Peter,
I really don't know why you are getting upset about this kind of thing. Non-believers will resort to the hyperbole as will the believer. The ABC is a "broad church" so to speak and we hear all sorts of people saying all sorts of things. That is called freedom of speech and is part of our democracy. You have the absolute right in this country to disagree as loudly as you like but I don't think that "demanding retractions" is going to achieve anything.
I suggest you turn up to the Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne in March and debate the issues.
http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/
Maintain the rage Peter.

This articlee is silly. Vegie religion can equally be interpreted as vegetarians who wear their vegetarianism as a religion.
Talk about crating a straw man.

Has anyone ever investigated "veggie evolutionism"? When my daughters were attending school in Queensland (Yes, this was in the reign of Joh, when all of Australia believed that evolution was prohibited in Queensland schools) they used an illustrated text book which proved evolution by the example of sheep living on an island with nothing but steep slopes to walk on.The sheep developed legs longer on one side than the other. I think the example comes originally from H. G. Wells's Outline of History. Of course some Intelligent Design advocates oversimplify and talk nonsense, usually because they have only a passing acquaintance with their subject and more enthusiasm for the Theist cause than good sense. I'm equally sure (because I've heard them) that many Evolutionists talk rubbish too, again because their faith in what they think a killer theory far outruns their knowledge. When I was a boy I knew many Jewish refugees from Germany and Estern Europe. They loved British rule but laughed loudly at Darwin, whose science they regarded as on a par with English music and English cooking. They all believed in evolution, but evolution that had proceeded from massive irruptions into the life of the planet. Many Darwinians I know would benefit from their intelligent scepticism about Natural Selection. I lost all expectation of objectivity from Robyn Williams many years ago when he brought Mark Aarons onto the Science Show, of all places, to peddle his line that the Vatican had knowingly assisted the escape of Ustase war criminals. It so happened that I had been reading the same files in the then PRO as had Aarons; and while the stuff Aarons referred to did exist,there was a mountain of evidence pointing in the other direction as well. I don't expect a "retraction" from Williams or his interviewee any time soon.

This article is me boils down to ABC people can be pro religion but they’re not allowed to be anti-religion.

DonG = Crazy as a box of frogs. If Queensland was really teaching what you said then they were not teaching Evolution. What you described is Lamarckism and was taught in the USSR. I can't tell head nor tail of the rest of the stuff you made up, my advice is read some science journals.

BTW can you tell me the difference between Darinism and Evolution?

"Christian scientists educated in Christian universities and following a Christian tradition of scientific and mathematical speculation overturned a pagan cosmology and physics, and arrived at conclusions that would have been unimaginable within the confines of the Hellenistic traditions”. These guys where Christians in the same sense the Wernher von Braun was a Nazi, they would not have been able to do what they did without professing loyalty to the powers that be. Evidence for that was how they in the most part dropped the pretence as soon as they were allowed to. The vast majority of working scientist are nontheists.
I also not the soft racism in the authors tone.

My article is not about freedom of speech, it is about the honest search for truth which seems to have gone the way of God. Simply to affirm freedom of speech is not good enough. That is such a hollow thing. You can be sure that if I wrote about the genetic inferiority of native peoples then free speech would quickly go out the window. My article is about the sort of quality journalism that undergoes research so that issues are not misrepresented. It is not pro science or pro religion it is pro professional writing that does not take a simplistic image of a phenomenon to produce simplistic criticisms and then roll out the same old blab.

The national broadcaster should be about quality of opinion, no just any old opinion under the guise of freedom of speech. Science is about a certain kind of truth and Ponder is protecting that truth against the veggi science of creationism and intentional design. I applaud him. But in the process he scapegoats what he likes to thinks is religion. Likewise I am seeking a deeper truth in Christian theology that is just not respected by Ponder or Williams. Who is being closed minded here?

Peter Sellick

Sorry Peter but can you tell me what was said on Ockham that is in the same class as somebody demonstrating racial prejudice? ("You can be sure that if I wrote about the genetic inferiority of native peoples then free speech would quickly go out the window.")
Surely holding on to a particular idea (i.e. religion) is not the same kind of attribute as skin colour?

This is akin to the statement:-"I/he/she was born a Christian/Muslim (etc).
Nobody is born with an idea but they are born with particular body features.

Peter

I listened to the Ockham's Razor programme via online today before your email came through. It had the sub par quality of those programmes that carry the angry but sterile utterances of American southern evangelist talking of the evils of "the liberals" and the "Darwinists".

I recommend the other programme hosted by Robin Williams, the Science Show, titled "Controlling the Future.." an address by Lord Rees President of the Royal Society of London.

Question: Is the Future to be controlled or is it to be lived?

"The Science" says it will be about control. And who informs us what is to be controlled, released and restrained? I assume the World Human Charter of Rights. Who appoints and promotes the Tribunal Members who will oversee those rights for those that need them There will surely some that do not. Such is the folly of sandy foundations.

"The Faith" says the future, the Human Project - Integral Human Development , will be about living as it unfolds with all of the human inquiring, ingenuity and endeavour that flow from riches endowed to us in our story so far founded in the Risen Lord.

Which "Ponder" is Sellick discussing?

The way the ABC embraced the global warning scam should be enough to inform any thinking person how blatantly biased and unbalanced aunty is. The political bias is another thing that is very plain for all to see except for those who champion there cause. Why should they be honest about the evolution myth when they are dishonest on many other issues? Could you imagine them giving a balanced report on the Middle East or US politics.

>> Religion is seen as such an easy target that no effort at all is required to pull it down.

sellick, if you don't want religion to be an easy target then you simply must argue the merits of religious belief. it's not that religion is torn down, it's that we can't see anything there to tear down: the emperor's church has no bricks.

you never do say what is the value of the *religious* aspect of your beliefs. other promoters of religion never do. you pretend to: god knows you never shut up. but you never ever actually state clearly your religious beliefs, or argue why anybody should take them, or you, seriously.

if your beliefs are dismissed with the flip of a phrase, you have only yourselves to blame.

Sells: "My article is not about freedom of speech, it is about the honest search for truth which seems to have gone the way of God".

If your still harking after "truth", as if it was some manifest holy grail to be (re)discovered, then you're merely indulging a stuborn anthropocentric mythos, long since discredited in our antifoundational age. Truth, so the argument runs, is not something identifiable, not something discoverable, but something created, and not by God. All human rationale is just that. Language "goes all the way down", according to Rorty--there is no access to thingness in itself, that is phenomena unmediated by language (and human language has all the universality of whalesong). All our strivings to ground our aspirations (or angst) in an ultimate truth (ala Kant, Hegel et al) amount to the dregs of human hubris; an inability to let go and accept that the universe is utterly indifferent and opaque to us. We have to strike our own path, construct our own meaning, posit our own truths, according to our lights, and make our own way. This is why we have religions and the search for "truth", because we just can't face the confronting fact that there is no point to us. "Truth", and other absolutes, are cultural constructs that mean SFA in the scheme of things, or so it seems, yet we continue arrogantly on searching for it in order to complete ourselves. Vanity of vanity, all is vanity, a chasing of the wind.
Robin Williams has a right to make fun of you lot, you're a laughing stock--"he" has no hopes of eternal life. Where is that humility you Christians prize so highly? It's ersatz, token humility, to get you through the pearly gates; the "truth" is your arrogance and self-importance, your refusal to observe "real" humility. You not only want eternal life, you want the kudos you think is complementary, and whatever earthly robes and regalia you can strut about in into the bargain. Oh God! Why hast though forsaken me!

Hi Kenny
The point I am trying to make is that downmarket Evolutionists can be quite as "crazy" as downmarket Inteligent Designists. The "crazy" text book I referred to - I kept it because it was so bizarre - says that it is teaching "evolution." What I find most objectionable about evolutionary publicists, like Robyn Williams and company, is that that they compare the most advanced scientists dealing with the latest on genetics and evolution with some unhappy fundamentalist and declare themselves victims of a "war on Science." They conspicuously refuse to meet the arguments of anyone as qualified as themselves with a different point of view. I didn't invent my refugee friends - they were part of my childhood, and I have since learned that their aproach to evolution through catatrophic events, rather than through natural selection, has a lot going for it. Of course the advent of genetic science has modified many argument relating to evolution.

Seriously Sells, this is not up to your usual standard

You accuse your "fellow scientists" (although what they can possibly have in common with you is beyond me) of religion-bashing, because of...

"...the narrowness of their education and the seemingly inevitable reduction of everything to facts"

I wonder if you could possibly phrase for us a summation of your own approach, using the same thought process.

What, Sells, do you "reduce everything to"?

"...the seemingly inevitable reduction of everything to..."

What?

Fable? Emotion? Intangibles? Mystery? Power?

If - as I suspect you will - you protest that you wouldn't dream of such a mindless reductio, what, pray, gives you the right to accuse your colleagues in such a way?

Just because we cannot understand why you believe, not only in a God, but a very specific and unique specimen of that ilk, does not mean that we are unable to think broadly, and deeply, about the human condition.

We simply don't make that single, blind assumption that you do, that preconditions everything you say.

Here is an example of where you go wrong.

"All religions are different and they do not all spring from the one source of the need for an explanation of natural phenomenon"

Wrong. Twice.

All religions are essentially identical, in their reliance for their very survival on persuading people that something that does not exist, exists.

Nor does the attraction of religion stem from the need to make sense of our existence, but from a simple, perfectly understandable underlying yearning, that this existence is not "all there is".

Also, your logic is starting to creak badly.

"Are we not aware that the world’s seats of learning have their origin in the Church?"

That is a very dubious argument.

You suggest, presumably, that if the State were the only provider of education establishments, its teachings must necessarily be right?

As was so vividly demonstrated during the Cultural Revolution?

DonG, when george pell claims that "of course" prayer can cure cancer, when the MAJORITY of americans believe mary was a virgin, i don't think you can claim religious lunacy is restricted to a few "fundamentalists".

you talk about people "qualified with a different point of view", but what does that mean? i know the different ways one might be qualified to talk about evolution, but what makes someone qualified to talk about god? where is the evidence that ANY religious belief is not "downmarket"?

I was interested to watch a program about global warming on the abc hosted by Tony Jones i beleive. In which Robyn William's said that a particular scientist in America could not be trusted on global warming because he liked smoking ciggarettes and thought that breast implants were good. Now everybody say's silly things sometimes but what worried me was that no-one said anything .So i am not supprised by the silly comments heard on the ABC. I know it's a bit off the subject but has anyone out there worked out how rock paintings can be 30,000yrs old when dulux paints only garrante there paints for 20yrs and the mona lisa is in an air conditioned box in an air conditioned roam in an air conditioned building and been fixed up afew times and is only afew centuries old .please don,t say they have been restored over thousands of yrs because how then would you know how old they are . Alowly painter

Sells,

Science is all about the search for rational truth, i.e. truth supported by facts.

As religion is faith based, and has no facts other than a pyramid of discourse to support it, it is by its very nature the antithesis of science.

As long as religion deals with metaphysics such as the "afterlife" it has a place, but as soon as it clashes with science, such as with evolution, it must lose. Its rearguard action against the onslaught of scientific truth is the very reason that its adherents are losing faith.

have been restored over thousands of yrs because how then would you know how old they are .
dibbles,,
I have long wondered how do they actually gauge the age of a rock painting when both the canvas & the paint materials are millions of years old ?

"Christians have a stake in atheism in that they do not believe in the existence of an intelligent supernatural being."

Sorry, Peter, I must have missed the poll that came up with these results. Would you like to explain -- with evidence -- just what proportion of your fellow(?) Christians 'do not believe in the existence of an intelligent supernatural being'? You and Karen Armstrong -- anyone else?

From an outsider's viewpoint, though, it's fascinating watching a religion try and rewrite its own history like this to survive in the face of education and rationalism. It's rather like watching a leech squirm and shrivel under a pile of salt.

So much has already been said, so I think I'll just focus on the historical side of things:

Plenty of the clergy supported Gallileo in his trial?
Nice- but the problem is he was made to stand trial for contradicting the church AT ALL- thus effectively, the church was inhibiting science and discovery. Using your own Godwin-argument, I could say that it would be the same as someone in WW2 Germany being arrested for, say, doing a bauhouse-style artwork, but had a few supporters/sympathisers in the Nazi government as character witnesses.

