The Roles of Science and Spirituality

[spectre]

I guess your reductionist absolutisim belief system is the place where we diverge in our views.

Clarification of phenomenological:
"the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view."

Why is this important? because the first fundametal instrument you use to measure anything is your own experience, which comes from your five senses. Again, biology can explain this but the studies in this field are again subject to our own experience. If we had fly eyes for instance, our studies maybe different as our experience is different. Whether the universe cares about consciousness or not, it is a factor in the scientific process as you must first have some form of conscious-awareness to even carry out research. The kind of experience we can have is broad, and can be biases upon our own understanding of self. The only instrument you need is yourself. Spirits and souls are not synonymous with ghosts, and if you do believe that you are only one step ahead of myth in your scientific understanding, these terms today relate to fundamental essence of "self" and "Self" which is key to our own personal experience.

If you have no consciousness or awareness of any kind, then that is the first fundamental tool you will have missing from your research. Therefore your own empirical criteria (if it misses the factor of consciousness) is no longer empirical in itself, because the criteria used to assess observable data is skewed. Without understanding the self phenomenolgially or how you understand yourself phenomenoligcally will determine your grasp of what you view ontologically, therefore confusing your scientific discovery.

Take anyone who advanced in any area, Einstein for example, and examine what we know about their phenomenolgical and spiritual understanding. In many cases the self-known limitation that parallell the science of their time do not allow them to look any further ahead. Many of these thinkers therefore question themselves and their place in existance ontologically and that in turn gives them new insight which leads to their further exterior discoveries.

Souls, thoughts, even emotions; these are not substantial so you cannot treat them with the methodology as if they were. The pure understanding as "understanding" is important because that is where any of us will come to agreement or disagreement, and the self structure that determines that must then be put into question, psychology can explain much of it for a start and as a "pseudo-science" psychology is phenomenologically related to spiritual study. In fact it's latin translation means "study of the soul" so if you want to talk about behaviouralism, then you need to refer to the study of the soul for that.

[spectre]

Scientific understanding advances through research outside.

Self understanding advances through research inside.

Definition of Spiritual (from Oxford English Dictionary): relating to or affecting the human spirit as opposed to material or physical things.

Definition of Spirit (from Oxford English Dictionary): a person’s non-physical being, composed of their character and emotions

Definition of Science (from Oxford English Dictionary):the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

OBSERVATION - what is doing the observing? Who is doing the observing? how is the observation measured? The actual observation of an individual may respond to neural activity, but the "understanding" is immarterial and part of non-physical being.

Thus spirituality influences internal understanding (self) which inturn determines the observational process in which data is recorded and the way that data is interpreted. Dismissing this dismisses a key part of the scientific process.

I believe in another thread here someone spoke of the difference between theists and non-theists and their approach to rationality. This is their differing views of self-in-nature (even if they are part of that nature) phenomenologically and an example of my point. Theist or Non-theist, you have an outlook, which determines the results of data, and structure of your research. And to say that one must be theological or religious to embrace spirituality goes hand in hand with a pre-rational understanding of the world.

[Jack]

The actual observation of an individual may respond to neural activity, but the "understanding" is immarterial and part of non-physical being.

This is the only thing you've posted I'd quibble with. We have no medical evidence that suggests understanding occurs in an immaterial or non-physical part of ourselves. True, consciousness is poorly understood, but there's no reason to think that our interpretation of the input of our senses takes place anywhere but in our brain.

[Vacuum]

Quote by: spectre The actual observation of an individual may respond to neural activity, but the "understanding" is immarterial and part of non-physical being.

The material world is directly related to understanding. If you could never feel, taste, or see water, you wouldn't understand what it was; this holds true with many things understandable.

[rez]

Quote by: spectre I guess your reductionist absolutisim belief system is the place where we diverge in our views.

Agreed.

Why is this important? because the first fundametal instrument you use to measure anything is your own experience, which comes from your five senses. Again, biology can explain this but the studies in this field are again subject to our own experience.

Actually it would be better to say that the first fundamental instrument to measure reality is through every conscious beings experience. Since everybody's five senses are the same, it is a good way to test to see what is real and what is unreal.

If we had fly eyes for instance, our studies maybe different as our experience is different. Whether the universe cares about consciousness or not, it is a factor in the scientific process as you must first have some form of conscious-awareness to even carry out research.

My point was based off your statements about death and what happens after it.

The kind of experience we can have is broad, and can be biases upon our own understanding of self.

I disagree. When you take into consideration that spirituality and science attempt to explain reality you find that experience is not broad and subjective. When you attempt to explain something then you provide information that either explains something or it doesn't. Either an important discovery comes from the explanation or nothing comes from it. This way of thinking is not subjective and broad -- it is specific and objective.

The only instrument you need is yourself.

