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Thanks for your input. I find it interesting that you distinguish between spiritual and sensual perceptions. In what ways could you or would you further define these terms? For yourself or more generally?
I think highly of a fusion of the spiritual and sensual, but this is not common, in my opinion.
Just to throw some unscrupulous ideas on the table where such a fusion may possibly occur - psychedelic drugs experiences, near death experiences, meditative trance experiences and the state of bliss.
All of these are great. I think they all give humans an occasional glimpse at how intense their emotions and sensations can be. We don't lack for answers. Our problem is perhaps just our shriveled hearts, that have no love what for is before us all the time. Instead, we "worship" concepts, obsess over concepts, and have little or no respect for feeling, sensation--love and beauty. Of course drugs can also bring one face to face with mortality. Shrooms intensify the experience of one's mortality sometimes, and one is forced to evolve a philosophy that can gel with this being-towards-death.
There's a great video posted on my profile by a friend. A stroke victim who is also a neurologist describes quite an experience.
I do seem to agree with most of what you have written, Especially about the mushrooms. If those young people would stay out of my cow field I do believe that it would help to stop them from being as delusional.
[Concepts] The big problem that we all seem to have is confirmation bias, the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms with our preconceptions.:detective:
The irony that the notion that man should restrict himself to empirical facts was originally derived from a theological understanding of man's limited ability to grasp God's nature.
Allow me to cite one historian of Science, David Lindberg:
The irony that the notion that man should restrict himself to empirical facts was originally derived from a theological understanding of man's limited ability to grasp God's nature.
I know. Hence why it's foolish to try to claim science as the highest much less the only legitimate source of truth. Science is no substitute for philosophy or religion.
But this is just the ever present assumption in these debates that religion is a legitimate source of truth (whatever that means). Science is fallible --> religion must have the answers, is how the argument always seems to go.
You do make a good point. Science is fallible and knows itself as such. I rate philosophy higher than science on certain issues that science isn't suited for, which essentially boil down to dialectical issues, or the coherence of our fundamental ideas concerning human experience.
I don't believe in any God outside of human experience. We can name human experience in various ways. "God" is not a 4 letter word. But it is still a word. I personally think that science and religion are not or at least should not be enemies. Science doesn't answer to questions of value. And religion does not generally offer testable descriptions of experience. There are emotional religious experiences, but these can only be tested first person, and they can't be quantified. Metaphors and narratives described such experience better than equations. Just opinions.
Somewhere along the way the notion that the unifying principle was some kind of rational purposeful intelligence (logos) got dropped in favor of blind indifference and creation through accident.
There is thus no immutable order of nature or reason that man can understand and no knowledge of God except through revelation. Ockham thus rejected the scholastic synthesis of reason and revelation and in this way undermined the metaphysical/theological foundation of the medieval world.
But this is just the ever present assumption in these debates that religion is a legitimate source of truth (whatever that means). Science is fallible --> religion must have the answers, is how the argument always seems to go.
Allow me to cite one historian of Science, David Lindberg:
The irony that the notion that man should restrict himself to empirical facts was originally derived from a theological understanding of man's limited ability to grasp God's nature.
I don't believe in any God outside of human experience.
I am frequently entertained by your verbal improvisations but this one sets off all kinds of alarm bells for me. I don't want to derail the thread at this point by considerations of such idiosyncrasies, but perhaps the opportunity might arise elsewhere to give it the treatment it deserves....
'You shall know the Truth', said Jesus, 'and the truth shall set you free' (John 8:32). I don't think that this refers to propositional, hypothetical or scientific truth, such as Quito being the capital of Equador, or the specific density of iron being greater than that of water, or the sum of 2 + 2 being 4. To what truth, then, does it refer? I like to think of it as capital T Truth: inner freedom, a condition of being free from conflict and sorrow, unencumbered by possessions or opinions, being in the world but not of it. This is the kind of truth that religion is concerned with, the subject of the Sermon on the Mount, and many other treasures of world spirituality.
I suppose that simply by taking in a large number of claims about these kind of truths one might arrive at better answers. But the investigation of them remains firmly with science and philosophy.
All of these are great. I think they all give humans an occasional glimpse at how intense their emotions and sensations can be. We don't lack for answers. Our problem is perhaps just our shriveled hearts, that have no love what for is before us all the time. Instead, we "worship" concepts, obsess over concepts, and have little or no respect for feeling, sensation--love and beauty. Of course drugs can also bring one face to face with mortality. Shrooms intensify the experience of one's mortality sometimes, and one is forced to evolve a philosophy that can gel with this being-towards-death.
There's a great video posted on my profile by a friend. A stroke victim who is also a neurologist describes quite an experience.
But metaphors and narratives can be described. They can be described as meaningless, for example. Or false. Science and religion are opposed to each other because religion offers narratives that say that stem cell research is wrong, for example. Science offers a different narrative. Philosophy uses the scientific narrative to criticize the religious narrative.
Spirituality has different connotations to different people. It is not just some neurological or bio-chemical activity. Thats what drugs do. It is gross experience. The activity of consciousness has to be experienced to be realised. This is only possible, imho, by being in meditation. This kind of experience (within the mind) is not a religious experience.
Religion is all external aspects of human life. At the core of all religious experience's lies an ubiquitous sense of awe and wonderment. This need not be intellectual, although this sense can also be reasoned out.
The problems lies in intellectualism and reasonings. We tend to forget that religion and science, both are attempts by humans to know the truth. One uses faith and spirituality, the other uses materials and reasons. One uses tradition and reverence, other relies more on senses and data.
One deals with moral codes, and regulate human behaviour, while the other is concerned only with the natural laws.
A human life confined to pure objectivity and pure reason is really not a life to be admired or emulated. We are both emotive (subjective and passionate) and rational (objective) creatures and any metaphysical world view which does not take both into account is inadequate, not applicable and is inherently incomplete.
Indeed. There is a view that all the religious philosophies are finally concerned with liberation, that 'the kingdom of heaven', and that the various other terms such as moksha, nirvana, enlightenment, salvation, deliverance, are all ciphers for the same state of being. This is the 'perennialist' view, as described in Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. It has also been of interest to scientists - for example William James' Varieties of Religious Experience addressed this kind of idea (although his approach has regrettably been abandoned in favour of Darwinian rationalism).
I like this view, because it includes potentially all humans, and is not ethnocentric, and does not depend on exclusion. If no one has watched that video posted by Attano on my profile, I highly recommend it. This stroke victim is a scientist. She describes an intense experience in terms of right and left brain hemispheres.
Well, yeah! I saw that Jill Bolte Taylorvideo the on the TED website last year. Fantastic. And I hope the understanding that religion, in the broader sense of 'religion and spirituality', is something much larger and much more real than Protestant fundamentalism (or any other type) , is starting to get through.
As for the 'perenialist' view, I think it is the only one worth having. Certainly it might be, in fact usually is, necessary to remain true to the path or the faith that is really yours. But at least in this kind of model, there is the possibility of a genuine plurality of views rather than materialism (all religion is delusion) or Christian triumphalism (Christianity is the only truth.)
Some will find it hard to accept, but there actually is a 'sacred science', scientia sacra, which has been known and practiced for millenia. Jill Bolte Taylor gets that, although via rather an unorthodox initiation.