Monday, April 5, 2021

Eternal Happiness for "Fools" and Gurus

It´s a funny skit. As for the issues, it gets at the nature of the non-seeker, or the misguided seeker still full of "the world." I have a situtation at a religious blog where a Dawkins or Hitchens type anti-theist very simplistically, and persistently, continues to push the same assertions. "You need evidence for God. No one has ever proved that God exists." I have to honor the type at one level, because they pushed me to the next level of spiritual awakening in the intellectual realm in recent years. There is a certain force in the mere use of "logic." "God is invisible, therefore he is a fairy-tale." That follows the orientation that science has been pursuing virtually since just before Newton as DesCartes invented modern mathematical notation. People tried to apply DesCartes´ approach to human affairs, and G Vico emerged as a secular, non-theistic respondent who pioneered constructionist ideas. That means perceiving that humans create their own artifacts, in complex ways. Terms like rationalism, logical positivism, and now scientism capture the problem of the science extremist side, also scientific materialism. Also, the Cartesian mind-body split is an iconic term that enters into matters. I´ve appreciated Karen Armstrong´s efforts along the way, with her articulation about the importance of spiritual practice and promotion of interfaith efforts. As a mixed blessing factor, her historical use of "mythos" to capture valid spiritual-religious experience as opposed to "logos" of rational thinking has had me doubting. Certainly, unempirical notions have been used in trying to innovate new religious experience, justifying the root term "myth-". Yet, that seems off-target, and carries the baggage of "myth" as fairy-tale. J Campbell used it too, I recall, and he stayed stuck in the non-transcendental and merely psychological. One key insight is to recognize the mystification of "science." "Seeing is believing" typifies the orientation, with Newton noticing an apple and looking at the moon, then studying the rate of fall of the apple. "Science," of course, is a modern popularized use by scientists themselves that extracts philosophy from it, and thus emphasizing the physical phenomena being mastered by virtual technicians. But, banalization is involved in that. Newton didn´t just "work it out." He thought about it, played around, and even thought about the concept of "action at a distance" in relation to his alchemical activities and those IDEAS. We don´t even need to talk about Newton´s understanding of an existing God to return to the term used for scientists until after the 1850s or so: "natural philosophers." Thus, Einstein´s insights were developed as he worked in a patent office, not a Collider or Atom Smasher facility. He had been philosophizing scientifically about light and its physics´ math by his Anno Mirabilis of some four groundbreaking papers. The scientific method is a philosophical method. It is empirical, and that too, can only mean empirical philosophy. Philosopher of Science M Pigliucci flipped, whether because of debating WL Craig or a series of events after that. He was anti-theist atheist, but became anti-scientism atheist, responding to physicist L Krauss who said, "Philosophy is a kind of science." M Pigl. commented, "He´s got it exactly backwards." Thus, we can start appreciating the philosophical value of questions like, "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" Science´s mystique is cracked, ultimately to its core. We can thus start delving into the relevance of scientific studies about the benefits of prayer and meditation, and other religious devotional practices. Scientific philosophy thus can richly supplement spiritual-religious knowledge, which of course is based on practice and the "spiritual-religious method." Well, that´s a philosophical statement. What else happens when philosophy meets spirituality and religion? lol

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