Our system based on Christianity?
Sigh- I don't even believe you actually don't know that this is flat out FALSE. Pagan greeks (before Plato- who himself contributed nothing to western culture anyway), various mathemeticians, scientists (real ones), inventors being the origin; PAGAN Romans effectively creating most of the political structures and institutions we use today, and everything else coming out of secular persons and institutions from the enlightenment era.
The only staunch believer who made a definite contribution to scientific knowledge- unlikely to have been made by a secularist (Because, as established, they were somewhat inhibited by the church) was Mendel who discovered genetics.
Oh, and lets not forget the Saxons, vikings and Normans who established most of the legal/property standards that became the blueprints of modern laws.
Basically, as far as Western society (ignoring Asian societies that made their own scientific understanding), our sciences are based on Greek, Roman and to some extent Chinese and Norse engineering, mathematicians and discoveries, our culture and system of living are based on Greek, Roman, Viking, Saxon and Norman principles- not from Israel/Palestine. ALL of these civilizations were NON-CHRISTIAN. Scientific advancement didn't occur much at all until the Church began to lose its power in the 1500s.

Not impressed- your own article would not pass the high journalistic standards you demand from others.

Why should you be upset because Robin Williams quite rightly criticizes, and makes fun of, dingbat religionists on a regular basis when everybody who listens to his programs knows that Williams is an atheist---and good on him too.

The prayer on the lips of all scientists who are also religious (and there are lots of them):

Please "God" send us more information so that we can really prove that you exist.

Individual,

If you really want to know how we date rocks and rock paintings there is a huge literature on the subject. I suggest you start with the Britannica.

Not that I believe for even one moment that your professed desire to know is sincere.

Sellick:

"Christians ...do not believe in the existence of an intelligent supernatural being."

Perhaps you don’t Sellick. But for most Christians, Muslims and Jews their belief is all about a great psychopath in the sky.

"Rather, they [Christians] are influenced by a history and a poetry that penetrates to the depth of what it means to be human."

My antipathy towards Christianity has nothing to do with poetry. It is based on a strong suspicion that, given half a chance, you guys would impose a totalitarian system on us that is as cruel and unjust as Marxism, Nazism or the current regime in Saudi Arabia.

In fact I suspect that a Christian theocracy would be indistinguishable from Taleban ruled Afghanistan.

"Marxism" a "totalitarian system", Stevenlmeyer?

Marxism is a humanitarian philosophy that, whenever it has been attempted, has been vilified by the opposition and bastardised at home. Corruption infiltrates every system.

a freind of mine spent some time in the early 60s touching up the art work at ayres rock with her aborigonal freinds from alice springs and ive been there and when they mentoined the age of the paintings it made me wonder. Iknow that caves in europe have very old paintings but they are much better protected than the ones in austalia
I'm interested that you know so little of political history and the ifluence of christian thinkers on freedom and rights not that they have all the good but your putting them along side hitler and others shows you either don't know much or you are not willing to give credit were it is due . agument about merit or otherwise is always better than insult. Chrisianity has generally been about obedience to goverments

Sells,
For some reason, and again, you appear to seriously strike a nerve – emanating from your so called lack of rationale, apparently. But, and I agree, the struck nerve is more from the raison d'être as found in the mind that is closed. Interestingly, as we broach the subject of science, virtually every one of the great pioneers of modern physics - men like Einstein, Schroedinger and Heisenberg - were spiritual mystics of one sort or another, an altogether extraordinary situation. The hardest of the sciences, physics, had run smack into the tenderest of religions, mysticism. I would wonder if there are many on this forum who would dare ask, “Why?” Some probably dare to ponder but ne’er are brave enough to confront the hardened cynic (quite understandably).

Max Planck, universally recognized as the father of modern physics and who formulated the Quantum Theory, wrote something some decades ago quite pertinent to the current environs found here, “Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists, which declares religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but – which is even worse – also any prospects at a better future.” (Planck, 1958)

Einstein, too, would enjoin, “The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.” (Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years)

Sells,

If the article is about freedom of speech, be honest.

Has not the Church enjoyed not only freedom to put it's own views, but the power to persecute those who differed in many countries for many centuries? Has not the church also enjoyed a long period of mainstream (secular to you religionists) law supporting all sorts of law that has no basis in other than peculiar religious doctrine?

If a few athiests want to talk it up at the church's expense, my suggestion is: suck it up.

In previous posts you have the hide to deride atheism and, of all things, deism and paganism, your most most nearly close supporters given that "god" doesn't seem to play by the rules in books written by mere prophets. You also attempt to discuss "the" trinity, little realising that the question is not whether "the" trinity exists, but whether any supernatural being, of any sort at all (including leprechauns) might happen to exist.

Cheers and good luck in completely reorganising your belief system.

Rusty

Relda,

I note that most historical figures lived in times when to not publicly profess a religion was to be at least exiled or put to death. I wonder how much their professed faith is worth?

I have no doubt that Newton and Kepler (as examples) were devout. I also believe that exceeding this they were intelligent in a way no church could completely cow. If their minds had not been clouded by the Christian sects of their time how much more might they have seen of the universe? Not having to scramble to fit what they plainly saw to some bizarre doctrines with their origin in 4th and 5th century politics? They were as chained as eugenicists working in Germany were by the ruling concepts of their time.

The later scientists you mention have great faith, but were similarly not led by the chemistry of the world but by the limited vision of prophets. Do note that many Christan "morals" have their roots in Greek ethics.

If any Deity exists, it spent more time on the concept of the atom, than all the prophets and all the great theologians of all time have spent in imagining (with no data) and making up (with even less) what "god" thinks.

I think every chemistry student is closer to "god" than any saint ever born.

Rusty

>> For some reason, and again, you appear to seriously strike a nerve – emanating from your so called lack of rationale, apparently.

reida, don't play dumb.

Rusty,
Current scientific figures now live “in times when to not publicly profess a religion” seems the far safer option for their reputation. How much is their professed faith worth? From Galileo to Michael Polanyi there are numerous and brilliant scientists professing a faith - there is a noted consistency of ‘tacit knowing’ (i.e. 'knowing' without data).

Perhaps you can grasp Schroedinger and his cat paradox (to which I’ve referred elsewhere on this forum) … or perhaps not. Schroedinger denies Materialism (i.e. the theory that matter is the only reality). Schroedinger affirms that human consciousness is absolutely different from the material bodily processes: “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

Commentators such as Robin Williams, who pretend science, deserve criticism and their grave error in a technically directed cultural drive, as pointed to by Schroedinger, is “ [ they see as the highest goal] the possibility of achieving an alteration of Nature. [This goal] hopes to set itself in the place of God, so that it may force upon the divine will some petty conventions of its dust-born mind.”

bushbasher,
The ‘state of play’ in this discussion can only be described as “dumb” where little serious effort is made for intellectual engagement. Putting aside our religion or intellect, however, faith doesn’t preclude the simple minded... quite to the contrary, as in the case of a child.

Relda,
I too am far from convinced that materialism is all there is, however the material world is far in a way our most pressing reality--arguably the only one we need concern ourselves with. The trouble is, I think, human "desire" for the transcendental is a luxury that diverts way too much energy from more pressing earthly concerns. It's not just that thanks to this fascination people are inclined to despise material reality and humanistic discourses--or that humanity can rationalise its material impact--but also that our capitalist system responds to the demand. Religions, philosophies and mysticisms of all kinds are commodities, pushed by corporations, little different from drugs and alcohol, that flatter consciousness, channel away intellectual energy and retard human development. Not that I'm not suspicious of perhaps Robin Williams's brand of positivism; the debate should not be polarised--materialism or transcendentalism--but materialism should be guided by and answerable to ethical/spiritual values. Neither should transcendentalisms (paid for by surplus production) be over indulged in--but taken in moderation.
It's incumbent upon humanity, not to alter nature for the sake of it, but to improve the material conditions within which God suffers us to suffer. This "self help" on a grand scale should, once again, be harried by concomitant developments in guiding ethics. Herein positivism is certainly at fault, driven as it is by technocratic pragmatism rather than aspirational humanism.
Desire for the transcendental should be tempered by our more practical, earthly obligations. I can't believe God wants us to despise this reality.

relda, this is where and how you are playing dumb.

*) you are pretending that there is no substance to criticisms of sellick.

*) you are pretending the lack of engagement is due to sellick's critics, ignoring the bleeding obvious, that sellick NEVER engages with any but the most accommodating "criticism".

*) you ignore ludicrously false generalized claims such as:

>> Christians have a stake in atheism
>> in that they do not believe in the existence of an intelligent supernatural being.

. you claim that sellick's posts doesn't get the respect they deserve. but you, nor sellick, NEVER demonstrate any content worthy of respect.

the fact of the matter is that you and sellick simply PRESUME this respect is warranted. you are so goddam sure of yourself, so pleased with your proud christian intellectual tradition, you won't actually ever lower yourself to address any criticism, to actually make a coherent argument.

well, if others don't buy it, if others don't apriori give religious belief any more credence than ghosts or astrology, then tough titty. it's not your job to defend christianity, but it's not our job to give your "faith" automatic respect. earn it or shut up. but, in either case, stop bitching.

>> For some reason, and again, you appear to seriously strike a nerve

relda, get your hand off it. you're not that dumb. sellick lies about "chrisitian belief", and "sellick belief" is an incomprehensible mish-mosh. people repeatedly ask WHAT he believes, and why, and he NEVER answers. still, you unfailingly defend him with your snide potshots.

your smug, more-intellecutal-than-thou posts are truly obnoxious.

Squeers, Jon J, Stevenlmeyer, and others:

Some people do seem to want to escape from “the world” by uniting themselves with a “transcendent God”. Throughout history this has been a tendency for many people in some phases of their lives, and for some people in most or all of their lives. But it is never a healthy direction for an individual or humanity.

Most – of today’s Christians do not choose that option. Nor, in my experience, do most believe in God as a being. In this respect they could be described as “non-theists” while also believing in God. And, from reading and talking to Christians, I would say this position did not develop in just the last few years; many Christians of the past believed in the same way.

Of course, I am here considering the theology of adults. To children the image of God as a person – even if invisible and intangible – is quite natural. Unfortunately most of the strident enemies of spiritual notions and religious practice present this as the way all Christian adults, today and in the past, perceive God.

God is both transcendental and immanent. In other words, God dwells not only beyond the material world but also in the material world. God can be found both within ourselves and outside of ourselves. This sort of theology, sometimes called panentheism, is driving a groundswell among people across the globe.

One problem in communicating the perceptions of non-theistic Christians is that language is in itself woefully inadequate for this task. Used in the poetic and mythic mode it can do much better, but still not enough. That is why traditional churches give so much attention to liturgy: it combines language with music, visual art, drama, taste and even – increasingly today – dance, thus providing channels for many types of intelligence to experience the presence of God and the inclination of God.

Following that experience, however, we need to reflect on it, using our human powers of rational thought, in order to decide how to apply our perceptions most fruitfully in the world.

crabsy, thanks for the honest attempt.

>> Some people do seem to want to escape from “the world” by uniting themselves with a “transcendent God” ...
>> Most – of today’s Christians do not choose that option.

i'm sorry but i simply do not believe this. if you have any evidence to support this contention, i'd love to see it.

>> To children the image of God as a person – even if invisible and intangible – is quite natural.

no, it is only "natural" if someone is feeding them nonsense. and it is poisonous.

>> God is both transcendental and immanent ...

i'm sorry. i can't say what you write here is meaningless, but it is meaningless to me.

and please excuse my rationalist, literalist approach, but where does jesus fit in? where do biblical teachings fit in, miracles and all, moral axioms and all? where does mary's virginity fit in? all evidence is that your "god is everything" approach" is overwhelmingly in the minority.

i doubt i would find anything silly or offensive in your "religious" view. in fact, it sounds very similar to that of christians friends whose beliefs i very much respect. however, i very much doubt that it warrants sellick's arrogant dismissal of others' beliefs, nor his arrogant
ownership of true "christian" belief.

>> One problem in communicating the perceptions of non-theistic Christians
>> is that language is in itself woefully inadequate for this task.

maybe so, but it is sellick who chooses to write. the fact that his task may be difficult doesn't negate the fact that he fails dismally. and, he fails while not unoften being arrogant and insulting to those who do not share his unclarified, unjustified waffling.

I agree with bushbasher. It is high time you were called out on your condescending and patronizing posts, relda.

>>From Galileo to Michael Polanyi there are numerous and brilliant scientists professing a faith - there is a noted consistency of ‘tacit knowing’ (i.e. 'knowing' without data).<<

The first half is accepted. Scientists have been "professing a faith" throughout history. It may have been largely driven by social convention, but it was there nonetheless.

But you then claim amongst these scientists a "noted consistency of 'tacit knowing'".

Show us just one example of how these scientists developed and supported any of their theories, through "tacit knowing".

You will find, that whatever their particular religious inclinations, they based all their findings on fact.

