Comments on Charles Taylor’s Comments

1. < To understand something you have to love it because understanding is never a completely disengaged stance but springs from inspiration.>

I think I understand how light emerges from electronic transitions in atoms and how earthquakes result from tectonic buckling. I don’t know that I love either the electron or earthquakes.

2. <Reason is never disengaged but is always in relation to our embodied engagement with the world because it’s to do with our perceptions of the world.>

Reason is sometimes disengaged when we are in the full enjoyment of music or poetry or art. In fact, such disengagement sometimes enhances the enjoyment.

3. <Feelings aren’t “brute,” as the Enlightenment conception of rationality teaches, but rather are our perceptions of the world.>

I am not sure that this is what the Enlightenment conception of rationality teaches us. I rather think that it encourages to distinguish between feelings-generated truths and reason-generated ones.

4. <Science has dropped its exploration of the teleological, central for Aristotle,>

Physics certainly has done that, because it was fruitless to try to explain planetary orbits, electromagnetic interactions and the chemical bond in terms of teleology.

5. <teleology is undoubtedly a feature of the world, not least in the human sciences.>

In human behavior, for sure. But it has not been established on the basis of science’s methodology that teleology is a feature of the world at large.

6.Some paradigms never gain universal agreement because what scientists commit to is linked to the values they hold.>

Many paradigms do gain universal agreement among practicing scientists. Those who have not practiced and grasped what science says  cannot be expected to agree to scientifically derived results, any more than that a non-initiate into operatic music can appreciate or understand a Verdi.

7. <We’ll never achieve a total consensus on how to solve our problems, though there will be overlaps when people come to the same conclusions, if by different means.>

We don’t need consensus to solve all our problems. It depends on the problems in question. With goodwill and mutual respect many needless conflicts can be resolved.

February 8, 2010

Kim Stanley Robinson Equates Science and Religion

News Item: <“It’s a religion in the sense of religio, it’s what binds us together. It is a form of devotion: the scientific study of the world is simply a kind of worship of it, a very detailed, painstaking, and often tedious daily worship, like Zen,” award-winning science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson…> in a lecture.

In the never-ending battle between science and religion, there are two extremist positions: One views  religion as total nonsense which has no place in a science-informed society, and the other engages in sophistry to show that science and religion are the same.
Some of this latter kind have argued that religion too is a science; others, as in this instance, like to say that science itself is another religion.
Calling religion a science may make some religious people happy, but I am not sure how many practicing scientists will be comfortable when their discipline is described as another religion.
They may take some consolation from the fact that this is done by one who is good at writing fiction.
February 8, 2010

Conversation on Dawkins et al.

<Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott and others are probably right that contemptuous ridicule is not an expedient way to change the minds of those who are deeply religious.>

Dawkins is too intelligent not to understand the thesis of the soft-talkers. So it is not surprising that he concedes, albeit probabilistically, that  they are right.

What he probably does not understand is the goal of a good number of enlightened thinkers is not so much to blast religions, religious beliefs, or religious people, but to persuade them to scientific and enlightened perspectives on natural phenomena, and to make them recognize that one can derive much spiritual and intellectual fulfillment from a scientific worldview when it comes to interpreting the phenomenal world.

<But I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable.>

I imagine by <we>  he is referring to the army of self-appointed crusaders (the New Atheists) who imagine themselves to be the only legitimate spokespeople for Science. While they may have a growing number of faithful flock to their evangelical crusade, I suspect not all of them are scientists, and not all scientists are as yet ready to join their band wagon.  That , I suspect, is why his sales-pitch is getting louder by the day.

But he is, I think, quite right that he himself and even milder versions of him, may not be able to drastically shake and destroy the faith of the deeply and truly religious: i.e. achieve their avowed goal any more than that Al Qaeda, through its tactics, can establish the Sharia in all Muslim lands.

<I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven’t really considered the question very long or very carefully.  And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.>

This is the blatant language of the proselytizers: Islamic, Christians, Communists, all who are so sure they alone hold the key to the Kingdom and also that  others are wallowing in a mire of ignorance. Friedrich Max Müller is said to have once believed that revealing to Hindus how stupid and superstitious they are, and by showing a naked display of contempt for their religion, they will all become Christians en masse. In retrospect that was such arrogant and shallow thinking.

< I think there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it.>

That’s precisely what folks on the other side are thinking  too.

