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May 31, 2005

That Old Time Religion

mallholder at Naked Villainy posts on religion in a way that makes me laugh and makes me cry, writing in part:

A religion is, by definition, something that is held without a reasonable basis. A leap of faith, as you will. Faith is something you believe, despite the lack of evidence. Faith is not something that can be proven true or false.

Reading that I thought, "That's the most simplistic definition of religion I've heard since Marx's "opiate of the masses."

Let me start off by saying this post may very well be so off-the-cuff that Smallholder (hereafter SH) perhaps could have been more careful and precise, but in trying to be glib, got carried away with carelessness. I know. I do the same thing often enough.

Still let me limit my remarks to this passage, although the entire post has much to remark on. I will strive to take SH's words as I think he meant them despite their profound imprecision. SH makes fairly black-and-white statements that raises several direct and indirect questions:

I offer some thoughts for consideration. What makes a true scientist? What is a true scientist's distinguishing characteristic? I think the most crucial is a direct spirit of inquiry that refuses to base beliefs on the mere authority of others. In other words, a true scientist strives to test directly, for himself or herself, by direct experience.

A true scientist cares not a whit for the authority of others, except on a provisional basis. In the end, a true scientist bases their understanding on direct experiment or experience. It may be nice that other "scientists" may be able to repeat the results, or claim an experiment proves a hypothesis, but a true scientist recognizes the danger in relying on the mere testimony of others.

I've already written about my existential years. I'd already read all of Asimov, Heinlein, and the crowd of scientific writers surrounding them. I faced an interesting dilemma in those early years, especially after so much chemical experimentation: How do I distinguish the truly TRUE from the apparently TRUE?

I'd been duped by Christianity, at least the Jehovah Witness branch of it. I'd reached a point where I knew better than to rely on mere sacred texts or priestly authority on the meaning of life. So I found refuge in science. It seemed so neat and tidy. The Scientific Method is a boon to medicine and aeronautics and so much of what we materially value today.

But then I had experiences that would not be suffered by scientists--well, most of them. I won't go into those experiences just now. I just mean to point out the nature of the dilemma: Do I base my beliefs on my own direct experience, or do I deny those experiences and accept the AUTHORITY of science?

And I found that I was right back to my original dilemma: Giving over my own authority to some external authority. And I began to read scientists more critically. It soon became apparent that so much of what I took as scientific was in fact based on authority. Most scientists readily accepted as TRUE much that they had not personally experienced or tested. Yet they claimed an objectivity and a KNOWING that reminded me of the fundamentalist Christians I used to be involved with.

I didn't doubt the value of the Scientific Method. I did doubt the extremes that so-called scientists would go to elevate their method in opposition to religion.

Ask yourself this: Suppose you could leave you body at will and travel as a non-material consciousness unobserved by others. Suppose you could travel somewhere on earth, observe something that you had no physical knowledge of, and then later, when in the body, you could go to the same place and verify that what you had experienced out fo the body matches in extraordinary detail what you observed in the body. And suppose the nature of the experience was such that you were not able to try to prove it to anyone.

Do you see the dilemma, and why Smallholder's simplification would not stand up for you in this circumstance?

Here you have a case where you are in the position to prove something to yourself but not to anyone else. It's repeatable only for your own recognition but for no one else's. If you are told by external authorities that your experience is bullshit, especially authorities who currently seem to hold the premier spot as the Knowers of Truth, what would you do?

For me, I cast off both religious authorities AND scientific authorities insofar as either would claim that my direct, personal, repeatable, and personally verifiable experiences are non-scientific or anecdotal, or non-scriptural or Satanic, or any other label that strives to dismiss me and my experience by conveniently labeling it.

I believe first and foremost in the MICRO-SCIENTIFIC METHOD, where I take full responsibility for my ability and willingness to test my own experiences in such a way as to prove to myself whether they are real or not. I don't give a fig about any external authority who makes claims against what I know directly.

Some things simply cannot be proved to others. And the attempt to prove such subjective experiences as real in a scientific context meets the kinds of difficulties that allow skeptics to easily claim they aren't real.

Here's another point: Scientists ARE in a position to claim an agnostic position regarding Intelligent Design. The evidence for or against intellgient design is of such a subjective nature that it does not submit to the standard Scientific Method. But any so-called scientist who claims there is no Intelligent Design is making the SAME LEAP OF FAITH as one who claims there IS Intelligent Design.

The nature of the question and the nature of the evidence ONLY allows for leaps of faith.

And this is where I remain so disappointed in so many of the scientists I otherwise admire. Yes, there is scientific evidence of natural selection. Yes, there is scientific evidence of evolution. But NO NO NO...there is not the kind of evidence to pronounce from on high that there IS no Intelligent Design.

It so often seems to me that many scientists love to use natural selection and evolution as a stick to beat on religionists. Perhaps because they experienced the same kind of...disappointment? betrayal? treason?... that I did being brought up in a Christian religion.

They look at history and point to the ignorance of religion, its superstitions, its justifications for oppression and slaughter. And these same scientists forget that the same finger can be pointed to science. That natural selection has given thousands of power brokers justification for financial, legal, and military control, manipulation and slaughter, all in the name of "survival of the fittest." That Einstein's greatest scientific discovery led to atomic weapons.

That Science AS PROOF of no external moral inteeligence or design has led to thousands and millions of people who see no reason to take responsibility for being decent and good, who see no good reason not to be out for themselves at the expense of others.

I am no Luddite. I do not wish to return to the good old days of superstition and pre-scientific methods.

But I do get testy when scientists betray their own methods and become scientific fundamentalists who want to take the limited domain of their method and beat down others who claim value in experiences beyond the reach of the Scientific Method. I will take a mild, loving, helpful Christian as a neighbor any day over a scientist who arrogantly smirks and shakes their head at the ignorant, stupid Christian, as if scientific knowledge is the only possible knowledge.

Smallholder, you need to widen your reading, I suspect. You might want to start with Plato and Aristotle. They are good initial guides in what it means to think critically and how to beware of sloppy intellectual constructs.

As always, just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

*** You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. Plato

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Posted by witnit at May 31, 2005 4:23 PM

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