Your marginalia on Schroedinger's Cat are particularly superficial, and - one suspects - intended to deliberately mislead.

>>Schroedinger denies Materialism (i.e. the theory that matter is the only reality)... “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms.”.<<

The story of, and conclusions from, Schroedinger's cat thought experiment have absolutely no bearing upon Materialism. To pretend otherwise is pure invention.

Schroedinger was a theoretical physicist, and was therefore stating a "fact", as far as existing knowledge was concerned. As he himself pointed out in "What is Life"...

"...the obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events is no reason at all for doubting that they can be accounted for"

Far from "denying Materialism", Schroedinger-the-physicist is merely pointing out that we have thus far insufficient evidence - BUT that the required evidence is bound to appear.

Thanks to the scientists, of course.

Schroedinger was also fascinated by the Hindu concept of Brahman. How do you reconcile this with your pseudo-philosophical interpretation of the cat story?

>>The ‘state of play’ in this discussion can only be described as “dumb” where little serious effort is made for intellectual engagement.<<

Your contributions, are mere intellectual tap-dancing, relda. In lieu of intellectual engagement, you use words to disguise and avoid, rather than illuminate and confront.

A habit particularly prevalent amongst those caught in the straitjacket of their acquired belief systems.

Bushbasher et al. You seem quite angry. Your responses appear to be more anti-Sellick than anti-religion. Rest assured Sells is acting out a fine tradition that runs through cultures that are underpinned by Judeo-Christian revelation - that of prophecy. He targets Christians and rationalists alike in his speaking out against the rationalising and demystifying of the Godhead.

Prophets are not particularly genteel people. They speak a message that is true to them in the context of their own faith relationship and understanding of things as they are. And it takes courage.

A Post secular society!

We live in era in which society is described by Jurgen Habermas, philosopher and Neo-Marxist social critic, as post-secular. An epochal time at which the two great contributions to human affairs from the West, Christian faith and secular rationalism, are of great necessity for human flourishing. Each can be further enriched through knowing its limitations and each informing the other.

Habermas states " The public awareness of a post-secular society also reflects a normative insight that has consequences for the political dealings of unbelieving citizens with believing citizens. In the postsecular society, there is an increasing consensus that certain phases of the "modernisation of the public consciousness" involve the assimilation and the reflexive transformation of both religious and secular mentalities. If both sides agree to understand the secularization of society as a complementary learning process, then they will also have cognitive reasons to take seriously each other's contributions to controversial subjects in public debate" The Dialectics of Secularization - On Reason and and Religion in a dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger ( now Pope Benedict XVI)

We see here Habermas in a prophetic stance. Sells speaks out against diluted expression of faith : Habermas speaks out against a rigid barren exclusive rationalism.

Squeers,
I agree with your observations – pure transcendentalism largely turns out to be a ‘con’, tricking us from a true balance of reality.

bushbasher,
On your first and also your second point, where have I given the pretence there can be no criticism of Sells – it seems you ignore what I’ve written? (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9564#155152)

I agree with the general thrust of Sells last article, he, I believe is quite accurate when he says, “Religion is seen as such an easy target that no effort at all is required to pull it down” - as evidenced by many on this forum.

In his book Nature and the Greeks Schroedinger states:
“Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.” Sells has said something similar – do you lump he and Schroedinger into the same camp?

Pericles,
Good tap-dancing is an art form and, as with the use of the intellect, it requires a certain discipline and dexterity – I’ve no problem with that. That you might judge me poorly at either, I find, is not at issue.

The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.

The ‘cat story’ is a metaphysical exercise and here’s the conncection:
“Now I shall not keep free of metaphysics, nor even of mysticism; they play a role in all that follows….. we are all actually members or aspects of a single Being, which we may in western terminology call God, while in the Upanishads it is called Brahman.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990).

Schroedinger’s best loved quotation from the Vedas is this:
“Who sees the Lord dwelling alike in all beings
Perishing not as they perish
He sees indeed. For, when he sees the Lord
Dwelling in everything, he harms not self by self.
This is the highest way.”
I kind of like it too.

How curiously serendipitous that I should be be reading this this afternoon, for the first time--a somewhat jaundiced Sigmund Freud:
"The common man cannot imagine this providence [the consolation of the concept of faith in God] otherwise than as an immensely exalted father. Only such a being can know the needs of the children of men, be softened by their pleas and propitiated by signs of their remorse. All this is so patently infantile, so remote from reality, that it pains a philanthropic temperament to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above such a view of life. It is still more embarrassing to learn how many of those living today, who cannot help seeing that this religion is untenable, nevertheless seek to defend it, bit by bit, in a pathetic rearguard action. One would like to mingle with the believers, in order to confront those philosophers who think they can rescue the God of religion by replacing him with an impersonal, shadowy, abstract principle, and to remind them of the principle: 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' If some of the greatest spirits of the past did the same, we cannot appeal to their example here, for we know they had to". Freud goes on to quote he says not who: "Whoever possesses science and art also has religion; whoever possesses neither of these, let him have religion!" ("Civilization and its Discontents" 13-14).
What do you say to this, Sells? You are clearly called by this synchronicity to address the matter.

Religion in action:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/01/2010181572087252.html

All in the name of the psychopath in the sky Sellick

Tap-dancing in this context, relda, is a form of avoidance.

>>Pericles, Good tap-dancing is an art form<<

The metaphor relies for its impact, not on the "discipline and dexterity" involved, but the image of dancing around, as opposed to confronting directly.

Far from "judging you poorly", I consider you one of OLO's masters of the craft. And that's some pretty stiff competition, right there.

And you are kidding here, right?

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

Scientifically correct, mein Arsch.

Galileo arrived at his conclusions after some very carefully recorded observations. However you may wish to describe that process, only the church could conclude it to be "tacit knowledge".

We know, of course, that they tried to squeeze it into this category by limiting Galileo's public argument to a form of trite dialogue. Another, unsuccessful, example of tap-dancing.

>>The ‘cat story’ is a metaphysical exercise and here’s the conncection:...<<

There you go again.

There is no metaphysical content in the cat experiment. Not a jot. From the earliest exchanges of correspondence with Einstein on the topic to its publication in Naturwissenschaften, it is pure quantum mechanics.

The quotes you provide bear no relation to the Cat. They are simply the philosophical musings of a highly intelligent individual.

Unless of course, you are smart enough to draw parallels between the Cat experiment, and Schroedinger's appreciation of Brahman.

That would be a fine use of your intellect, to join the theory of quantum mechanics with Brahman, "the infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe" (thank you Wikipedia)

But I suspect you would prefer to stick with tap-dancing.

Pericles,
I’m not kidding at all – you’d go beyond mere superficial argument if you read a little more widely and perhaps more deeply. Galileo came to advocate the new Copernican heliocentric cosmology instead of Ptolemy’s geocentric system through far more than mere observation. His observations certainly challenged the ancient myth that heavenly bodies were perfect spheres made of “ether,” in contrast to the imperfect and corrupted earth. Tycho Brahe however, the great astronomical observer, never accepted the Copernican system because he couldn’t 'observe' the stellar parallax caused by Earth’s motion around the sun. Galileo’s argument that the tides result from the Earth’s rotation turned out to be correct. At the time, however, and bound by their ‘observations’, no one knew enough about gravity and centrifugal forces.

Galileo’s scientific creativity confirmed new ideas, which conflicted with geocentric cosmology - he had the courage to create and not merely observe. As Paul Tillich says, “it is disastrous for theology if theologians prefer one scientific view to others on theological grounds... This ill-conceived resistance of theologians from the time of Galileo to the time of Darwin was one of the causes of the split between religion and secular culture in the past centuries.” Incidentally and importantly Galileo, although deeply hurt by his conviction at age 69, never lost his faith or his courage.

That one of the two major paradoxes of the quantum mystery is illustrated by Schroedinger's Cat certainly doesn’t make it by definition “pure quantum mechanics”. Your allusion to defining 'Schroedinger’s cat' is therefore quite misleading. In a sense the cat is a red herring. The paradox is merely an illuminating way of thinking about the consequences of radioactive decay being totally random – it is just a thought experiment, metaphysical if you like.

Interestingly, Einstein never accepted Quantum Mechanics. He summarised his objections by saying "God does not play at dice with the universe." It was Bohr who responded with, "Quit telling God what to do!"

My quotes illustrate that Schroedinger went beyond his mere intelligence. Perhaps go beyond yours also – and sharpen your pencil a little.

boxgum, yes sellick and his pompous band of fans are particularly aggravating. they're hardly the most evil of religious adherents, but they are bloody irritating. what gets up my nose is their presumption of intellectual and moral superiority, their refusal to honestly engage any criticism. given the very, very thin ice of religious belief, this presumption is mind-numbingly arrogant. as for the suggestion of sellick being a "prophet", maybe so: overwhelmingly, prophets are loons.

relda, you claim to address my first and second points, but it is obviously merely pretence. the fact that you are willing to argue with sellick, on your tightly proscribed terms, does not negate your blatant and snide dismissal of others who are more critical of sellick.

secondly, as always, you ignore the elephant fact that sellick absolutely refuses to engage here with his genuine critics. any of them.

>> I believe [sellick] is quite accurate when he says,
>> “Religion is seen as such an easy target that no effort at all is required to pull it down”

yes, we KNOW you believe it. what you haven't done is given any argument for WHY religion is NOT an easy target. pompous appeals to authority definitely don't cut it.

>> Schroedinger states: Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us ...
>> Sells has said something similar – do you lump he and Schroedinger into the same camp?

what are you saying? what do you think schroedinger is saying? that we have to buy religious mumbo jumbo in order to enjoy music? does it have to be christian religious mumbo jumbo, or would any religious mumbo jumbo suffice?

More tapdancing, relda?

>>Galileo came to advocate the new Copernican heliocentric cosmology instead of Ptolemy’s geocentric system... His observations certainly challenged the ancient myth... Tycho Brahe however, the great astronomical observer... Galileo’s argument that the tides result from the Earth’s rotation...<<

We can all read Wikipedia, you know.

But you completely forgot that it was your glib assertion...

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

...that was under discussion.

You presumably chose to ignore the challenge, in favour of a distracting cramp roll.

>>Galileo’s scientific creativity confirmed new ideas, which conflicted with geocentric cosmology - he had the courage to create and not merely observe.<<

What did he "create", relda, over and above that which he observed? And how old were the "new ideas" that he confirmed.

More side shuffles.

>>That one of the two major paradoxes of the quantum mystery is illustrated by Schroedinger's Cat certainly doesn’t make it by definition “pure quantum mechanics”.<<

Oh yeah? Where, in any of the material produced by Schroedinger while developing the thought experiment, was anything discussed that was extrinsic to quantum mechanics? Where, in other words, did metaphysics intrude?

Thought not.

>>My quotes illustrate that Schroedinger went beyond his mere intelligence<<

I have absolutely no problem with that, and won't even dispute the condescending insertion of "mere".

What is at issue, though, is your conflation of his philophical musings with the cat.

You may choose to interpret them in any way that suits you. But it is pretty arrogant to assume that Schroedinger would have shared your particular conclusions.

Especially in the absence of any evidence.

Relda,

You yourself seem a little confused about Schroedinger's gedanken experiment. It is more a word game than anything else.

Quantum events on the scale that they operate have little to no impact on consciousness. Conveniently available sensory tissues show that local feedback mechanisms filter most quantum noise. For instance, lateral inhibition in the retina. Similar microanatomy is present throughout the nervous system. As a pure digression, Sells can probably expound for hours on threshold sensitivity in the cochlea and micranatomical noise correction.
Numerous perceptions and emotions clearly correllate with causal and detectable chemicals and action potentials, all operating on a known scale of transmitter concentrations and currents far exceeding the scale of quantum events. Some can be mimiced by direct stimulation, the only limitation being our obviously crude interface and map. The activity of the brain, "the mind", conciousness itself, is clearly the product of measurably large changes that exceed and functionally exclude quantum noise.

Try again.

You were the one using the faith of historical scientists as some sort of endorsement so your little toy reversal of my valid objection is hardly meaningful. Is that sort of thing what counts as scholarship for you? No wonder science leapt ahead as mysticism was shed.

The point you try to dodge, it being simple, is that scientific enquiry does not have it's seat in religion, but likely has a millstone. Most particularly in the form of otherwise intelligent people who cannot discuss simple things without an extensive mystical preamble.

Rusty

bushbasher,
Perhaps you’ll find, somewhat, in my reply to Pericles and Rusty as to why I believe “religion is not an easy target” – perhaps an attempt to narrow its definition or to over generalise makes it an easy target, but it based on false supposition.

