Hello Nick:
—The value of science is in the establishment of facts. As Prof. Needleman suggests, it should serve the human “being” need for meaning and purpose.
O- The facts that science seeks are about the How’s, not the Why’s. It can tell you that light travels at a certain speed, not why it does so. Why’s are very annoying inquiries that science does best to stay out. Science can establish facts because it concerns itself with How’s, which can be settled, more or less, to an acceptable degree. Religions on the other hand concerns itself with the Why’s and predictably have failed to establish any universal facts.
Besides, I keep pointing it out, you’re seeking that which shall never be because of the very nature that defines us. We are mortal, finite, fallible etc. It is only by an error that we become immortal, limitless and infallible. It is by an error, by a simple folly, and praise be to folly, that we answer every Why.
— It cannot create it which is what it does now with technology for example. it creates a psychological necessity which covers over the more subtle but more real natural needs.
O- First of all, I do not conceive of technology as an aggressor, or personify it as “doing”. We create technology. We then buy technology. It is certainly not free. People in Ghana have no or little technology. Are they better off? Besides, who has told you what are the “real natural needs”? Maybe some coorporations have been trying to create a sense of lack in the consumer to boost sales and with their commercial redefine what is proper for a shoe. But the reason that this strategem works is not because “they” create a psychological necessity or dependency that hides “our” “real natura needs”. Our needs are not just material needs, in which case you could accuse technology alone, but we have immaterial needs that technology does not hide, but supplements perfectly.
The social beat that is man is concerned with status within that society. When Joey buys a pair of $300.00 shoes when he really had a need for a $15.00 one, that is not because technology has covered the real needs of Joey with artificial psychological needs it created. Joey is buying the prestige afforded by the new technology. Is he much better off than Ramon, who bought the cheapest shoes he could find? Or better of than the kid in Afghanistan with no shoes whatsoever? Not materially, but immaterially. Further, this psychological necessity is not the creation of technology, but a feature of the human being that he shares with all humans.
— Anyone who truly understands this and human “being” as relative in quality within an objective scale of “being” will have to be religious in the essential sense.
O- I put value in a human life, above the life of say, a chicken. But that does not by necessity makes me religious but carnivorous.
— The problem isn’t science but the fact that human being has become so chaotic that it cannot use science as the tool it should be but rather has its life run by the developments of science motivated by blind egotism.
O- Again you victimize the consumer. Is having a computer a real natural need? Is a cell phone? No. But what is a real necessity for the social animal is the ability to communicate. Is that blind egotism? i have yet to find a truly ego-free person. And the most egotistic folks are indeed the most religious as well.
The problem here, seems to me, is not with science or even technology. people can have their lives run by the developments of science but are also capable of using it as a tool. You could be my example. Has technology run your life? Some people are indeed slaves to the latest contraption out of the assembly line, but not others. And why is that? Is it because those that are indifferent to technology, unfazed by it, religious? No. if my life is not run by technology and the artificial needs it proposes to solve (like when they say “Don’t let this happen to you!..”) it is not because I have become spiritual or saw through the difficulties and misuses of science. It could be that I simply cannot afford the things offered, or it could be that I simply prefer a simple life. For example, I don’t have a computer because I am too lazy to maintain security devices and updates that come out yearly. It does not mean that I was religious and resisted technology etc…
— “Though the resources for a culture-renewing vision of science are available in ancient Greek thought, this renewal requires as a catalyst the revivification of the Christian tradition.”
O- See, this is where we have that rub. All the argument before serves only as a wedge to drive in a christian agenda. Left unsaid, however is that entire set of difficulties found in the Christian faith.
— "In modernity, science has become deracinated from its original grounding in common experience and has become “a universe apart, whose objects are signs” in which “the play of interchange between signs develops of itself and for itself”.
O- They might as well be talking about postmodernism and Derrida.
— “Although Descartes converts traditional geometric figures into abstract and a priori relationships of pure quantity, he believes that these relations still provide the mind a means of apprehending the reality of body with which physics is concerned. The crucial link is the imagination; for Descartes, the study of geometry is still sufficiently grounded in figures that the clarification of the quantitative relationships serves to render our imaginations more exact.”
O- Then let us use our imagination more and more. Not seek to marry religion to science. Unless we say that religion=our imagination, with which Feuerbach would agree. Just remember one thing. Every religion, unless we are talking of a personal opinion, by it’s very existence, requires dogmas; that is bits of facts that are not open to the imagination. in that sense, your project is dangeorus, especially if what we are trying to graft onto science is a form of Christianity, for it can lead to the closing of the human mind.
Look at the current debates between science and religion.
In asking what is the age of the Earth, “scientists” that are also religious find “facts” to support the “facts”…er, I mean The Truth already found in their Holy Book. The hope of scientism is that one can approach his/her research with a blank slate, an open mind, unprejudiced, unbiased. the religious mind does a 180 and, as a christian, has closed his mind almost on purpose for his own salvation. Like a tortured prisioner who just wants his pain to end, he will say whatever is asked of him, whether it is true or false. The Earth must be to the Christian 6,000-10,000 years old, because if not then the Bible could lie, and if it was untrue about what is simple, what would be the risks that it could be wrong about the complex?
— When united as they should be they form the basis of a very misunderstood concept called “understanding.” The quality of understanding is defined as the intersection between the linear line of knowledge and the vertical line of “being” or inner unity.
O- Understanding can also be defined as “to be able to reconceptualise, to explain and to use received information”. The essential problem for the religious mind is to determine objectively what that understanding should be or what is the correct understanding, because my understanding of scripture can grossly differ from your understanding of it, so by what criterion do we settle the difference?
— its highest it is wisdom or religious perspective. It is one thing to know facts and quite another to put them into an objective perspective. The lack of this perspective is why people build bombs for example.
O- It is the religious folks who put to use these bombs and strap themselves to them due to their overflow of perspective.
— This level of qualitative understanding would balance our planetary needs with our spiritual needs. But it is no longer possible since collective egotism is too strong to recognize its value.
O- Have you read Mary Madgley? She makes much the same case in her books.
— Divine perspective seeks to allow men to evolve to become men and not remain the fallen “things” we’ve become as a whole. I will agree though that this idea has been abused as much as anything can be abused.
O- Why do you feel were are fallen?
— The idea of the Trinity is really only genuinely valuable for those with the intellectual drive to understand the laws of world creation and cosmological structure since all created things are an expression of qualitative relationship between these three forces of the Trinity. It is not a matter of forcing but useful only for those wishing to increase their understanding since nothing including quantum physics can realistically be built I believe without it.
O- And you call your conclusions scientific? Tell me, from which hypothesis did you start your research?
I was married once so I know about patience. Actually I am gun shy around here because these ideas provoke the strongest righteous indignation which makes discussion useless. You seem to be willing to discuss what can understandably be felt as disconcerting which I admit I don’t trust yet and am waiting for the other shoe to drop. But, I’ll be optimistic.