As Above, So Below - the religion thread (formerly: People of California, beware)

I would go as far as to argue that "supernatural" as a concept is flawed.
NOTHING is SUPERnatural. There are only ASPECTS of nature we don't full understand YET.
What we define as supernatural today is commonplace tomorrow.

There seems to be a generally pervading concern that somehow (cold logical) science will supplant (warm loving) spirituality. This to me always seems a bit like a kneejerk reaction: especially among the more sensitive, creative part of the people I know there is a great reluctance to the idea that some things may be defined ("caught") by scientific research. I have a composer/text writer friend who is absolutely panicked by the thought that one day creativity may come out of a pill (a rather charged idea, but I do get his meaning: it's not completely unthinkable that some day certain parts of the brain may be stimulated artificially to enhance (or treat) facets of our personality...in fact, on a very small scale, that is already happeninga s we're mapping the brain and its functions. Though any such "pill" is absolute science fiction at this point, of course).

The overbearing fear seems to be that this implies we "lose" something of that what makes us unique. For the life of me, I cannot understand this reasoning as -aside from the many, many variables hat make up the human character- it completely negate the concept of free will.

To my mind there is no dichotomy between science on the one hand and supernaturalism, spirituality, human personality and all things undefined on the other. They enhance and complete each other, and always will! What drives science is the spark of will, determination and inspiration. Science, at its turn, (also) tries to understand these sparks.

The one key thing in both spirituality (in which I would include religion) and science is that we try and better ourselves. This implies a continued quest for improvement on every level.
And that's the danger of any "one" answer: it STOPS progress.
And me, I'm not prepared to accept that from any source, whether it's a guy with a big white beard thundering from a mountain, an all-powerful all-seeing galactic Force, OR a bloke in a laboratory who hasn't had a date for 64 years.

Indeed. His famous gravitational laws are basically reworkings/corrections of Descartes laws of nature for instance. There have been so many great minds before him, and he formulated all these thoughts and discoveries into three beautiful laws and some simple but extremely illuminating mathematical equations.

I think many people just hear the apple story and picture themselves some lazy guy lying under a tree daydreaming 24/7, and then by accident/miracle an apple falls and he jumps up and yells "Hallelujah". It's a shame that many people don't realize the effort and dedication that really takes place hiding behind these embellished and rather silly stories that often arise after scientific discoveries.

Peter

I quite agree.
It's like they would be enemies, and of course they don't have to be at all.

To try and put things as abstractly as I can to try and endorse consensus:
I would oppose any school of thought that inhibits man's natural prediliction towards development and betterment of himself, including a greater understanding of the world around him, and within him.

Anyone who follows that predilection freely I respect and applaud, and I don't give a rat's ass whether he believes in God, Shiva, Odin or Elvis.

Oh, OK! Yeah, in that case we are saying the same thing, more or less.
(except that I honestly don't believe we will ever reach our limits in any way (except maybe at the end of the Universe ). Whether or not what that will entail for what we define as "humanity" of course remains to be seen, and assuredly food for scholars in a couple of million years or so.)

No no, I mean the limit of science that is humanity. Because science is human. That limit.
I'm not sure if I'm clear!

Have faith in science.

Are you talking about the limits of science due to logic?
Thomas

You know, I don't know about theology today, though I am reading through some MODERN Encyclopediae of religion due to my future Ph. D., but I think we are indeed, as Demetris said, going far from the old man in the sky idea. We must remember one little things.

Your remark in another thread about Christianity ripping off other, earlier beliefs is really spot-on. Of course, the primary setting is taken from Judaism, in a quite verbatim way, remember that Christian religion DOES take Old Testament into account, even if through the filter of New Testament (mostly Christ's interpretation of certain prophecies, the Mountain Sermon, or however is it called in English and St. Paul's Letters, also Apocalypse reworks some OT ideas).

But then come other influences. The Greek and Roman idea of religion was anthropomorphic. I am not denying nobody's knowledge and intelligence here, but let me explain this term - of human shape. Everybody definitely saw at least photos of ancient Greek/Roman sculptures and that the gods are depicted as humans of perfect proportions (not because they were gods though, I think, it had more to do with general aesthetics of the times than any specific vision of the gods).