Where have I said you need to be Christian in order to enjoy music? Your presumption that all is 'mumbo jumbo' within Christianity is perhaps understandable but I and others here believe differently – you obviously find that problematic.

Pericles,
As you are a fan of Wiki, look up Micheal Polyani and his ideas on ‘tacit knowledge’. Read again the first paragraph in my previous post and attempt to understand the ‘tacit knowledge’ held by Galileo, apparently unavailable to Brahe. Both men, highly intelligent, were able to observe the same phenomena, but only one actually was able to ‘see’.

Personal Knowledge (i.e., hunches, intuition, and guesses) is a precursor to Polanyi's more direct account of tacit knowledge. There is as an argument for a renewed and expanded epistemology of science rooted in the personal construction of knowledge (often inarticulable knowledge), it is chiefly concerned with the earliest stages of the larger arguments for tacit knowing - exposing the faulty grounds of objectivism.

The cat experiment is a ‘thought experiment’, lying outside the bounds of physical reality i.e. pertaining to the metaphysical. The ‘experiment’ serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level. It is a paradox and quite prone or attuned to philosophical meandering – try to give explanation in hard objective terms otherwise.

cont'd...

History repeating... biannually it seems.

Reactionary malignant anthropomorphism of 'science' may be becomming trendy in conservative circles, but I've little doubt those responsible cannot or will not grasp the consequences of their actions.

Sorry Peter, but such retributive altruism is not traditionally associated with critical thinking, much less being "a scientist". Belief in eternal torment dictates incomplete reciprocative tenure. In short, another expression of anthropic hubris.

With respect, noting you deport yourself, again, as a genuine "one true faith" Christian apologist, I reject your self promotion to science entirely. Particularly with burden of proof and such old chap. Try "Wedge strategist" and I'd agree.

Nonetheless, you ironically by default score one point solely because Muehlenberg outdid you on Creation Ministries with an almost entirely fictional construct he then visciously attacked.

His target? Ockham's Razor, the guest speaker, the subject of over-population and Robyn Williams. Astonishing coincidence, what?

Bill Muehlenberg - Jan. 27th, 2007:

http://creation.com/melbourne-atheist-the-exterminator

"Thanks John Reid and Robyn Williams for giving us in such cold, clinical and chilling detail the fruit of your materialist worldview. It is always refreshing to hear out of the horses’ mouths the savage proposals that flow from an anti-theist worldview."

Above you write, "What sort of limited enclosed world do these people live in that they are ignorant of the intellectual content of Christian theology?"

Astonishing co.. oh, sorry.

Here's the audio and transcript he misrepresents in splendid fashion:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1807002.htm

Despite the speaker not once mentioning violence of any type, and referencing 3rd party hypotheses we read;

"Well folks, there you have (sic) [it]. Half of the human race needs to go. And will Reid be the first volunteer? Or will he be pulling the trigger of the machine gun, or flipping the switch to release the poison gas? Funny, but all this somehow sounds strangely—and eerily—familiar."

Familiar, yes point exactly. Either "science" is portrayed in scurrilous predetermined schemas or "Christianity" is portrayed as the urgent saviour from "science".

And that is the one and only outrage associated with this unfortunate topic.

Looking at the meal you've made of Schroedinger's cat, relda, there's a cautionary tale there for everyone: don't argue using ideas you don't understand on the assumption that no one else understands them either.

At its most basic, Schroedinger's cat means we can't place a definite value on a factor we can't observe. I cannot see relda, so I don't know if her hair is blond or brunette. Therefore, any equation or exercise of logic that I attempt which requires relda's hair colour as a measurable variable is going to be skewed and/or unreliable. It is purely a demonstration of reason and the limitations of measurement.

What Schroedinger's cat DOESN'T mean is that I don't know the colour of relda's hair, therefore anything is possible, and therefore god.

relda, you still fail to respond to simple questions, preferring instead to string a lot of words together in the hope that it gets you off the hook.

Let's get back to the issue that you have spent so much time and energy obfuscating.

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

Galileo presented findings that were accumulated through normal, scientific observations. His "tacit knowledge" may well, if you insist, have separated his insights from those of Brahe, but they certainly had no relevance to the end result.

For the church to be "scientifically correct" to reject Galileo's conclusions as proof, they would need to have addressed them at a scientific level. "Tacit knowledge" does not form part of the conclusion - that is called a "hunch" - whereas it may, if you believe Polyani, inspire the investigative process.

jesus. Pong is more meaningful.

relda:

>> Where have I said you need to be Christian in order to enjoy music?

here is you complete paragraph:

>> In his book Nature and the Greeks Schroedinger states:
>> “Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us,
>> of why and how an old song can move us to tears.”
>> Sells has said something similar –
>> do you lump he and Schroedinger into the same camp?

let's ignore your appeal to authority, and the fact that schroedinger is simply wrong. let's accept that music psychology is difficult, and that science will not tell us all.

so what? what does this have to do with religion, and sellick's "CHRISTIAN" ramblings? are you claiming that "religion" gets credit for anything beyond F = ma? if so, why? if not, then what the hell are you actually claiming?

>> Your presumption

it's not a presumption, it's a tentative conclusion.
you and sellick are doing nothing to challenge that conclusion.

>> that all is 'mumbo jumbo' within Christianity

i didn't say that and wouldn't. all religion reflects real human needs and desires and fears. i respect that. the mumbo jumbo is to mistake the reflection for the reality.

>> is perhaps understandable but I and others here believe differently

god, yes, we know it.

>> – you obviously find that problematic.

not problematic, just totally unsupported by your waffling.

>> Perhaps you’ll find, somewhat, in my reply to Pericles and Rusty as to why I believe “religion is not an easy target”

perhaps, but no.

>> – perhaps an attempt to narrow its definition or to over generalise
>> makes it an easy target, but it based on false supposition.

perhaps. but perhaps it is genuinely an easy target. and perhaps you are using genuinely difficult questions about the philosophy and functioning of science merely to distract from the central question: what is gained by religiously couched thought? perhaps you're simply playing an obvious tactic of bait-and-switch.

and, you're ignoring the elephant: where's sellick?

I applaud Sells for putting his finger on the real problem plauging this discussion, over simplification. The criticisms showered on Sells remind me that George Steiner described 'fundamentalism' as 'a lunge towards simplification.' Sells's critics have been fundamentalist in the worst sense of the word - they reify Science and declare it Right; Religion they noisily denounce as Rubbish.

Surely the way the Galileo story has been hacked about exemplifies the problem. In the early 1600s, there were still many more astrologers and alchemists than there were astronomers as we would understand them; and even genuinely advanced thinkers like Bacon clung to notions that we today would regard as superstitious. So the Galileo fuss wasn't a quarrel between the massed scientific wisdom of Europe on the one hand versus an obscurantist church on the other, it was far more complicated than that.Most university faculties did not take Galileo's side when asked whether his findings should be described as "theory" or fact.

Copernicus's heliocentrism had been around since the early 1500s, Tycho Brahe destroyed the notion of spheres in the mid-1500s, Kepler described elliptical planetary orbits in the late 1500s. The authorities could live with that. Then Galileo, with access to the telescope and the confidence that engendered, directly attacked the astronomical language of the Bible as 'designed for the ignorant. 'Once the authorities were directly challenged, the fat was in the fire. They could live with two parallel forms of knowledge but could not tolerate a direct attack on the Bible.

Whenever an authority - civil,religious, academic, popular - is over powerful, suppression of opinion can and does occur. Sells's critics all decry religion as though it is the sole oppressive force. Self proclaimed anti-religious, scientific-socialist regimes in living memory have notoriously suppressed scientific opinion in the strictly scientific field of plant science. Authority, whether religious or civil, is fallible.

>> Religion they noisily denounce as Rubbish.

DonG, if you think that some religion is not rubbish, the onus is upon you to provide some argument or evidence.

you wrote previously that some posters here were tarring all religious thought with the silliness of a few "fundamentalists". i responded, and i'll say it again: the overwhelming evidence is that the majority of self-proclaimed christians believe in miracles, virgin births, some level of biblical literalism, god as a thinking being. in short, they believe a hell of a lot of rubbish.

that's the basis. if you are, as are sellick and relda, proclaiming some smarter religion (i presume christianity), then that's fine.

but:

a) don't pretend that majority religious belief is not infused rubbish.

b) put up or shut up. again, what are the merits of religiously couched thought? yes, religious people can usually think perfectly clearly about non-religious matters, including science. BUT, how is the religious aspect of their/your/anybody's thinking of any benefit whatsoever?

>> Authority, whether religious or civil, is fallible.

yes. so what? it means that one cannot point out the special, inherent danger of god-given authority?

Bushbasher is right on the money for mine.
Moreover, if you can't put up, then how about some self-examination? If religious thought can't be rendered in comprehensible language, then perhaps the dupe is the adherent.
Thanks for the stuff on tacit knowledge, Relda, but I don't see how faith fits into that category. Tacit knowledge comes in handy when you're carving Blackbean (as the grain is difficult to master) but in the realm of theology, you'd have to admit, it's more likely to be self-deception and sophistry. I take your point about Galileo, but his tacit insight is, was, surely evidence of the marvels, and conceits, of the human imaginative intellect. That's why we use the scientific method, because otherwise a range of prejudices, known and unknown, interfere with the outcome; indeed such prejudices will invade the most scrupulously objective experiments, or thought. I have my own reasons to doubt a purely rational approach to experience, but I have no faith at all in my conditioned human intellect; it cannot be trusted on its own terms--it has no meta-critical capacity or tacit-transcendentalism I can trust.

"Sells's critics all decry religion as though it is the sole oppressive force." Sorry DonG, but that's nonsense." Religion (for the masses) is part of the hegemonic infrastructure that keeps humanity in the dark; or it's a narcissistic diversion for those whose brains should be put to better (materialistic) use.
I would throw out the challenge to Sells and co: "how does religion serve to improve the human condition?"

Someone sent me this this afternoon:
Please look at the math below:
They say only people with an IQ with 120 and over are able to figure this out [I find that hard to believe].
Prove me wrong J
If:
2 + 3 = 10
7 + 2 = 63
6 + 5 = 66
8 + 4 = 96

Then:

9 + 7 =?

and I thought wow, a good illustration of tacit knowledge, just when I was wondering about that! And then the other day I was amazed at reading Freud and finding him so on topic. So did I say to myself, this is more than coincidence! No; the mind is merely selective about what it notices; thus Jung noted long ago that "dreamwork" generally precipitated dreams in his patients. Is it so amazing then that Crick dreamed of the double helix, or that Newton saw God behind natural law, or that Schroedinger or Einstein had a problem with the randomness of everything, or that Christians see God's divine handiwork within the petty events of their lives. Ah, 'tis a seductive fantasy that there's an underlying order to everything--and the mind all to eagerly renders the notion compelling.

The answer's 144.

God made me clever.

The problem with religion in general is the narrative. It's a problem with people and history generally really. People need to make up reasons for everything, and will often hold on to the made up explanations long after the real reasons have been found.

What Christians and other 'believers'cannot stand is the idea of a world where "randomness" rules and inexplicable phenomena abound. Everything must have a cause or purpose, they feel queasy if it doesn't. It comes from the same root cause of economic reporting why the stock market went up or down on any particular day. It doesn't matter what the cause is, as long as there is one offered. It's a deep seated heuristic problem in the human brain that prevents us from seeing the actual reality.

Squeers: That's 'gross' and I worked it out myself ;)

Sum of the first two numbers multiplied by the first.

Thank you, Jesus, for a high IQ.

…cont’d
Rusty,
In short, I’ve not tried to dodge anything but have been willing to accept greater minds than mine are likely have a more precise grasp on history and its perception than mine. Suffice to say, the founder of Quantum Physics certainly strikes almost sufficient resonance for me: “Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.” (Planck )

Consequently, I have no need to “try again.” Scientific enquiry requires there be no bias in our method and I believe Sells has correctly pointed to the prejudicial view of slamming, per se, anything or everything religious. Ignore Planck if you will, or as bushbasher may say of Shroedinger, “that he is simply in fact wrong” – I’ll put my money on a ‘tacit’ understanding of a reality that is transcendent as it is subjective in its experience.

Never mind the “elephant” bushbasher, in this discussion we have all we require as you are in no need of an authority. Make up your own mind – which I’m sure you have.

Squeers,
One can’t deny the oppression occurring in the name of religion because it has always included the poorest of its practitioners. Even its best are fallible… but as Don G would suggest, it’s best not to give the religious secular authority for power inherently corrupts (Shakespeare).

I'm sure I already pointed this, but I'll point this out again- in the ENTIRE arguments essentially boiling down to the Catholic authority's/practices in regards to science, the best arguments the opposition has to come up with have to be based on 'spirituality'- which may well have zilch to do with Catholocism- and this has been going on for about 10 pages seemingly overlooked/forgotten.

