I find it absolutely fascinating how a majority of the world is indoctrinated with religious beliefs. What is very telling about this situation, is how those religious beliefs differ by geographic location, as well as by time. If you were born in Greece 3,000 years ago, you may very well have been raised to believe Zeus was God. Saudi Arabia today, viola, you’re going to likely become a Muslim. Each of the faithful, of all the religions, believe that they have received direction from the true God, or gods, and that “God” or gods, have provided a list of rules and guidance that must be obeyed and this is indeed an absolute, objective morality.
What follows from believing in their god, often comes the illusion that they have knowledge of some of this morality provided through their “sacred” writings and this is taught and passed on to others, spreading the same way that their faith has spread, word of mouth or through writings. Through having children and indoctrinating them accordingly, generation after generation carries on this faith and “objective” morality. Yet, the funny thing is, somewhere along the line, that objective morality of God, changes, bends and ultimately caves in to societal pressure. It seems the rate of this change occurs faster today, in a smaller, connected world, through the internet, however the full effects will still remain to be seem.
In the United States, Christianity is seen as the guider of the prevalent, moral consensus through the simple fact that Christians are the majority and hold their morality from Christian teachings, indoctrination, and reading the Bible themselves, at times. Christians argue against other morality that threatens their assumed “moral authority” by stating that if you do not believe in “God”, anything goes. Which, to some extent they do have a point. However a disciplined, learned mind, with reason and logic on their side, can quickly conquer not only this statement, but also offer a morality that Christianity cannot obtain, a more righteous ethical system, that is based on logic and reason, aside from belief that “god says so”. What we can gather, that if you are not a believer, the Bible was written by archaic people with inferior morality by today’s standards. These people try to pawn of their morality as coming from the “one true God”, for the sake of assimilation to their ways, their culture, their desires.
Considering much of the old testament morality is seen in the Western Hemisphere as morally bankrupt now, we can see how obvious it is today that this “objective morality” has changed over years, centuries, to adapt to a less religious, but more of a reason backed morality and value system, which does have a tendency to shine through, even in believers. However, there is still cherry picking of morality from the old testament. Currently the gay agenda is something that is “objectively” wrong, because “God” says so. Never mind the commands to stone adulterers, or to judge not lest ye be judged, or to love one another as you love yourself.
The believers fail to recognize that this morality was not of their “God’s”, but of reason. They do have their reason, which isn’t very noble, but it seems that a culture of hatred and discrimination against gay people is their reason. They use the Bible to back up their preconceived notions of homosexuality, or the Bible has produced their preconceived notions of homosexuality. The same people claim their morality is objective and of “God”. What they fail to see, is that their morality is indeed not objective, it is merely believed to be. Some of their morality is backed by their own reason, some is caused by a herd mentality, and some is due to their indoctrination. Due to the ever evolving morality of Christianity that is evidenced throughout it’s history, it is obvious we have nothing close to an objective morality in Christianity and due to its judgment based on believing a god exists and believing that this god told them these rules, we have a morality founded upon belief and an archaic backwards culture of thousands of years ago. It is not necessarily founded on reason and logic conducive to values that people hold dear, thus making this morality not only subjective, open to interpretation, but also at times unreasonable and irrational.
The origin of reasonable morality is through the values one holds. Christians, holding the bible and their belief in “God” which somewhere along the lines gets misconstrued with a knowledge of their “God”, fail to understand this. They only understand that morality comes from their god, that they believe in, which essentially has been formed through the same way as any other religious god who tells people what to do, through the writings of men, spread through a local culture, until the entire world has become indoctrinated.
Reasonable judgments based on our modern values often shine through. Many Christians are against the discrimination of homosexuals, despite what the Bible states on the matter. It is the job of those moral, good believers and non believers to provide a reasonable sound morality based on knowledge and logic, not belief, not the writings of an immoral archaic people by today’s standards. An archaic people who promote misogyny and stoning of adulterers, or killing those who are homosexual. For reasons outlined above, religious morality will always be inferior to that which can be derived from logic and reason and that is how religious morality bends to pressure of logic and reason. This is why Christianity evolves and why, one day, they will likely accept homosexuality. After all, it is only spoken of negatively in the Old Testament, just like all the other nonsense that is ignored, from commands to not eat pork or wear multi-fabric clothes, to condoning slavery.
