What do we need a deity for? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, August 01, 2011, 19:42 (4841 days ago)

Under Science vs. Religion, Matt has talked about his fleeting feeling of oneness with the universe: "I want to continue to believe that I'm incapable of religious experience, but its entirely possible to me that the broad bursts of energy I feel when I meditate or write sections of song or novel are precisely this....But what is a religious experience without religion?"-Under "Asking of the Designer..." whateverist says that while "you can reasonably embrace both science and a deity, what do we need the deity for?"-Although whateverist's question is in a different context, in some ways it answers Matt's question. As I see it, belief in God is not in the least necessary for us to experience oneness with all living things, or wonderment at the natural beauty of the world, or at the achievements of humans, especially in the arts ... of which for me music ranks supreme ... but also in technology and science. In fact it always annoys me when religious people assume that they have a monopoly on such feelings, as they sometimes also do when it comes to ethics and a social conscience. I have known wonderfully kind and loving believers and non-believers. Buddhist philosophy (perhaps one should say philosophies) manages to focus on non-materialistic values without any recourse to deities, and the precepts of humanism are as moral as those of any religion.-But there are other answers to whateverist's question. I don't think there is any doubt that belief in God brings enormous comfort to people in times of need, and it brings hope to people who have no other source for hope. That is a value in itself, although it would seem hollow if there were no grounds for such belief. So I would look again at the context of science and religion and say that not only are they perfectly compatible, but that there are things that science can't explain and MAYBE ... just maybe ... religion can.-I'm going over old ground here, but I'm trying to draw threads together. Science cannot explain the origin of life (see "Abiogenesis") or the origin of those physical mechanisms that have enabled the earliest forms of life to evolve as they have done. Science cannot explain the mystic experiences that many of us have had, in Matt's case perhaps through meditation, in my own through music and literature, or quite simply out of the blue for no particular reason. Science cannot explain the mystery of consciousness. And science cannot explain a range of psychic experiences reported by humans down through the centuries. One can, of course, assume ... as atheists do ... that one day a material explanation will be found for everything. But that assumption is not based on science, it is based on faith in science, which in turn is based on faith that all things actually have a material explanation. -And so even if some of us don't feel the need for a deity in our personal lives, the question still arises as to whether we can be sure that all the unsolved mysteries of life and the universe are solvable in material terms. If not, then we must allow for the possibility of a form of life completely beyond the range of our cognition.