Science & Spirituality - Should they go hand in hand? - General

[QUOTE=sgman91;42708815]but not a naturalistic claim. There's no reason to assume our form of science has anything to say about things outside of our space time.[/QUOTE] And there's certainly no reason to assume religion does.

[QUOTE=Beerminator;42647650]How can science and spirituality go hand in hand? There is no proof of the existence of something like a supernatural "spirit".[/QUOTE] Absence of proof is not proof of absence. For all the bullshit atheists call out in the various religious texts, many of the more militant ones can't seem to grasp this one simple concept.

[QUOTE=lavacano;42712975]Absence of proof is not proof of absence. For all the bullshit atheists call out in the various religious texts, many of the more militant ones can't seem to grasp this one simple concept.[/QUOTE] Yes, but you can't use that as a justification for believing in something. Which pretty much makes religious beliefs unfounded.

[QUOTE=Falubii;42713944]Yes, but you can't use that as a justification for believing in something. Which pretty much makes religious beliefs unfounded.[/QUOTE] Nor can you use the fact that there is no proof as a justification by itself for declaring a lack of existence. Which pretty much makes atheistic beliefs unfounded as well. To put things bluntly, we don't know shit about how the universe started (I'm not talking about the Big Bang, that's merely the first event. I'm talking about its cause). We know absolutely fucking nothing about the beginning of time. We don't even know if time and this universe started simultaneously. We've made plenty of guesses, and if you wish to use one of those guesses as your own, more power to you. But do not claim at any time that you [b]know[/b] shit about the very beginning, because you don't, and you're a goddamn liar to say otherwise.

as;dlkhzidoks;laasoifhsadlfhaisudn make sense of that, it may be a formula for chicken pox.

[QUOTE=lavacano;42718212]Nor can you use the fact that there is no proof as a justification by itself for declaring a lack of existence. Which pretty much makes atheistic beliefs unfounded as well. To put things bluntly, we don't know shit about how the universe started (I'm not talking about the Big Bang, that's merely the first event. I'm talking about its cause). We know absolutely fucking nothing about the beginning of time. We don't even know if time and this universe started simultaneously. We've made plenty of guesses, and if you wish to use one of those guesses as your own, more power to you. But do not claim at any time that you [b]know[/b] shit about the very beginning, because you don't, and you're a goddamn liar to say otherwise.[/QUOTE] Time and space were both in a singularity until the big bang.

the big bang is not a scientific or spiritual practice unless scientists gain some kind of kick on the thought of a universe expanding, it's all irrelevent.

Well, some might. It is pretty interesting.

[QUOTE=lavacano;42712975][B]Absence of proof is not proof of absence.[/B] For all the bullshit atheists call out in the various religious texts, many of the more militant ones can't seem to grasp this one simple concept.[/QUOTE] I hate it when people use this argument in this context. It makes sense when you're debating about ET existence or mathematical theorems for instance but the moment you bring religion and the existence of deities into this is where your wikipedia'd argument collapses. We don't have to assume that some divine intelligence poofed everything into existence and we certainly don't have to assume religious texts written millenniums ago have some ground, because they don't. And so far nothing supernatural has been tested or demonstrated so there is absolutely no reason to believe why we should accept religious texts as authority as our understanding of the universe grows. Yes, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but when the same arguments about intelligent design has been repeated throughout centuries and hasn't been researched by the people claiming it, and in fact the people claiming it abstract their arguments as time goes by and science grows, then your argument is some kind of plain [I]stupid[/I].

Of course those texts have ground. They have a lot of moral value, yet the focus somehow went from that to "prove it has value". The belief of an eternal life/spirit shouldn't be debated as if one person asserts that the other to disregard their feelings. If you feel something you can't explain and it changed you internally, would you like someone to claim you simply had a brain malfunction?