Righteous non biblical morality will not be justified by something the bible says, it will be justified by reasonable and logical deductions based on secular values. The religious through time will bend their morality, perhaps because Jesus loves us all. They will cherry pick the passages and ignore the rest of the archaic nonsense gradually more and more over time, until one day hopefully there is nothing left to ignore but the entire whole goddamn thing itself.
I find it fascinating how a majority of the world is indoctrinated with materialistic beliefs. What is very telling is that we have evidence that a materialistic/mechanistic understanding of life is inadequate, but we seem to hold on to its verbal expression, giving a majority of people the wrong impression. Also, the fact that we are all dependent upon metaphors in our description of whatever we are investigating, but science fails to own up to the fact that they use metaphors just as much as anyone else, and that their description is therefore not accurate – and couldn’t be. The materialistic worldview helps us use what we find in nature, but it hasn’t helped us gain an understanding of nature in the sense that we understand how it could come to be given the theories of how planets were formed.
Religious beliefs have suffered under this materialistic ideology by succumbing to its explanations, whereas Religion is about why there is something, rather than nothing, and what is the implication of our sentience? Does a sentient life-form intuit that sentience, or consciousness is the ground of being? Early human beings, watching the night sky, have seen patterns all over the world they live in and the cosmos that surrounds them. They discovered a mathematical pattern, a behavioural pattern in the creatures around them, patterns in the movement of the stars (amongst many others) and tried to make sense of them. We still speak of laws of nature, rather than habits of nature, despite laws suggesting intelligent design (at least semantically), and habits suggesting a becoming out of existing circumstances.
The observation of the world led to the belief that there is some intent being played out, some lesson to be learnt from what they observed. They also observed that human nature is also a curious mixture of knowing from experience what is good and following a course of action that contradicts what we know. We have a theoretical, conceptual understanding, and we have the instinctual satisfaction of drives. We have a maternal and a paternal nature, which varies in degrees. There is so much that confuses us that it is natural that one would seek guidance from the only source we could find. Some observed various influences in the world that they couldn’t explain and struggled to make sense of them. Their communication seems to have developed out of music, songs, and rituals, and they integrated lessons they learned in such expression. Lessons about the hunt, about keeping alive, but also lessons about living together, all developed into stories and songs, and a beginning of what we can call moral teachings. In these songs and stories there was a strong anthropomorphising, and everything spoke or sang their teaching, including inanimate objects. It wasn’t that they didn’t know that inanimate objects don’t speak, but how could they pass on the insights they had gained any other way?
There were people who felt called out of the larger group they were in, who believed they were called to a different life. A call needs a caller, and so it was not surprising that at some point people believed that this was all part of the purpose that was taking place in the world in which they lived. They were in touch with the spirit that gave them their consciousness, with the Word that brought everything into being. And perhaps their intuition really gave them a relationship with the creative force that made life possible, which we still do not understand. Whether it is a world spirit or a cosmic presence, we still appeal to the source of everything we experience to be just and to give us meaning. In a world where our needs are met: There is water for our thirst and animals and plants for our hunger, there is medicine for our ailments, and harmony with nature fills us with an inexplicable sense of well-being, is it any wonder that people assumed the world was a mystery they had to solve?
Given what I have written above, it isn’t any surprise that wisdom that has been reliable in the past is passed on from generation to generation, developing as it spreads. The unreliable or wrong ideas are thrown out over time, and this aids a developing morality that makes life in a group sustainable. In the end, religious movements have led to scientific methods of application, and helped develop us technologically.
I suggest, following the clues that Iain McGilchrist has given in his books, that we have become victim of the dual nature that has dogged our existence all along, in that we have developed a bias that is undermining all we have managed to achieve. This has arisen out of something that we contrarily fail to notice was apart of a development we consider positive. Our preoccupation with specifics has taken our attention away from the larger picture, which, despite its lacking in other areas, used to be a part of religious orientation. It has led to a fundamentalism in all walks of life, in which truth is considered a thing, a whole, instead as a process, which we only possess partially, and which we need to be supplemented by other perspectives. We mistake a partial truth for the whole truth, a useful perception for understanding. We fail to recognise that we are producing more and more questions as we go along.
