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Religion... why?

wyrdsister

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In fact, science ruled as part of the Enlightenment 200+ years ago and persisted throughout the Modernist movement (up until maybe the late 60's or early 70's)... and failed, which is why Postmodernism sprang up and supplanted it. It answered the "how," not the "why," and people were looking for more.

But can't this *more* be found in modern science?
 

SolitaryWalker

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But that is not a rational or logical stance. If god created us, he created us with the propensity for questioning and rational thought.


What makes you think that God created you for a purpose that suits your likings or anything that you can understand?

Maybe God created the ethereal form of man, but what we understand for man to be could be an arbitrary product of nature. God is unfathomable so we can never know what he created us for. This has nothing to do with the kind of a God that the ignorant Biblical literalists believe in.
 

ptgatsby

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Nope science cant go there. It can only describe what happens in this world. The problems of science and philosophy are of understanding this world and Gods are to be left on the outside.

No, that's not the case. Religion and science do intersect in terms of beliefs. I'm talking religion - codified theology, doctrine, ritualism.

And I have a hard time understanding how metaphysics can be considered "part of this world"... considering it deals with a lot of issues that would be viewed as esoteric. I'd also disagree that theology and philosophy can be completely separated. Their origins are very intertwined - scholasticism and its like.

Also, religion is not only about Gods, and many older religions are a cross between science and philosophy (shamanism via shintoism, for example).

More than that, the basis of science is philosophy, a form of epistemology. A subset of philosophy is also theology. Their domains are not as absolute as you say - they differ in their forms of knowledge.

I'm asking if you are saying that you positively support one epistemological theory over the other, in that only the scientific method can determine truth.

Evolution tells us nothing about eschatology or metaphysics, it can only tell us that perhaps man evolved from apes, but to say that from this it follows that God does not exist, or what our creator may have looked like, or what happens after death would just be mere conjecture. We dont have enough to speculate from what we've gained from either science or philosophy.

No, not so. The current limits of science do not need to project into the future. I asked how you felt about religion overlapping onto science, which has happened, is happening and will continue to happen.
 

Totenkindly

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The task of the community should be no other than GIVING you an environment where you can function best so you could do a better job in your solitary meditations. Nother other than this. True religion has no public aspects.

Meh. I disagree with this. I don't think the individual is necessarily the focus of the faith, although a person has to have a personal faith if he is to function in the group. I think we are both unique as well as integrated with each other.

(Isn't that how normal communities work, regardless of religion or not? A family is an integrated unit with its own rituals and structures, yet each member is still an individual, not losing his or her unique identity.)

But you can treat others with respect and have a moral code without having a religion so why religion?

Well, for a faith such as Christianity (and some others), which places such a large emphasis on how people relate to each other and the "Body of Christ" (i.e., all Christians together as an integrated unit, working as one even while retaining identity), religious structure allows people to worship together and work effectively together, just as a secular team might develop its own rituals to build comraderie and/or create a common narrative that the team could cling to in order to build unity.

[btw, I am assuming by "religion" you mean the structure of rituals, organization, rules, and what not that govern the institution. When I refer to religion, I mean that -- as well as the understanding that religion might be structure, but it is not the "spark" of life which necessarily begins in the individual and is shared among the Body, like many people lighting their candles at a Christmas Eve service.]

I don't think we can take religion out of the personal sphere into the social sphere without some form of structure to help guide the interaction and provide a framework.
 

nightning

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But you can treat others with respect and have a moral code without having a religion so why religion?

I'll say this again... I believe religion gives us meaning to life. That we like living with a purpose. It doesn't directly affect the way you act, rather it affects your attitude... and from altering your attitude change your approach to life and indirectly affects your interactions with other people.
 

SolitaryWalker

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But can't this *more* be found in modern science?

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.
 

SolitaryWalker

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Meh. I disagree with this. I don't think the individual is necessarily the focus of the faith, although a person has to have a personal faith if he is to function in the group. I think we are both unique as well as integrated with each other.

(Isn't that how normal communities work, regardless of religion or not? A family is an integrated unit with its own rituals and structures, yet each member is still an individual, not losing his or her unique identity.)



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.
 

wyrdsister

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Care to explain to me what "modern science" means to you? I think this is a case of misunderstanding of what science really is.

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!

:devil:
 

SolitaryWalker

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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

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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!

:devil:

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

wyrdsister

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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

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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.


--

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

wyrdsister

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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
 
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