Albert Einstein to a little girl from New York named Phyllis:
“…everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve."
Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children ISBN 10 9781591020158
Inspired by your uncertainty, I followed your link back to its source who happens to be on my “Ignore” list. Take heart. your source was either referring to some guy that neither you nor I are familiar with or to me, with the greater probability being that it was me.
No doubt, your source was responding to my brief comment which, in turn, was a response to your loquacious reply to my question, “Are you a Baha’i?”
In the evangelical community I was associated with.
It is my short appraisal of his criticism, I would have to quote him at length to explain his position. He was specifically mentioning the waning spiritual tradition in Europe, but also the fundamentalism in the world, which failed to appreciate the vast variety of traditions and worship, that essentially pointed to the ineffable and transcendent Ground of Being.
Jörg Zink wasn’t, as far as I could recognise, a panentheist.
Christianity, particularly in its Protestant forms, has promoted individualism and the idea of a personal relationship with God, the emphasis on individual salvation, and the concept of personal responsibility for one’s faith and actions have contributed to a sense of individuality among many Christians. Paul stressed personal responsibility for one’s faith and actions. In his letters, he frequently discussed the idea that individuals would be judged based on their own deeds and faith. Obedience must be understood in this context.
Collectivism has been more widespread than individualism, especially in a historical context, and many traditional societies and civilizations throughout history have placed a strong emphasis on collectivism and community values. Especially early human societies based on agricultural practices were characterized by close-knit communities that depended on cooperation and collective efforts for survival. In such societies, collectivism was a fundamental aspect of daily life.
With Paul it is both/and when it comes to the question of whether he was a individualist or a collectivist. One of the important truths in the Bible is that we become like what we worship. So when we worship a Triune god, there is a real sense in which we become like him.
Of course, Paul’s message was not exclusively individualistic. He also emphasized communal and collective aspects of the Christian faith. Paul used the metaphor of the “Body of Christ” to describe the Christian community, indicating the sacred Unity to which we are called, as well as the interconnectedness and interdependence of believers, highlighting the idea that each member of the community has a role to play in the sacred Unity.
What I was stressing was that Christianity has been a large influence in the West in which individualism has become more prominent. Tom Holland’s central argument, for example, is that the ethical and moral framework of Western societies, including concepts of human rights, equality, and individual dignity, has deep roots in Christian thought.
It is therefore no surprise that the author I mentioned said that there is a need to break out of the societal degradation dragging us down, and go your own way towards the sacred Unity.
I could point out that the evangelical community is a wide spectrum… but… there is very little of the evangelical community which is all that all that open to things outside the Bible. The Bible is basically the one thing they can agree on.
Well here I will point out the mistake of identifying the evangelical community with fundamentalism. The southern Baptists brought that to the evangelical movement by jumping on the bandwagon. But in the beginning it was a shift of focus from dogma to the experience of the saving power of Jesus. That is when most of Quakers joined the evangelical movement.
Yeah despite my existentialist leanings, I am not so crazy about this “ground of being” idea touted by Paul Tillich. I am afraid I lean in an opposite direction from this panentheist understanding of Christianity.
A metaphor I have used is that Christianity is like a tree where the living part is on the outside and a lot of dead wood on the inside. But the living part goes in many different directions and not just in the direction that you like.
Still struggling to understand…
so… fascination with some of the ideas you picked up from Jorg Zink’s books?
And liberalism has gone even more strongly in this direction of individualism. …so much so… that the church often looks like the last vestige of communal/corporate way of thinking.
I like that and the same analogy would work pretty well for science too except that there are safeguards to prevent some of that out-of-bounds growth. But some of the early fits and starts show a progression.
Here is a more challenging extension: one spurious direction of growth for science is scientism and the very vocal few who feel it is their mission to argue that science must bring down religion. Science has led to a widely held belief that material is the most basic of things and everything else must be explained in terms of how whatever else is proposed can be justified in terms of the physics. This leads to the other popularly held opinion among the atheists I have encountered online that if our knowledge of all the atoms and other particles were more complete we could chart out the rest of history (determinism).
I recently watched most of video of an online discussion titled " The Nature of Reality: A Dialogue Between a Buddhist Scholar and a Theoretical Physicist" in which Sean Carroll whose science writing I have enjoyed in Endless Forms Most Beautiful seems intent on making an argument over what could have been an interesting discussion. But how does he justify thinking his knowledge entitles him to rule on what is or is not a part of reality or what would constitute an adequate theory of mind based on particle physics? This is painful to watch but there is a slice from 47:30 to 52:50 which would give you the flavor,
The comment in the first minute of that segment about the soon to be lost opportunity to have a discussion about the nature of reality - because, obviously, he expects science to exhaust that topic sometime soon. Weird.