This is a problem that religion is going through as much as science, and the mutual dogmatic refusal to accept each other’s understanding of life as a possible approach to existence means that simple human beings are left floundering in the maelstrom they experience as life, reaching out to whatever can give them meaning for their existence, however contradictory and contra-productive it may be. An experience I had seemed to characterise this situation: A patient with cancer that was conceived as rising in the patient’s body led to the doctors literally turning him on his head, in the hope of slowing the threat to his life. The patient, a self-proclaimed atheist who even rejected the non-religious compassion that sought to sooth his anguish, was clearly in distress. Everything became a threat to him and when he died the whole ward sank in relief, and some nurses even cried – not so much at the passing of a life, but at the subsiding of a situation that was so electrified that everyone was sharing the distress of that patient. The dignity of that person had been driven out and distress and anguish had taken its place.
I am all in favour of reasonable judgements, although it must be said that an overestimation of rational judgement led to the chaos of the 20th century, in which schizophrenia and paranoia ruled, racism and fascism flourished, and ideologies posed a threat to humanity like never before. We are still not recovered from that time, although the disappointment with beliefs, creeds and ideologies has brought on a wave of depression and despair, washed away by alcoholism and drug-abuse. The recurring abuse of the weak and young, the gender confusion, the violence on the street, the irrationality of conspiracy theories and the threat to democracy speaks clearly of disorientation and a meaning crisis. There are numerous other aspects of our society that suggest that we haven’t got a better perspective, despite the “reasonable judgments based on our modern values” that are said to “shine through”. I wonder where such optimism comes from.
The complaint against Christianity is not that it is censorious, but that it is not censorious enough. Not that it is absolutist, but that it is not absolutist enough.
As I have said for many years, communism is just a sect of dissafected Christians.
A clue, also, maybe, into some of the Roman motivations behind Christianity.
Secularism grew out of Christendom. By contrast Islam spawned no secular society of its own. The objective subjective dichotomy itself is a product of modern post Cartesian metaphysics. But right the Bible has already become a dead book to most people including a lot of Christians who must be spoonfed by their clergy in order to “understand” it.
Well, you know, except that it didn’t, and it did.
You know, except that it isn’t, and stuff.
The Bible itself is a spoonfeeding.
People make the mistake that the Church used to interpret the bible for people. In fact, the bible, which the Church itself compiled, was read in Latin with the priest looking away from the people behind a veil.
They understood the words were meaningless compared to the awesomeness of God.
In any event, my own personal complaint against Christianity – and all other a God, the God, my God religious denominations – revolves more around these factors…
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence “my God”
2] the fact that down through the ages there have been hundreds and hundreds of “my God” paths to immortality and salvation. And, given that only one of them [if any] can be the true path, why yours?
3] the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual’s belief in “my God”
4] “My God” and theodicy
And what could possibly be more preposterous than to argue that Marx’s assessment of political economy down through the ages is just part of “a sect of disaffected Christians”. Marxism is “religious” in the sense that “thinks up” a font for mere mortals to anchor “I” in. But its assessment of human interactions given the historical intertwining of the infrastructure and the superstructure in any particular community is far, far more sophisticated than the fairy tale that some construe Christianity to be.
Sooner or later, he is driven to turn all threads here into The Corner. And what is The Corner basically but yet another “yak yak yak” social media sinkhole.
Anyway, before he up and vanishes again for another 4 to 6 weeks, all I can do is to provide opportunities to bring him and his ilk back into The Old ILP mold. Where, believe it or not, actual substantive posts were…the rule!!!
So, given his own take on Christianity, will he or won’t he go here:
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence “my God”
2] the fact that down through the ages there have been hundreds and hundreds of “my God” paths to immortality and salvation. And, given that only one of them [if any] can be the true path, why yours?
3] the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual’s belief in “my God”
4] “My God” and theodicy
Why should anyone assume anything non materialistic exists?
Religious beliefs didn’t merely suffer, they were disproven. Religion isn’t about why there is something rather than nothing as opposed to assigning a definitive reason that doesn’t quite make sense, that there is “God” therefore something, excluding “God” from the equation as a part of this something. The question here is, why would people assume God is something from nothing anymore than anything else we can observe?
