Are Science and Religion Enemies of Morality?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by coberst, Mar 12, 2009.

  1. coberst Registered Senior Member

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    Are Science and Religion Enemies of Morality?

    The Scientific Method seeks to bracket [fence out] meaningfulness. The scientific method hates bias and bias is one form of meaning. Bias causes the individual to often distort “truth”. In the lab bias is the enemy, i.e. meaning is the enemy.

    Religion seeks to bracket the “word”, i.e. to create a fence protecting the “word” from outside influence. Religion seeks to bracket human critical thought. I was raised as a Catholic and went to Catholic schools and was taught by nuns. I learned quickly that to “entertain” impure thoughts (thoughts about sex) or questions about my religion were sinful and had to be confessed to a priest in the confessional.

    What is meaning?

    Meaning is not a thing: meaning is a creatures’ association with an object.

    Meaning and epistemology (what can we know and how can we know it) go together like a “horse and carriage”. Epistemology is about comprehension.

    Comprehension can be usefully thought of as being hierarchical and formed like a pyramid. At the base is awareness followed by consciousness. Awareness is the beginning of comprehension; it begins with preconceptual and unconscious happenings in our brain. Consciousness adds to awareness the focus of our attention on this object that results from awareness. We are aware of much and we are conscious of little. When I walk in the woods I am aware of much and become quickly terrified by the consciousness of a shape that makes me think bear.

    Knowing follows consciousness on this pyramid. Knowing is followed by understanding. Understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid of comprehension.

    Meaning follows comprehension side by side. Meaning begins with awareness and grows with consciousness and knowing. At the pinnacle of the pyramid is the creation of new meaning through the process of our understanding, which organizes into a gestalt that which is known. The understanding at the pinnacle of comprehension is that rare moment of eureka when all becomes clear after a great struggle to understand a complex matter. Understanding is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where our knowledge are the pieces of the puzzle.

    Understanding is a far step beyond knowing and is significantly different from knowing. Knowledge seeks truth whereas understanding seeks meaning. The following analogy signifies the stages of comprehension as well as the stages of meaningfulness:

    Awareness--faces in a crowd.

    Consciousness—smile, a handshake, and curiosity.

    Knowledge—long talks sharing desires and ambitions.

    Understanding—a best friend bringing constant April.

    The instinctive force that provides us with the momentum to survive has driven us to seek out a niche for humanity that rests between the gods and the animals. We need a supreme being to provide a means for immortality and we cannot but recognize our animal nature. Our problem has been to create a place for the human species that rests between heaven and earth, between the gods and the animals.

    In the process of creating this in-between resting place we have overemphasized our “cool reason” and underestimated our “imagination and heated passions”. We have placed cool reason; devoid of imagination and animal passion, on a pedestal and in so doing we have tried to disassociate our imagination from our reason. We have failed to recognize the essential role of imagination plays in all aspects of thinking and “reasoning”.

    In this process we have forced our self to deny that reason has a central role in morality. We deny reason as being a gestalt with feeling, imagination, and passion, i.e. our embodied rationality, a fundamental role in learning how to “get-along and reason together”.

    Empathy is at the core of morality and imaginative rationality is at the core of empathy.

    “Robert Unger describes as passionate “the whole range of interpersonal encounters in which people do not treat one another as means to one another’s ends.” Passion is the basis of our noninstrumental relations to others, and it takes us beyond fixed character, social roles, and institutional arrangements.”

    Quotes from Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson
     
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  3. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    I read this a few times trying to discern exactly what you mean, but frankly it's impenetrable to me. You might very well have a good point buried in there somewhere, but if so I'm apparently not clever enough to grasp it.

    Science doesn't say that anything and everything should be evaluated through "cool reason." That's mostly only for matters of objective, empirical fact. If you want to figure out whether or not a new vaccine is effective at preventing a disease, or the weight of a proton, or the distance between Jupiter and the sun, then cool reason is certainly the way to go, and "heated passions" will probably be of little use. If you have one person trying to use reason to figure out the weight of a proton and another using passions, I know who I'll be placing my bets on. On the other hand, if you want to evaluate a symphony or write some poetry, then cool reason is likely to be of little use.

    The question, then, seems to be which category (if either) matters of morality fall into. Moral philosophers throughout the ages have had very different opinions on this.
     
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  5. theobserver is a simple guy... Registered Senior Member

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    Morality is the enemy of science and nature. Morality is subjective and the very attempt to add social dimensions to it or universalize it creates a lot of troubles.
     
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  7. coberst Registered Senior Member

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    Therein lay our problem. Our schools and colleges reach us only job related knowledge but little or nothing that will help us comprehend the nature of the self and of reality out side of the very narrow confines as our natural sciences define it.
     
  8. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not sure about religion. Some say it is science which is the root of moral nihilism. I think religion is actually at the root of a lot of moral behavior.

    Science teaches materialism and physical determinism. Darwinism and evolution teaches biological determinism and survival of the fittest. Science has a very materialistic and atomistic nature and that's why it leads to moral decay or to moral nihilism.