The only instrument you need to understand yourself is yourself. Yes. However, to explain reality you need other people too. The world is seen through billions of people's eyes.

Spirits and souls are not synonymous with ghosts, and if you do believe that you are only one step ahead of myth in your scientific understanding, these terms today relate to fundamental essence of "self" and "Self" which is key to our own personal experience.

Ah yes, you are talking about the transition between animal instinct and self-awareness (consciousness). In order to understand your self or your subconscious you must first understand the transition between animal instinct (no self-awareness) and self awareness (modern man).

Souls, thoughts, even emotions; these are not substantial so you cannot treat them with the methodology as if they were. The pure understanding as "understanding" is important because that is where any of us will come to agreement or disagreement, and the self structure that determines that must then be put into question, psychology can explain much of it for a start and as a "pseudo-science" psychology is phenomenologically related to spiritual study. In fact it's latin translation means "study of the soul" so if you want to talk about behaviouralism, then you need to refer to the study of the soul for that.

In order to study human nature (human behavior) you must use Psychophysiology, Biology, Chemistry, Zoology and History. In other words its impossible to understand human nature or human behavior without understanding how it evolved.

[spectre]

This is the only thing you've posted I'd quibble with. We have no medical evidence that suggests understanding occurs in an immaterial or non-physical part of ourselves. True, consciousness is poorly understood, but there's no reason to think that our interpretation of the input of our senses takes place anywhere but in our brain.

The process itself maybe physiologically measured yes. But the PHENOMENOLOGICAL interpretation which is what I have been getting on about the entire time is not pyhsiological. How many cubic metres of fear do any of you have? how many litres of love? how many grams of thought are sitting in your mind right now? Thats "thought" not the brain anatomy that enables them. We have no medical evidence to suggest understanding occurs else where, because it can't be measured through medical instruments. A first-person perspective is not objective. A first person perspective studied from third person is objective. Do you see the difference? Yes the five senses are the same in each person, bar colour blind people, hard of hearing, deaf... but even if you want to talk linguistics, this changes the actual reaction a persons experience has to someone with another language. I'm not saying that sciences can't explain all these physical processes, but experience cannot be explained through physical experience. Genetics, psychophysiology, those are only parameters governing particular behaviours but there is still enough room for choice that thats all they provide - parameters.

Also animal instinct isn't quite no self awareness, its pre-self awareness, they still have awareness yet no concept of self. No self awareness would be my origial explanation of a causal state of being (deep sleep) in which you still have awareness but self identification is detatched.

The subject of our awareness (our views and outlook) gives us an objective view through a subjective lens. If you were to change your views and outlook now drastically, your original view would be an objective view from your new subjective lens. If you were to look at that subjective lens again from a detatched third person perspective, it would then again appear objective.

Lets for arguments sake say that internal experience is the product of exterior nature, seen through; physics, chemistry, biology. This is still "a product" so this internal experience, even if it were the result of external nature the internal nature is still an internal experience, so once you use the external to "explain it away" there is infact, no longer, and internal experience left to understand through those give means.

So again, those five senses may all be the same with each person. However, what seperates the five-senses of an animistic self and of a relativistic self? Or a mythic world interpretation to a rationalist one? I'm not saying the experience creates the world in its state (like some dickhead on that other thread) but the internal experience or self-structure lens you look through will determine what you can see in those external sciences, because it will determine your criteria for research and what data you accept or dismiss.

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: spectre Q: is it important for science to try and "prove" spiritual beliefs and should spiritual beliefs "adhere" to scientific regieme? Or should one of these two purely be abandoned?

Science and religion are two separate subjects but they overlap in application.

To answer that questions you run into the extremes on both sides.

Religious people will tell you science doesn't matter since all you should do is believe. Feel free to use science to discover the world, since everything it teaches is nothing but further showing God's creation.

Atheists will say science is explanation to provided the natural reasoning for everything and what it doesn't should just be assumed to have a natural explanation. Atheists say you are free to believe but in reality you still must accept their view that God doesn't exist so believing makes you ignorant.

Those are both the extreme polar stances. Most people would probably fall somewhere between. Some people accept science as answers to natural questions inside daily life while keeping faith in questions science can't fully answer.

[spectre]

Thats the best explanation I've heard from this thread so far, and the best part is that you didn't have to go too far out of your way to say it. Thanks HelioPrime.

My point has been that:

The science has a rational process for being accepted as objective truth.

The keeping faith has also got a rational process for being believable, or keeping faith in.

A hard-core reductionist is no better than a religious fundamentalist in my view. One says "Science is the answer to all of this" the other "God is the answer to all of this." And why do the two not get along? Because both are hard headed, projecting their absolute, unwavering, lie fallaciously to make a point, outlook onto the other.

Science answers immediate questions; how does this work, what makes this happen, how does this react?).
Spirituality answers ultimate questions; why are we here, is there a god?, what happens when we die?