Of course there is a mystery, but hasty conclusions are not the answer.
People assume much about science, that it “proves” things for one, or that it is dogmatic. It is not dogmatic and it does not prove. It does disprove, but it is constantly open, never claiming objectivity, never claiming to be definitive, unlike religion.
The end of religion does not mandate the beginning of alcoholism and drug abuse or despair. That is possibly a side effect of having ill thought out beliefs to begin with that came crashing down upon their heads.
Thanks for your well thought out reply and discussion.
Thank you for your reply, I have always tried to be civil on ILP, and think through my replies before making them, which is probably why, despite being here for many years, I have far fewer posts than people who have been here for less time.
I have actually given the answer to this, being that we have evidence that a materialistic/mechanistic understanding of life is inadequate. It isn’t a question of whether something the non-material exists, but whether there are indications that we are not getting the full picture. As an example, I just mention the assumption, despite it not being visible, that dark matter and dark energy must be out there, making up the 95% of space that we regard as empty. This isn’t “proof” but a suggestion that we have in no way got all the answers. For this reason, it isn’t prudent to rule something out.
McGilchrist points out that things we believe are a matter of value as much a matter of knowledge, quoting CP Goodman, a scholar of Michael Polányi:
It is a mistake to assume that people (even long ago) were arbitrary in what they believed, or that it was just superstition.
This is where I must disagree. I am myself someone who challenged the church I belonged to about the literal interpretations of mythologies and allegories (which I believe to be another way to present observations, even if we are not aware that we still do it today). I see these literal interpretations fairly and squarely reputed, but this doesn’t touch the intention of the stories told. I see a lot of symbolism, and a lot of wisdom transported in these stories, which were probably orally transmitted until after the Babylonian Imprisonment, and then they were written down. As soon as you conserve wisdom, a process starts to outdate the original sources and you need people to interpret or even translate into a statement that is understandable in that time. In the case of the Old Testament, it suffers under the fact that Christianity’s adoption of those scriptures made the change of mind very clear. Christians are told to “look for Christ” in the OT, which means that parts of scripture become outdated.
The nature of God was demonstrated by people (now called mystics) over the last two millennia to be something that we cannot comment on, except in clearing away those beliefs that are clearly wrong. Similar to the deduced existence of dark matter, there are statements that can be made about what it is not, but not what it is. Similarly, one can say how it has an effect, but not what it is. This is what scripture is doing, and the Gospels were written in styles, that are refuted by particular groups in the broad diversity of the Christian churches but remain evident. Most obvious is the proclamation of the Gospel of John, which seems to follow Paul’s line, who saw the events of the NT having a far larger meaning than just a Jewish Carpenter being crucified. It was for him a change of direction for humanity.
For Paul, Christ manifested the deep wisdom of the OT, that had remained a mystery, or a secret, over hundreds of years. And Paul was the synthesis of the many cultural influences of his day, bringing Greek wisdom together with the dislike of idolatry of Judaism, and the idea of every single human being called to a form of “Kenosis”, an emptying of ego, or self, which we also know from Buddhist teaching. This is also meant in the instruction of Jesus, “go into your room (or inner chamber) and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” It may be a long way off from what we often see presented as Christianity today, but this was early teaching, and it wasn’t completely eradicated by the totalitarian organisation that the church was over centuries.
Considering what I am presenting here, I think that this is an unwarranted simplification and overlooks the vast history of spiritual struggle throughout millennia. The tendency of totalitarianism, which is clearly observable today, even in supposedly liberal societies, is to suppress spirituality that is independent and has its own social agenda. The order to toe the party line has frequently been ignored by those devoted to teachings that stress individual responsibility and compassion, and these people have always tempted the authorities to stamp them out. The protest of fundamentalists today is a weak expression of dissidence and is, compared to the teaching of Christ, misinformed. It is more a utilisation of Christianity to give moral support to their bankrupt ideologies.