If anything, it just strengthens the point that the Catholic church IS a pointless waste of space that has been more a detriment upon humanity (especially Europe) than a positive.

Bushbasher, King Hazza et al...

So what are your thoughts on Jurgen Habermas's proposition that the Secular Theory is dead, but not quite buried. That post-secular thought sees the value in both the secular and the religious informing each other and recognising their own particular limitations. A proposition supported by then Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI

There is a touch of the dinosaur in much the rants of the anti-religious in these forums.

Arguably it depends on the 'religion' too- you could ask that question to a secular person and get a different answer when the religion 'offering' something is Christianity, Budhhism, scientology, Islam and perhaps a pagan religion.

On one hand, the religious have taken full advances of scientific improvements (one example being, the computer), but I'd like to ask what the religious- particularly the catholics- have to offer science, other than something for scientists to study like any other topic. Or even to those of us in the secular world who do are presently doing quite fine without them and quite capable of performing good deeds without them.

It's easy to say "something's missing" without actually having to tell us what that "something" is- or why we need the Christians to provide it, instead of just say, the Buddhists- who I might add, fit much more neater into the secular world without compromising themselves than the Catholic faith and institutions have.

relda, your posts have progressed from strained to farcical. as keating would say, you're all tip, no iceberg.

boxgum, give me a single example of religious thought "informing" in any sensible manner and i'll consider the rest of your posts.

Relda,

In short, Yes, you do have to try again.

Planck's opinion in this matter is conjecture, not a professional effort at science.

Many of the greatest scientists of *our* age are not religious. Some, like the late Feynman were arguably of the same stature as others you mention and were athiest.

Correcting for all those who were *really* in an age where you could be killed (tortured and killed) for saying otherwise, you are critically obliged to recognise that many athiest scientsts are just as good as religious ones, and that many religious ones were so under threat of death.

This in turn establishes that great scientific endeavour is independent of religiosity. ( by the way, this observation disproves by existing, Planck's speculation)

Given that it is not required, what is it? at worst, it is on average not completely inhibiting.

At best it might be like the tricks deBono suggests to aid in lateral thinking.

You do have a feint idea how science is done, don't you? or do you just read about it?

Rusty

Rusty,
I have a strong and healthy respect for Richard Feynman who states in his 1990 hook, The Character of Physical Law, that “Everything in physical science is a lot of protons, neutrons and electrons , while in daily life, we talk about men and history, or beauty and hope. Which is nearer to God -beauty and hope or the fundamental Iaws? To stand at either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is a complete understanding, is a mistake.” This is little different from Shroedinger stating, in his astonishment, that “the scientific picture of the real world is very deficient… it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us….”

Many on this forum have made the mistake and have taken a walk off the pier Feynman so eloquently describes. The ‘atheism’ brand to which you refer in no way matches Feynman’s for its integrity or intellectual strength. The clichéd use of “lateral thinking” is too often bandied by smaller minds – unable to grasp the greater reality where the Scientific process (i.e. how it’s ‘done’) will never answer ‘the big’ questions. Wherever science does pretend the answers they “are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.” (Shroedinger, Nature and the Greeks), unless you, naturally, are silly enough to expect this of science.

Sancho,
“Looking at the meal you've made of Schroedinger's cat...” On the contrary I think I’ve made more a ‘snack’ of his cat – from the amount scientific literature on the subject it takes more than just a ‘meal’ to explain this thought experiment or to gain any depth of understanding in QM (few have achieved it – perhaps one or two).

Incidentally, I’ve gained as much understanding on the subject as any amateur might, nevertheless, trusting it as valid theory but certainly not on my own expertise (or lack of).

Pericles,
You're still waiting for a simple answer to a simple question I guess...

The scientific ‘observations’ made in Galileo’s time were underpinned by prevailing perceptions, i.e. from a geocentric viewpoint, adopted from the ancient Greek and medieval philosophers. Medieval ‘scientific’ standards are abysmal if compared with our own current and more advanced theories. Geocentricity, however, appeared obvious and was easily observed as such - it was therefore taken as standard and verifiable ‘proof’, the same scientific standards as applied today but with a little more rigor and precision (one would hope). Scientific theory isn't static and, given what has traditionally underpinned its 'process', it will continue to be creative.

Galileo’s best seller in Italy, ‘Dialogue on the Two Principle World Systems – Ptolemaic and Coperican’, satirized the Pope, who in his infallible role couldn’t take a joke. This certainly didn’t help him at his trial.

>> Many on this forum have made the mistake
>> and have taken a walk off the pier Feynman so eloquently describes.
>> The ‘atheism’ brand to which you refer
>> in no way matches Feynman’s for its integrity or intellectual strength

what makes you think anyone here has devalued beauty or human feeling? what makes you think god owns the concept?

go to hell, you pompous, insulting little prat.

and for those who want to know what feynman *really* thought of religion:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/richard_feynman_tells_it_like.php

Oh, hi relda

>>Pericles, You're still waiting for a simple answer to a simple question I guess...<<

True. But I'm not holding my breath, so you can relax.

I presume that the two paragraphs that followed this observation of yours were just more rambling stuff you cut 'n' pasted from someplace. 'Cos they had nothing to do with the question, did they?

Maybe it isn't so simple a question after all.

Perhaps you are floundering about because you are actually unable to remember how you came to put the following words together:

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

I suspect it would be smarter, relda, if you simply admitted that you have absolutely no backing to your claim that "the church was scientifically correct", and that Galileo's explanations were "tacit knowledge."

Because, as you must surely realise by now, both are pure nonsense.

Incidentally, it takes a particular talent to misinterpret Feynman so perfectly. You must be very proud.

Squeers

(x +y)x = z

Yes, me ol' mate CJ is corrrect.

But that does reeeally mean he has an IQ of over 120!!

( :>/

Muffed it...

That should have read...

But does that really mean he has an IQ of over 120?

I mean, obviously I don't and yet I cracked it very quickly!! (:>)

Pericles,
Your 'cut’n’ paste’ presumption in this instance is wrong. An implied presumption, that in order to have ‘tacit knowledge’ you need to be religious or mystical is also incorrect. Also, Galileo’s explanations were based on his tacit knowledge; they weren’t, per se, tacit knowledge – there is a difference.

The book, ‘From Galileo to Gell-Mann - The wonder that inspired the greatest scientists of all time’ (Templeton Press)I believe is a worthy read. To cut’n’paste: “The mistakes made in the distant past continue to have a negative influence on many of those who dedicate themselves to scientific research, nurturing the conviction that to make progress it is necessary to refute completely, or even to ridicule, any notion that comes from faith or philosophical research. It should be added that often our scientists show a good deal of intellectual arrogance and, believing that they have “understood” how the universe was made and how it evolved, they think that they can “demonstrate” that there is no need for God to give life to our universe and ourselves.”

I see Feynman as non-religious, an atheist and a scientific genius – he also mentions beauty and hope; my strong inference was that some here appear to ignore both from what I see. In 1956 he wrote on the two great heritages of Western Civilization: One being the scientific spirit of adventure and two, the other “great heritage is Christian ethics – the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual – the humility of the spirit.” He was critical of a modern Church where he asks is it “a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God - more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts?” A fair enough criticism, for me.

If you have the time, watch the BBC’s “Illusion of Reality”: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7136440703094429927#docid=-1406370011028154810
The final insights given on QM in this program are interesting regarding the ‘measurement problem’, metaphysical speculation and the return of inquisitional dogmatism to science.

Don't read stuff that isn't there, relda.

>>An implied presumption, that in order to have ‘tacit knowledge’ you need to be religious or mystical<<

Your inference, not mine.

>>Galileo’s explanations were based on his tacit knowledge; they weren’t, per se, tacit knowledge – there is a difference<<

Nor did I suggest otherwise.

I simply wanted to know how on what grounds his process of deduction-from-observation allowed the Church to conclude that "Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’", as you claimed. Still waiting on that one.

An interesting choice of supporting evidence.

>>The book, ‘From Galileo to Gell-Mann'...I believe is a worthy read.<<

Here's the reaction of one reviewer:

"Marco Bersanelli and Mario Gargantini in their work From Galileo to Gell-Mann... have transmuted the gold of exceptional achievement into the base metal of inanity... there is the point, sidled up to again and again as a sort of stealth agenda: Religion, in particular Christianity, provided the inspiration for great science and great scientists. As the authors state, 'Science, as we have noted, had its historical roots in Christian soil.'"

http://calitreview.com/4604

You really should broaden your horizons, relda. Simply reading stuff that feeds your vanity is no challenge.

And a quote:

"...nurturing the conviction that to make progress it is necessary to refute completely, or even to ridicule, any notion that comes from faith or philosophical research."

This makes the assumption that scientific "notions" can in fact be born of faith or philosophical research.

Could you give an example, perhaps, of just one such "notion"?

Oh, goody, here comes the straw-man. Right on time:

"our scientists show a good deal of intellectual arrogance... believing that they have 'understood' how the universe was made and how it evolved"

No scientist claims "understanding". They still deal in theories, refutable hypotheses, doubt and uncertainty.

Feynman agrees.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/richard_feynman_tells_it_like.php

>>...he also mentions beauty and hope; my strong inference was that some here appear to ignore both<<

Not ignore. But you may see occasional observations that beauty and hope are not the exclusive preserve of Christians.

Pericles,
Glad we’re perhaps agreed on what “tacit knowledge’ isn’t.

You stated (in your previous post), “…Galileo's explanations were "tacit knowledge” – I didn’t.

At the time of Galileo the Church, the recognized scientific authority of its time and soil from which modern Western science grew, could not see beyond its dogma. Today we have similar dogma but now draped in secular authority – the point of Galileo lay in his refusal to rely on authority for scientific truth. There is no ‘authority’, however, that can really ever explain the mystery or ‘illusion of reality’. Only via the abstract can we attempt to even come close – poetry, theology, philosophy, art…..

So you cite the reaction of one reviewer… Here’s another, “This is an inspirational anthology of the thoughts and vision of scientists through the ages. A much needed antidote to the current dehumanizing of scientific discovery. A book which questions the very basis on which modern science is conducted and to take us back to the values and vision of why we investigate and try to explain the world in which we live”.
John Wood, Principal of the Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College, London

“..you may see occasional observations that beauty and hope are not the exclusive preserve of Christians” – Have I said otherwise, it is your inference and not mine that it is even incidental to what I’ve said. Your ‘straw man’ – not mine.

>>...he also mentions beauty and hope; my strong inference was that some here appear to ignore both

who? i suspect pericles got it wrong: it's not a straw man, it's an invisible man.

>> So you cite the reaction of one reviewer… Here’s another, ...
>> John Wood, Principal of the Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College, London

christians praising special pleading for religion. who woulda thunk it?

This is getting just a little weird, relda.

>>You stated (in your previous post), “…Galileo's explanations were "tacit knowledge” – I didn’t.<<

If you have now decided that Galileo's explanations were not "tacit knowledge", how do you explain this earlier statement of yours?

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

Perhaps you could reconstruct the sentence to make it clearer.

Where we seem to be having problems is the part where the church is deciding on what basis they should reject Galileo's position.

>>Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’<<

The inference here is that the reason the church was correct about Galileo's lack of proof was that his "tacit knowledge" somehow invalidated his conclusions.

In other words, had he not been in possession of "tacit knowledge", they would have been able to accept his findings.

Is this what you meant to say?

As I said, it would help a great deal if you could explain this a little more clearly.

Or withdraw your claim that the church was "scientifically correct".

Which is the part I took exception to in the first place.

Incidentally, your John Wood quote came from the publisher's promotional blurb.

>>So you cite the reaction of one reviewer… Here’s another...<<

It was not a review, relda.

He was selected for the quote because of his Christian views, not because he had read the book with an open mind. Or even read the book at all, come to that. He is a busy man, after all.

You can gauge how impartial he might be from his "new covenant" presentation at the "Christians in Science" conference last October.

http://cis.org.uk/assets/files/Conferences/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Conference%202009,%20abstracts.pdf

"Without a spiritual basis which is robust and is centred on wonder and awe of all that creation offers we start to create a god who is man made in our image"

Hardly an objective stance, wouldn't you agree?

Pericles,
In answer to your final objection, i.e. your allusion to objectivity: The following Nobel Laureate’s in Physics - Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Millikan, Charles Townes, William Bragg, Arthur Compton, to name just few, all stated a conviction in ‘God’. Answer me this, does this belief compromise their objectivity (scientific or otherwise)in any way?