I don’t think so. The most useful part of science is that which is founded on the most evidence – the oldest parts. It is the part we use everyday in everything. How can that be described as dead wood. It makes no sense. The part on the outside is mostly speculation – so much so that people often wonder if it should be called science at all.
Religion is different because very little of it is any more than speculation with very little evidence to establish any of it as fact. In this case it the outer changing part which has the most contact with life – ever seeking to reconcile itself with the facts of new discoveries about the universe as well as with the changes in society and ourselves.
definition: excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques
It is hard for me to make sense of this as a direction of science. Our faith in the power of science and its methods are well justified. The faith of scientists in this methodology is one of the best things in science. How can it be excessive…
Ah… well… It is excessive when it is used beyond what is the proper scope of science. But in that case it ceases to be science at all. Thus it cannot be a direction of development in science but must rather be a direction of philosophy…
the philosophy of science perhaps. If this is what is meant by “scientism” then is rather similar to naturalism – another direction of philosophy which equates reality to the scientific worldview.
He could ask the same question of philosophers and theologians. How is he any less entitled just because he hasn’t read as much of the speculations in philosophy and religion? He probably thinks that the solid foundation of science gives his speculations a more solid foundation. But I think that is just as flimsy as the reasons philosophers and theologians have regarding their own speculations on the matter as authoritative. He has no more evidence for his opinions than they do.
I had in mind astrology and alchemy but perhaps phrenology and even numerology (as an archaic STEM subject?)
But I don’t really care. Just a passing thought.
Well by extending it further than it actually reaches or getting confused about where science leaves off and ones personal opinion begins as with Sean Carroll in that video but also Dawkins and Krauss. Self appointed crusaders for banishing the ‘dark ages’ of religion.
Yes but they will be better prepared to answer since they recognize the thin ice on which they operate, unless they are fundamentalist theologians or one of those ‘philosophers’ who are propelled by the explanatory power of their own opinion (like Dennett).
Ah but things without objective evidence are simply discarded from science.
Exactly they have left science behind.
Well that depends on the philosophers and theologians doesn’t it. Likewise, many scientist know better than Sean Carol about where the limits of science are and when they are indulging in speculative philosophy only.
I am probably misreading something here, but there are different types of evidence. And while this may mean our languages sometimes do not have corresponding words, I would hope that given enough time trying to talk about it we can at least acknowledge the meaning of each other’s words.
You may recall a Sean Carroll quote I took a liking to. The one on the Janus point book. If not I can dig it up.
Well yes… there is the objective evidence of science and there is subjective evidence for other things. But without that distinction and clarification it is frequently presumed that by evidence we mean objective evidence.
I was thinking of evidence from Scripture, history, and personal experience.
The thing that Sean Carroll was talking about with a Janus point, looks like it’s going to turn scientific objectivity inside out as it relates to reality in the ‘distant’ past.
Discarded, grown over by next years’s bark … the real point is that association with science does not guarantee the result any more than does religion or philosophy. Science appropriately applied is better, religion appropriately applied is better and so is philosophy appropriately applied.
I’ll count that as you ceding my point.
Science does more than either of the other two to vouchsafe the results but the point remains: buyer beware. Philosophy probably does the least well in that regard because the standards are constantly debated. One bad apple doesn’t really spoil the whole barrel but it does provide merchants of misinformation with ammunition for making that case as we have recently witnessed in the face of a national epidemic.
The development of science comes from objective evidence not the proposal of new hypotheses (if this Janus point can even be called such a thing, which I doubt). Otherwise it is indistinguishable from philosophy and the Janus point stuff is a work of popular science and philosophy rather than science. The increase of order based on entropy is only a temporary localized phenomenon derived from an overall increase in entropy. I certainly see no objective or mathematical definition of order given apart from this. So I have no reason to see this as anything more than a personal subjective philosophy.
As for me, I think quantum decoherence is a more fundamental explanation for the arrow of time than entropy. So Julian Barbour’s argument is largely irrelevant as far as I am concerned. And I would counter his claim that time is based on an increase of order (to which I can reply with many counter-examples), with my own claim that our experience of time is much more fundamentally based on the reduction of many future possibilities to a single actuality of the present and past. This is something quite concrete in our scientific measurements.
What point is it you see me as conceding to? My point is that the humility/quality of philosophers and theologians varies just as much as this same quality in scientists. This does not concede that philosophers and theologians are inherently more likely to recognize that they are on thin ice.