Science doesnt take a day off and neither does spirituality, because in light of each, comes questions for the other.

[spectre]

rez - I just want to make a point of saying that I know where you are coming from with your explanations because I used to share your views adamantly. However I want to add that your interpretations of both science and spirituality, though very indepth and intellegently understood, are still only coming from a concrete-operational level of cognitive development it seems. That is ok though, because two thirds of people remain at concrete operational their whole lives, and this doesn't make them any less intellegent, and your excellent arguments show this. I just want to commend you on your efforts rez.

[rez]

Quote by: spectre The keeping faith has also got a rational process for being believable, or keeping faith in.

Please tell us about this rational process.

"Science is the answer to all of this"

This sentence carries a lot of weight. What exactly does science mean in this sentence?

The way in which "science" works is the answer to all of this. The funny thing is this is what spiritualists do too. In all actuality this is how every single human being functions on a daily basis. This is the very basic method to discovering the unknown. Does a spiritualist have a different method of discovering the unknown?

Step 1: Observe and generalize
Step 2: Formulate hypothesis
Step 3: Make a testable prediction
Step 4: Experiment or observe
Step 5: Modify the hypothesis as necessary and repeat steps 3 and 4.

Spirituality answers ultimate questions; why are we here, is there a god?, what happens when we die?

Spirituality gives explanations, nobody has the slightest clue what happens after you die, why we are here, is there a god...

Science doesnt take a day off and neither does spirituality, because in light of each, comes questions for the other.

If you ask the wrong questions you will get the wrong answers.

For instance.

With the assumption that the earth is flat I would ask the question "What happens when you reach the edge of the world, do you fall off the planet"?

[spectre]

You sure ask a lot of questions for someone who claims to have suffiecient evidence to support your conclusion. Ignorance is not a form of evidence, and the unknown is not a fact but lack of facts. If you're ill-equipted to tackle spiritual issues, I'd suggest reading about it online. Your steps 1 to 5 for the scientific process are also one kind of process, if you reflect on time this process was once less efficient, and we also have the 'antihypothesis' today to rule out bias. The fact you expect spirituality to take the same approach as science as outlined above is ridiculous as they are seperate fields, and is in fact the reason I originally asked whether the two fields were compatable, because spiritual questions could benefit from scientific approaches the same way scientific approaches benefit from greater philosophical understanding. There are many philosophical structure, and levels of development that influence those philosophical stucutres, which give rise to the ability of people to also creat more workable scientific approaches, such as the one you outlined above, which is a more efficient method to one which would have been used for scientific understanding in say, 700BC.

[spectre]

What we want to do is make things simpler to understand, not simpler in themselves. Stripping down a whole to a fraction of its parts gives only an understanding of those parts. Strip down a human being from consisting of a soul, mind, body and matter and what do you get? Well, you have to understand the workings of the mind which reductionally removes the soul from the being, then the anatomical workings of the body removes the existance of a mind, which when you biologically examine the body you reduce this to being no more than matter. Each time you reduce one to the next you leave the previous behind. Which through your understanding would mean "we are only matter" or further still "we are only energy." Which is not true in itself, because we are every holarchic level that you study before and after making those reductionist claims.

Also for an atheist, what the hells up with the Alex Grey avatar? Makes no sense...

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: spectre You sure ask a lot of questions for someone who claims to have suffiecient evidence to support your conclusion.

It's a LACK of evidence that's used to support their conclusion. They want you and every person to be a good little rational human and refuse to believe in any sort of religion without direct verifiable scientific evidence.

It's not so much that they answer the question on existence. What an atheist wants is acceptance of the scientific rule of evidence to every question. If it doesn't have evidence then is doesn't exist and or has a natural explanation. It's this viewpoint they want the world to embrace.

[rez]

Quote by: spectre You sure ask a lot of questions for someone who claims to have suffiecient evidence to support your conclusion.

Asking you to clarify something you said has nothing to do with evidence. I want to make sure I am staying on topic and posting relevant information.

Your steps 1 to 5 for the scientific process are also one kind of process, if you reflect on time this process was once less efficient, and we also have the 'antihypothesis' today to rule out bias. The fact you expect spirituality to take the same approach as science as outlined above is ridiculous as they are seperate fields,

Every single human being everyday of their lives follow steps 1 to 5. When they walk to their car, when they pick up the trash, when they open the refridgerator, when they think about themselves, when they take L.S.D. sit in their chair and talk about a "higher power".

and is in fact the reason I originally asked whether the two fields were compatable, because spiritual questions could benefit from scientific approaches the same way scientific approaches benefit from greater philosophical understanding.

My point is that spiritual explanations are just hot air. You can't do much with a spiritual explanation except claim it. There is no evidence and there is no way to test to see if it works or not.