    I could be wrong but this is my opinion though. Some say that science is simply a way to unveil natural truth and obviously many people don't like the truth.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2009
  9. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    Science is the enemy of nothing. Science is necessary. There are ideas, philosophies & beliefs which are the enemies of science just as they are enemies of truth. Truth simply is & science, tho sometimes flawed by not perfect humans, is the investigation of truth.
    Most, if nor all, religion is the enemy of truth & the investigation of truth.
    Yes, many people don't like the truth & cannot handle it so they substitute fantasy.
     
  10. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    The Holy Babble is the worst proposed "morality" I know of thus I consider it an enemy of morality.
     
  11. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    But science is highly biased too. Science doesn't acknowledge the existence of the spirit or the soul. It is extremely materialistic and is hence one-sided.

    Also science can't answer fundamental questions: Is there a God and is there an afterlife or life after death?
     
  12. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    Of course this is only a flaw with science if spirits or souls actually exist. If these things don't exist, then the fact that theology/philosophy/whatever acknowledges them is a flaw in those disciplines. Can you demonstrate that spirits or souls exist?

    I'm not saying they definitely don't, I'm just saying that it's unknown whether the fact that science doesn't acknowledge them is a flaw or a virtue.
    So do you only care about getting an answer, or do you care about getting the correct answer? It's true that religion provides answers to questions that science doesn't, but if those answers aren't true, then it really isn't any more useful anyway. Given the vast disagreements between different religions, it seems that at the very least most religion would have to be wrong most of the time.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2009
  13. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    Incorrect.
    Science has the sense to limit its purview ONLY to the things that it can possibly explain.
    Spirit and soul are not testable as scientific hypotheses and are therefore not considered by science.
    They aren't studied because because they can't be, by science.

    Again: both subjects are outside science's remit - they are not objectively observable.
     
  14. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    You make a very good point. I want to further argue that what can't be studied and measured by any means or instrument probably does not exist.

    As for life after death, there wasn't any experience before we were born so there probably also isn't any after we die. I have no memories or experience from the time before I was born.
     
  15. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    This is bullshit. Colleges have departments of philosophy and religion and literature and music and pretty much whatever else you want. Most colleges will even force you to take at least a few of those sorts of classes in order to get a degree, even if you're majoring in a scientific/technical field at a scientific/technical college. Hell, even places like MIT and Caltech have philosophy departments.
     
  16. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    11,888
    Sounds good to me.
     
  17. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Pain?
    Love?
    Compassion?
    Hate?

    Hangovers?
    Horniness?
    Pleasure?
    Taste?

    Geez, I don't know ...perhaps we need a little more study, huh?

    Baron Max
     
  18. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    11,888
    Most of those are discernible and measurable chemical/ neorological reactions in the body.
    Maybe someone needs a little more study, huh?
     
  19. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed. Scientists believe that we are all our brain and that all consciousness is in our brain. Every thought, every emotion and every movement we take is just a series of electrical impulses in our brain and there is a lot of evidence to support this view. So the difference between being alive and being dead is probably just activity in the brain. When the brain is destroyed and stops functioning then that's it, there is nothing more. So basically all we are is a thought-process.

    Regarding the Soul, I am of the opinion that this is just the memory left behind with those who remember us. Most of us have short lived souls whereas the notorious or famous have souls that are recorded for posterity.

    Links to interesting sites:

    http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/God1.html
    http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Is there life after death.htm
    http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2007/01/is_there_life_a.htm
     
  20. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    “ Originally Posted by StrangerInAStrangeLa
    Science is the enemy of nothing. Science is necessary. There are ideas, philosophies & beliefs which are the enemies of science just as they are enemies of truth. Truth simply is & science, tho sometimes flawed by not perfect humans, is the investigation of truth.
    Most, if nor all, religion is the enemy of truth & the investigation of truth.
    Yes, many people don't like the truth & cannot handle it so they substitute fantasy. ”



    Science is not biased. Some human scientists may be.
    Everything is materialistic.
    WHAT other side is there???
    The purpose of science is to investigate & answer to the best of our ability the questions that can be answered.
     
  21. Clucky Registered Senior Member

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    107
    Science is about studying the mechanisms by which things work, but that are also testable. If something does not fit the concept of human morality, then this does not make it any less right. I disagree with those, though, who say science leads to moral nihilism. I think more often than not it leads to different intensities of humanism.
     
  22. jnc1110 Registered Senior Member

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    Sounds like you delve deeply into philosophy, so surely you will know what epistemology is: it's a study of philosophy that attempts to differentiate knowledge from opinion. Both philosophy and science are contained within knowledge, moreover religion is what I believe an opinion (otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them).

    And as I have come to find out, science and religion are mortal enemies (i.e. a moray eel vs. an octopus). Some religious fanatics believe they can't coexist but even the most intelligible of scientists know there must some form of a "God" out there; you don't just get something from nothing, right?
     
  23. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    11,888
    When you say "intelligible" do you mean intelligent?
    Regardless, you're incorrect.
    There is no necessity for there to be be "some form of god out there".
     

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