As our ‘straw-men’ appear to have faded, we are left with Polanyi's ‘tacit knowledge’ and your issue with a ‘scientifically correct’ church. Polanyi believes there is a type of knowledge that is not captured by language or mathematics. Because of this elusive character, we can see it only by its action. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that the actor knows he has (how to catch a ball, tie a knot, mark a line etc.) but which he cannot, nonetheless, describe in terms other than its own (skilful) performance: “..Rules of art can be useful, but they do not determine the practice of an art; they are maxims which can serve as a guide to the art only if they can be integrated into the practical knowledge of the art…” Galileo's ‘explanation’ therefore does not actually form a part of his ‘tacit knowledge’ but rather is incidental to it. For example, while the correct use of medical terms cannot be achieved in itself without the knowledge of medicine, a great deal of medicine can be remembered even after on having forgotten the use of medical terms. The medical practitioner’s skill is as much an art of doing as it is an art of knowing - perhaps a poor example, but it attempts to show the co-relation between the two separate entities of 'knowing' and 'doing.'

Polanyi also makes an illustration of incompetence: We draw here a distinction between two kinds of error, namely scientific guesses which have turned out to be mistaken, and unscientific guesses which are not only false but incompetent – the medieval Church seems to be guilty of the former, and ‘creation science’ the latter. So, yes, I was a little unclear.

>> As our ‘straw-men’ appear to have faded,

not faded, ignored.

>> "our scientists show a good deal of intellectual arrogance...
>> believing that they have 'understood' how the universe was made and how it evolved"

name one such scientist

>>many of those who dedicate themselves to scientific research,
>> nurturing the conviction that to make progress
>> it is necessary to refute completely, or even to ridicule, any notion that comes from faith or philosophical research.

name one such scientist

>> Many on this forum have made the mistake
>> and have taken a walk off the pier Feynman so eloquently describes.

name one such person on this forum.

>>...he also mentions beauty and hope;
>> my strong inference was that some here appear to ignore both

name one such person here

Hello all,
I'm a straw man of Squeers's, bound to do his bidding while he serves a month in the wilderness for flaming and talking back.

Did anyone else happen to listen to Daniel Dennet's wonderful segment on the science show just now? Should be available as a podcast presently. Do have a listen, it's a treat.
You ought to have a listen, Relda. All humanity's big intellectual breakthroughs have been profoundly humbling.
Perhaps that's why the path of faith hasn't led to any breakthroughs, just dubious epiphanies that, by definition, are never subjected to proper scrutiny. Never look a gift horse in the mouth eh?
Science, on the other hand, never rests on it laurels, and is never appeased by intellectual vanity--or at least, if a proponent does, s/he is eventually found out. There are no holy texts for science. To quote Rorty, "Truth is created [by the hubris of Man], not found".

Your talent for obfuscation knows no bounds, does it relda.

>>Pericles... the following Nobel Laureate’s in Physics - Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Schroedinger etc etc... all stated a conviction in ‘God’. Answer me this, does this belief compromise their objectivity (scientific or otherwise)in any way?<<

Lo, another white rabbit of irrelevance from your conjurer's hat of misinformation.

Of course not, relda, what a silly question.

(I've ignored the "or otherwise", since it is even more irrelevant than the rest of the question. If you feel that it is important, please define "or otherwise" a little more clearly.)

But the corollary must be, did their belief in any way influence their scientific discoveries, findings or conclusions?

Equally, the answer must be a resounding "of course not". Unless you can unearth some evidence to the contrary, where a step in the scientific process required belief in a deity in order to complete.

And you are definitely clutching at straws here, aren't you?

>>we are left with Polanyi's ‘tacit knowledge’ and your issue with a ‘scientifically correct’ church.<<

My "issue", if you recall, was that your suggestion, that the church was scientifically correct because of Galileo's "tacit knowledge"

But now, it appears, you agree with me.

>>Galileo's ‘explanation’ therefore does not actually form a part of his ‘tacit knowledge’ but rather is incidental to it<<

Precisely my point.

I assume therefore that you now accept that your original assertion is utter rot, and was plucked from your imagination because it sounded clever.

>>Polanyi also makes an illustration of incompetence<<

Polanyi, Polanyi, always Polanyi.

Polanyi is not the most convincing source around, relda. He was a most devout Christian, of course, as is expected of a convert. But not everyone is convinced about "tacit knowledge".

http://www.jstor.org/pss/187340

http://www.jstor.org/pss/186871

Have a great day.

Bushbasher re your request for a single example of religious thought "informing" science ( rational thought) in any sensible manner....

I have often reflected upon the appropriation by our secular brothers and sisters of established ideas from the truths founded in sacred Scripture; the sense of the common good, the dignity of the person, communal solidarity through fellowship. So there is a start. But let me quote Jurgen Habermas (refer to my previous post..) who specifically describes the passage of a Scriptual truth held by Christians and the other monotheistic faiths into the language, too often as rhetoric, of secular humanism.

"This is because the mutual compenetration of Christianity and Greek metaphysics not only produced the intellectual form of theological dogmatics and a hellenization of Chritianity ( whiich was not in every sense a blessing). It also promoted the assimilation by philosphy of genuine Christian ideas. This work of assimilation has left its mark in normative conceptual clusters with a heavy weight of meaning, such as responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship. Philospohy has indeed transformed the original religious meaning of these terms, but without emptying them through a process of deflation and exhaustion.

One such translation that salvages the substance of a term is the translation of the concept of "man in the image of God" into that of the identical dignity of all men that deserves unconditional respect. This goes beyond the one particular religious fellowship and makes the substance of biblical concepts accessible to a general public that also includes those who have other faiths and those who have none..... Page 44 The Dialectics of Secularization"

BushBasher et Al... In the context of my contribution can I ask you to focus and comment on the position of one of the world's leading princes of rational thought that has him talking of a post-secular age. An age where the Secular Thesis is dead and those still taking sustenance and hope from it take on the property of the dinosaur.

That's not particularly convincing, boxgum.

>>re your request for a single example of religious thought "informing" science ( rational thought) in any sensible manner... I have often reflected upon the appropriation by our secular brothers and sisters of established ideas from the truths founded in sacred Scripture; the sense of the common good, the dignity of the person, communal solidarity through fellowship. So there is a start.<<

Are you implying that these truths were non-existent before "sacred Scripture"? Or that only those who had access to "sacred Scripture" held these beliefs?

If not, then you cannot under any circumstances claim that these ideas were appropriated by secularism, can you?

If any appropriation was conducted, it would have been the other way around, with the "sacred Scriptures" re-issuing and promoting accepted social norms as their own proprietary religious product.

>>can I ask you to focus and comment on the position of one of the world's leading princes of rational thought that has him talking of a post-secular age<<

Habermas? That fraud?

I particularly enjoyed Darshana Medis' observation:

"It's a serious misunderstanding if someone thinks the reason for Habermas' fame is the brilliance of his thought. On the contrary, as comrade Rippert quite rightly put it, the authority of the Habermas' theory lies solely in the indigestible terminology of his writings."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/hab-j27.shtml

It's also worth considering that, bearing in mind Haberman's track record of standing by his principles and convictions, we can expect yet another major change of heart any minute now.

Apart from that, what evidence is there that we live in a secular age? As far as I can tell, religious beliefs infuse every aspect of our government, the US government, the Saudi government, the Iranian government, and most governments around the world.

We should first be contemplating the peace and tranquility promised by a truly secular age, before considering what might be meant by "post secular".

boxgum,

1) your last sentence makes pretty clear the pointlessness of addressing anything else.

seriously, if you just want to insult, fine. if you want to try to discuss things, fine. if the discussion gets down to slinging slurs, that's also fine. (i have learned that relda's pontification, obfuscation, snide insults and selective memory deserve nothing better).

BUT, presuming you actually want to discuss things, why start with a general and totally unsupported slur? what do you think it serves, other than your vanity?

2) i am not one bit impressed by people quoting habermush, or pollyanna, or anyone else. if you have an argument, make it. but quoting questionable authority is pompous and adds no weight to your argument.

3) pericles, as usual, has given a fine reply. i haven't much to add, but:

a) i have written, numerous times, that i don't discount ideas simply because they are the ideas of religious people. religion reflects human needs and desires and fears: it would be astonishing if religion came up with no human truths. (just as it would be astonishing if religion didn't come up with gross obfuscation when facing human fears).

BUT, that does not make these truths religious truths. that would only be the case if you can argue that religious thought is in some way necessary, or at least hugely and particularly assisting, in coming to these truths. you have made no such argument.

b) your habermas quotation is impenetrable (and irrelevant, as i have said). but let's take the first sentence.

i) what is the compenetration of christianity and greek metaphysics? give me a concrete example of the merging of such ways of thinking.

ii) what is the intellectual form of theological dogmatics? give me a concrete example.

iii) what is the hellenization of christianity? give me a concrete example.

in brief, i'm willing to learn. but don't throw slabs of overstuffed text at me and simply expect me to be impressed, bowing in humble submission before the greater mind. not gonna happen.

Pericles,
“…that your suggestion, that the church was scientifically correct because of Galileo's "tacit knowledge" – Now, who’s reading what isn’t there? Read more carefully… and as you say ,”Don't read stuff that isn't there”.

“He was selected for the quote because of his Christian views, not because he had read the book with an open mind. ..” – Something more you’ve read into theTempleton press website (http://www.templetonpress.org/default.asp ) or just your own particular bias coming through?

In harking back to the relevant issue, Sells is quite legitimate with his article and you merely carry the baton with your “dreadfully simplistic bash at all things religious”.

And I had a ‘great day’... thanks.

>> Sells is quite legitimate with his article and you merely carry the baton
>> with your “dreadfully simplistic bash at all things religious”.

possibly, but you've done nothing to prove it. you apparently can't sustain an argument, respond to straight-forward questions, or defend a single one of your army of straw men.

Back to the tap-dancing I see, relda.

>>Pericles, “…that your suggestion, that the church was scientifically correct because of Galileo's "tacit knowledge" – Now, who’s reading what isn’t there? Read more carefully… and as you say ,”Don't read stuff that isn't there”.<<

Here's another careful read.

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

Reading oh-so-carefully, it still appears to me that you are:

1. Claiming that the church was "scientifically correct", and

2. That they reached this conclusion on the basis that Galileo was not offering proof, but merely "tacit knowledge"

How can this statement of yours be interpreted differently?

And then perhaps you can explain to me again how the church was "scientifically correct".

In simple, plain terms please. Without reference to Polanyi, or anyone else you have cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia.

>>“He was selected for the quote because of his Christian views"...Something more you’ve read into the Templeton press website<<

My mistake. It was merely blind coincidence that they found a fully paid-up member of Christians in Science to promote a book about the place of, errrr..., Christianity in Science.

>>you merely carry the baton with your “dreadfully simplistic bash at all things religious”.<<

The reason the arguments are simplistic, relda, is that they require no sophistication, deep thought or dedication to Wiki-philosophers whatsoever.

In trying to turn your and Sells' version of Christianity into some form of intellectual one-upmanship, you (both) succeed only to demonstrate the narrowness of your cerebral compass.

Pericles,
I’m claiming the medieval Church held the prevailing ‘scientific’ view of the time, i.e. the Catholic Church maintained that the Bible taught geocentricity - the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. A literal reading of the bible appeared to support this early scienftific viewpoint - therefore both the religious and scientific views on this coincided. Galileo was in the minority - he asserted that the Bible should be interpreted in light of man’s knowledge of the natural world, and that Scripture should not have authority in scientific controversies. He was at odds with not only church leaders but also his contemporaries in science and considered heretical in his views by most. His proof was ‘unseen’ by the majority.

The medieval (Catholic) Church was in agreement with the scientifically held consensus of its time i.e. in a manner of speaking, it was “scientifically correct” - even if not the reality, as we now know.

I would suggest, Pericles, the arguments do require some sophistication – even if the belief may appear quite simple. As with all disciplines and learning a certain dedication eventually leads to complexity, as has occurred within the spheres of science, religion, art and philosophy.

I would suggest you give Sells his due and consider your own ‘one-upmanship’ – I certainly don’t narrow Christianity down to one ‘cerebral compass’, or even mass for that matter.

Hi folks,
the following imagined imploration of Galileo's is apposite.

"My friends of the future, many hundreds of us were imprisoned or tortured to death by methods including burning at the stake so that your society could be enlightened—freed from the dangerous, cruel superstition and naïve absurdity of the dark ages. Socrates said: “there is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance”. As you approach the 400th anniversary of my death, it saddens me that in spite of having free access to the vast, ever-deepening well of priceless knowledge acquired in the intervening years, cryptic scriptural references are again fiercely competing with sound scientific theories within your learning institutions and among your elected leaders. Unfounded geocentricism and anthropocentrism is back—and propagating.

