Evolution, Science & Religion (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, June 17, 2012, 23:06 (4540 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Matt and I agree that if you want to study the material world, you turn to science, and if you want to study the whos and whys and wherefores you turn to philosophy (which includes religion). Tony says "there must be overlap and agreement", and I say that will never happen.-TONY: Has a separative materialist framework ever produced something that is an improvement on the natural system? (In order to qualify, it must work in harmony with the material [don't you mean natural?] world, and cause no adverse side effects)
If we had not previously interfered with the natural order, would you even have a car that needs to be repaired, or a cause to see a heart surgeon? (i.e. Your car and your poor ticker would both constitute poor human design. Your car is actually directly responsible for your poor ticker (ironically). That and your artificial diet which is also poorly designed by humans.)-Here and in your latest response to Romansh you are arguing against materialism, but that is not the subject you and I are discussing! I stated explicitly in the post to which you are replying: "the overall quest for so-called "truth" does not entail one branch of knowledge excluding others, or even taking precedence over others" ... see also my next quoteHW: There are many forms of understanding ... intuitive, spiritual, purely materialistic, theistic ... and while some may overlap, some cannot possibly agree. -TONY: If you do not KNOW it from all of those angles then you do not UNDERSTAND it.-As far as we are aware, nobody UNDERSTANDS it, from no matter which angle or how many angles. Only blinkered fundamentalists (religious and anti-religious) even CLAIM to understand it. Every single world view is subjective, and unless there really is a God and he decides to tell us the whole story, we shall never know the objective truth. 
 
DHW: How, for instance, can the purely materialistic (atheistic) and the theistic ever be unified? Yes indeed, by definition one of them is wrong ... but no-one can ever know for sure which one. That's why the debate is never ending!-TONY: You are absolutely correct. When two ideologies are antithetical and mutually exclusive one of them MUST be wrong. In my humble opinion, materialism has proved to be an epic fail. So, why not give the other a shot.-And that is the source of most of our misunderstandings in this discussion. You have an anti-materialist agenda, but I am not defending or attacking materialism any more than I am defending or attacking the study of ancient texts. I am merely saying that if I want to study the material world, I'll turn to science, and if I want to study the non-material aspects of the world, I'll turn to philosophy. Neither will give me the objective truth, but perhaps I'll find a subjective world view that satisfies me. We will never ever be able to unify all world views, i.e. there can never ever be "unity between the various schools of thought". That can only happen if there is a God who chooses to enlighten us.