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Is Mormonism And Science Compatible? Attn Bcspace


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I was hoping for a more mundane example at first so that I could make sure I understand you correctly.

But even with spiritual experiences there is often a connection that "verifies" the experience. For example an occasion where the spirit reveals to you something that is going to happen before it takes place. Or a priesthood blessing that reveals an answer to something that you have been praying about in secret and discussed with nobody, or the spirit revealing something about your private plans to somebody else, etc. There is a connection with what most call the real world that validates those experiences.

How does this paradigm shift change the way you deal with any of the facts(experience) of science if at all?

I think you have hit the nail on the head in one way but perhaps you are still not seeing it clearly.

The fact that you see the "verification" of spiritual experiences is exactly the point - that they indeed offer a verification not unlike science. They are inconsistent and personal and subjective but they are still "verifications" to the person receiving them.

The only difference between science and spiritual verification I am proposing is that spiritual verifications are personal and subjective- you cannot prove to anyone else that you have indeed had such a verification- yet you know that you have.

The point is that your level of certainty about receiving that verification can be as certain as a scientific verification, and indeed you can justifiably I think say that you "know" that you have had that verification.

That as I see it is the entire point- your approach to knowing in both cases is scientific in the sense that Alma 32 is scientific- it is in a sense "empirical" - it depends on your perceptions to verify other perceptions and interpretations.

My point is that is what science is and that is what religion is. They are really the same in terms of perceptions and their verification.

The difference is that they deal in different spheres of discourse- science deals in observations about the world around us where are verifiable to anyone, religion deals in the sphere of the subjective and what is good and bad, what choices to make in our personal lives, and what gives our lives meaning, how to pursue that meaning and what gives us true joy.

Even atheists can understand this if they want to, and indeed the philosopher Richard Rorty understood this perfectly. He did not think that belief in God gave his life meaning, I would argue that was because he confused what God was with what sectarian churches taught- that God was linked with Platonic forms, ultimately.

But what he did understand is that what gives our lives meaning and joy is something we seek and define for ourselves in the same way that we communally define scientific "reality" though observation- or put another way, that the distinction between what is scientific and what is personal is not in the realm of what is "real" but in the distinction between how we speak of scientific things and how we speak about personal beliefs, and more importantly, the "language game" or context or function of the discourse which we are engaged in at the time.

Does that help?

So there are certain ways that indeed the aims of science and religion cohere in giving us individually a coherent view of reality and helping us organize our individual understandings of the world and our place in it, but religion is about our subjective perceptions and what is important to us individually and science is about what is objectively observable- those observations we can all verify and agree with.

One is about personal observations and the other is about public observations but both are about observations which help us create our "worlds".

Edited by mfbukowski
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Remember, Mormonism as the "only true religion" has taken a NEUTRAL stance on this issue. Haven't you ever wondered at such a weird take? Here God Almighty himself, the source and fountain and cause of eternal truth, of verifiable truth hasn't given the truth on this most important subject?

I'm sorry, I know that others have responded to this already, but I don't see how evolution is a most important subject. I personally don't have the science to understand whether evolution most likely happened or not, but I can accept the possibility (probability?) that it did. I think the church's neutral position on evolution clearly shows that evolution is not incompatible with the LDS teachings. Perhaps God didn't reveal the details on whether it happened or not because it is not a most important subject. Can we have faith in Jesus Christ without knowing whether evolution happened or not? Can we accept His grace without knowing if evolution happened? I don't see why not. Salvation is possible without knowing all things - so I would say that it isn't an important subject. I would say that it is a most *interesting* subject, and after I die I certainly hope I get to find out all the details.

But IMHO science and religion is definitely compatible - as long as you stick with TRUE religion and TRUE science - and we don't always have all the answers to those things. But after all, God created everything, right? Which means that He is the source of TRUE religion, and He is the source of TRUE science as well. If there seems to be an incompatibility then either we misunderstand something or else we don't have as much truth as we think we do.

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I think you have hit the nail on the head in one way but perhaps you are still not seeing it clearly.

The fact that you see the "verification" of spiritual experiences is exactly the point - that they indeed offer a verification not unlike science. They are inconsistent and personal and subjective but they are still "verifications" to the person receiving them.

The only difference between science and spiritual verification I am proposing is that spiritual verifications are personal and subjective- you cannot prove to anyone else that you have indeed had such a verification- yet you know that you have.

The point is that your level of certainty about receiving that verification can be as certain as a scientific verification, and indeed you can justifiably I think say that you "know" that you have had that verification.

That as I see it is the entire point- your approach to knowing in both cases is scientific in the sense that Alma 32 is scientific- it is in a sense "empirical" - it depends on your perceptions to verify other perceptions and interpretations.

My point is that is what science is and that is what religion is. They are really the same in terms of perceptions and their verification.

The difference is that they deal in different spheres of discourse- science deals in observations about the world around us where are verifiable to anyone, religion deals in the sphere of the subjective and what is good and bad, what choices to make in our personal lives, and what gives our lives meaning, how to pursue that meaning and what gives us true joy.

Even atheists can understand this if they want to, and indeed the philosopher Richard Rorty understood this perfectly. He did not think that belief in God gave his life meaning, I would argue that was because he confused what God was with what sectarian churches taught- that God was linked with Platonic forms, ultimately.

