In Defense of the Human Spirit - IV

From where I'm sitting, it really seems that one of the sadder, lingering legacies of the 20th century is the phony dichotomy between religion and science.  It has left us with a division between hard line atheistic know-it-all pseudo-scientific dogma on one extreme end of the spectrum, and hard line theistic know-it-all religious dogma on the other extreme end of the spectrum.  To my view, they are both pretty much the same brand of subjective "certainty" held in place by whatever forces can maintain such an absurd equilibrium of sub-rational thought.

The sad part is that science has ended up, at the present juncture of idiocy versus stupidity, terribly demeaned and reduced in stature for the sake of religious "tolerance"...  So that if there can be any slightest smoking gun that "science" may have slipped down into mere politics, then one can simply dismiss anything and everything previously established in science that one doesn't like...  most recently notable would be the global warming "controversy".

Personally, I don't like the Big Bang Theory...  Heh.  It seems too similar to the Reader's Digest version of creation in Genesis...  in that there has to be a beginning.  Neither can I easily buy the idea that simple doppler effect accounts for spectrum shift in light traveling over billions of light years.  It doesn't make sense to me that no other cause could be possible.

But that's just me.  I think that maybe Occam's Razor is just too dull... 

I tend to look at scientific data and theories as a starting point for the wider range of subjective experience.  We tend to agree or disagree, to whatever degree, between the narrow blinders of "science" and the unlimited viewpoint of subjective reality.  But to pretend that the severe limitations that the blinders of science must, of necessity, be the only thing admitted to be real, and to pretend that that extremely narrow, physical reality is the only thing that exists...  well, this is just plain bizarre to me...  that anyone could be so fixated and narrow minded.

The preponderance of self-righteous adherents to this kind of "scientism" bothers me to no end, because they drag science down into the muddy waters of mere dogma, especially out here on the wider stage of discourse where, clearly, "scientist" is not a label most of us can even consider wearing.  But this wider stage of public discourse is where the battle between science and religion has always been waged.  And I truly consider that dichotomy to be a phony one.

I look at it more from the angle where subjective reality and first person experience is the major part of life and living, thought and philosophy, and weighs much more significantly in the forming of opinion and decision making.  This is the unlimited scope of life and living: subjective reality.

Science, on the other hand, only deals with physical phenomena that can be measured, quantified, and repeated in physical space: the objective reality of the physical universe.  It's only a tiny sliver of overall "reality" when compared to the unlimited scope of subjective, first hand experience in day to day life, however.

Here's a quote for the moment:

"She blinded me with science!"
- Thomas Dolby

I really think that line is where the rubber meets the road.  I think most of our society has been blinded by science, to some degree or another.  We don't understand it, we don't comprehend what it really is, and yet the results of scientific discovery and subsequent technologies and engineering wonders have simply overwhelmed us into being easily persuaded that, essentially, there's really nothing else going on in this universe except that which science has already explained.

Science has suffered for being held up too high in this way, and hoisted constantly up into some levels of importance and significance above that which it truly deserves.  It has been done over decades, and there had been established a somewhat haughty class of scientific brahmin here in our western society who, through no real malicious intent, fell upon habits of making fun of those less learned than their august selves...

Suddenly (at least to my eyes), the blowback from the more religious against this long, slow tide of somewhat atheistic, somewhat academic, somewhat haughty, and somewhat lefty control over the major political agendas of our country...  these guys got sick of being made fun of.  Without that change, George W. Bush wouldn't have become so popular.  It's a subtle angle, I'll admit, but I think it's actually a major factor...

And the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are religious.  It's a very small minority who are hard line atheist, and although a fairly larger bunch, the agnostics and the lapsed religious are still a pretty small minority, as well.  I'll be the first to admit to having a fairly rich spiritual side to my life, and a life-long adventure through epiphany, self-actualization, some brand of enlightenment and a general life's store of amazing spiritually aligned adventures.

And my lifetime of spiritual experience is what now bolsters me in this chapter of my life, where facing the end as a much closer probability weighs heavily upon me. 

There is a simple fact I always like to point out.  The physical universe is "going downhill".  There is no phenomenon in this universe that but merely presents a temporary anomaly to this entropic absolute.  Life, on the other hand, goes in exactly the opposite direction.  Life grows, life pushes the stone uphill, and life is, therefore, demonstrative of something that's pretty much the opposite of the physical universe in its basic nature.

The physical universe, through no "fluke" or "chance" could have possibly created life out of its own elements and magically obtained this fundamentally opposite basic nature.  It could never have produced something that didn't conform to its own elemental nature.

Life is a spiritual phenomenon, not a physical one.  It is not a "product" of the physical universe.

Heh.  And as to whether you've got any "soul" or not?...  well, that's really up to you!

As Donald Shimoda once said, "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough...  they're yours."