu weaves them together in a stunning vision, this manifesto of the twenty-first century, so that they emerge as a shimmering, profoundly radical whole.

Nicolescu’s raison d’être is to help develop people’s consciousness by means of showing them how to approach things in terms of what he calls “transdisciplinarity.” He seeks to address head on the problem of fragmentation that plagues contemporary life. Nicolescu maintains that binary logic, the logic underlying most all of our social, economic, and political institutions, is not sufficient to encompass or address all human situations. His thinking aids in the unification of the scientific culture and the sacred, something which increasing numbers of persons, will find to be an enormous help, among them wholistic health practitioners seeking to promote the understanding of illness as something arising from the interwoven fabric—body, plus mind, plus spirit—that constitutes the whole human being, and academics frustrated by the increasing pressure to produce only so-called “value-free” material.

Transdisciplinarity “concerns that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all discipline,” and its aim is the unity of knowledge together with the unity of our being: “Its goal is the understanding of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge.” (44) Nicolescu points out the danger of self-destruction caused by modernism and increased technologization and offers alternative ways of approaching them, using a transdisciplinary approach that propels us beyond the either/or thinking that gave rise to the antagonisms that produced the problems in the first place. The logic of the included middle permits “this duality [to be] transgressed by the open unity that encompasses both the universe and the human being.” (56). Thus, approaching problems in a transdisciplinary way enables one to move beyond dichotomized thinking, into the space that lies beyond.

Nicolescu calls on us to rethink everything in terms of what quantum physics has shown us about the nature of the universe. Besides offering an alternative to thinking exclusively in terms of binary logic, and showing how the idea of the logic of the included middle can afford hitherto unimagined possibilities, he also introduces us to the idea that Reality is not something that exists on only one level, but on many, and maintains that only transdisciplinarity can deal with the dynamics engendered by the action of several levels of Reality at once. It is for this reason that transdisciplinarity is radically distinct from multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, although it is often confused with both. Moreover, because of the fact that reality has more than a single level, binary logic, the logic that one uses to cross a street and avoid being hit by a truck, cannot possibly be applied to all of the levels. It simply does not work. Nicolescu explains it is only the logic of the included middle that can be adequate for complex situations, like those we must confront in the educational, political, social, religious and cultural arenas. As he writes, “The transdisciplinary viewpoint allows us to consider a multidimensional Reality, structured by multiple levels replacing the single-level, one-dimensional reality of classical thought.” (49)...........................

[FlashDangerpants]

Which is worse: blind faith or blind denial?

We don't care, you are fully loaded with both.

[Nick_A]

FD wrote:

We don't care, you are fully loaded with both.

Are you sure you weren't fully loaded when you wrote this?

[uwot]

What does it mean to find open minded scientists, artists, and mechanics who realize they all have a piece of the great puzzle and work to unite them.

Two things. Firstly it is an ad hominem slur on the people who don't wholeheartedly embrace your way of thinking. You infer that people who disagree with you are not open minded. Ironically, you complain:

This just about sums it up for everyone here.

Everyone here? This not only fails to respect the individuality of the people expressing views other than yours, but it also illustrates your lack of open mindedness, as your characterisation is no more subtle than 'us and them'.
Secondly, it means you are making an almighty assumption that uniting all human endeavour is feasible.

Atheists worship fragmentation or the way of science.

Atheists, as a rule, are not in the habit of worshipping anything. The fragmentation of science is not a specified aim, it is simply the result of the richness of the phenomena, that makes studying all of it, in any worthwhile detail, impossible.
As I said, by all means attach whatever 'meaning' or metaphysics that pleases you; it makes no difference to what actually happens. Whether god exists or not, which I personally doubt, the purpose of science is to understand the natural world to enhance our control. Religion demands that at some level we surrender that control, and in fact religions predicated on the fall of Adam and Eve, insist we are being punished for wanting any control. Which religion is it you wish to unify with science? The vast range of religions have a very poor record of showing a united front.

[Nick_A]

uuwot, when a person writes the following I cannot see how it can be seen as anything but blind denial:

He wants a Purpose. There isn't one.
He wants an Objective Value. There isn't one.
He wants Science to ratify Religion. It's not going to happen.

An open minded person will say that they don't see a purpose to our universe or life within it, they don't see how value can be anything but subjective, and do not understand how science can verify the essence of religion. Do you see the difference between blind denial and an open minded question?

As of now, I think that Panentheism along with an internal structure based on levels of reality as explained by Basarab Nicolescu will eventually be the means for the unification of science and religion. But judging by what I've experienced around me, the effects of defensive blind denial and blind belief, we are many years from it and only a small minority will let their guard down long enough to ponder, in the real meaning of the term, the potential for such a realistic union. It is ironic though that the influence of this minority may determine the survival of our species.

[uwot]

uuwot, when a person writes the following I cannot see how it can be seen as anything but blind denial:

He wants a Purpose. There isn't one.
He wants an Objective Value. There isn't one.
He wants Science to ratify Religion. It's not going to happen.

Skip is more than capable of thinking and speaking for himself and you might consider that his denial is based on sound reasoning. In the first two cases, there is no evidence for the things being denied. Similarly, there is no evidence for unicorns or fairies; would you accuse someone of blind denial if they said they don't exist? As for science ratifying religion, if there were 'scientific' proof of god, some measurable, predictable and manipulable phenomenon that is 'god', it would have severe implications for its free will, thereby undermining probably the most important attribute ascribed to any god. In other words, the discovery of god, against its wishes, would prove practically every religion wrong. I think you are confusing organised religion and a feeling that some sort god exists. The universe is a bewildering thing, and the idea of a god is no more ridiculous than some of the scientific hypotheses presented, but the chances of a god being as it is described by any mainstream religion is not significantly greater than zero.
That is my view. Others will disagree with both of us.