Religion... why?

[SolitaryWalker]

You need to expand this.

I was talking about what religions ARE not about what the *should* be in an ideological sense.

You asked: whats the point of religions if I can come up with morality without them and make myself happy.

The point of religions has nothing to do with making you happy or moral, their purpose is transcendent and one that we can not understand because it is outside of the province of reason.

[SolitaryWalker]

Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to collect accurate information about objective reality and to model this objective reality in a way which can be used algorithmically to make reliable, concrete and quantitative predictions about future events and observations. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research.

Science!

Again science talks about what we can understand, religion tells us about what we can not understand.

[wyrdsister]

Postmodernism goes all the way back to the human problem of egocentricity and it was erected upon the Perversion of Kant's teaching. Postmodernists believe that the truth is confined only to human perceptions, Kant taugh the opposite of this, that the truth has nothing to do with human perceptions and we can never grasp it.

Interesting, I think that there is a subjective human truth and a universal truth, however this thread is not about my personal beliefs but about why religion is relevant today.

I digress!

[Totenkindly]

You've skated right over your point.
Goal in life-Find true spirituality in your solitary meditations.
Purpose of the community-Help you do this.

Heh. Well, that's not Christianity, if that's what you were thinking of.

The goal here is the "Body" and the reintegration of everyone into healthy relationship with each other. It's very much a communal faith, not an isolated one such as you describe.

From a Christian perspective, you can't really grasp God if your ultimate gist is an isolated faith.


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btw, this thread is a hoot -- a spiraling argument of 4+ posters, sort of skipping all over the place.

[wyrdsister]

Again science talks about what we can understand, religion tells us about what we can not understand.

But isn't * what we cannot understand* just the things that science has not been able to model/describe yet?

Define *what we cannot understand*

Do you mean ghosts? OBE? UFOs?

[SolitaryWalker]

Interesting, I think that there is a subjective human truth and a universal truth, however this thread is not about my personal beliefs but about why religion is relevant today.

I digress!

There is no subjective human truth. There is truth and there is our perception of truth.

Truth never changes, yet our perceptions do quite a bit.

[SolitaryWalker]

But isn't * what we cannot understand* just the things that science has not been able to model/describe yet?

Define *what we cannot understand*

Do you mean ghosts? OBE? UFOs?

Here is Kant in a nutshell.

God is infinite and we are finite, we can never understand him because he is too big for our box.

The question of creationism requires knowledge of the other-world, and we are only confined to the knowledge of this world so we can not talk about those things meaningfully.

[nightning]

Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to collect accurate information about objective reality and to model this objective reality in a way which can be used algorithmically to make reliable, concrete and quantitative predictions about future events and observations. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research.

Very good, then by that definition science can only tell you what is and what can be... a description of how the system works, ways of organization information in a sensical manner. Then based on that description, come up with hypotheses that can hopefully predict what will happen in a given situation. Science works on falsifiability... we test hypotheses over and over again... if we cannot disprove something... that idea ends up as becoming a theory... for example Darwain's theory of evolution. Nowhere in the system can we "prove" something is the truth... all we can say is that evidences cannot disprove the said theory. So we tentatively accept it as a possible truth. Note that if new evidence comes in suggesting evolution is wrong, that theory will go out the window.

Religion on the other hand does not belong in the realm of science. For it's not falsifiable. You either accept it on believe or you don't. Therefore the two are completely separate. On the issue on creationism and evolution... Scientists have a problem with creationism not because they don't care about religion. Rather they don't believe in the values behind creationism. The fundamental justification behind it is mote.

[nightning]

btw, this thread is a hoot -- a spiraling argument of 4+ posters, sort of skipping all over the place.

I agree... would it be better if we divide this thread into subthreads? We're refering to multiple aspects of religion and science.

[wyrdsister]

You asked: whats the point of religions if I can come up with morality without them and make myself happy.

The point of religions has nothing to do with making you happy or moral, their purpose is transcendent and one that we can not understand because it is outside of the province of reason.

I disagree how can religion be transcendent* when it is fundamentally a human construct created to give us thinking apes some kind of purpose or meaning to life? Beyond our biological function to perpetuate the human species?

transcendent
A adjective
1 transcendent, unknowable
beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding; "philosophers...often explicitly reject the notion of any transcendent reality beyond thought...and claim to be concerned only with thought itself..."- W.P.Alston; "the unknowable