QuakerInfo.com Forum

[kevin roberts]

You're right about science explaining proximate aspects of the physical world, James. There's no way I or anybody should deny that it's a tool that serves that purpose extremely well. But it's a proximate tool, and to assert that the world has no other determinants just because science doesn't address them is to substitute the conclusion for the assumptions. It still seems to me that what often happens is that people assume without external evidence that there isn't anything deeper going on--not because they know on the basis of evidence, but because they have chosen a world view that doesn't work well in that arena. We haven't yet established what makes the scientific assumptions more valid than the divine ones, except to say that they are more scientific. That doesn't prove them correct.

I can take your last sentence, for example, and rephrase it like this:

"On the other hand, we have not clearly and reliably answered *any* questions of the fundamental causes, workings, or purposes about the universe through scientific inquiry. Ultimate or otherwise. Not a single one. A sense that the scientific method is universally appropriate is an undeniable part of being trained in it and using it frequently, but it does not follow that a scientific explanation is intrinsic to the cosmos. Assuming that it does is simply projection."

But my argument doesn't refute the one you present, either, until we can find a larger frame of reference within which to compare them. Are the important aspects the questions, the answers, or the way that we approach them?

[james]

Nor can I refute anything you have said here, Kevin. But I do think I've marked out a very real and important distinction between the scientific approach to answering questions, and the, I don't know, approach that assumes a realm beyond the physical. The scientific approach yields clear and verifiable truths, though it leaves much unexplained. The other approach does not yield clear and verifiable truths. It is not a good tool for clearly distinguishing between that which is the case, and that which is not the case.

I do not mean, and do not believe, that a religious practice and approach to life is unimportant. It is greatly important. But I would say its importance is in the field of values (what is good) rather than truth (that which is the case). And I constantly find conversations about religion getting confused when people fail to make that distinction, between that which is good, and that which is the case. The practice of capitalizing truth, assuming there are two classes of truth, in particular, I find undermines clear communication around these issues.

Also, when I speak of values I am not just speaking of morals. A good life is not simply being nice or following the rules; it is [also] seeking to live fully and richly.

Added later: Kevin, I will challenge a part of your rephrasing after all. You echo my phrase "ultimate or not," but in fact you have already excepted the "not ultimate" by limiting answers to the "fundamental." You are using fundamental here in the same way you use ultimate, and it doesn't work. Science does answer non-ultimate, physically-based questions, and it does in a clear and reliable fashion if you are careful. And it does therefore follow that physical is intrinsic to the cosmos. It is possible, though not evident, that there is a non-physical realm, but it is beyond question there is a physical one. Walk into a tree and you will hurt yourself. This we both know experimentally.
_________________
James Riemermann
www.nontheistfriends.org
www.liberalquakers.org

[Diane]

For the red-green colour-blind person, there really *is* no red or green. It does not exist in their reality, but is something asserted by others and by documents created by others.

In something of the same way, science deals with a certain spectrum of perceptible phenomena and for science as such knowledge of the Spirit and its ability to move us really does not exist.

I think of scientists - among which I have a formal claim to belong - should be much more modest: we are technicians, minds limited to the 'gee-whiz' things we find we can do. But whether or not those things *should' be done is better, to my mind, left to ethics and philosophy.

Had we had such a system, then the non-scientists would surely have asked whether the benefits of putting lead in paint were worth the broader detriments. Don't listen to scientists who say that they could not project the negative outcomes of their inventions: nuclear weapons, lead in petrol, 'medicines' whose habit of killing is disregarded as a so-called side efffect, or the lowered nutrition of genetically modified food.

They can, but won't, accept any human, moral or social accountability. Of course 'science' must reject the idea of all higher perceptions, especially those associated with religious ethics. Moreover, something remains in the discipline of science of that belief of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that scientists were the most superior types of person in the world: a mixture of hero and demi-god, able to solve all problems and create utopia on earth. One cannot underestimate the degree to which a longing for that adulation, and a sense that such a position in society is no more than the scientist deserves, underpins much of the argument about science as not simply another technical field, but as arbiter of reason and truth.