From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 06 2003 - 19:26:53 BST
Hey there Sam,
SAM
> I don't see the fruits of science as necessarily separate to a religious
> perspective. To say that it is requires putting a religious perspective
into
> a static box, which does violence to the nature of the religion itself. If
> science is allowed to change over time as our understandings evolve, why
> can't religions?
RICK
The way you tell it, apatheia evolved into objectivity which evolved into
science. So if religion has evolved overtime into science and objectivity,
why insist upon maintaining a belief in the pre-evolved version? I think
this is what Campbell was alluding to when he wrote: "In fact, the famous
conflict of science and religion has actually nothing to do with religion,
but is simply of two sciences: that of 4000 B.C. and that of A.D. 2000."
SAM
(The things which a particular religion has to hold to, in
> order to maintain recognisable continuity of identity, we can debate
about).
RICK
I'd sincerely love to hear you talk about this.
RICK (from last time)
> > To borrow a phrase from one of favorite professional magicians, Mr.
> Penn
> > Gillette (of Penn & Teller), "God lives in the margins of science,
that's
> > why the believers like to keep those margins wide and blurry." Granted,
> > Gillette is no theologian, but he is an expert on the ways in which
people
> > are fooled and fool themselves. You say that the philosophical
tradition
> is
> > just another religion. But when you say that, it sounds to me like
you're
> > trying to blur the distinctions between knowledge derived from reason
> > and knowledge derived from faith.
SAM
> I don't believe in a 'god of the gaps' - in fact, that's rejected by most
> theologians as a confused reaction to Modernism.
RICK
I don't know Sam... Sometimes it sounds to me very much like you do
believe in a god of the gaps. First, I see you creating the gaps in
statements like..."Science is tremendously powerful in certain restricted
areas. In other areas, it is worse than useless"... "Science has nothing to
say about 'shoulds'"..."...as soon as we get away from questions of
'physics', and into all the areas that we find humanly interesting... then
science has nothing to say". Those are the gaps where your god lives.
RICK (from last time)
> > You object to the notion that "there is 'neutral ground' from which
it
> > is possible to impartially assess the truth claims of different
religious
> > beliefs (ie 'objectively')." But do you really think some sort of
> > 'neutrality' is necessary to refute the proposition that a man can be
> > resurrected and that therefore if one is to believe that Christ came
back
> > from the dead it must be believed *entirely on faith* and in the face of
> the
> > mountains of evidence to the contrary?
SAM
> What are the 'mountains of evidence to the contrary'? Just that nobody
else
> has?
RICK
That's a good place to start. After all, that is the same ground you
indicted Pons and Fleischmann on when you wrote: "Their experiments were not
able to be replicated by anyone else - it appears that their desires to make
the intellectual breakthrough distorted their perceptions of what their
experiments proved." This is identical to the way in which the Christian's
desire to believe that Christ was resurrected distorts their perceptions of
what the bible proves...
Oh yeah, does this mean you do think Christ was literally resurrected from
the dead? Or are you just defending the literal fundamentalist reading that
you asked me not to force you to defend?
SAM
Yet Christians would say that 'nobody else was the Son of God' - so why
> shouldn't Jesus be different?
RICK
Well, that's fine so long as one is willing to believe that Jesus was the
son of God (or even that there even is a 'God' for that matter). I admit I
can't prove that there is no god or that Jesus was not his son, but I also
can't disprove the existence of unicorns, goblins, batman, or the
tooth-fairy. Homer's Odyssey and Iliad contain countless fantastic
elements I can't disprove (ie. that a cyclops existed who was killed by
Ulysses). Should I believe that the Odyssey also really happened for this
reason?
SAM
> What do you make of this quotation, from Alan Watts, which DMB provided
> (I'll make my own reactions to him):
>
> There is no more telling symptom of the confusion of 'modern thought' than
> the very suggestion that poetry or mythology can be 'mere'. This arises
from
> the notion that poetry and myth belong to the realm of fancy as distinct
> from fact, and that since fact equal Truth, myth and poetry have no
SERIOUS
> content. Yet this is a mistake for which no one is more responsible than
the
> theologians, who, as we have seen, resolutely confounded scientific fact
> with truth and reality.
RICK
Campbell is saying the mistake is to be defending the myths as if they were
literal. From my perspective, this is precisely what you appear to be doing
when you question the evidence against a man rising from the dead. You
insist that your god doesn't live in the gaps of science, you insist, "It's
the ideology that says such things *need* to be 'backed up' that is in
question." Yet, you don't hesitate to defend the literal possibility that
there was a man named Jesus who was resurrected from the dead by virtue of
his relationship to a divine being. What am I to make of this?
(quote continued)
....Having degraded God to a mere 'thing', they should
> not be surprized when scientists doubt the veracity of this 'thing' - for
> the significant reason thatit seems an unnecessary and meaningless
> hypothesis.
RICK
Exactly. It's an unnecessary and meaningless hypothesis. I can think of no
aspect of reality which requires the assumption of the existence of god.
(quote continued)
Certainly the poets and myth-makers have little to tell us
about
> facts, for they make no hypotheses. Yet for this very reason they alone
have
> something really important to say; they alone have news of the living
world,
> of reality. By contrast, the historians, the chroniclers, and the analysts
> of fact record only the news of death.
RICK
If you are putting your theological beliefs in with the myths and poems that
Campbell is talking about then I have no quarrel with you. That's exactly
how I see religion, as mythology; As metaphorical stories that a culture
makes up about itself for its own good. Perhaps in the same way Pirsig
talks of science inventing a myth of independence from the social world for
its own good, religion has invented a myth of compatibility with science for
its own benefit.
> > RICK
> > The MoQ, as I understand it, rejects the notion of Subject/Object
thought
> > being transformed into a complete metaphysics. That is, it objects to
the
> > view that nothing exists except subjects and objects (since such a view
> > leaves out DQ entirely and blurs the lines between the 4 levels). The
MoQ
> > has no objection to using the subject/object dichotomy as a tool for
> > understanding, so long as it is acknowledged to be just one high-quality
> > intellectual pattern. The mistaken value-assumptions of SOM are avoided
> (or
> > at least minimized) by the increased clarity provided by the 4 levels
and
> > the acknowledgment of Dynamic Quality as an influence.
SAM
> Agreed.
RICK
Nice. There's another one.
SAM
> Hope you're still having fun....
RICK
Oh yeah. I hope you are too.
thanks for your time
take care
rick
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Apr 06 2003 - 19:33:55 BST