\"Bleached Faith\" (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, October 11, 2009, 13:24 (5522 days ago) @ dhw

Matt: Reasoning about things that cannot be known [...] is as futile an exercise as being a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> Great line! I&apos;ve only repeated it for the sake of repeating it! But if your motive for being on this site is &quot;engaging in high-stakes philosophy&quot;, even allowing for your being the devil&apos;s advocate, we need to establish a bit of consistency in the arguments. As usual, though, there&apos;s a danger that I&apos;ve misunderstood you, so please take all that follows as an attempt to clarify rather than to criticize. &#13;&#10;> -Which apparently I am wont to do! >_<-Oh, and the line was lifted from my Judo/Ju Jitsu instructor back in high school. It&apos;s more funny in a martial context!-> You agree with Stephen Jay Gould (incidentally, David, I thought he was an agnostic), who &quot;felt science and religion were two separate magisteria and should be two views of our reality&quot;. I&apos;m not going to oppose Gould, because I don&apos;t know the details of his argument, but earlier, in reply to my statement that ID tried to make religion and science compatible, you also wrote: &quot;Science and religion aren&apos;t compatible but complementary.&quot; &#13;&#10;>-It seems my usage of complementary hinges on the confusion. I refer back to the use of colors on a color wheel. This time it&apos;s in dealing with a range of human existence. Science and religion are on that same spectrum, but at opposite ends, religion say, is purple, and science is yellow. In computers we use the RGB color model, and the way it is set up, when you mix two complementary colors together, you just get gray. In any color model, putting two complimentary colors together on the same sheet, say yellow on purple, is the most eye-catching kind of combination; you can clearly see yellow for yellow or purple as purple. There&apos;s little need for reconciliation, until you try to blend them together. -> However, in your post of 8 October at 23.05 you wrote: &quot;I&apos;ve said for some time here that I thought Process arguments were one of the best theological responses to science. Process theologians modify their theology so that it reconciles what has been discovered in science instead of clinging to old dogmas.&quot; What is the difference between science and religion being compatible, and religion being &quot;reconciled&quot; to what has been discovered in science? I&apos;m picking on this because it&apos;s so central to all the arguments about abiogenesis and evolution. The difference between your two approaches seems to me to obscure rather than clarify, which is certainly not the aim of &quot;high-stakes philosophy&quot;.&#13;&#10;> -Hopefully, my above analogy cleared this mess for you; if not, I can reformulate. -> I have a similar problem with your idea that religions are about &quot;how to deal with human suffering&quot;, and &quot;how we should act towards each other&quot;, together with your downgrading of gods as &quot;only the central glue to this picture&quot;. Most religions are based on the relations between a god or gods and humanity, and it&apos;s not just a matter of suffering and morals but ... as your &quot;Bleached Faith&quot; author remarks ... of &quot;faith and values&quot;.-Your problem might disappear when you consider this question: What are the times in the majority of peoples&apos; lives that they use religion the most? In my experience both with my extended family and at the hospital, God is who you turn to when you no longer have any hope; a loved one is ill. People might go to church regularly, but the people who admit to &quot;communing with God&quot; when not in dire need is rather small. -Human existence is synonymous with suffering, and religion steps in to help alleviate that problem. We&apos;re afraid of death, no problem, when I die, I&apos;ll be in heaven with Grandma. We want to punish those who do wrong, so we have some variation on Hell or purgatory. Anyone in western civilization who doesn&apos;t know at least some story about Christ, also realizes that his works were about exactly this phenomenon; alleviating suffering. I&apos;m not downgrading Gods here, but pointing out what exactly their central role actually is for the majority of people. We can say the Bible is a record of man&apos;s dealings with God, and we can also say that it is a tool used to answer human questions--direct from &quot;the source.&quot; -&#13;&#10;> In my view, there&apos;s absolutely no need for any of this confusion. Both approaches can be &quot;reconciled&quot; or &quot;made compatible&quot; by removing the rigid divisions in Gould&apos;s and your formulae. So let me now set up my own target for you to knock down!&#13;&#10;> -For the record, you agree that they study different things. How that isn&apos;t a rigid division is baffling. -> Science is concerned with the material world. Religion is concerned with systems arising out of belief in a god or gods. Science should be independent of religion, but religion should be compatible with the generally accepted findings of science. Too simple?-No, just right; here I realize we&apos;re barking up different sides of the same tree. The only time a reconciliation needs to happen between the two, are either when science implicitly challenges a religious claim, or when a religious claim challenges science. Otherwise they coexist.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"