<We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? Ann Coulter is about as good as it gets.>

Fair comparison. Dawkins and his likes are to fanatical rationality what All Coulter is to the opposite side. Both have their respective adulators.

<We can’t lose!>

Thanks to Dawkins (a brilliant scientist whom most of us admire and respect, and a clear thinker for the most part) the party of enlightened scientific outlook is having difficulty advancing, and is in fact losing in some instances.

As long as there is free speech, there will be  bulldogs on both sides that bark and bite, but the less violence-prone are more likely to eventually win the cause of truth and compassion, of reason and enlightened ethics which are more important goals for culture and civilization than treating one’s opponents with contempt and making them laughable.

October 5, 2009

An Exchange on Haiti

Thanks for that deeply felt and carefully considered analysis, Jerald.

I did read Brooks’ piece in the NYT, and agree with him (and you) on the general points you make.

And here are some of my further thoughts on the matter.

1. <I gather from what Brooks says that compassion, charity and doing the Lord’s work will not get the job done>

I agree fully.

2. < and may actually be counter productive.>

Not always and not necessarily. There is a difference between short-range solutions and long-range solutions. Your statement is valid for long-range solutions, but may not be for short range ones. At this point in Haiti, compassion, charity and doing the Lord’s work are urgent and extremely important.: at least many reasonable people in the world feel that way.

3. <What is needed are recognizing hard truths and tough, measurable demands.>

Very true for long range solutions of global poverty and suffering.

I agree that “these are not the traits of compassion.”

4. <Another thought, Mother Nature did not kill most of the people with an earthquake as some now say, but collapsing buildings did. Some years ago a neighbor of mine went regularly to Haiti (I think it was more to ‘save’ them for God than to feed them). All the aid in all this time has not changed much. Saving them for a merciful God didn’t either.>

What has this to do with the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are suffering today? Should we say, “Tough luck, you wretched people! Deal with it!”

5. <A few of you may have been taken back by my comments the other day.>

I was one of the few.

6. < IMHO I think I am a reasonably kind and generous person>

IMO also, from whatever I know of you.

7. < but not a particular compassionate one.>

This is not terrible. Not many are.

8. <I don’t see that compassion does other people much good whereas kindness and generosity sometime does.>

Maybe true. But sometimes compassion does prompt kindness and generosity.

9. <Neither am I empathic. I do not wish to feel their pain and why should I. Nor would I wish that they feel mine, why should they. In fact if they were to feel my pain, that would make my pain only worse. Why multiply pain.>

Very wise stance to take. I too feel that way.

10. <This attitude of mine does not mean I am unaware of the needs of others or of their hurts.>

I can see that.

11. < I do care about people but recognize that if I really dwell on all the wars, poverty, illness and suffering in the world, I would weep away. I would experience great rage as I believe we now have the means to eliminate such things. These events sadden me because we have not.>

I often feel the same way.

12. < We need to craft a new paradigm that does.>

I agree with you fully on this.

13.  <This was predicted several years ago – “a 7.2 magnitude quake in a city like Port-au-Prince, with lax building codes and shoddy construction, could be catastrophic.” – At 200,000 possibly dead and still counting, yes catastrophic, unnecessary and down right stupid.>

Yes it would appear that the people of Haiti did  not take adequate precautions, like the people of New Orleans and Bangladesh and Indonesia before, or of San Francisco in 1906. There are at least two reasons for this: The people did not have the wherewithal to protect themselves fully. Sometime Nature’s fury can outdo human precautions.

14. <I apologize if I ruffled a few feathers here with my comments the other day, but these happenings make me angry.>

My feathers weren’t ruffled.  I just don’t feel like condemning a victim of an accident when the person is writhing with pain, even if the victim had been partly responsible for the mishap. This is just my reaction to events like this. This is not to deny the good sense and wisdom in rationally trying to figure out how the impact of natural disaster can be minimized, and how the poor of the world can be helped on a long range basis. I’d leave that to a later time.

January 17, 2010

On the Armstrong-Harris Debate

As often happens when two intelligent people debate both are right from their respective understandings/convictions/definitions of the issue they are debating, each impervious to the other’s perspective.

To Sam Harris the word religion evokes witchcraft, cannibalism, superstition and such. It cannot be denied that these have been aspects of religion in the past, and still are so in many contexts.

