Not making this easier...
As I was saying, the magisteria are non-overlapping...no, come on guys, shut up, that's just ridiculous. As I was saying...what a sec...the Catholics said what?! What part of non-overlapping don't they understand?
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across here is...WHAT?
Man, this is like being Lindsay Lohan's lawyer...
posted by The Front at 8:13 PM
13 Comments:
You mean the Believers of the world aren't taking their cues from Stephen Jay Gould?
Because if they aren't, I'm not real clear on who they're meant for.
In all seriousness, the 'non-overlapping magisteria' idea doesn't make sense to me, because I cannot understand what it's trying to describe or who the precept is meant for.
A couple of years ago,I read a forward to a science textbook from a Christian university (maybe Bob Jones). It said that there was absolutely nothing incompatible between Christianity and science. Unless, of course, a scientific theory or fining contradicted the Truth of The Bible.
I suspect that this is the kind of double-think one must engage in to profess belief in "non-overlapping magisteria," whether you come to it from the viewpoint of faith or reason: it must be conditional on the surrender of magisteral territory by the other side.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but...
It's like saying there isn't any overlap between Pakistan and India. After all, neither Pakistan nor India will state there is an overlap of their national territories, so it's all good, right?
Religion isn't about whether the three wise men rode camels. It is about the search for meaning in an otherwise apparently arbitrary and meaningless universe. As far as I'm concerned, science has no answer for those questions, because they simply aren't empirical. If you want to take the view that all questions are ultimately empirical be my guest, but I don't believe it and I don't know many philosophers who believe it either.
Science does, however, have very good answers for questions like "what happens to water when you heat it up?" and "what forces affer the genetic changes in a species over time?" For religion to attempt to compete with these straightforward observational insights is ludicrous.
On both sides, the overreach and arrogance is breathtaking. I find the argument that science can tell me the meaning of my life as inane as the idea that the Pope's organs are somehow more sacred than mine (well, he probably has a better liver, but still).
In short, any human paradigm of knowledge that claims exclusivity is guilty of arrogance and immediate falsifiability (thanks to Goedel). So both sides need to STFU about stuff that is outside their area of expertise.
Not that they will.
The Dalai Lama has behaved better than well in this regard. The Tibetans are smuggling kids out of country so they can learn math and science.
We should try that in Kentucky.
To my point: that's what religion means to you. It's easy to support the non-overlapping idea as long as you get to draw the line. Billions of people on this planet believe that science is arrogant and overreaching to presume to have anything to say about the origin of species. These people will agree with your argument, but not with your application of it to suite your beliefs instead of theirs.
Any system of belief that claims exclusivity - and many organized religions do - forfeits the attention of sentient beings.
Most scientists aren't stupid enough to claim they understand everything, though geneticists and physicists periodically forget themselves.
For both sets of behaviors, my response can be found here.
I view both sets of behaviors as a severe reaction to uncertainty. For me the DMZ of the magisteria is around determinism and free will. Physics, like religion and philosophy before it, ends up hugely entangled with problems with uncertainty.
Our monkey minds don't like uncertainty so they start looking for something certain. That creates big problems, and probably will for as long as there are humans. If we could somehow abolish all religion tomorrow, we wouldn't be in John Lennon's paradise. Those monkey minds would get to work, and we'd have truckloads of new religion by Sunday.
Since no one knows what's really going on - even if basic questions of determinism and free will were resolved we still would have no objective or empirical basis for morality - I don't see a basis for an external critique of what anyone else believes or disbelieves in matters of right and wrong, or human intention.
I therefore have much more respect for radical agnosticism (as discussed here) than radical atheism.
Okay, I pretty much agree with you. I just disagree that the 'non-overlapping magisteria' idea gets you any closer to this.
Holy Shit!
Yes, Gould's distinction is quite artificial. Whatever its intellectual merit, it's not much use if it's not widely subscribed to and respected.
I think your point is very well-taken there.
Of course we'll need some sort of armed force to provide social enforcement of the insights we've arrived at here...
I'll forward you my plans for re-education camps.
Reeducation. Indeed. It is the construction of humanistic culture that is the great priority: irrespective of God, fractured shards of god, our feverish insights into the spectacular connection and specificity of all living consciousness, or the blank truth of the isolation of warm little minds in a great and cold but dynamic universe. All is requiring, demanding, yearning for kindness, compassion and conviviality, and yet liberation, development and expression of the true nature we find ourselves happening to contain.
If we call these reeducation camps "monasteries," "labs," or "art school," I'm pretty alright with it.
How about "scientific art monasteries"?
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