Re: "Mangled Magisteria," by E.G. Ross

--- In wta-talk@yahoogroups.com, "John Leppik" <jleppik@k...> wrote:
> Interesting article regarding "NOMA, Non-Overlapping Magisteria". I
> agree and would like to add three key points.
>
> 1. If God created man, science and our world, then the study of
these
> creations is the study of God's works and will lead to a greater
> understanding of God, and should be very much supported by
religions.
> The divide comes when science demonstrated that the world works
> different from a literal reading of holy texts. Religions tend to
> treat such findings as blasphemous rather than new insights on God.

Deism in the 18th Century tried to make the case for this view of
science, but for some reason the meme never got much traction. Even
back then, the smart & educated people in Europe and America could
tell that the literal claims of Christianity are nonsensical, though
like modern "neoconservatives," most of them kept their opinions to
themselves while supporting religion as a socially useful fiction for
keeping the rabble in line. A few brave ones attacked "revealed
religion" in print, but they had to fall back on some idea of god
because the absence of a natural explanation for the appearance of
order in living organisms seemed to require the postulation of a
supernatural designer. Because science was progressing while theology
had been stagnant and untestable since the beginning, science looked
like a promising new way to find the mind of god.

>
> 2. Religions often stretch far beyond their claimed sources of
> authority. I do not know of any religious text (other than what may
> be claimed by modern cults) that was written by an author who had
any
> inkling of DNA, stem cell cultivation, cloning and many other
aspects
> of modern life. Yet, self-appointed religious authorities claim to
> know what God's attitude is towards such activities.

Buddhists seem to have made a correct and counter-intuitive guess
when they concluded that the perception of selfhood is illusory.
Buddhism seems to have a future because it doesn't really depend on
the historicity of a legendary Buddha, but rather bases itself on a
handful of plausible observations about the human condition and how
to improve one's subjective experience of its unpleasant aspects.
Whether suffering is all that undesirable is really more a matter of
personality than fact. But I can see a Transhumanist Buddhism as a
plausible eupraxophy.

Christianity, by contrast, has gotten so many empirically testable
things either wrong or doubtful that it's going to be hard to salvage
unless you can practice it as a form of creative anachronism. It's
especially going to founder when the science of consciousness matures
and there's just not going to be a credible way to maintain the
existence of a supernatural "soul." When we have the ability to apply
something to a person's brain and make her do or experience anything
we want with the feeling it's completely "volitional," then the
fiction of personal autonomy has to be discarded.

With our luck, however, a christian theocracy could use this
technology to make completely reliable converts, Stepford Saints for
Christ.

>
> 3. If anyone in the secular world made totally unsubstantiated
claims
> for their own benefit analogous to those made by religious, they
would
> soon find themselves in a secular or religious jail and damned by
> their religion. I will allude to just a few claims and acts:
heaven,
> hell, help in getting to heaven, help in avoiding hell, being saved,
> killing of heretics and witches, fees without deliverables, the
> trinity, resurrections, miracles, saints...........

I wonder how long it's going to take for christians to abandon this
sorry fantasy about getting "raptured" before all the bad stuff in
the book of Revelation is supposed to happen. I read recently that
one of the main advocates of this doctrine, John F. Walvoord of the
Dallas Theological Seminary, died in his 90's after spending his life
waiting for the rapture.

Mark Plus
It's not "religious" or "science fictional" if you can do it.
Received on Mon Feb 10 19:19:12 2003