To Armstrong, “religion is also about the quest for transcendence, the discipline of compassion, and the endless search for meaning; … to help us to live creatively, serenely, and kindly with the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition.”

She wisely rejects explicitly those aspects of religion which Harris emphasizes, and (I trust) the latter will be sympathetic to those features and goals of religion which Armstrong mentions.

Then why the difference and why the debate?

This, I contend,  is because the ugly sides of religion have dominated humanity for much too long, and its finer and ennobling dimensions can be incorporated into human life and culture without the heavy doses of deadweight that still deface many religions.

Perhaps the New Atheists and the New Religionists  should be spending more of their time and energy in salvaging whatever is good and noble in our religious traditions and reject all that is anachronistic, unconscionable, and muddled in religious frameworks

They should join hands to formulate a new pan-human religious framework which will be meaningful to the masses, which will foster caring and compassion, and which will make us aware of dimensions beyond  consuming, purging, and propagating. But this will not be possible as long as those who are ardently affiliated to traditional religions refuse to acknowledge the negative and hurtful dimensions of their religions (or are unable to do so), and the awakened folks are incapable of seeing anything good in humanity’s religious heritage and sensitivity.

January 6, 2009

On God and Non-God

The recognition and experience of the splendor of the world and  wonderment about its beauty and variety is what I choose to describe as a theistic reaction to the world. Acknowledging a complex universe without any experience of wonderment, reflection, and awe about an existence that includes love and joy would be a drab and unpoetic awareness such as other creatures on the planet seem to be living through. I characterize it (contrary to the common usage of the world) as atheistic: the explicit, and almost angry, repudiation of even a possible cause of ordered and wondrous complexity.

Where disagreements arise is often regarding the visualization, characterization, and personification of that unfathomable root of ephemeral Reality. Those who deny the existence of a Primary Cause such as is enunciated in traditional religions declare themselves to be atheists, even if they have that transcendent experience of Nature, and they are as eager to demolish the theist’s view as the latter is infuriated by the atheist’s rejection.

This is a tug that is likely to continue for as long as humans rejoice and reflect. It is dangerous only when and where on group gains so much power that it can silence and strangle the other: This has happened in the past, this still persists in some <God-forsaken> regions of the world, and is an ever present threat and possibility even in the most enlightened countries.

January 3, 2009

On Why, Ontology, and How

For  at least two thousand years keen human minds in many cultures explored,
discussed, and debated why the universe came about, why humanity is there,
why there are patterns in the world, why there is good and evil, why there
is beauty and ugliness, why there is pain and pleasure, enjoyment and
suffering, and many other such why’s.

The fruits of those inquiries are enshrined in the religious lore and wisdom
of humanity. With all their richness and deep insights – and these questions
continue to be explored in our own times – the proclaimed answers have not
achieved any unanimity in the human family. Occasionally, they have led to
divergences and rifts that have been more harmful than helpful.

Staring again in antiquity philosophers have been seriously wondering about
the nature of human knowledge and the reality of Reality. Their sharp
analyses and unrelenting probes have resulted in abundant volumes of
fascinating perspectives, but with very little success in calming the
turbulence of verbal exchanges among the gladiators in the area of
metaphysics and epistemology. If the past is any indicator, such exchanges
are likely to persist unabated for two thousand and more years, assuming the
species will be on the plane of reality for that long.

But then, by the sixteenth century it occurred to some that one should
perhaps explore the how of natural phenomena than the why of existence, and
this was the point de départ of what was to blossom as modern science.
Unlike reflections on the why and on the ultimate nature of reality, which
rely largely on insight, intuition, revelation, pure rationality, and
speculation,  investigations into the how of things are carried out at
several  overlapping levels: logical, observational, experimental,
instrumental, mathematical, conceptual, modeling, etc. These ingredients
have contributed immensely to the power and prestige of science which are
the envy of all who wonder seriously about human knowledge. Modern science
pleads ignorance as to the why of the world, and may respect those who
engage in that pursuit. Modern science  may not be able to coherently
formulate a list of moral injunctions for personal behavior from its own
resources, much less assuage a grieving heart or uplift a dejected mind, but
these are not its goals. Even with this constraint, it has much to boast
about its achievements in answering the how of natural processes, which
remain to this day unsurpassed by any other mode of inquiry.

