Well! I have stirred quite a debate...
Mar. 7th, 2005 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpb...and, so far so good, no ill-feeling or flaming. Let's see what happens if I poke my nose in again.
First, of course, a couple of apologies. I apologize to Ayla for having got her wrong (in what was at any rate a private discussion) about her view of humanity at large; and I apologize to Natalie - whose post was the first to come out - for neglecting an important part of her "rant", which I agreed with anyway. For that matter, I would not say that any of you have committed anything to writing that could properly be described as a rant; that I found many of your points ill-grounded does not mean that I have a problem with the way any of you developed them.
Now, some replies.
You cannot possibly call Darwinism or the Big Bang theory 'religious' theories. Just because a religious theory explains life and existence, does not mean that ALL theories that explain life and existence are religious.
Sentences which begin with you cannot possibly are dangerous. Have you heard about the man who was told you cannot be sick here? I can and I do. That is exactly my point. That one belief system simply claims the right to exclude another on grounds of supposed rationality; and that part of the rhetorical strategy of this exclusion is to employ the word "religion" of one belief system but not of another, implying that there is some sort of essential difference between them. This is playing games with words, or rather stacking the deck so that you can claim to have won the debate before you start; and it is nonsense. All claims about reality and existence belong to the same category. To just label some "religion" and others not is false labelling.
Having said that, "Darwinism" is not a religious doctrine at all. It does not make any statement about ultimate reality, unless of course it is connected with a radical monism; and there is no logical reason so to connect it. (An authoritative letter by the Pope - http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm - has stated its total compatibility with Catholic doctrine.) It does not, either, make any statement about human life as such. It is strictly a doctrine of the interrelation of species within an ecology; the rather tautological statement of the "survival of the fittest" by no means contradicts the idea that a species might survive, and prove fittest, by a behaviour within itself which contradicts the vulgar idea of the survival of the fittest. A species could and does prove "fittest" by behaving, within the bounds of species, according to the rules of unselfishness and mutual collaboration. The only really religious significance of Darwinism is to break any common link between species: it analyzes the relationshiop between different species in terms of pure competition, and therefore is death to the kind of sentimental doctrine that would place all animals on the same level and make the killing of an animal the same as the killing of a man. In other words, you can be a Darwinist and a Catholic, but not a Darwinist and a New Ager.
And that leads me to an important point. Ayla, I would say that you have ignored Natalie's most important statement: that science is a method, not a doctrine. Science, indeed, would commit suicide if it committed itself to a doctrine. I suggest you read Karl Popper. Science can support, say, both a doctrine that implies that the universe has a beginning and an end, and one which claims that it is uncreated. What is more, there are areas that science simply is not able to question. The existence of the soul, or the existence of a Self in the Hindu sense of the word, or the existence of a supernatural state of Nirvana such as Buddhism postulates, are beyond the measuring and assessing capacities of science. Science can say nothing about the issue between monism and Christianity, namely the existence or otherwise of a spiritual reality beyond the material universe known to us. Science is only capable of assessing the said material universe.
That is not to say that science is irrelevant to issues between doctrines. Each religion makes a claim about reality which has numerous highly practical features. I already pointed out that Darwinism directly contradicts one frequent religious posture in our time (the sentimental attitude to animals). And one of the most important features of science is that it denies. Acquired and certain scientific knowledge makes certain doctrines just plain impossible. By this I do not mean miracles. The definition of a miracle is something that does not ordinarily happen; something which commonsense rejects. The eyewitnesses who saw St.Joseph of Cupertino rising in the air did not need to have the theory of gravitation explained to them to know that human beings don't fly; that was exactly why they were astonished. However, a religion which gives a view of certain permanent facts which is contradicted by science is in trouble. For instance, Greek religion believed that the vital principle came from the male alone, the female being nothing more than a kind of biological incubator. This is plainly contradicted by modern genetics and means that if someone wished, today, to resurrect the religion of Plato and Aeschylus, they would be in serious trouble. Likewise, ancient Germanic religion believed that earthquakes were caused by the imprisoned rebel god, Loki, writhing against his bonds. Modern plate tectonics has an alternative view. Modern science makes a certain amount of religious tenets from a number of religious traditions rather difficult to hold. (A parallel fact is history. Historical research establishes facts about the past that wreck the historical picture of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.)