I implore you; do not let the suffering and deaths of the enlightenment martyrs be in vain. Before it is too late, let there be a renaissance of reason. In order to save your species, if not your planet, you must save the enlightenment."

The full text is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=198777783543#/group.php?v=info&gid=198777783543

Ronnie's a friend of mine, is passionate about these issues and is trying to get his "FreeThinkersSQUARE" forum off the ground. I hope you'll have a look, make a comment, even join--and help in the cause of reason.

At least you have the good grace to put the word between quotation marks, relda.

>>I’m claiming the medieval Church held the prevailing ‘scientific’ view of the time<<

I would only remind you that you earlier pointed out that:

>>At the time of Galileo the Church, the recognized scientific authority of its time and soil from which modern Western science grew, could not see beyond its dogma.<<

You clearly understand that the Church's position was based on dogma, but at the same time claim that they were "the recognized scientific authority of its time"

The only way that this circle can be squared is by equating dogma with science.

Which even you must recognize, relda, is a step too far.

You continue to ignore that in situations such as this, religion and secularism are fundamentally irrelevant.

>>Today we have similar dogma but now draped in secular authority<<

Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind. That was the mistake made by the Church back in Galileo's time - their assumption that dogma overruled properly managed observation and diligently unemotional conclusions.

Removing dogma allows something wonderful and miraculous to occur. Namely, that any theory, however competently arrived at and cogently argued, may be disproved or replaced by a more informed series of endeavours at a later date, where "later date" may mean tomorrow or the day after.

The "secular authority" that you have just dreamed up has no place in the process whatsoever. Science and scientific authority is only derived from, and confirmed by, their own disciplines.

>>I certainly don’t narrow Christianity down to one ‘cerebral compass’<<

I'm sorry, relda, but this is exactly what you do. You may be able to have a learned discussion with Sells about, say, the Trinity. But your views are completely circumscribed and limited by being informed, entirely and uniquely, by your very specific faith in one single branch of religious belief.

It is similarly impossible, for example, for a member of the flat earth society to maintain an intelligent conversation on cosmology, with anyone other than a fellow flat-earthist.

Bushbasher

If you are ignorant of such historical facts as the Hellenization of both the Jewish and Christian faiths and the effect on the process of theology - faith seeking understanding - then I suggest you are simply unable to offer any illuminated comment on the intersection of faith and reason. Certainly not on Sell's work. You can off course snipe away at fundamentalist thoughts, expressions and practice as they seem to nourish your ignorance and prejudices.

Habermas's contribution in the passage you claimed as impenetrable essentially says Christianity, born out of Judaic faith and tradition , and Greek metaphysics informed each other of truths and expressions of truths. Just as Habermas is proposing as being necessary in this post-secular time - inform each other and recognise each one's limits.

The legacy of such early "informing" is rich meaning in previous abstract terminology and practice such as "responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship.." These are core roots of the civilisation that saw the emergence the Enlightenment. You cannot enjoy the look and scent of the flower without regard for the root and plant.

Regarding the Galileo discussion. It appears to me as the Tower of Babel revisited.

Cheers

ah, more obfuscation and oneupmanship.

boxgum, please keep your snide intellectual superiority to yourself. i offered to have you work through the habermas quote, which i needn't have done. but that means i want specifics, examples that i can latch onto in order to understand what, if anything, habermas is talking about. your latest serving of word soup and smug "you're not worthy" insults add nothing. all it demonstrates is your love of cheap rhetoric is much greater than your love of reason.

more to the point, you completely ignored pericles' and my criticism of your purported example of the value of religious thinking. you should either defend your example, come up with a new one, or concede the point.

hundreds of posts, thousands of words, and not one single example. ever.

I totally agree Pericles, “Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind”, and that the Church was in error of this. Your following paragraph on science is also cogently put., namely, “Removing dogma allows something wonderful and miraculous to occur…”

With my phrase “secular authority” the key word here, I suppose, is authority and the dogma which might underwrite it. Copernicus, the French philosopher Descartes and Isaac Newton overturned the ‘authority’ of the Middle Ages and the classical world. The Copernican system offended the medieval sense that the universe was an affair between God and man – Ptolemy was also challenged. The ultimate ‘authority’ challenged, of course, was the Holy Writ. The ‘Illusion of Reality’ (BBC program) showed challenge to the‘Holy Writ’ currently stifling Science, saying there is in fact a return of inquisitional dogmatism to science. It cannot grasp the ‘measurement problem’ nor the metaphysical speculation it might imply.

The removal of dogma, as you put it, and the Revolution in science certainly overturned the authority, not only of the middle ages, but also of the ancient world - it eclipsed scholastic philosophy and also caused destruction of Aristotelian physics. As you would probably agree, this revolution was primarily an epistemological revolution as it changed man's thought process. It was an intellectual revolution - a revolution in human knowledge.

The extent to which medieval ‘science’ led directly to the new philosophy of the scientific revolution is a subject for debate but it certainly had a significant influence – but that isn’t the point of our discussion. My ‘faith’, as you put it, is not circumscribed by the specifics of any particular religion. That I have offered a defense of religion, particularly Christianity is totally irrelevant to any intelligent conversation we might have on matters scientific.

Thank you, relda, that was very gracious.

>>I totally agree Pericles, “Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind”, and that the Church was in error of this.<<

and this...

>>That I have offered a defense of religion, particularly Christianity is totally irrelevant to any intelligent conversation we might have on matters scientific.<<

That is a very fair and reasonable basis upon which to continue discussion.

I will make equally certain that I do not pretend that atheism has any bearing on scientific enquiry, interpretation or conclusions.

Bushbasher

I display no intellectual superiority as there is none. But you really should know the basics of matters you reject.

You ask me for an example of the value of religious thinking from within a civilisation that formed through millenia of of religious revelation and thought.

As a foundation for such thought : man is a creature of God with the special attribute of being made in His image - man through his desire for power and control extended beyond a specific limit placed upon Him by the Creator God - as a consequence he knew hunger, thirst, pain, death amidst the goodness of the Creation in which he works at the arrow head of evolution - The Law was passed onto him through Moses - generations of kings, prophets and psalmists wrote a canon of stories of this God revealing His ways to His people - from among them the Incarnate God in the form of Jesus Christ was born on our planet earth amongst us to reveal and proclaim as flesh and blood the Word of God as Logos - he died on a cross and is now Risen to be with us as the Risen Lord who is found when sought even today - a small group of frightened people became alive with His spirit and overcame their fears and ignorance to proclaim what they saw and pass on what Jesus preached - and on into the history of man informing him of his role and responsibility and sustaining him towards bringing the world to a final state of Love with all things being in Christ - the Parousia. Since mid 20th Century man has had the power to rise to it or to obliterate ourselves with the tools of science.

With such a foundation man is still unfolding truths that are captured in the properties of ( as quoted from Habermas) "responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship".

All of these are informed with religious thinking

An odd assertion, boxgum. But perhaps you intended it to be ambiguous.

>>"responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship". All of these are informed with religious thinking<<

The ambiguity arises because you can read the list in two ways. That these characteristics are informed *only* with religious thinking. Or that these are simply some characteristics that can, on occasions, be influenced by religious thinking.

It would be impossible to justify the first reading, of course. All of those characteristics exist independently of any religious thinking. The concept, for example, of individual responsibility existing solely in a religious context is particularly insulting.

Possibly, of course, intentionally so. But nonsense, nonetheless.

But if the intention was to describe areas in which religious thinking had its own type of impact, which is undeniable, then one has to wonder how it can in any way be considered an answer to bushbasher's question.

Whatever, it was a pretty succinct summary of why Christians need faith to sustain them, boxgum, for which, thanks. As a narrative, it is all pretty far-fetched, especially when you see it all crammed into a single paragraph.

What happened to the "secular age" by the way?

When is it likely to come about?

Pericles, with Relda's endorsement: “Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind”.
Not quite true; scientific disciplines are parasitic, at present they rely on positivist and Enlightenment dogmas, as well as capitalism for funding and a ready market. Modern science amounts to aimless technocracy. What after all is the object of positivistic science? What are its aspirations and inhibitions? What is its hippocratic oath? To what end does science prosecute its mania for understanding and utilising the natural wonders of the universe? This is a real problem. The drive for scientific discovery is uninhibited and indifferent. It's like capitalism; it doesn't question its modus operandi; endless growth and endless innovation respectively. That's what they do. That's all they do. This symbiotic juggernaut is out of control; we are kidding ourselves if we think we're running the experiment. This is why Habermas was in favour of extending Enlightenment values--the philosophes successfuly threw off the aristos' yoke; that was their objective, and age of reason, but without a God or a set of ethics to guide them, we are the logical outcome--a hopeless race of misfits--Smith was of the same ilk, only he tapped unwittingly into a natural law that would not fail--human decadence. Habermas's late religious turn was born of frustration, I think, that we seem incapable of theorising a set of transcendental ethics; humanity needs a guide! The Habermasian backflip has been repeated ad nauseam: Wilde, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Eagleton just to name a few. Post-secular is the dialectical obverse of post-religion--sorry for holding out, Boxgum. We need a synthesis.
The advocates of reason here are sounding rather sanctimonious. So what's it founded on?

Pericles

An understanding of Aristotle by Averroes (Latin name for Ibn Rushd 1126-1198) proposed that there is a single human intellect and it is shared by each person and united with them only in its operation, namely, thinking.. St Thomas Aquinas (1225..1274) saw the limitation of such thought in that it excluded personal identity here and into the next life. Aquinas's attaching the existence of individual intellect along with the personal soul was foundational in the development of personal responsibility, and indeed the understanding of each of us being made in the Image of God.

The notion of individual romantic love flowered through the music and deeds of the troubadours in the courts of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages.

Guess what Pericles and Bushbasher et al. A lot did happen in the human project between the times of Ancient Greece and the Renaissance leading to the Enlightenment.

Mitchell - In Avatar the scientists and their direct workers are the good, "white hat" humans - a nice little embedded message for the masses.

Well I'm disappointed you blokes don't want to go "there". Clearly what you know, or think you know, is sufficient. But I'm afraid our reality is a bit like the Mandelbrot set--endless contingency. Not only is rationalism paltry and inadequate, it's actually a modern pathology--the ersatz objective that precludes the ersatz subjective. Not that I say for a moment that religion is the path to health.

But perhaps another time.

And Sells, for heaven's sake, if you're going to instigate these in-depth discussions that people engage with at great expense in terms of time, please have the courtesy to defend your positions, and not remain aloof like a pompous git!

Mitchel,
Hmm, Pompous git! I own being a git but not being pompous. I have been writing these articles since 2001 and have grown weary of defending my position against contributers who will not properly engage and simply defend their simplistic solutions. When I read your first post I recognised a real contender and your second did not disappoint me.

Science should be free of idealism, that it is patently not is evidence that we do live between the times in which all is not right with us. By the way I like your conclusion that rationalism has become the modern pathology. We still have not gotten over the enlightenment missunderstanding that rationality is not enough.

Peter Sellick

Sells: "Science should be free of idealism, that it is patently not is evidence that we do live between the times in which all is not right with us."
Well I don't know what to make of this. Why should "science be free of idealism", whatever that means? I think I was complaining that science "is" ostensibly free of idealism, but that its adherents are a little naive in their worship of all things putatively objective. And "all" has never "been right with us" btw Sells, certainly not under Christianity. All these systems, including rationalsim/scientism, are ways of dealing with the "absurd" human condition (absurd to us). If rationalism is to be heralded as the consumatum est, then what are its credentials? Where is it taking us? And since it proceeds independently of our native "irrationalism", are we, condemned to corporeality as we are, of any moment in this technological drive.
On the subject of corporeality; does not the objective drive divorce us little by little from the conditions of our own existence? Can we ever transcend what it means to be human? We are "thinking meat" (as Pinker has it). To what do we aspire with the aid of technology? Conversely, what does religion offer? Is its primitivism more "organic"? Is the universe fundamentally spiritual or rational, or neither? One would have to expect that it's indifferent to all our language games. If we believe it's amenable to scientific method, doesn't that imply an anthropocentrism tantamount to religious belief? It still implies some foundational place for humanity.
I doubt rationality is enough, as a scalpel. Whether or not it's enough, existentially, shouldn't influence us. I'm not interested in comfort believing.

On November 10, 1619, in the course of a real mystical crisis, Descartes caught a glimpse of a new civilisation in which men, in order to be able to tolerate themselves, would establish a science founded upon reason and common sense . It was to be a dependable science – free from those moral value judgements which in his conviction had been the cause of all their previous controversies.