There are many philosophical structure, and levels of development that influence those philosophical stucutres, which give rise to the ability of people to also creat more workable scientific approaches, such as the one you outlined above, which is a more efficient method to one which would have been used for scientific understanding in say, 700BC.

Even cavemen back in 700 bc trying to create heat used those 5 steps. Its the 5 steps of problem solving in reality. Everybody problem solves, the difference is some people don't actually go out of their way to find out a way of measuring it. Some people don't actually give reasons and evidence for their conclusions.

[rez]

Quote by: HelioPrime It's a LACK of evidence that's used to support their conclusion. They want you and every person to be a good little rational human and refuse to believe in any sort of religion without direct verifiable scientific evidence. It's not so much that they answer the question on existence. What an atheist wants is acceptance of the scientific rule of evidence to every question. If it doesn't have evidence then is doesn't exist and or has a natural explanation. It's this viewpoint they want the world to embrace.

You are responding to a couple of questions I had asked in a previous post.

Here are the exact questions.

Quote by: spectre said: The keeping faith has also got a rational process for being believable, or keeping faith in.

I have never heard of a rational process for "being believable, or keeping faith" Please instruct me where such a process can be found, so we can analyze it in this thread.

Quote by: spectre said: "Science is the answer to all of this"

I responded asking what he meant by "science". It sounds like science is a person that has a certain way of going about something.

I am trying to show that science is in every persons lives every single day. The Scientific method is used by every single human being every single day even if they are not scientists.


and to your post -- No, HelioPrime. I am not going to respond to your post as an atheist. This is not about atheism, this is about comparing and contrasting scientific explanations and spiritual explanations.

[rez]

Quote by: spectre What we want to do is make things simpler to understand, not simpler in themselves. Stripping down a whole to a fraction of its parts gives only an understanding of those parts. Strip down a human being from consisting of a soul, mind, body and matter and what do you get? Well, you have to understand the workings of the mind which reductionally removes the soul from the being, then the anatomical workings of the body removes the existance of a mind, which when you biologically examine the body you reduce this to being no more than matter. Each time you reduce one to the next you leave the previous behind. Which through your understanding would mean "we are only matter" or further still "we are only energy." Which is not true in itself, because we are every holarchic level that you study before and after making those reductionist claims.

When someone suffers a stroke, they suffer a lose of a particular motor skill or a particular belief, or a particular piece of knowledge they once had. If there was a soul, then a stroke victim wouldn't lose anything because the soul is supposedly separate from the brain. It is obvious to see that people need their brains, without them you are not a live.

Also for an atheist, what the hells up with the Alex Grey avatar? Makes no sense...

Just because I am an atheist, doesn't mean I don't have a imagination that I like to play around with....The difference is that I at least admit it is just in my imagination and nothing else.

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: rez I responded asking what he meant by "science". It sounds like science is a person that has a certain way of going about something. I am trying to show that science is in every persons lives every single day. The Scientific method is used by every single human being every single day even if they are not scientists. and to your post -- No, HelioPrime. I am not going to respond to your post as an atheist. This is not about atheism, this is about comparing and contrasting scientific explanations and spiritual explanations.

Of course applying science involved atheism. It involves it because atheism falls into place automatically if your using the scientific method in every case in life.

What you (as an atheist) want is for every person to apply the steps of science to every question:

If your car breaks down there is a natural explanation found by going through steps of checking.

For the question of is there an afterlife since there is no proof then using the scientific method your supposed to lack belief and assume the afterlife doesn't exist until proven otherwise.

So yes, atheism and the scientific method go hand in hand. Saying you want to apply science to every question means you want to eliminate any none natural explanation.

[spectre]

Since when was the soul seperate from the brain? 100 years ago? Thats the reductionism I'm talking about.

Reuctionism chops away at this:
self = Soul + Mind + Living Body

Remove soul through reducing it to a working of the mind:
soul = mind + body

Reduce mind to a working of the body:
mind = body (brain)

Reduce body further
body = compistion of anatomy and tissue

Reduce further
anatomy = molecular compositon

further
molecular compositon = atomic arrangement

further
atomic arangement = sub-atomic salad

further
sub atomic particles = energy (strings)

further
we are still working on this but I have a theory it's turtles all the way down.

[spectre]

Each time you reduce you leave something behind in your explanation: a Soul, a mind, a living body, a molecular structure, an atomic structure, turtles all the way down.

It's important to see how the parts fit together, but each part consists of a whole in itself. The atom is a whole atom, the molecule a whole molecule. My body an entire human body. My life - it's alive. My mind a whole mind, my soul a whole soul. My environment including myself (be it an ecosystem) in working function because it is whole in itself.

[spectre]

When you see that the scientific world is measurably infinite, you understand the turtle thing I'm saying. There is always something new to reduce, (and if you are smart enough to put it back together, something new to construct) so questions of an eternal nature become necessary when you realise that.