Again, we must distinguish between the teaching and the manifestation of religion, which is true of most religions. The “dogmatics” of science enthusiasts are as well-known as those of religionists or populist politicians, but I would call that “scientism” rather than science. The problem is that prominent scientists tend to use this popular opinion to sell books that seek to whitewash religion, although they are only addressing a certain kind of religious fundamentalism. Stephen C. Meyer is a theist who has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, and clearly a clever chap (if you watch his interviews) who says that there is evidence for intelligent design that is being systematically ignored rather than disproved. The realm of science has increasingly more critics, all well qualified, that suggest that the focus on such evidence is being avoided, although there are many inferences being made to clearly theistic arguments. It would take too long to go into this all, but follow Meyer on YouTube and you will see what I mean.
Which isn’t what I was saying. What I am saying is that it isn’t reasonable judgement that is flourishing right now. The assumption that reasonable judgement will “shine through” as you said is not being corroborated by reality. Instead, we are becoming ever more aware of the fact that our lifestyle is on the whole destructive, whilst in particular pleasant for us, the few that benefit from it. It is in particular the tsunami of lies and deceit that has flooded through western politics, the radicalisation of subjects, the violence on the streets, that suggest that reason alone isn’t sufficient – in fact, it has been discovered that schizophrenia isn’t a lack of reason but a surplus of it, which blocks out all consideration of other factors in a situation. It is an over-domination of the left-hemisphere of our brain, and a narrowing of perspective. In many cases, fundamentalists and atheists are suffering the same mental blockages as each other.
My intention isn’t to call names or defend the indefensible, but instead to make a case for looking at the phenomenon religion from a more respectful and attentive perspective. There are many reasons for doubting the popular opinions because they are not thought through and very often just jumping on a bandwagon, spouting statements of other people. As I quoted above, explaining the mystery of existence suffers under the fact that we are part of that mystery, and religion has been exploring the mystery much longer than science. The tenet of religion is that you have to acquire a certain state of mind to access an experience of that mystery, which immediately has an effect on our approach to life and our fellow human beings. It isn’t measurable, which makes it suspicious for science enthusiasts, and it is hard work, which deters the average religionist. That is why it is misunderstood.
A more meditative, contemplative and devotional way of life would do us all good.
We have evidence that a materialistic understanding of life is" Inadequate". An interesting point about the nature of humans. We demand answers, even if they are impossible. However, why do you consider it “inadequate”?
Also, ruling out the immaterial is far different than assuming the immaterial exists - and once people assume the immaterial exists, people then construct a worldview based on that assumption which ends up being a complete distancing from reality… In that respect, it isn’t prudent at all to assume the immaterial exists just the same.
I’m really not sure what your disagreeing with me here, as opposed to providing a brief history of religious evolution. Can you explain your disagreement more concisely?
No argument here, but you’re speaking of things outside of the realm of science. Scientism, is simply, just more religion, strictly speaking.
Fair point, but my argument is that religion is not needed to make a more meditative contemplative and devotional way of life. Yes, that often happens in religion, but we’re missing out a non assumptive way to do this, fact based, reality based, not belief based.
I appreciate your perspective, any quotes I left out of this post here is because I have no argument against them, but enjoyed reading.
We like to explain whatever it is that we are explaining in a sequence of cause and effect, but it turns out that the material world, from the atomic to the cosmic level is full of anomalies to that explanation. Even the term matter is difficult to associate with anything, since the further we go into atomic structure, the more we discover that there is far more space between the particles that form to make that which we experience as solid, fluid or gaseous, than we could imagine, and it is degrees of motion that gives us the impression of degrees of solidity and “thingyness”.
At a molecular level, we discover that we are organisms that live due to the cells in our bodies working for the whole organism, each dynamically interacting with each other in processes which flow into each other, even identifying and destroying the odd cell that becomes malignant, aided by other organisms that live in and off the organism. At this level, there is an information transfer between the cells that we can’t explain from a materialist point of view, just as we struggle with consciousness as “the hard problem”, because it seems to come from nowhere. Or, as a different theory, consciousness is the ground of everything, and a force that is causing what we experience.
At the cosmic level, we have solar systems which also have these astronomical spaces between the star and the planets, but which are invisibly attracted, and which maintain orbits over billions of years. Voyager recently left “solar space” and registered a higher density – of what? Of space. There are forces in the universe that we assume are invisible to our sensual apparatus, which we call “dark” forces, and even “dark” matter, which is also invisible, but the same people who report these phenomena ridicule the use of words like “spirits” to describe invisible forces that affect human life.
