[ExI] A science-religious experience

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 27/02/2025 20:36, Jason Resch wrote:.

>
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 12:03 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat 
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>     Jason, you seem to be making a lot of effort to use the word
>     'religion' to refer to things that most people wouldn't consider
>     to be religion.
>
>
> I use the word generally, to refer to any person's set of beliefs. 
> Anything less than such broad generalization would be to impose my own 
> biases on how other people's belief systems should be labeled.
> And as to the word "belief," I again use a broad definition for it, as 
> found in the first sense of the word "believe" in the dictionary:
> "to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of 
> something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so."
>
> You are free to use the word "religion" in a different way, to refer 
> only to those ideas you deem to be false, supernatural, or fantasy.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some religious ideas are, purely by 
accident, correct, natural and real. My main point refers to dogmatism. 
That's what enables the inclusion of the supernatural. If religions 
weren't dogmatic, there would be no problem in questioning them, putting 
their claims to the test. Religions either outright reject (often with 
hostility) attempts to rationally analyse their claims, or claim things 
that simply can't be proved or disproved, or subjected to logical analysis.

The biggest difference, I think, between science and religion is that 
science encourages asking questions, even mandates it, but religion 
forbids it, or at least strongly discourages it.

>
> But I, personally, think it is better to refine our concepts than to 
> throw out words.
>
> Consider that the scientific conception of the word "energy" for 
> instance, has undergone vast revision throughout its history of use, 
> but we never threw out the word. Rather, we kept the word and revised 
> our conception of energy.
>
> Likewise, rather than throw out a word like "soul", when science 
> provides us a means to revise and improve our conception of it (as 
> say, functionalists or computationalist theories of mind allow us to 
> do), then we ought to improve our conceptions, rather than stamp out 
> the words.

Which leads exactly to the kind of problems I've encountered, where I 
might be using the word to refer to the mind, or a dynamic pattern of 
information-processing subject to natural laws, and the person I'm 
talking to hears their own version of 'immortal soul, not subject to 
natural laws'. The traditional religious version of the word is almost 
ubiquitous in the western world, so I use the word at my peril. Rather 
than use the revised, rational version of the word, I'm pretty much 
forced to just say 'I don't believe in souls'. I'd be all for improving 
our conceptions of the word, and happily use it, but that's just not 
going to work, as long as there are still billions of people who use it 
in the traditional way.

>
>     All the sources I've looked at define religion to be related to
>     supernatural powers (like gods),
>
>
> Buddhism and Shinto generally are considered to not have gods, yet 
> they are called religions.

Buddhism is more a philosophical system than a religion (although the 
concept of reincarnation complicates things), and Shinto has a 
supernatural concept of souls.

>     and people's belief in them. As far as I can determine, 'the
>     supernatural' does not, and cannot, exist.
>
>
> It depends. For example, consider if there are other universes in a 
> multiverse. Are these supernatural or not?

No.
Not only do they not contradict the known laws of nature, the idea of a 
multiverse is derived from and supported by, science. The fact that some 
people think it's correct and some don't has nothing to do with whether 
the idea is supernatural.

>
> If there are other universes, then we must either expand the 
> definition of natural to include universes that operate according to 
> other natural laws, or we must admit there are supernatural things in 
> reality.

Ah, I see. The thing is, other universes, with their own physical laws, 
will be self-consistent. If somehow, those other physical laws could be 
imported into our universe, they might well appear to be supernatural. 
But within their own universe, they aren't.

>     The word means 'outside nature', and nature encompasses everything
>     that actually exists. So religion is primarily about stuff that
>     doesn't exist. The supernatural can make for good entertainment
>     (depending on the writer), but that's all.
>
>
> How do you define nature? If you say it is all things that exist, then 
> I ask: how do you define reality? (How big and encompassing is it in 
> your ontology?)

I don't know what that actually means. I've never understood what the 
word 'ontology' is supposed to mean.
I can only answer the question 'how do you define reality?' with 'what 
is, as opposed to what is not'. That excludes things that are logically 
impossible, of course (which defines a lot of, but not all, religious 
ideas), but also other things that, as far as anybody knows, don't exist.

One thing that should be emphasised, I think, is the difference between 
concepts in minds and instantiations of those concepts (see my earlier 
remark about the existence of gods). We can conceive of impossible 
things, or just nonexistent things, and the concepts can be regarded as 
things, but they aren't the same as the things that the concepts are of. 
'The map is not the territory'.

>
>     For things that actually do exist, I think it just makes sense to
>     avoid conflating them with things that don't. So we should use
>     different words to label them.
>
>
> If only it were so easy to know what does and doesn't exist.

It's not always easy, no, but some things are. I have a high level of 
confidence that the traditional monotheistic gods don't exist (note that 
this isn't the same as 'I believe they don't exist'!)

>     So I don't say things like "I believe the scientific method is the
>     best tool for understanding the world we have discoverd so far",
>     because I don't trust anyone to understand that this use of the
>     word 'believe' is a totally different thing from what someone
>     means when they say "I believe in Inanna!" (or whatever their
>     chosen local deity is).
>
>
> The word believe means the same thing in both contexts, it is only the 
> object of belief that differs. If we are honest with ourselves, we all 
> have beliefs, whether they are in science as a method for finding the 
> truth, or in Inanna.

I don't understand how you can say that.

If you don't understand, or won't acknowledge, the vast gulf between a 
scientific mindset that demands evidence and expects change, and a 
religious one that rejects evidence amd refuses to change, I really 
don't know what else I can say.

Using the word 'belief' in both of these contexts is just a recipe for 
confusion and conflation. Maintaining that it means the same thing in 
each context is, well, the phrase 'beyond belief' springs to mind.

>     Using the words 'religion', 'faith', 'belief' for things like
>     value system, philosophy, feelings of awe, etc., is stamping them
>     as belonging to the realm of the supernatural, which, at least for
>     me, degrades them.
>
>
> This is a connotation you are ascribing, (incorrectly, in my opinion). 
> Einstein spoke of his "cosmic religious feeling" when he contemplated 
> the universe, but he never introduced anything supernatural into it.

Maybe Einstein didn't mean the same thing that priests would mean by the 
word, but using it is inviting them to claim justification for their 
vicious nonsense. Maybe he should have just said 'awe'.

-- 
Ben
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