In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the
faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy
debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence
of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just
cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going
to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.
That’s from David Brooks.
From a purely economic pov should anything be sacred?
I think the world would be a lot better if nothing were.
What is he talking about?
Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.
I heard about the research about religious feelings and the brain. But the research that shows that brains transcend themselves and merge with larger presences is new to me. I am not even sure what it means.
From a Christian point of view, I have little disagreement with the second and third beliefs he lists, except that I would extend the second to far more than moral intuitions.
The fourth belief sounds far more Hindu than Buddhist to me. The main difference from Christian belief is whether the God one can experience is a separate entity from that God’s creation.
The first belief is actually the interesting one to debate.
I also do not see why he thinks we need to defend theologies as guides to behaviour. What matters about theologies is truth. Having established (at least to your own satisfaction) truths, you may or may not be able to deduce guides to behaviour from them.
His second point, “underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions,” is either wrong or too vague to be useful.
Cannibalism is moral in some circumstances, to some people. I don’t know how we can square that reality with, say, the moral intuitions of most people claiming allegiance to Christian faiths.
Or, to take an example from within the Christian world, a few Christians believe quite strongly in the morality of polygamy but many Christians feel that polygamy is morally objectionable.
Is David rather saying that the material claims of mysticism are more vague and less concrete, and therefore science cannot undermine them as directly because they do not present testable hypotheses?
Which in turn reminds me of the much derided paragraph in “The End of Faith” where he describes research into reincarnation and ESP as credible.
But I certainly lug around some “artifacts” that might make good footers in a religious foundation. Though I would classify myself as an atheist, I am also a horrible flier and could not read Harris’ book, purchased at an airport, on a plane for fear of Old Testament retribution.
There’s no atheists in foxholes or window seats.
Referencing Chesterton and others, the near universal existence of belief in something beyond the physical and material seems to be a fairly convincing argument that we were designed for more than what is here.
It’s just particularly useful evidence for what is called natural law.
Uh, yeah. Nice of him to just declare victory and move on. Glad to know materialism is dead because he loves his spouse.
To take a shorter crack at it:
Suppose this guy says “sometimes I have this awesome feeling that Everything is One.”
And the scientist comes along and says “Interesting… whenever you report this feeling that Everything is One, your neurons are doing a little dance.”
Is this scientific evidence that Everything is One?
That sounds to me like an abomination of logic, but it appears that David Brooks is suggesting this.
Is this scientific evidence that Everything is One?
No, it is personal subjective evidence that Everything is One.
The incontrovertible scientific evidence that Everything is One is found in quantum mechanics, the big bang, and the universal lawfulness of the material universe.
The incontrovertible scientific evidence that Everything is One is found in quantum mechanics, the big bang, and the universal lawfulness of the material universe.
1) “Everything is One” is not a testable scientific hypothesis, unless it is put into clearer language.
2) Quantum mechanics posits many diffent subatomic particles with many different crazy properties. So, plausibly, Everything is Lots of Things. This doesn’t disprove the statement Everything is One, but it shows how the truth or falsity of the statement depends on the definition of terms.
3) The big bang posits that Everything Was, at One Point, One. But when Joe-Bob has a mystical experience is he feeling the Big Bang? Doubtful. Is Everything Still One because Everything Was at One Point One? Under some definitions, the answer is no. Depends, once again, how you define your terms.
4) Scientific laws are reliable, but there are a lot of scientific laws, right? Of course it is possible to make an ordered list of all scientific laws, joined by the word “and”, and create One statement out of it. But this is just playing with words.
No matter which way you slice it, science is simply not in the business of providing supporting or refuting evidence for propositions like “Everything is One.” I could defend this more rigorously but I’d rather do something else.
His second point, “underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions,” is either wrong or too vague to be useful.
Cannibalism is moral in some circumstances, to some people. I don’t know how we can square that reality with, say, the moral intuitions of most people claiming allegiance to Christian faiths.
The point is that it is nearly universal that people feel a sense of moral revulsion and outrage when someone they identify with is murdered and cannibalized. In some societies, that empathy and concern is extended only to the extended family or clan. It’s not that the moral intuition doesn’t exist, it’s that the number of individuals who someone considers worthy to be treated as fellow human beings is small. In Western societies, most people are willing to extend such concern to complete strangers including those who live in different countries.
From the article:
Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.†
No, just your particular brand of “soul” is dead. That kind of reasoning is like saying because there’s no monsters underneath the bed there’s no monsters period.
Is it just me, or is the mumbo-jumbification of quantum mechanics in the top two or three most irritating phenomena of the past 20 years?
Replace “quantum mechanics” with “string theory” and you’ll be more up to date. “String theory” should be relegated to the religious or philosophy departments. Or the “I need some state money for my thought experiment” department.
thanks mk, you had me in stitches with the “Joe-Bob mystical experience” – brought to mind Bill & Ted’s serious history lesson. And I felt the same about the integrity of one’s definitions. Of course All is One if you just define everything together as an All. And Nothing can be the absence of All, or merely the state of not being any one thing (even if All). And it goes on and on …
Referencing Chesterton and others, the near universal existence of belief in something beyond the physical and material seems to be a fairly convincing argument that we were designed for more than what is here.
In response Franklin writes: Another variation on the ontological argument, by which I can prove unicorns exist simply because I can imagine them. Oh, and also begging the whole “design” question, too.
Yes, by itself it doesn’t offer proof in the mathematical sense of proof. It is useful insofar as it is one piece out of many affirmative pieces of evidence that can be entered into a sort of tribunal.
Your point on unicorns is a straw man. Since, it is not in anyway a parrellel. Universally, all of humanity did not accept that there were unicorns. However, all of humanity has accepted that there is something more than the physical and material. This is different from the ontological argument since the ontological argument is a metaphysical thought experiment. This is a bit different because it is just an observation of human history. As an observation, it is useful anthropology. It’s fascinating that no society rejected this common concept until the French revolution.
My mere suggestion is that the universal voice of human history may sit as one piece of evidence in this case.
I don’t think so
Comments on this entry are closed.