It is a curious fact that, although both science and religion are reliant upon metaphor to refer to what they are talking about, science attempts to ridicule religion, suggesting that it is primitive. We are told that “we can explain everything” suggesting that science has overcome a void of ignorance that plagued primitive man, but what they mean is that we can use the knowledge they have amassed, leaving out the fact that a deep understanding of how or why it is happening eludes them. In fact, we have only just begun to be able to explain things, and each explanation uncovers the next set of questions.
Another metaphor that is often used by materialists is a mechanistic model, comparing even the dynamic organic processes to machine operations, despite the fact that organisms are not in the least like machines. It may be convenient to make such comparisons, but we must not fail to differentiate clearly. The self-renewing organism may be a model for the ultimate machine, but we don’t even know where to start. The clumsy attempts at robotics are comparable to lego models of machines. Life is a mystery, but it gives us enough already to stand in awe and want to praise whoever or whatever caused this multitude of processes to work together and present us with something we can admire.
‘Life requires cognition at all levels’ begs the question, where this cognition is located.
As you can see from what I have written above, I don’t believe that religious beliefs were disproven. I just think that religious beliefs have a depth of understanding that we fail to understand because our use of metaphor and symbol is different, and we presume that the ancients were somehow in a phase of evolution that was inferior to ours. What continually got in the way was the aggressive nature of humanity, which we obviously still haven’t overcome because we are still at loggerheads. Despite having amassed knowledge to a degree that nobody could have imagined even twenty years ago, we still can’t process that information efficiently, so we have amassed as much garbage as we have useful information. It is the garbage of our societies that is causing disruption today, whether physical or digital garbage.
In the same way, we are amassing mental garbage, causing extreme distress in multitudes of people, even though they are at a loss what causes it. Psychiatrists are prescribing abstinence from social media and mindfulness-based procedures to combat the overwhelming flood of information. We know that in the past people were more stable when they had a narrative which gave them meaning to their lives. They were more resilient and had less on which they were clinging, which made them more adaptive. This tells me that, for all the “material comforts” we cherish, we are becoming rigid and confused, because the in-form-ation coming our way isn’t formative, in that it doesn’t contribute to our ability to confront the challenges we are faced with.
The most effective narrative was the orally transmitted narrative because it became a living entity in the daily lives, in rituals, and annual celebrations that took place. The more we became dependent upon written sources, the more we began to narrow our perspective, orientating ourselves on the letters and words, rather than the spirit of the narrative. At one time I was dismayed at older people who just took part in church services or devotional meetings without actually contributing, now I realise that the participatory aspect was more important to them, and the liturgy was more powerful than the sermon. There was a youth movement in Taizé, in France, in which young people gathered just to experience the spirituality, which required no intellectual participation. Much of this has moved to secular movements now, but they fail to have the depth of meaning that we had in the past.
We haven’t disproved anything, but we have lost the meaning of aspects of religious life that were central to the resilience of people, which is apparent when you consider the harshness of life in the past. A “nevertheless” mentality that stood back up and pressed on, was enabled by the meaning that narratives gave people. In effect, we have weakened the present generations on many levels: We have taken away a sense of purpose, we have destroyed the assuredness of a prosperous future, we have filled them full of garbage, and retained the possibility of annihilation. What you call a “disproving” I call an irresponsible, arrogant narcissism, which assumes a superiority which it clearly doesn’t have.
Which is precisely the problem. It is a pseudo-religion that is leading people astray, and it would require a bigger effort on the part of true science to put the record straight. Unfortunately, scientism seems to be more acceptable than spirituality and nature-sensitive alternatives (which are intertwined) to our modern society. The disregard for the balance of life on this planet, which is on a knife edge in many ways, is disconcerting, especially for young people. The danger of climate change isn’t about extremes but about shifting a narrow margin to the wrong side and upsetting a balance that enables us to live on this planet. Given that we have been so presumptuous to expand our exploitation of the planet into areas where resources have formed over tens of thousands of years, and destroyed fauna that we hadn’t yet fully understood, it would be fitting if we could find our way back to a respectful cooperation with nature.
