This one from
https://www.sciencereligioncompass.org/
2022 Theos Think Tank and The Faraday Institute.
the questions of course are REALLY BAD but thats the kind of thing that gets me going... someone is wrong on the internet! i must fix!
the order of their questions is a little loopy, i COULD rearrange them to make a cohesive statement. but i probly won't get to it.
let's have an epigraph or whatever those little quotes are called
swirls of sexvines intoxicating night perfume of flowers calling moths enticing em to mix pollen imagine new beings invite danger eruption of potent species into the forest a memory of aroma of a night when i feared being only a moth but my death was death of the universe locked in my skull infested with vines and sinews of thoughts and longings bible verses came to attack but the jungle rotted them to ant food longing for something to read i picked up stars with my tongue but they stung i burrowed under leaves and seeped into roots the stars called me into veins in the night and i became many and the rain washed me into puddles and i birthed a multitude of minute beings eating each other living in each others bellies stitching the earth together in laughter and it keeps growing
and a picture
Pavel Tchelitchew. Hide-and-Seek, 1942
1) religion is first and foremost about... no. it's a VERY many different human phenomena!
anyway to me it is most strongly about staying awake and being able to live through the fact that human life is an intensely a-rational and sometimes horrific experience.
2) after darwin belief in god... there are too many reasons to believe in god. actually what darwin showed was the first model we have of god the creator. so if god is the creator, darwin shows what kind of phenomenon god is.
3) do you mean christian bible or jewish tanakh? very different! actually i suppose ur quiz is mostly for christians. in judaism, there is always a healthy dose of: the torah is poetry, hell, we don't even give god a name. but yeah, torah is OBVIOUSLY a vast poetic game
4) modern science vs "divine force" the whole point of this quiz should be to determine what someone means by "divine force" can't take that phrase as a given. i mean... i can call the 4 forces of physics divine, there. or actually these days i think it is all mathematics and i have NO CLUE what mathematics is anymore! call it god if you want
5) science is the only way of getting reliable knowledge. depends on the domain? sceience is young. about rocks, machines, planets etc... pretty good. about how my mental life works? not so much. anyway it aint so much about reliable KNOWLEDGE, but about the most fruitful game plan for finding things out. but it's not sufficient for some people. for some people feelings are more important than knowledge, so for humanity, more than science is needed.
6) miracles are an essential part of religion. not the trivial kind of miracles. but that the very experience of existence feels miraculous, definitely.
7) science is not affected by bias. this is important to ask CORRECTLY. the whole point of science is to learn to weed out bias! different scientists are going to be better at it than others. but the whole point of science is to help them! science as a whole? over 100s of years? there may be some bias, but i'm amazed at the insane breadth of topics it explores and finds interesting.
8) we don't understand the brain thru medicine. medicine is not science, it is a practice for helping people feel good, not for finding things out (which doesn't necessarily make people feel good, that's why science is hard, see #7) knowledge about brain make it hard to be religious?
look, in general my take on religion is that the more knowledge u have about the world, the more HOLY SHIT WOW, and hence the more religious!
9) science most DEFINITELY needed faith at the begining to work, cuz you had to have faith that putting in years of detailed observation would pay off in sensible patterns. probly the faith of christianity in a loving sensible god creating orderly universe propelled early science (unlike classical greek culture)
today? some science years of hard work, what motivates scientists? well you know by now that past efforts paid off, but still what are day to day individual motives?
i do't think u have a question on this, but not faith but SHEER LOVE of the beauty the wildness of the world motivates me. not some rational ... or certainly not the motive that i'm gonna cure cancer or stop global warming, that's engineering, not science
10) dangers vs benefits of science. too late, H. sapiens was already curious, can't put pandora's shit back in the box.
anyway i suspect what you are really asking is not dangers of science but dangers of human engineering which were always dangerous ever since fire and agriculture... don't need science
ok but is more knowlege bad, i.e. oedipus? no to go back to the garden is to become an infant again. not the adult way.
11) religion without belief in god is meaningless. not for juduaism or budhhism, come on.
again i think strongest religious impulse is not about belief but about 'wow this human life is intensely beautiful horrific, how do i still apprecaiate it?' no belief necessary, no god necessary. unless you define god as "SMACK! stop thinking so hard about everything, wake up!"