I have not ever seen of miracles that have been scientifically proven. Well, since miracles are by definition beyond the scientific norm, this is not very well formulated; but there have been plenty of miracles which have been scientifically observed, and determined to be beyond scientific explanation. You might, for instance, have a look at the numerous miracles recorded at Lourdes. The sanctuary has a board of medical investigation staffed by medical men who were under orders by the Church not to certify as a miracle any healing that could, by any length of possibility, have natural causes. Over the decades, the healings fell off - the last certified one dates to 1970 - but there have been astounding ones, certified by doctors some of whom were not Catholic. I am speaking about healing of organic, degenerative illnesses that cannot possibly be treated with placebos or faith healing: necrosis, violent infections and the like. You may then ask: why did you never hear about this? Let me tell you a story. The novelist Zola, an extreme monist and atheist at war with the Church, once went to Lourdes along with a young woman who was suffering from an advanced case of lupus, an illness that had all but destroyed her face, AND tuberculosis. Against physical possibility, this woman's face was completely restored within hours of having a bath in the spring; the tuberculosis, then incurable, also vanished, and her personal physician (who did not recognize her when she returned from Lourdes) testified that, twelve years after the cure, neither lupus nor tuberculosis had reappeared. That is a fact, testified both by the girl's local doctor and by the Lourdes one, who gave a long account of the case. Zola himself saw it happen. Only, when Zola fictionalized the case, he had the young woman relapse and die; whereas in real life she was still perfectly healthy eleven years after her cure. In other words, Zola deliberately lied about a miracle he had witnessed. (Zola, of course, was not a scientist, only an obstinate monist; the medical men who described the case were much more scientific than he.) This is typical of the mainstream attitude to stories of miracles from places such as Lourdes: they are assumed in advance of the evidence to be false. And the habit of mind remains even when the record of scientific observation is present. (Of course, plenty of supposed miracles are fakes or misunderstandings; but there are many which no amount of explanation will explain away.)
This post has gone on long enough. Apart from responses to further comments, I will answer on the more specific matter of Christian evidence (and on Chthonya's excellent criticisms) in a day or two. Meanwhile, let me offer my thanks and congratulations to everyone for the intelligence, courtesy and constructive spirit shown throughout. So far, this debate has been nothing like what I feared from past experience of LJ encounters; God willing, it will remain so.
First, of course, a couple of apologies. I apologize to Ayla for having got her wrong (in what was at any rate a private discussion) about her view of humanity at large; and I apologize to Natalie - whose post was the first to come out - for neglecting an important part of her "rant", which I agreed with anyway. For that matter, I would not say that any of you have committed anything to writing that could properly be described as a rant; that I found many of your points ill-grounded does not mean that I have a problem with the way any of you developed them.
Now, some replies.
You cannot possibly call Darwinism or the Big Bang theory 'religious' theories. Just because a religious theory explains life and existence, does not mean that ALL theories that explain life and existence are religious.
Sentences which begin with you cannot possibly are dangerous. Have you heard about the man who was told you cannot be sick here? I can and I do. That is exactly my point. That one belief system simply claims the right to exclude another on grounds of supposed rationality; and that part of the rhetorical strategy of this exclusion is to employ the word "religion" of one belief system but not of another, implying that there is some sort of essential difference between them. This is playing games with words, or rather stacking the deck so that you can claim to have won the debate before you start; and it is nonsense. All claims about reality and existence belong to the same category. To just label some "religion" and others not is false labelling.
Having said that, "Darwinism" is not a religious doctrine at all. It does not make any statement about ultimate reality, unless of course it is connected with a radical monism; and there is no logical reason so to connect it. (An authoritative letter by the Pope - http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm - has stated its total compatibility with Catholic doctrine.) It does not, either, make any statement about human life as such. It is strictly a doctrine of the interrelation of species within an ecology; the rather tautological statement of the "survival of the fittest" by no means contradicts the idea that a species might survive, and prove fittest, by a behaviour within itself which contradicts the vulgar idea of the survival of the fittest. A species could and does prove "fittest" by behaving, within the bounds of species, according to the rules of unselfishness and mutual collaboration. The only really religious significance of Darwinism is to break any common link between species: it analyzes the relationshiop between different species in terms of pure competition, and therefore is death to the kind of sentimental doctrine that would place all animals on the same level and make the killing of an animal the same as the killing of a man. In other words, you can be a Darwinist and a Catholic, but not a Darwinist and a New Ager.