Of course, I see the implications of the interpretation of the command in Genesis to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” But the interpretation is the problem. The God of the Bible did not give man the authority to degrade and destroy the planet. Environmentalists are correct in saying that mankind should consider and address environmental concerns. In the Bible, God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to “tend and keep it”. To keep (Hebrew shamar) means “to exercise great care over.” In the context of Genesis 2:15, it expresses God’s wish that mankind, in the person of Adam, “take care of,” “guard,” or “watch over” the garden. A caretaker maintains and protects his charge so that he can return it to its owner in as good or better condition than when he received it.
If we consider for how long human beings were tending the land, prior to the industrialisation of agriculture, it is clear how interconnected religion has been with nature. Unfortunately, the combination of biblical spirituality and environmentalism isn’t widespread, which is the fault of a fundamentalist belief in Armageddon and the new world, which is more widespread in America than elsewhere, and is rather defeatist in its attitude. For me, it is also a sign of evil disguised as good, or the wolves in sheep’s clothing, which is the problem with fundamentalism in whatever religion. It too is narrow-mindedly focused on the letter of scripture, out of touch with reality and has little regard for other perspectives. This kind or religion is destructive.
I have yet to encounter a more meditative, contemplative, and devotional way of life that does not have at least an implicit spiritual context in its appreciation of the natural world. The “tacit cognition” mentioned earlier as “inherent in the cellular organization” is not limited to this realm, but it would be going too far to explain how widespread the examples of influences in the natural world are, that require some kind of intellect to explain them. I have alluded to them above.
You may have noticed that in many ways I am not a convinced theist, though I was raised in Christianity, and encounter some who argue that God cannot be one and be all at the same time. Either God is one being who is the source of all other life, or he is not. Well, I’m putting off this discussion for lack of information, but am inspired by the quote from a Greek poet in Athens in which Paul refers to God as the one “in whom we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28). It was also Hegel who famously asserted that “God without the world is not God,” and is usually considered the paradigmatic panentheist of the 19th century. Alfred North Whitehead, on the other hand, is regarded as that of the 20th century, who inspired process theology. Whitehead said, “It is as true to say that God creates the world as that the world creates God.”
So, I assume that anyone who aspires to a meditative and contemplative lifestyle will find the influence of whatever it is we call God implicit in the world, if not in some cases explicit. Which is why I will aspire to protect spirituality and religion from materialists and fundamentalist alike, and continue to recommend people like Iain McGilchrist, and his The Matter With Things, as attempts to dispute the simplistic thinking that disregards the aspect of the Sacred in our lives.
I don’t know who told you “we can explain everything” but science certainly does not, and if anyone told you science can explain everything that is certainly incorrect to begin with. I would garner that you have gotten the wrong impression of science in general though here… But I would say that some public scientists often forget their roots when explaining things to the general public, or that they forget that science does not really provide “proof” either. The efficacy of science can get carried away with by people, their explanations, their enthusiasm.
The very belief that the earth is the center of the solar system was a religious belief that was disproven. That’s just one example. Imagine all the religious beliefs of all religions.
Well that is not the fault of anyone except for each individual, if they are guilty of such things.
How does disproving that the sun is the center of our solar system say, result in an irresponsible, arrogant narcissism?
As opposed to a real religion that leads people astray?
Why unfortunately? How have you determined that following falsehoods of religious belief is better than following falsehoods of “science” based religious belief? What’s the difference? A falsehood is a falsehood. If it isn’t right, then its wrong.
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I agree that religion provides a meditative, contemplative and devotional way of life. But why do you, or does anyone, need religion to have a meditative, contemplative, devotional way of life? I am free to meditate, contemplate, and devote myself to anything I choose to… AND I do. My life is as meditative and contemplative or devoted as any way of life is, and this is coming from a former Catholic who went to mass every Sunday, having to sit, stand, kneel, chant, chant, chant, and spend an hour daydreaming and “contemplating” or "meditating: every Sunday Mass, but I know I can and do the same without having an hour of my time wasted sitting, standing and kneeling for purposes other than the discipline it may provide.