12) religious stories and miracles figuative... there's a total range out there. yeah for me it's all poetry. except again, the miracle of existence, of this universe being here at all... WOW. these are not figurative
13) can't be good scientist and sincerely religious... again there are so many ways to be human... if to be religious is to stay awake to the AWE of this existence... doesn't preclude practicing science. but, u can't be OVERawed by universe, otherwise you won't be able to function rationally...
but definitley if to be religious means you can't be CURIOUS, then you can't do science. if you are motivated by irrational beliefs in daddygods and motive to help people heal or be happy... it can detract from the fullest open minded exploration in science.
Nevertheless what is great about science, is it is a community of communication, so really, anybody can contribute as long as they are honest. collect some data and report it honestly? sure. design a cool instrument and tell us how it works? thanks...
14) theory of big bang has nothing to do with creator. it's merely a theory of what happens when we look further and further back in time through physics. it says NOTHING about the beginning or the creation of the universe or why the laws of phyiscs are as they are. question is too glib.
look, the science vs creator thing... the universe is so huge and DETAILED it seduces me to explore it WAY more than the rather boring tiny conceptions of a creator one finds in scriptures.
but i'm willing to go with the mystics and call mathematics itself god. or i can get playful and call mathematics the great MATRIX and the 27 constants of physics the jizm of christ inciting her to birth. fit that on your 2 dimensional graph!
15) scientific data on age of earth disproving bible? torah? torah is NOT a geology text, it is aobut life with people. geology does NOTHIHG to the torah. anyone fixated on some Usher guy and his silly ideas of 5000 yr chronology that much isn't even religious, they are just perverse.
16) science answering big qusetions about life and meaning. definitely gives BIG insights! meaning... some people want their meaning handed to them. is that religious or lazy? anyway... ultimately? since i view science as a LOVE AFFAIR with the universe and its phenomena, THAT can give a lot of meaning to my life.
17) even if prayer IS just meditation or therapy, that certainly can make a real difference! come on! if prayer is a way to CONNECT with the experience of the universe... if it is LISTENING... (half of even christianity sees it this way) then it isn't far from being a scientist. it's a first step in fact.
no i don't ask skydaddy for gifts
18) science makes philosophy redundant. science IS philosophy, you are trying to figure out how figuring things out works! most important act of science is learning how your mind fools itself.
given that... i often find that mature scientists are better at philosophy than many 'philosophers'. i don't think philosophy that is not grounded is worth any more than a drug trip.
19) religion tells us somethig new about reality. weird one. all religions are OBVIOUSLY responding to PROFOUND aspects of reality. especially reality of being human. so sure.
20) science on reincarnation and resurrection. well... you have to determine if you are being literal or figurative eh? u mean my soul after death going back to another living being? will i remember who i was? if not, it's almost meaningless. so can we determine that reincarnation is impossible? hmm... somewhere you ask about the soul, we'll look there
21) religion is about how to live life not about beliefs. in judaism its split exactly 50 50 so ... i know you are writing for christians, it was a debate there too. but i'll go orthogonal to your tiny graph and add another dimension. its about neither how to live life nor belief but about how to deal with the fact that LIFE IS INSANE! AWESOME! HORRIFIC! PARADOX! how to stay awake to that, how to keep going. not even primarily about how to be a mensch!
22) scientists disagree with one another... ok so there is a certain psychology, possibly deeply damaged by trauma that can't deal with subtlety, doubt... a CERTAIN kind of religious variety appeals to them, gives em something to hold onto... nah... that aint religion, that's ... if religion aint helping you heal, why cal it religion?
It's ADULT to learn to disagree constructively with each other!
and for CHRISSAKE don't 'believe' in scientists! sheesh! they aint god.
you learn to trust them cuz you learn a little bit about how they work.
23) ah.. the soul. again, first of all , its not scientific to 'believe' in anything. it's scientific to explore and test... and wonder... soul is a hard one... it's certainly scientific to wonder how plants grow (one early idea of a kind of soul), how we think,
the most intense experience of feeling alive of feeling like me? that's a hard one, but it is not scientific to shy off of wondering if we will eventually be able to tackle that!
24) science is only thing needed to solve climate change? that's stupid. obviously science is not NEARLY enough. we need to learn how to educate, motivate, help people with trauma... ultimately it may come down to a-rational decisions about which science can't help us. like how do we ask people to stop breeding so much? stop being greedy?
personally i think genetic engineering might be our only hope on those! hah!
25) you can't have the ethics of religion without the beliefs. this relates to the fact that some people are so traumatized they need easy answers, hence beliefs. but no.
26) religious belifs can help you be better scientists. at the begining, yes. i think the a-rational belief that a sensible god created an orderly universe motivated scientists at the begining. but most belif is incompatible with true open ended exploration and doubt, so don't believe too hard.
