In my view science and religion address aspects of the same reality. As such they are not necessarily exclusive, but they are their own distinct fields and proceed according to their own axioms. The empirical sciences, for example, do not make moral determinations, merely pragmatic ones. I disagree with the idea that science will one day explain everything, because that would mean everything reduced to the empirical and the mechanical. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we would end up at a place where man would know the measure of everything, and the meaning and value of nothing.
The contemporary idea of ‘progress’ (especially in the field of social or spiritual evolution) I believe to be profoundly flawed. The linear, mechanistic world view – never dreamed of by the ancients – appeared in the Newtonian west, and is becoming outmoded, despite its proponents like Richard Dawkins. It belongs in the same drawer as ‘flat earth’ theories (if such ever existed) and that latest piece of nonsense, creationism.
Nature is, to use a contemporary analogy, ‘cloud-like’ rather than ‘clock-like’. Not so much chaos theory, but rather nature is manifold in its interactions, rather than proceeding by ordered steps. Empiricism is a man-made methodology, and we can fool ourselves into thinking that nature proceeds empirically and can be explained empirically.
Empiricism is a very ‘male’ way of looking and would imprint on nature a very ‘male’ way of being … God preserve us from that!
For me body, mind, soul and spirit address different aspects or states of the one reality. They are not other realities, nor are they a reality and various intellectual abstractions therefrom. The spirit-matter dichotomy is a dualistic hangover from Greek philosophy and is applied too often, too easily and often erroneously to the holistic Biblical texts.
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On the question of God, when faced with the assertion that: ‘Your God doesn’t make sense’, then it doesn’t take me long to discover that the kind of God held in mind is not the kind of God I have in mine. Nor are right-wing fundamentalists the benchmark of Biblical interpretation, so why people reference them as being in any sense an authoritative source is beyond me. Most critics of the idea of a deity usually have some medieval concept in mind.
For me God is an ontological necessity, not a logical one. Logic can never prove nor disprove God.
The problem of evil is the most serious intellectual objection to the existence of a Biblical God, but it is not insoluble. The idea that God wills both good and evil is a logical fallacy, if we’re talking about the God of the Bible or, indeed, the Deity of the Greek philosophical tradition. The idea that evil is something God can do nothing about is equally erroneous. It’s a complex problem. Simple criticisms might sound infallible, but they are philosophically naive.
The question then devolves to is would the world be a better place if it was populated by human ‘automata’ who had no will as such, but are simply hard wired ‘to do the right thing’. A world in which the idea of the Good, the True and the Beautiful do not arise. Nor, I might suggest, would the arts, the sciences and the humanities beyond the necessary means of survival … Nor, in fact, would ‘ideas’, beyond the purely mechanical problems of existence.
But the fact of evil means one cannot be too glib in one’s assertions.
The contemporary idea of ‘progress’ (especially in the field of social or spiritual evolution) I believe to be profoundly flawed. The linear, mechanistic world view – never dreamed of by the ancients – appeared in the Newtonian west, and is becoming outmoded, despite its proponents like Richard Dawkins. It belongs in the same drawer as ‘flat earth’ theories (if such ever existed) and that latest piece of nonsense, creationism.
Nature is, to use a contemporary analogy, ‘cloud-like’ rather than ‘clock-like’. Not so much chaos theory, but rather nature is manifold in its interactions, rather than proceeding by ordered steps. Empiricism is a man-made methodology, and we can fool ourselves into thinking that nature proceeds empirically and can be explained empirically.
Empiricism is a very ‘male’ way of looking and would imprint on nature a very ‘male’ way of being … God preserve us from that!
For me body, mind, soul and spirit address different aspects or states of the one reality. They are not other realities, nor are they a reality and various intellectual abstractions therefrom. The spirit-matter dichotomy is a dualistic hangover from Greek philosophy and is applied too often, too easily and often erroneously to the holistic Biblical texts.
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On the question of God, when faced with the assertion that: ‘Your God doesn’t make sense’, then it doesn’t take me long to discover that the kind of God held in mind is not the kind of God I have in mine. Nor are right-wing fundamentalists the benchmark of Biblical interpretation, so why people reference them as being in any sense an authoritative source is beyond me. Most critics of the idea of a deity usually have some medieval concept in mind.
For me God is an ontological necessity, not a logical one. Logic can never prove nor disprove God.
The problem of evil is the most serious intellectual objection to the existence of a Biblical God, but it is not insoluble. The idea that God wills both good and evil is a logical fallacy, if we’re talking about the God of the Bible or, indeed, the Deity of the Greek philosophical tradition. The idea that evil is something God can do nothing about is equally erroneous. It’s a complex problem. Simple criticisms might sound infallible, but they are philosophically naive.
The question then devolves to is would the world be a better place if it was populated by human ‘automata’ who had no will as such, but are simply hard wired ‘to do the right thing’. A world in which the idea of the Good, the True and the Beautiful do not arise. Nor, I might suggest, would the arts, the sciences and the humanities beyond the necessary means of survival … Nor, in fact, would ‘ideas’, beyond the purely mechanical problems of existence.
But the fact of evil means one cannot be too glib in one’s assertions.