And that leads me to an important point. Ayla, I would say that you have ignored Natalie's most important statement: that science is a method, not a doctrine. Science, indeed, would commit suicide if it committed itself to a doctrine. I suggest you read Karl Popper. Science can support, say, both a doctrine that implies that the universe has a beginning and an end, and one which claims that it is uncreated. What is more, there are areas that science simply is not able to question. The existence of the soul, or the existence of a Self in the Hindu sense of the word, or the existence of a supernatural state of Nirvana such as Buddhism postulates, are beyond the measuring and assessing capacities of science. Science can say nothing about the issue between monism and Christianity, namely the existence or otherwise of a spiritual reality beyond the material universe known to us. Science is only capable of assessing the said material universe.
That is not to say that science is irrelevant to issues between doctrines. Each religion makes a claim about reality which has numerous highly practical features. I already pointed out that Darwinism directly contradicts one frequent religious posture in our time (the sentimental attitude to animals). And one of the most important features of science is that it denies. Acquired and certain scientific knowledge makes certain doctrines just plain impossible. By this I do not mean miracles. The definition of a miracle is something that does not ordinarily happen; something which commonsense rejects. The eyewitnesses who saw St.Joseph of Cupertino rising in the air did not need to have the theory of gravitation explained to them to know that human beings don't fly; that was exactly why they were astonished. However, a religion which gives a view of certain permanent facts which is contradicted by science is in trouble. For instance, Greek religion believed that the vital principle came from the male alone, the female being nothing more than a kind of biological incubator. This is plainly contradicted by modern genetics and means that if someone wished, today, to resurrect the religion of Plato and Aeschylus, they would be in serious trouble. Likewise, ancient Germanic religion believed that earthquakes were caused by the imprisoned rebel god, Loki, writhing against his bonds. Modern plate tectonics has an alternative view. Modern science makes a certain amount of religious tenets from a number of religious traditions rather difficult to hold. (A parallel fact is history. Historical research establishes facts about the past that wreck the historical picture of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.)
I have not ever seen of miracles that have been scientifically proven. Well, since miracles are by definition beyond the scientific norm, this is not very well formulated; but there have been plenty of miracles which have been scientifically observed, and determined to be beyond scientific explanation. You might, for instance, have a look at the numerous miracles recorded at Lourdes. The sanctuary has a board of medical investigation staffed by medical men who were under orders by the Church not to certify as a miracle any healing that could, by any length of possibility, have natural causes. Over the decades, the healings fell off - the last certified one dates to 1970 - but there have been astounding ones, certified by doctors some of whom were not Catholic. I am speaking about healing of organic, degenerative illnesses that cannot possibly be treated with placebos or faith healing: necrosis, violent infections and the like. You may then ask: why did you never hear about this? Let me tell you a story. The novelist Zola, an extreme monist and atheist at war with the Church, once went to Lourdes along with a young woman who was suffering from an advanced case of lupus, an illness that had all but destroyed her face, AND tuberculosis. Against physical possibility, this woman's face was completely restored within hours of having a bath in the spring; the tuberculosis, then incurable, also vanished, and her personal physician (who did not recognize her when she returned from Lourdes) testified that, twelve years after the cure, neither lupus nor tuberculosis had reappeared. That is a fact, testified both by the girl's local doctor and by the Lourdes one, who gave a long account of the case. Zola himself saw it happen. Only, when Zola fictionalized the case, he had the young woman relapse and die; whereas in real life she was still perfectly healthy eleven years after her cure. In other words, Zola deliberately lied about a miracle he had witnessed. (Zola, of course, was not a scientist, only an obstinate monist; the medical men who described the case were much more scientific than he.) This is typical of the mainstream attitude to stories of miracles from places such as Lourdes: they are assumed in advance of the evidence to be false. And the habit of mind remains even when the record of scientific observation is present. (Of course, plenty of supposed miracles are fakes or misunderstandings; but there are many which no amount of explanation will explain away.)
This post has gone on long enough. Apart from responses to further comments, I will answer on the more specific matter of Christian evidence (and on Chthonya's excellent criticisms) in a day or two. Meanwhile, let me offer my thanks and congratulations to everyone for the intelligence, courtesy and constructive spirit shown throughout. So far, this debate has been nothing like what I feared from past experience of LJ encounters; God willing, it will remain so.