But what he did understand is that what gives our lives meaning and joy is something we seek and define for ourselves in the same way that we communally define scientific "reality" though observation- or put another way, that the distinction between what is scientific and what is personal is not in the realm of what is "real" but in the distinction between how we speak of scientific things and how we speak about personal beliefs, and more importantly, the "language game" or context or function of the discourse which we are engaged in at the time.

Does that help?

So there are certain ways that indeed the aims of science and religion cohere in giving us individually a coherent view of reality and helping us organize our individual understandings of the world and our place in it, but religion is about our subjective perceptions and what is important to us individually and science is about what is objectively observable- those observations we can all verify and agree with.

One is about personal observations and the other is about public observations but both are about observations which help us create our "worlds".

Ok I suspected that was where you were coming from but I wanted to be sure I understood you correctly.

I think a lot of the problem with the scientism types is with the idea of individual verification. This seems especially apparent in trying to test something like prayer as though it were some universal force like gravity. Gravity doesn't care about one's state and standing before God whereas with answers to prayer it makes all the difference in the world. With other areas such as living a different life style I could see them agreeing that the only way to know individually is to give it a try individually. But others who don't want to know or to change could simply stand on the objection that there isn't any scientific verification available. And with some things perhaps there never will be, but that doesn't invalidate an individual's experience.

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Religion is what one person experiences, and science is what everyone experiences.

That's essentially the idea I am pushing. Religion is what makes our lives meaningful for us each individually. Science doesn't even deal with that and doesn't want to.

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Ok I suspected that was where you were coming from but I wanted to be sure I understood you correctly.

I think a lot of the problem with the scientism types is with the idea of individual verification. This seems especially apparent in trying to test something like prayer as though it were some universal force like gravity. Gravity doesn't care about one's state and standing before God whereas with answers to prayer it makes all the difference in the world. With other areas such as living a different life style I could see them agreeing that the only way to know individually is to give it a try individually. But others who don't want to know or to change could simply stand on the objection that there isn't any scientific verification available. And with some things perhaps there never will be, but that doesn't invalidate an individual's experience.

Yep I think that's it.

When one makes a decision based on moral values, or decides that his life goes better when he goes to church, there is no science which will verify for him that those are right decisions- for him.

After the fact, perhaps we could plug him into the "happy meter" - some scientific criteria for measuring some kind of happiness level based on defined brain states, say for example- and show that he is provably more happy as defined by the criteria.

But that doesn't help him decide. And this also relates to the free will/determinism issue we discussed earlier- no amount of scientific data about brain states will ever be able to take away the fact that I EXPERIENCE the quandary of making a choice in my life without the guidance of any possible scientific data, simply because choice is so complex and non-quantifiable, BESIDES the point that such matters are subjective to begin with and involve an entirely different point of view.

As far as subjectivity is concerned- I don't know if you are into logic, but you will find that any subjective statement, ie: any first person statement starting with the word "I" is not logically equivalent to any third person statement- a statement about other persons places or things.

I believe that to be the case, though it is as yet unproven as far as I know.

For example the statement "I feel pain in my big toe" can be equivalent to "Bukowski says he feels pain in his big toe" but it cannot be made equivalent to the statement "The pain-o-meter shows pain impulses in Bukowski's big toe"

One is a statement about my feelings, the other is a statement about what the pain-o-meter shows. They do not contain the same information. They cannot be logically equivalent.

This I believe is essentially the point of Nagel's essay on "What it's like to be a Bat" I probably have already referenced in this thread several times.

That is essentially why physicalism does not work- ie the belief that information about brain states is equivalent to subjective information about feelings.

It just isn't! The propositions are being made are not from the same point of view. It is similar to making an observation from above a pyramid saying "Pyramids are square" and saying from a certain point viewing a pyramid from the side, "Pyramids are triangular".

Both are true and both are incompatible logically- because both are made from different points of view.

I make statements about my feelings from inside of me- about my subjective experience. A scientist studying my subjective experience and brain states makes statements from outside of me by observing me. A first person statement is not a third person statement and the information in each is not identical to each other.

For similar reasons, statements about spiritual experiences have nothing to do with statements about objectively verifiable (scientifically verifiable) experiences or states of affairs. They are made from different points of view, similar to calling a pyramid a square from one pov or a triangle from another.

A pyramid is both a square and a triangle at the same time- and a few other possible shapes- all depending on your point of view.

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Yes, but what POV are you utilizing to make this statement/observation?

That was really an excellent question and I had to think about it for a moment- I understand where you were going with that.

I suppose the pov was more artistic than any. I was thinking of the variety of shapes that pyramids make if one were to draw one.

But notice it was still a definite point of view. It was not symbolic- it was not scientific, it was not historical, it was not from the view of an engineer or an archaeologist nor was it religious. I mentioned nothing about the meaning of squares or triangles or their symbology nothing about how much pyramids weigh or how much rock goes into them. I was not thinking about the people who made them, or how they cast shadows or whether or not they have foundations. Nor was I talking about how far they could be seen out into space of whether or not Martians would know about them. ;)

There are probably a zillion other perspectives or ways to see pyramids before one exhausts all the possibilities.

It was a definite point of view abstracting only their shape and how one might draw them from different perspectives.

Any point of view is taken for a specific purpose and function, or instrumentality.

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now from up and down, and still somehow, it's clouds illusions I recall, I really don't know clouds at all."

There is always another way to create a point of view of clouds or pyramids, and another reason to do so.

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