27) the only definition i can come up with for 'supernatural' is: 'i REFUSE to question something. i REFUSE to believe something can be analysed' in that sense if you say u believe in supernatural... you aren't gonna do science.
28) bible beautiful literature but otherwise irrevlent. that's silly. some is beautiful, some ugly, but torah for sure, has alot to say about how to live a human life,
and for chrissake, literature is NOT irrelevant! sheesh! is this sentiment why ur view of reigion so pedestrian? either belief or morals? ugh.
29) science will never explain consciousness. how the hell do i know? but on the whole i think for me the science way is a more fruitful way to explore it than, say, zen meditation.
but which way will benefit humanity the most? ah.. did you ask somewhere about how we VALUE science and religion? hmmm...
30) saying religion is 'really' about community or culture is a copout. yes, ultimately. religion is about much more intense reality of being human. cuz no matter how good community is... we are SO ALONE.
31) belif that god exists compatible with science. NOT belief. rigid belief is incompatible with science. probly also with healthy adulthood. but if you think god is out there go ahead and explore what you think is out there with science. i dare you.
i mean... if i call mathematics god, why not?
32) science changes too much to be trustworthy. actually, the first part of statement is flat out wrong! science, the method, the body of observations and theory.. has been growing more and more solid, more and more interconnected every century. sounds like something worthy of trust, more than fashion, politics, health food fads, theology or philosophy!
what people are responding to is every now and then an individual hypothesis will get disproven.
i think what we are dealing with here again are people traumatized by their inconsistant alcoholic fathers. hard to develop trust in complex humans, better to trust some unmoving monolith. but that's not healthy.
33) 'spiritual forces' are real and active in the world today. vague term. means too many things to too many people. no comment possible. again, i can call gravity a spiritual force.
studying religion requires lots of data, lots of nuance
34) science will explain everything one day. traumatized people projecting their need for certainty onto science. i have no need for such a statement. science is the journey not the end result.
here's a thot: the more science humanity learns the more humanity will change, hence the more we'll need to explain. so unless there is a curious mathematically convergent propterty to it all, i seriously doubt it can happen
35) science cannot tell you how to live your life. surprisingly i think the PRACTICE of science: love the universe, explore, be curious, be ok with doubt, help each other question our biases.. is not a bad start on how to live a life. but of course it doesn't cover ALL of human life.
the knowledge of science? it can certainly help guide our lives. but ultimately, at least at present, human life is a-rational, hence at some level we have some sort of religion to help us live it.
hell there is no evidence that life is rational, so approaching it 100% rationally is a kind of perverse religion? ha!
36) modern science has disproved afterlife. u asked that already, right? no data yet.
37) science now explains music literature and art. explains little bits, but for SURE we have no science of the human psychology yet. come on, dont be silly. (don't believe e.o. wilson just cuz he has two pulitzers, 'Consilience' was an awful book.)
40) u don't need to believe in supernatural to be religious. i already said th only def of supernatural is to say i refuse to analyse a phenomenon. again, that stance isn't really religion that's the religion of the traumatized. you can analyse and be religious! hell the more you analyse the more horrified or awed you may become.
molecular biology of the cell? 100billion galaxies of a 100billion stars each? 100billion amoebas in my head trying to figure it all out with their conversation? WTF?
39) science can damage peoples sense of morality. what IS morality? i'll just say this: the most moral thing is to truly honor another's experience of reality, to listen, to empathise, to get your greed and feer out of the way, so like buddhist practice, the practice of science, of getting outside your head so you can listen to reality... can only help you be moral.
ok look if my view of science tells me that we are experiments, trials in this grand game of evolution, if i know that each of our successes or failures will further the evolutionary drama of creation.. or if i think there is no god who's petty feelings will be hurt if i don't... if in a moment of intense mediation feel the universe is so much grander than any of this petty human shit,
again.. you are asking have i been traumatized or not... in the end of course my gut tells me to care for my fellows. i don't think science activity or meditation is the kind of trauma that destroys that. something else does it.
38) religion real purpose is life before death not after. ok what's this afterlife shit? y we make up the story? cuz human life IS disturbing, horrifying... but as i've said in some of these answers... belief in afterlife is the lazy way out, the way out for the traumatized who wont heal. religion is foremost about learning to embrace this crazy life, learning to EMBRACE DEATH.
i suppose if you embrace death you can say you've conquered it. and at that moment you have already entered the afterlife. if you transcend your attachement to life/death then you are by some definitions already eternal. and bodily death is trivial. each MOMENT is the whole universe.
39) oh we should end with that. 39 and 40 go above.