The early Christian iconography was based on that idea, which was very connected to the due times. We must not forget that religion is really a cultural thing. This is where there are many concepts of god(s), this is why there is a large difference between the way a god is defined and even in the proposed (yes, religion is a choice, so I see it as a proposition, even if, indeed, if you decide to follow the religion, you also follow this) value system. Science is based on definitely different set of rules and the language of mathematics is very universal. But to me, of course (also as a Ph. D. since this october), humanistics is also a science.



Bregje, theology is of course a part of Humanistics

Theology as a science is a little bit more like the 'science' of law/jurisprudence, where interpretation of documents, uncovering links, positing common systems, etc. are the primary intellectual challenges. The observables are the texts and social history, and a thesis derived from a text will usually be tested against both by a theologian. (Though I do agree, it's not experimental science in the classic sense. But then neither is economics, political science, or historical study, with some exceptions.)

Absolutely! By all means let's not!
In fact, I would argue we need LOADS more modernists in our differentiated idiographies! Can't imagine ever having lived without 'em! Brilliant stuff! My nomothetics are positively rife with anticipation!

( I have NO idea what you just said, but I'm honestly curious as to your follow-up. )

OK, got it now. This typology was created by Wilhelm Windelbrand, a Kantian philosopher. Modernist means "post-positivistic", which in culture history basically means the turn of XIX and XX centuries.

So, nomothetic science is natural science, because it deals with the tendency to generalize, as Kant said, which means deriving natural laws based on observation of objective phenomena, like the legendary apple of Newton - an apple fell and he saw it as a general rule of natural gravity, in big simplification, of course. Literally translating from Greek "the position of the law". Nomos means law, interestingly it affects the names of certain sciences, like ECONOMY (oikonomia - the law/administration (nomos) of the household (oikos)), also ASTRONOMY (astron - star)

Idiographic is in social science and generally humanistics, because it deals with our tendency to specify. As Wikipedia says: "It describes the effort to understand the meaning of contingent, accidental, and often subjective phenomena.". Literally translating from Greek - "self-describing".

Generally, idiographic sciences deal with subjective phenomena, because it deals with the creation of humans (see the origins of the word "culture"). You can't build general laws based on literature, because we all try to make what we can and our own understanding out of it. The same goes with theology (also, incidentally theos and logos - the theory of deity), where we deal with very subjective views.

Of course there is a trend of generalization, which I can tell based on my experience with literary history - the trend goes when we try to define certain historical periods, which is very clearly shown by the art historian Heinrich Woelfllin, who in his famous book tries to define certain elements of Renaissance and Baroque art, building even oppositions between both styles.

Why?

Once again I'm not sure what you mean...
There's a human point of view... and another?


OK, I thought that was what you meant, but my view on that is that it's far less restrictive than you might infer: of course science is limited by human understanding, which is limited as well.
But while I would agree that human understanding is, and will always be limited, it does grow and expand. And of course science grows and evolves accordingly.

So any one limit today is history tomorrow.

If I would know that, it wouldn't be beyond human understanding!
You know, what we think is true is only based on our own senses. I'm not saying there is more, I am saying I cannot know if there is more and neither can anyone else.

Our understanding can expand, maybe we will develop other senses who knows, but still they will always be human and... only human.

Oh, but we already KNOW there is more, wayyyyyyy beyond our senses! (silly examples: ultraviolet, sub-bass tones). We already require enhancements to detect those. Currently there is no reason at all to assume there may NOT be more.
Why?
Simply because we haven't explained EVERYTHING.
Therefore there must be more.



But that's just a label.
What we do, think and say today would be considered heresy not four hundred years ago.
A thousand years back we wold have been considered demons.
In a million years time, who's to say how humanity will have developed and changed? Of course we'll still be (well, refer to ourselves as) "only human" then...but to today's standards we may be as gods. Where our trains of thoughs part ways is that I do not see being human as inherently limited *).
Humanity to me is potentially UNlimited.

*) That's what I *understood* your point to be. I may have misunderstood of course!