Let's Get Creative And Redefine The Meaning Of Religion

[rug]

by Adam Frank
May 21, 2013 2:56 PM

We all know how the battle lines shake out: evangelical vs. scientist, believer vs. atheist. The culture war defined as science vs. religion is so overheated that it seems to be more of a caricature than a coherent, useful discussion. Unless, that is, someone is trying to stretch beyond the usual polarities.

Ronald Dworkin, an acclaimed American legal scholar who died in February at the age of 82, has done just that in Religion Without God. After reading an excerpt in The New York Review of Books, I couldn't help but think that Dworkin offers a way into discussions of science and human spiritual endeavor that is actually engaging and interesting, not combative and dogmatic.

Here's how he frames it:

The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious.

How does a culture saturated with the fruits (and poisons) of science understand the ancient human longing that is sometimes called religious, sometimes spiritual or sometimes sacred? The route of absolute rejection (taken famously by Richard Dawkins) makes for a clean ideology. But it comes at a cost: ignoring the reality of human experience. This is why Dworkin is keen to show that — even for people who call themselves atheist — there remains a sense or a value to the world which bears so much in common with attitudes we call religious or spiritual. In his mind, to not see them as such is a kind of willful blindness:

(These atheists) find the Grand Canyon not just arresting but breathtakingly and eerily wonderful. They are not simply interested in the latest discoveries about the vast universe but enthralled by them. These are not, for them, just a matter of immediate sensuous and otherwise inexplicable response. They express a conviction that the force and wonder they sense are real, just as real as planets or pain, that moral truth and natural wonder do not simply evoke awe but call for it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/05/21/185767142/lets-get-creative-and-redefine-the-meaning-of-religion

[DetlefK]

1. The poison of science causes us to ignore the reality of human experience?

Ah, reality. How can we define reality? By negotiating and strong-arming each other over what is "real" and what is not.

Humans define reality. Therefore "human experience" is only "reality" because we all agreed that it should be reality.

What about the hallucinations and beliefs of mentally ill people?
Why does their "human experience" not count as "reality"?
If their's doesn't count, why should yours?



The focus on "human experience" and the justifications it delivers for beliefs and morals is ridiculous, arrogant, anthropocentric bullshit.
For example: The human eye can see three colors. A dog's eye can see two colors, but they have a way better olfactoric sense.
Now answer me: Which of those two can witness reality? The human or the dog?

[Jim__]

6. "Which of those two can witness reality? The human or the dog?"

Both of them. Each of them experiences reality in a different way, and each of them only experiences a part of reality.

We know through our own experience of using dogs to follow scents that their sense of smell is correlated with external reality. We have a sense of smell but not nearly as refined as a dog's, so, we are not able to make the distinctions that a dog can.

A dog's sense of vision works quite well for navigating through the outside world - they rarely bump into things, can accurately see both predator and prey. Their vision isn't as refined as ours, so, I'm sure that they can't see some of the details that we see.

Our perceptions are a part of reality, and they usually correlate with the external world well-enough to enable us to navigate through the world successfully. In some forms of mental illness, such as illnesses that cause hallucinations, human perception does not correlate well with the external world. But those perceptions, even hallucinatory ones, do have a correlation with reality. The human brain is part of reality. Understanding why the perceptions of certain people don't correlate with the external world can teach us about ourselves, how we perceive things, and how those perceptions can go wrong.

But, take our perception of color. Do you think that various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are actually different colors? Or, do we just perceive it that way? IOW, does our perception of a colorful world actually reflect external reality? I doubt it. But, color is an extremely important part of the human experience; and there is a correlation with the outside world.

The sense of awe that most people feel when they look at the Grand Canyon is also a part of our perception of reality. Presumably, there is some adaptive advantage to this sense, or we would not expect it to be so widespread, seemingly universal across humanity. If we don't know what the adaptive advantage is, that doesn't mean that there isn't one. We can't define external reality; but, we can share our sense of reality with other people. That sharing can lead us to a better understanding of the world we live in.

[rrneck]

2. We've been redefining the meaning of religion for hundreds of years.

It is one of the most popular commodities in the world.

[ladjf]

3. The practice of religion legitimizes superstition, making it one of mankind's most dangerous

activities. nt

[skepticscott]

4. The latest "atheism is just another religion" blather

from someone desperate to fill column inches.

Yawn.

[rug]

5. I doubt he's desperate to fill column inches.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/10/142182292/credit-controversy-who-made-key-cosmos-discovery

[Lordquinton]

7. I think Scott got it right

needlessly bashing Dawkins with an untruth to boot.