[QUOTE=AK'z;42732204]Of course those texts have ground. They have a lot of moral value, yet the focus somehow went from that to "prove it has value".[/QUOTE] How is owning slaves and allowing you to beat them have any moral value? And even if they did have moral value, we [B]don't[/B] need ancient texts and a chiseled stone to tell us that killing people is wrong. [QUOTE] The belief of an eternal life/spirit shouldn't be debated as if one person asserts that the other to disregard their feelings. If you feel something you can't explain and it changed you internally, would you like someone to claim you simply had a brain malfunction?[/QUOTE] If I feel or see something I can't explain, it's ridiculous to assume by default it must be supernatural until proved otherwise. That's why science exists, so we can research into and test what we don't know until we find something and start from there. You can take any problem and plug in the supernatural to get an answer. We need to stop taking comfort in thinking there is some divine being who created everything and drop the "as long as it feels okay to me, I don't care if my belief is true or not". When someone makes a claim to you that they felt something that they can't explain so therefore it must be divine, you have no reason to assume that they gave you 100% information and even if they did, they must provide you evidence. It is not up to you to prove them wrong. You can sit there and claim how something supernatural affected you or others or move your butt and press these claims.

"have a lot of moral value" =/= 100% morally sound [editline]2nd November 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=HighdefGE;42733136] .. We need to stop taking comfort in thinking there is some divine being.[/QUOTE] You want everyone to have the same experiences in life as you. Rather than accept people feel attached to a spirit that gets them up in the morning and help people, you'd rather them be some sort of norm. It's irrational to disregard feelings as ridiculous and scientifically pointless when each of us are on our own path.

[QUOTE=AK'z;42733226]"have a lot of moral value" =/= 100% morally sound[/QUOTE] So if the same texts have twisted values, why set them as an example for morality? [QUOTE]You want everyone to have the same experiences in life as you. Rather than accept people feel attached to a spirit that gets them up in the morning and help people, you'd rather them be some sort of norm. It's irrational to disregard feelings as ridiculous and scientifically pointless when each of us are on our own path.[/QUOTE] Way to disregard everything else I said in my post. I don't want 'everyone' to live my life and in fact atheism is definitely not the norm. And did I say feelings are pointless? I love my parents, my cousins, my family, my friends, and the fact that I even breathe but it is [b]not[/b] because some mythical being or a thousands years old texts told me to. I am what I am. I accept that people believe in the supernatural but people don't need to "be attached to a spirit" to go about their day or help people. In fact, there are plenty of atheist-ran charity organizations out there that help others, probably much more than religious ones do. Back to the original topic, it's stupid to propose that the supernatural somehow ties in with our scientific knowledge. Sure, it's fine to believe in the [i]possibility[/i] of spirits or otherworldly intelligence, but until you have something to show, there's no reason why any of us should take your word for it. Mythical beings have not helped us progress in the past, and they certainly will not help us now. If you personally want to believe in that stuff, that's fine as long as none of that influences children because we need more engineers and scientists. We as a humanity need to progress as a whole and keep mythological beings in stories.

[QUOTE=HighdefGE;42733974] [B]Back to the original topic[/B], it's stupid to propose that the supernatural somehow ties in with our scientific knowledge. Sure, it's fine to believe in the [i]possibility[/i] of spirits or otherworldly intelligence, but until you have something to show, there's no reason why any of us should take your word for it. Mythical beings have not helped us progress in the past, and they certainly will not help us now. If you personally want to believe in that stuff, that's fine as long as none of that influences children because we need more engineers and scientists. We as a humanity need to progress as a whole and keep mythological beings in stories.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure you understood the original topic at all.

I'm rather more curious about something else...is spirituality an innate thing,something the we are born with of the humans (or perhaps even of the animals? ) or is it something that we aquire though traditions,practices,and the culture of the society we live in? I think religiousness,spirituality and everything in-between is a relic of the past, and it fails to serve us nowadays, and it can even have bellicose consequences( as it has happened so many times in the past in clashes of civilisations, one example beying the death of atahuelpa,ruler of the incas who was imprisoned and later killed by the spaniards after he declined to bow down to the christian faith, and the inca soldiers sheathing their weapons because they thought the spaniards were belived to be the form of a returned god) This happened over and over with the persians ottomans portugese roman empires...to name a few. Can you see my point? Right now I think we need better healthcare,education,social&intelectual life, and those all happen due to improovements in technologies and science. Happily, this is a vicious circle. science&tech further improoves the quality of our lifes, and because of this,alot more people get to become science litterate, advancing research to even farther horizons. In the past(especially before the printing press became a thing) there were few followers of science, and it was percieved more of an arcane or even mystical thing, among the masses and to some degree to the pioneers themselfes. I highly recommend this series, amongst other things: [MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhgo9fAlAQQ[/MEDIA] And jared diamond's stuff aswell: [MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLJfZOyFpZo[/MEDIA]

[QUOTE=AK'z;42734066]I'm not sure you understood the original topic at all.[/QUOTE] I'm sure I do. And my vote is no. If there's anything else you'd like to bring up I would be glad to discuss it.

