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Why do You Find Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Knowledge to be Incompatible?
- Thread starter SalixIncendium
- Start date
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Have I said something wrong? There are millions of atheists in the world who do not accept the existence of God. What is there in my post which you would like to fight?
You speak of all the world and all humans with proof, thus you speak for all of us, yet you are tribal, because your "we" is limited to those of the "right" beliefs and judge the other humans.
You are in effect no different than some of the people you oppose.
In effect you speak with a proof, you don't have. Just as some other humans do and those you oppose. You are like everybody else, which speak with a proof, they don't have.
I accept that you believe as you do, because it is fact, that you can do so without proof. I just do it differently and admit I have no proof and just believe, because it appears to work.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Science and spirituality are totally compatible.
They just seem incompatible because:
1. Some elements of religious traditions were proven to be mythological and some religious people are not willing to accept this.
2. Some scientists have tried to discredit religion (I must admit that it is partly because of the reason 1.). There are religious/philosophical concepts that don't oppose reason and some scientists are not willing to accept this. They create some kind of counter-religion against religion in making unlogical and unscientific claims.
shivsomashekhar
Well-Known Member
They do conflict.
Abraham ic religions believe in a creator God who bought forth everything that is in existence. There is no room for such an assumption in science.
Hindu scriptures speak of cyclic time, the cosmic Golden egg and reincarnation. Again, none of these are supported by scientific facts.
in short, the two cannot coexist without having to make some adjustments on the spiritual/religious side. That is, some parts of religion have to be reinterpreted or treated as allegory for one to make peace with science.
Of course, I find that most people (on either side) seem to have no interest in the matter and ignore the contradictions.
Science is a moving target and people pick different religions.
exchemist
Veteran Member
exchemist
Veteran Member
This is wrong.
I see you are a Hindu. Talk to a mainstream Christian minister of religion and he or she should be able to set you straight. I don't know, but I suspect the same would be true of at least the reformed strands of Judaism. Regarding Islam, again I think it depends on what versions, but I do not know.
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Well, usually in QM the operators are on a Hilbert space. That simplifies matters.
And you can do tensor calculus without really understanding what a vector bundle is.But, more fairly, the early material involves solving differential equations and finding eigenvalues of matrices. For a bright student, that can be done while young enough to be in high school (I was reading about Schrodinger's equation and geodesics when I was 15).
My view is probably closest to Gould's non-overlapping magesteria: science and spirituality are simply involved in different questions. Because of this, they use different methods and get different results. There is no conflict when they don't try to make statements about the subject of the other.
So, science deals with testable, objective claims. As such, it requires statement to *be* testable, repeatable, and clearly stated. It refuses to take any claims on 'faith', but it produces information that many identify as 'knowledge'.
Spirituality, on the other hand, has a different set of goals: morality, purpose, feelings of connection, etc. The methods are those of poetry, myths, analogy, and metaphor. It produces feelings of meaning of goals that are crucial for living life.
The problems come when the two sides try to say things about the subject of the other side. So, science has shown that humans are a result of evolution. For some, that violates their image of themselves obtained through spirituality. Alternatively, science cannot and does not determine morality. It alone cannot and does not give a sense of purpose.
And, of course, both sides need to deal with the results of the other. Science needs to be done ethically. Spirituality cannot deny the results of science. Spirituality cannot claim the *existence* of certain phenomena: that is a scientific question. But science cannot say what we should *do* about, say, global warming: at most it can say what will happen for each of our possible decisions.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
So, science deals with testable, objective claims. As such, it requires statement to *be* testable, repeatable, and clearly stated. It refuses to take any claims on 'faith', but it produces information that many identify as 'knowledge'.
Spirituality, on the other hand, has a different set of goals: morality, purpose, feelings of connection, etc. The methods are those of poetry, myths, analogy, and metaphor. It produces feelings of meaning of goals that are crucial for living life.
The problems come when the two sides try to say things about the subject of the other side. So, science has shown that humans are a result of evolution. For some, that violates their image of themselves obtained through spirituality. Alternatively, science cannot and does not determine morality. It alone cannot and does not give a sense of purpose.
And, of course, both sides need to deal with the results of the other. Science needs to be done ethically. Spirituality cannot deny the results of science. Spirituality cannot claim the *existence* of certain phenomena: that is a scientific question. But science cannot say what we should *do* about, say, global warming: at most it can say what will happen for each of our possible decisions.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
As one who who goes by science, I do not discredit religion. Religion has its own uses. I just points out that there is no proof of existence of God or soul, and of the enlargements on that, i.e., heaven, hell, judgment, deliverance and everlasting life. Either religions should provide proof for that or just say that this is what they want to believe. I would have no problem with that. But they should not trumpet it as the only truth. It is only what they believe. Of course, there are religions that do not oppose reason. (leaving out my own version of Hinduism) Buddhism is one such religion. Talking about God, soul, various messengers from God / Allah, and then about heaven, hell, judgment and everlasting life is, sure, illogical and unscientific, since religions cannot provide any evidence for that.
Polymath, do not term it as spiritual. You are making it unclear. Morality, purpose, feeling of connection are concerns of the society. And these concerns existed before religions came up.