The moral neutrality of science was thus proclaimed – and later also in that of the university, the economy, politics, and art. Inevitably this led to the expulsion (from real life at least) of philosophy, religion and poetry from humanity generally. One was led to believe that God, who possesses no objective reality, can have no place in the universe – the divine, after all, is merely a creature of the human spirit. The world therefore has no meaning in itself – it is we who now give it purpose, a purpose that is merely subjective and purely human in origin. Every value or existence of a transcendent order is therefore, of necessity, denied.

Frued, the great materialist, sees man as a machine – he is reduced to automatisms and responds to an alleged rigorous psychological determinism. In a sense and a little ironically, this revolutionary breaking from the line of development in organic pathological medicine led to a rediscovery in the importance of the psychic. Even before Frued, the ‘School of Nancy’, by its study of the phenomenon of suggestion, had driven a breach in the dogma of materialism. There are in fact illnesses which are not caused by a lesion but by an idea. The antinomy between the psychic and the physical cannot be eliminated, despite our best efforts to do so.

Mitchell,
Natural science should be free of subjective idealism, that idealism that refuses to see that an object in the world and our perception of it, thought of it, are necessarily connected so that they are not understood as two separate things, an object in the world and a mental fact. Natural science must operate on the principle that the world is free of spirit, it exists on its own, without the aid of our consciousness. This means that the power of positive thinking, the miraculous nature of prayer, the idea of a world spirit, the existence of mind in nature, Newton’s understanding of God as a kind of intelligent ether etc can all be discounted.

The understanding that there is no mind/spirit in nature comes from the creation narratives of Israel in which God and the creature are separate and the world is not the habitat of spirit. Pinker’s “thinking meat” comes close to Israel’s and the church’s most radical conceptions except that this meat is part of a community of meat that shares a common story about the world that allows them to operate in it without fear of the demonic. It is a pity that biologists usually make some reductive remark as this as though they are fighting against the dualism of spirit/matter. This is not the dualism that the church entertains (at its best). Rather in Paul, for example, the dualism between the flesh and the spirit is really between living in the lie or in the truth. It is not a denigration of the body over against “spirit”. The insistence on the resurrection of the body is an insistence that there is not life outside of the body.

Peter Sellick

I understand what you're getting at, Peter, although the objective stance is arguably itself a form of blind idealism--the naive assumption that reality is as it seems. I took you to be referring to idealism in its garden variety sense, rather than that science should not suppose its very regard constitutes reality--we've been there with Schroedinger's cat. In fact science strives to interrogate reality in the realist mode, this is the beef between analytic and continental philosophy--reality is not necessarily thingness in itself. I don't accuse science of idealism in this sense, I criticise it for its indifference to human discourses, even while it parasitises them to drive its manic agenda. Positivists might counter that science has provided for our prosperity, but it has also provided for our various ills: nuclear weapons, overpopulation, devastation of the planet etc., as well as our own organic estrangement, hence my comment that we are become "a hopeless race of misfits". In an indigenous sense we are now hothouse plants; pathetic hybrids divorced from material reality, complacently dependent on the cosy nest we've made for ourselves, not removed but remote from our elemental being. Nature will of course have the last word.
So Relda, above all I'm in "defence" of materialism as the only "reality" we have. The rest--religion or scientism--is pie in the sky. At best, they are both worthwhile intellectual pursuits, but their first allegiance should be to "this" world. Religion offers no hope in this world, and science doesn't condescend to care.
To deny Freud his reductionist, Coppernicanism, demands you substantiate the preferred narcissistic view.
Materialism is not a dogma, it is a proper regard for the here and now, everything else is luxury and vanity.

Mitchell

My Christian faith sees me work for the here, but not yet. There is no postponement of action or of delayed joy in life.

It involves a God/man relationship as real as any I live with in the flesh. It calls me beyond the wee me to the supra me to love and serve my neighbour.

All quite balanced really.

Mitchell,

The Enlightenment project wasn’t cast in a single slab. Its ‘hard component’ consisted of science (the exact one), technology, the economy and the modern rationale. We believe, whilst in awe and enchantment within our modernity, that which cannot be solved today can be solved tomorrow – alas, this ‘progress’ is a misnomer.

Mankind is as much a destroyer as a creator.

Materialism would have it that consciousness is merely an insignificant by-product of different mental processes. Removed here is the idea that the entirety is greater than the parts as this inevitably leads to the paradoxical (non-rational) conclusion that there must be an other entirety which is even greater than the entirety. Despite our rationale, the word "nature" no longer represents something unquestionably reasonable – evolutionary biology renders such a notion impossible. Perhaps there remains a residue in the ‘natural’ suggestion of ‘human rights’ – but rationale alone cannot in the long run guarantee that either rights or duties are defended.

Rationale, if left by itself, can be abused in many different ways. Ratzinger's conclusion is that rationale needs religion in order to not go astray. But, correspondingly, religion also proves to rely on rationale, without which it is prone to degenerate into unruly fanaticism. Perhaps, under the premise it is freed from dogmatism and coercive guilt, religion loses its ugly front.

Interestingly, Habermas feels that a certain relgious power must be renewed, perhaps in such a way that a human being must be treated as if they were the image God, even if there doesn't happen to be any God. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Yep, one could say, God has abandoned mankind, however the notion of God lives on - for it fills them with Geist.

In an era of inordinate capitalism, to gather devoted multitudes with sights set on something other than consumption and exploitation, Christianity, parallel to Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) is perhaps the only effective counter-force to capitalism.

Boxgum: "All quite balanced really"? Well sorry, but it all sounds rather fantastic to me, as though you've latched onto the idea fervently but forgoten to check its teeth--an invasion of the memes (if you're going to mix a metaphor, you might as well go all the way!)? but I'm happy for you.
However, onto the Habermas theme.
Relda, no problem with your first four lines. The next bit I don't really get, except to say that it sounds like a cosy deal for Ratzinger, even though "rationalism", I presume you mean, has had no part to play in Catholicism hitherto--"rationale" of course has, and does. A Freudian slip?
Habermas has been trying to revive, and supplement, the Enlightenment all his life, notably against deconstruction. He's only now accommodating Ratzinger--the same way he sucked up to Derrida--in order to make his own agenda float, since religion is the other half of hegemony. I certainly agree on the evils of capitalism, but religion has worked hand in glove with mammon through the ages! and is still making a killing via televangelism and its various snake oil products. The radical teachings of Jesus are remote from the corporate religionism that has subsequently co-opted and commodified them.
There is no monolithic materialism, Relda, the term is open to revision--certainly religion has been!
And this: "Christianity, parallel to Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism)is perhaps the only effective counter-force to capitalism".
I won't even go there! unless you want to?

I'm working on a new materialism founded on ethics (I can see Pericles rolling his eyes), moreover an ethics derived from the same visceral stuff that religion's always exploited.
Religion has signally failed. I'll say it again: religion has signally failed! It's taken the bribes down through the ages and is morally bankrupt!
Materialism has to develop its own virtues--and it can do so without religion or existentialism.

Relda: "Materialism would have it that consciousness is merely an insignificant by-product of different mental processes. Removed here is the idea that the entirety is greater than the parts as this inevitably leads to the paradoxical (non-rational) conclusion that there must be an other entirety which is even greater than the entirety. Despite our rationale, the word "nature" no longer represents something unquestionably reasonable – evolutionary biology renders such a notion impossible. Perhaps there remains a residue in the ‘natural’ suggestion of ‘human rights’ – but rationale alone cannot in the long run guarantee that either rights or duties are defended."

I would argue that materialism doesn't have to be reductionist. I don't dogmatically think, for instance, that materiality is all there is, but it is fundamentally "our" reality, and we're alienated from it, even repulsed by it, via religion, philosophical contingency, and even technology. I would posit consciousness as a singularity--though strictly we know, surely, that it is emergent as carnate phenomena or epiphenomena, just as the universe is epiphenomenal--preceded by the big bang. Is the unfolding universe any less marvellous in its attainments if it is not God-created? Is consciousness? I merely argue that it is materially unhealthy for humanity to be preoccupied with some unknowable first cause when patently we draw our orientation and succour from the biological sphere. Investing our energy in pursuit of faith or nihilism, or even "techne" as as diversion, is tantamount to creating an idealised reality, pie in the sky, as a substitute for this one which, ergo, we are free to despise.
On the question of religious ethics; history shows that they have no force, are observed mainly in the breach, and are anthropocentric and detrimental in the context of the biosphere; in a word, Christian ethics are "unsustainable".

I guess , Mitchell, if one is to subscribe to 'hard materialism', which claims that the only substances are material objects, and persons are such substances, you reach a dogmatic conclusion. The ‘soft materialism’, which you appear to ascribe to, is often also called 'property dualism'. This Cartesian mind/ body dualism, as defended by Descartes, however, ends up with its own set of problems. Materialism has inherent limitations. The root problem is that the Cartesian notion of the “mental” is totally opposed to the “physical.” All of which proves, not that materialism is necessarily totally wrong, only that, as in the insightful parable of the blind men and the elephant, it pertains to one aspect of Reality, not the Totality.

The Intelligent Design movement appears to incorrectly assume God is the only way to account for the complexity and variation one encounters in the biological sciences and in the universe as a whole from the perspective of cosmology. So I essentially agree with you in your, “that it is emergent as carnate phenomena or epiphenomena” statement.

There are many adherents of Christianity who make it a despicable religion, but essentially, far from being ‘pie in the sky’ or an ‘idealised’ reality, it contains an indispensable truth. I like the way T. S Elliot puts it:
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD...

But I’ll give Albert Camus his final say: “I wonder what the future will say of modern man. A single sentence will suffice: ‘he fornicated and read the papers’.”

Relda,
you betray a slippery grip, as was Elliot's and the whole Arnold-Leavisite tradition he was a part of. Of course I alluded to Camus above when I mentioned the "absurd", and thus his Sisyphusian condemnation of materialism--and of spiritualism; the absurd being existentialism. What interests me is, is existentialism a by-product of materialism or religionism? I would say the latter, indeed that it is a dialectical response to the death of God. Existentialism seems such a visceral part of the human condition that it's tempting to cite it as evidence of the fundamental reality of humanity's fall from grace. But in fact existentialism came in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, arguably in response to it, rather than as a spontaneous human discourse.
Materialism definitely isn't easy, especially in the light of what's gone before--religious thought that continues to sing its siren song. Is it any wonder that Odysseus had to be lashed to the mast? I guess that answers that question; the ancient Greeks were well versed in existential thought long before modern disillusionment. Does that then signify that the absurdity of the human condition is a perennial human discourse? Or does it signify, as Deleuse would have it, that we just haven't moved on since the Greeks?
I think that we have to find something in the materiality of our existence that motivates us. The alternative is dismal indeed--waiting around for paradise while the planet goes to hell, all the while scoring browny points with God, and telling ourselves that it's somehow deeper that that.
If there is a God, surely she would have greater respect for us if we made the most of what we've got?
(Descartes' a bit old hat btw)

Mitchell,
I think Elliot was very much of the tradition where an ‘Enlightenment’ flaw replaced mythological (non-rational) thinking with reason which then became dominant as rationalisation – so dominant that it became a new kind of myth. The rational mastery of nature was eventually extended to human beings who became objects for the most terrible exploitation. I would certainly side with Elliot who saw that reason, far from realising the humanitarian dreams of Enlightenment thinking, actually works in favour of totalitarianism. So I would agree, existentialism was a reaction to certain Enlightenment thinking, but a healthy one at that.

Old Indian sages, who tell us that the pain of endings, of separation, of old age,sickness and death force us to take a step back and examine our condition; it is the experience of such pain that motivates us to look more closely at our perception and experience of ourselves, we look at how we actively participate in creating the suffering we claim we want to be free of. So, it is not the materiality of this world which will really motivate us.

Samsara, where a loose translation could be ‘going in circles’, is chasing one’s tail in the cycle of experiencing happiness along with sadness. One solution is to simply give up having and desiring a tail. However, as you rightly suggest, this alternative is rather dismal. One of the meanings given to yoga is ‘union,’ it is one way of overcoming the predicament of dualism. Yoga suggests a return to a state of wholeness, an effort to make whole what has been split asunder – something perhaps at the heart of Christianity but a little corrupted.

Our Indian sages recognise the experience of alienation but reject the idea that this is really how things are. We suffer because of our own mistaken or limited perception, or our own forgetfulness and inability to recognize the presence of the Divine. A misconception, often held within Christianity, is that we are merely sojourners in a foreign, alien land. The idea of ‘waiting around for paradise’ really is a misnomer.