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

I think reading a lot about the mind lately has made me a materialist!

Thinking, reasoning and analyzing are things we can do thanks to our brain. When consciousness and even selfconsciousness came into existence that's when ethics came into existence as well.

I do have a dilemma thinking like this, because I believe in nature but also in humanity. I'm very much a humanist! However I think humanity will disappear in the far future, because of the natural process of the universe. It is a bit of a sad thought, but no sadder than the thought of the earth before life started. Or the idea of our sun dying.

Perhaps this makes me even more thankful for being here and be part of the wonder.

I'm not sure I know what you mean exactly.

There are many things we do not know about nature.
And many things we will never know because if our human perception of reality.

So nature will always be partially explained and partially mystery. New questions keep rising with each thing we discover.

And what we do not know is simply unknown. Nothing more nothing less.

I don't see why nature is a structure. To me nature is what is.
I do see how maths and science are structures. (They are products of our minds and the mind is product of nature.)

It is true that the way we perceive things has to do with science. It's not that truth is reveiled step by step by science, but we make decisions what will be researched and what not and the outcome of the researches together form our perception of reality.

One example that made this very clear to me is reading about species. Categorizing is a very human thing to do. We believe animal species exist because we categorize them, we label them and devide them into groups. We know the species that have been labelled and we think those are the species that exist. Of course we know there are species not discovered yet but they are not part of our knowledge of the world yet. When many scientists do research on flies, we will have more different flies (have = know of). If much research will be done on grass than we will think there are more different sorts of grass than flies. So in that way our perception of nature is a structure indeed.

You made pretty much the same point on the previous page, but I'm not sure where you're going with it?

Like Bregje rightly says, increased understanding of nature will yield to qualitatively and quantitatively better descriptions and theories. That necessarily entails having to re-evaluate and in some cases completely discard existing theories.
That's what science does.

I have no idea by the way why nature generally or by definition should be "beyond any kind of structure".
Why would you think that? And what sort of instance or cause could "break that structure apart"?
I'm just not sure what you mean or what you are getting at?

What I am getting at is that there is *no* perfect description of reality. Science is a human concept. That's what I mean. Nature is not a human concept. There are things happening that aren't necessarily formally describable by a mathematical model.

That's what I mean, basically.

To make sure:

I am NOT questioning science and its discovering. What I am questioning is science being the only reality-describing model. The whole concept of science is a human construct, nature is *not* a human construct. It was there before we could add 2 and 2 and realize it equals 4.

I am not questioning the scientific explanation o thunderstorms as series of electric events (sorry, I forgot the word here, please correct me) coming from two depolarized clouds and yes, I don't believe that a thunderstorm is the Wrath of Zeus or whoever.

What I am trying to say all the time here is that one can accept a few descriptive models at the same time. While I am religious, I am looking for my own ethical system (well, I could say I have one, but I am doing extensive personal research in ethics just for the sake of seeing if I am not wrong anywhere or if there is a good explanation that something I regard as bad is in fact not as bad as I thought for purely psychological - not religious - reasons), I have an extensive interest in psychology, sociology and philosophy, added to my own literature research. If math didn't scare me away (traumatic experience in high school) and my physics teacher wasn't "good" enough to end up as a library worker in my high school (my physics teachers included what I just said, a PhD allowing us to leave whenever we want and a very clueless former colonel who had totally no idea what was happening around him, true story!), I'd probably read more about science, except reading the basic texts about the philosophy of science (T. S. Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolution" and J-F. Lyotard's "The Postmodern Condition" made me quite cautious about any kind of formal model explaining reality), if I knew what I could read that would be readable for a total layman, who's only making a PhD in literature, which is not exactly natural science.

I accept a religious AND a scientific model at the same time and, frankly, as a person NOT rejecting scientific discoveries (not even the dominating model, whatever it is, I am just cautious about the scope of the model itself) and still staying a spiritual believer, who's searching for his place in the world.

And, while I am a raised Catholic and I am a believer, I am against the hierarchy and I am pretty anti-clerical.

Actually, ironically, this discussion is the first time when I am having an intelligent discussion about it and it did reinforce some of my own views, interestingly, because I was at the moment of growing agnostic after some heavy talks with a rather radical Catholic friend of mine.

I don't believe that scientific and religious models are mutually exclusive and I think they can really work together, which they happen to do in my mind.

If you bring up gaps in our knowledge (for instance humanity's lack of knowledge about the beginning of the current Universe) to support a theistic position, you are in fact using a god of the gaps argument. Perhaps I misunderstood your initial argument, but now that I read it again I'm not sure what else you could have meant. I'm not sure how your current reply is addressing my point either.

Peter

Well, something had to turn the switch on. And I think of God as a general spiritual outline in the universe, in which all the natural (I almost wrote scientific, but we don't know everything, do we?) processes happen on their own.

I know I am basically using the "first mover" (ie, everything's move, so something had to start it) argument, but yeah, that's what I think.

Science is for the physical matters (and biological, but one could argue that life is a series of biophysical and biochemical processes, right?), religion is purely for metaphysical matters

I'd agree with Peter about ethics. The fact that there are metaethics, quite dominant at this time, doesn't change the fact that it's basically rules of social conduct more or less defined.

No, no, no!
Ethics is not simply about behaviour. It's about the morality of behaviour, and as such they are far more narrowly defined than mere rules of (social) conduct. It's really about right and wrong (which very much is NOT the same as crime and punishment as in your example about the wolves!).

Ethics are a part of social conduct, but a part specifically reserved to human behaviour, as man are the only species (for now) that can actually make that distinction between good and evil (and actively base choices on that).

No animal will show any sign of ethics or morality, while of course they do have very clear rules of social conduct.

(But this is getting off-topic a bit, and I don't want to hijack an interesting discussion for another (which incidentally may not be less interesting) about morality and ethics)

Well, I'm a spiritual person, yes.

So by ethics do you mean "rules of conduct guided by an internal sense of right and wrong"?

I guess I use a wider definition because I can't really see it in isolation. A sense of right and wrong, policing, reputation a.o., are all evolved traits that help to determine our behaviour in groups. The wolf example was intended to show how policing (the ability of social animals to react negatively towards asocial individuals) will give a fitness benefit to individuals who behave the right way, and therefore desires to do what's right will be expected to evolve over time. Kin selection theory also explains why social animals develop altruistic behaviours, i.e. behaviours where the altruist isn't rewarded, but still tries to help other individuals. Altruism is observed in many animals, btw. Same with empathy.

The main difference I see between human ethics and animal ethics is that humans with their greater ability to think and communicate, use alot of words to describe these instincts and desires to do right, and have developed complex ways to discuss them.





Yes, perhaps a discussion for another time...

Peter

Thanks for the article. I shall give it a read.

Peter

I have some issues with that article, but I'm tired and need to relax my brain. Perhaps tomorrow.

Oh, and you're a wanker*.

Peter

* Just to make Steven happy

You two suck at fighting.*


*No amount of catering proves Steven wrong.