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exchemist
Veteran Member
Well, usually in QM the operators are on a Hilbert space. That simplifies matters.
But, more fairly, the early material involves solving differential equations and finding eigenvalues of matrices. For a bright student, that can be done while young enough to be in high school (I was reading about Schrodinger's equation and geodesics when I was 15).
Exactly. You can get a good feel for simple QM at 6th form school level with just some calculus. I remember Coulson's "Valence" being on the summer reading list when I was 16yrs old. It had a few curly ds in it, but that was the only thing that was unfamiliar, mathematically - though I recall the conversion of Schrödinger's equation into polar coordinates was fairly hairy to a 16yr old.
What confusion between science and philosophy do you detect in my post, exactly?
And I've already pointed out the difference between my pragmatic faith in my three assumptions, and your dogmatic faith in a supernatural that you can't show anyone.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
But my faith is God is pragmatic. It is true, because it works for me.
I can do correspondence, coherence, pragmatic and deflationary truth depending on what works. And I can do false and get that to work, because I am a skeptic.
As for what reality really is as strong objective as independent of the mind none of us know. Yet you do, because you know for objective reality that there are no Gods. I don't, nor do I know that there are Gods.
As for my belief you can believe all you like and you can't believe you have knowledge. You don't, because you haven't solved epistemological solipsism and no, it is not ontological solipsism.
OK....but I'm not quite comfortable with the word "explain." I haven't seen any 'explanation' of the spiritual realm.
A religion may assert a spiritual realm, but I've yet to see a religion offer any evidence for one. Moreover, the spiritual realm described by various religions are inconsistent.
So truth is whatever you're personally comfortable with; not with what we have evidence of? Your neighbor's truth; that which makes sense to her, is equally valid even if it's in conflict with the truth that 'makes sense' to you?
How can this be true?
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
There are at least 4 kinds of truth aside from logic and mathematics:
Correspondence, coherence, pragmatic and deflationary.
For overall categories of reality there is objective, intersubjective and subjective and that those appear interconnected, but no one truth applies to all.
As for evidence, that is in the end a cognitive model based on unprovable assumptions and have nothing to do with truth as such. Truth is one kind of philosophy and evidence is another. I mean, I know an actual scientist, who gets mad with people confuse truth and scientific evidence.
Regards
Mikkel
Two of our better known posters have created threads to ask why either science or spiritual views are more important than the other.
Do your spiritual views conflict with science?[/QUOTE]not generally. the problem tends to arise with language and attachment to a definition of the word vs knowing all definitions of the word. i've encountered this problem in dialogues with people and myself at times.
Do your spiritual views conflict with science?[/QUOTE]not generally. the problem tends to arise with language and attachment to a definition of the word vs knowing all definitions of the word. i've encountered this problem in dialogues with people and myself at times.
they have and they should; if they don't align
generally due to restrictive attachments to language and lack of rigor
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
What you are comfortable with or not is your issue, not mine. Personally I do not need physical evidence to believe it to be true. But I know you must.
Have you practiced a spiritual teaching long enough that the wisdom from the teaching begin to enlighten you? If you have not it is no problem to understand you can not believe. It take many years of practice to understand that you do not see the spiritual world with your physical eyes. Those eyes only see this physical world, nothing more.
I don't know what "spirituality" means, so I can't speak in a general sense, but I do see some pretty wacky - and apparently false - claims being touted as "spiritual knowledge."
That being said, I also see people misrepresenting science and calling wacky and false claims "scientific knowledge," too.
The main difference I see between the two sets of claims is that we have good tools, rooted in sound empirical reasoning, to sift the supported scientific claims from false pseudoscience, but when I ask someone for good reasons to believe their claim is true, the person making the claim usually just dodges the question or feigns offense that I would even ask.
So the difference I see isn't so much about the quality of the claims, but about the approach:
- when someone approaches a claim from a scientific mindset, they're using a methodology that concerns itself with questions like "how could we know that this claim is true or false?" and "How can we know that our method for discerning true from false is valid?"
- with a "spiritual" mindset - well, I wouldn't say that "spiritual" is a single mindset - I generally don't see a concern about confirming that claims are actually true. Instead, I see a lot of motivated reasoning and assuming that claims are true.
So some "spiritual" claims may be true, but I see very little interest from people who label themselves as "spiritual" in bothering to check whether they have good reasons to believe the beliefs they've built their lives around.
... so I generally don't assume that their judgement is reliable. Instead, I ask for something to corroborate their claims, which they're generally reluctant to provide.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, it is because if you can separate science and spiritual, then the former is objective and the latter subjective.
So the spiritual in everyday world is subjective and when someone confuses objective and subjective they can't give true answers.
But here is the joke about objective truth. If someone claims that only objective truth is true, then that someone has made a subjective claim. Namely to that one subjectively only the objective is true.
Seeing how people often label claims about objective things "spiritual," it seems that your definitions aren't universally accepted.Well, it is because if you can separate science and spiritual, then the former is objective and the latter subjective.
So the spiritual in everyday world is subjective and when someone confuses objective and subjective they can't give true answers.
But here is the joke about objective truth. If someone claims that only objective truth is true, then that someone has made a subjective claim. Namely to that one subjectively only the objective is true.