I do find a certain beauty in solving Physics problems, and doing experiments to probe the universe (or verifying ohm's law in the last experiment I've done, I'm only a physics fresher), but I won't call that spirituality, as you only ask questions that you can (or at least try to) find empirical answers to. Sure it's fun to talk about what existence is in terms of unfalsifiable could bes, but that isn't science. Science to me is trying to understand the universe without spirituality only using empirical evidence, but that doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

Take acid, become spirituality

both deal with the divine and the struggle for reaching it so yea they sure do!!! imo this has nothing to do with fuckin debating whether or not spirits n faeries exist. it's about that raw feeling of spiritual ecstasy that the divine places us in. god is divine, just like nature is divine, just like mathematics is divine, and people can have similar emotional reactions to all of those things. the divine can be glimpsed at in religion, or psychoactive drugs, or science, or math, or art, or sex

Science made acid, and acid (LSD) makes me feel really in touch with myself, my friends and nature (every plant and tree is a livin thing maaaan know what im sayin). The people involved in the chemistry and production might not see much of a spiritual side to it, but the consumer definitely does. I'd say this is a fair example of science and spirituality meeting.

that doesn't mean he's wrong lol since I tried shrooms I can agree on a lot of things with my christian friend

OP, as has probably been said many times already, it sounds to me like you're confusing the term 'spirituality' with 'a sense of satisfaction/validation/fulfillment derived from learning'. That sense of satisfaction is internalized - The human imagination, for example, can help us come up with exciting new applications for new scientific formulae, or one can often feel a sense of wonder in making a personal discovery regarding the physical mechanics of the universe. None of that has anything to do with the scientific methodology that makes such discoveries possible, nor is there a great need to change it. I don't quite understand what you mean - Are you trying to say that scientists aren't allowed to feel satisfied, or express their satisfaction in a professional context? What could a researcher's feeling of satisfaction possibly have to do with the material he's researching? What would make the way he personally finds something appealing, for example, become relevant to the significance of, say, a new mathematical model to explain the physics of subatomic particles?

[QUOTE=Harnbrand;42804835]OP, as has probably been said many times already, it sounds to me like you're confusing the term 'spirituality' with 'a sense of satisfaction/validation/fulfillment derived from learning'. That sense of satisfaction is internalized - The human imagination, for example, can help us come up with exciting new applications for new scientific formulae, or one can often feel a sense of wonder in making a personal discovery regarding the physical mechanics of the universe. None of that has anything to do with the scientific methodology that makes such discoveries possible, nor is there a great need to change it. I don't quite understand what you mean - Are you trying to say that scientists aren't allowed to feel satisfied, or express their satisfaction in a professional context? What could a researcher's feeling of satisfaction possibly have to do with the material he's researching?[/QUOTE] I think the term is misconstrued. But the examples you brought up could very easily be a part of the scientists practice. I tried to focus more on the practice of science as a service in the OP but research can very well be a spiritual experience for a person; e.g. the ideas conjured by a mathematician can very well be their drive as a person. This film is a nice example: [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/]A Beautiful Mind[/url] Although it's a dramatisation, the real character must have gone through a huge transformation inside as a direct result of his gift in the science.

I have an elaborate hypothesis on spirituality and other things that would be considered 'supernatural' I call it a hypothesis as there is a way to provide evidence, it's just a matter of finding it, like an archaeologist finding a lost city. I even thought up a name for it. 'scientia ignotum' Latin for 'Science Unknown' :3: Of course, I have no math to support it but I'm sure there are Scientists that have evidence of the things in my hypothesis and I'm just unaware of them.

[QUOTE=Dakiin Dovah;42891635]I have an elaborate hypothesis on spirituality and other things that would be considered 'supernatural' I call it a hypothesis as there is a way to provide evidence, it's just a matter of finding it, like an archaeologist finding a lost city. I even thought up a name for it. 'scientia ignotum' Latin for 'Science Unknown' :3: Of course, I have no math to support it but I'm sure there are Scientists that have evidence of the things in my hypothesis and I'm just unaware of them.[/QUOTE] Umm, what?