None of this is to say that we should switch our minds off to questions
relating to the why of things or to the nature of reality. No thinking mind
can easily do that. But it may be useful to recognize the role and relevance
of scientific, philosophical, and spiritual pursuits.

February 2, 2010

Science on Religion

Sean Carroll: <Some people have as their primary goal advocating for some sort of cause, whereas others are simply devoted to the truth. But an organization advocating for science needs to take both into consideration.>

I agree with this, in principle.
However, we need to be very clear about what one means by Truth.
There is <theoretical truth> and there is experiential truth.> It is the latter that Gandhi had in mind when he wrote about his <Experiments with Truth.>
People advocating a cause often have a certain type of truth in mind.
Science itself is an enterprise that is working for a cause: the quest for truths about the phenomenal world.
It seems to me that it would be in the best interest of science if  scientists qua scientists keep silent on religious truths. But as thinking people and as citizens they have every right and obligation to speak on such issues.
But it could be inappropriate for  scientific organizations to take a position on religious matters, exactly as (in enlightened frameworks) governments and governmental leaders refrain from advocating one religion or another.

January 20, 2010

On Grace

Among the many in intriguing aspects of the human experience is the fact that we have achieved different levels of understanding, awakening, and sensibilities. At the simplest level we may attribute this to different guiding factors, educational opportunities, healthy influences. Biologically one may trace aspects of them to genes and other biochemical influences.

But, as with God, one may still ask wherefrom are these salutary sources for individual lives? Why should I get the positives and someone else on the planet be subjected to less enriching or even the most awful mangling in life?

Some have tried to bring in stars and planets to account for such discrepancies.

Others speak of good karma, and yet others invoke terms like blessing and good luck.

It is equally fulfilling to speak of grace in this context: as a special favor granted by the unfathomable mystery that flings its favors in apparently random modes.

I recognize that these are but conceptual, sometimes even verbal, artifacts to explain away what is in essence a Grand Mystery.

So, for my part, I am as content with attributing my unsought bio-brownies to good luck as to Gemini, blessings, good karma or grace.

Whatever the source, even if it is only stochastic serendipity, as a  culturally  conditioned reflecting human, I express my gratitude to It. That way I avoid being an ungrateful wretch.

January 20, 2010

Thoughts provoked by the Earthquake in Haiti

The human condition depends largely on the helpful balance of bio-friendly factors in Nature and  on the availability of resources to feed and sustain the creatures on our planet. Life-destroying disasters arise from Nature’s periodic whims such as hurricanes and earthquakes. But there are also calamities that  result from social injustice and iniquities, fanatical beliefs,  racial and religious tensions, and the like.

Much light and wisdom shine from intelligent and sensitive minds. Reflections on these matters are certainly stimulating and clarifying when we are in the comfort zone of home and hearth, but when, for no fault at all, one is thrown into the quagmire of violent political conflicts (such as in Palestine or in the terror-ridden terrains of Afghanistan or in scores of other places on earth where one can barely come upon basic needs), or when one’s  modest life course  is rudely jarred by Nature’s blind fury, what is one to do?

Under such circumstances, our worldviews can be shattered. Some cling even more dearly to the God from whom they still expected love and mercy, because that faith gives them the strength of heart to bear the burden. Others are tempted to abandon their long-held trust in such a God.

But those who are not directly affected often  feel a moral obligation to help their fellow creatures on the planet, in however small and symbolic a measure, with no consideration of race or religion, nationality or  history. What, one may wonder, is the source of this innate morality that touches so many people, if not all? I don’t know, and in a context like the earthquake in Haiti, I really don’t care.  I am reminded of the poem

When Disaster Strike

When lightning strikes a praying crowd

And the pious burn and die;

When earthquakes bury decent folk

And orphaned children cry;

When sick and old are abandoned too

And people lose their mind:

Try not for these and disasters such

Answers clear to find.

There are times to ask if God’s just a thought

Or indeed a fact.

There are times at which we need to go

And at once begin to act.

With loss and pain and intense grief

We don’t have much to gain,

From arguments on heaven and hell.

They’ll all be just in vain.

Let’s search and see what we can do

For those who are in need,

Let’s see how we can help and heal,

How we can clothe and feed.

It does not matter if we do not know

Why there’s pain around.

What we need are helping hands,

Not learned views and sound.

January 15, 2010