Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Maybe the interpretation of scientific data just seems like it's religious because it keeps pushing into the realms that were formerly the realm of religion?
Rolling a ball down an incline and determining the relationships of the forces is something easy to disassociate from god/spirituality/however you want to define religion and describe and understand scientifically. Things like morality, origins, consciousness, and meaning are far more difficult, but are still natural phenomenon and are still subject to scientific inquiry.
Or am I missing your meaning?
Now I really don't understand what you are saying here, what do you mean by "the truth"?
Natural events are the only things that have an impact on human understanding. If it is determined that free will is an illusion that will (and should!) have a significant impact on our understanding of ourselves, society, morality, etc.
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What does it mean to be natural? As moderns, we interpret natural man through the eyes of the liberal theorists, Hobbes, Descartes etc... We reduce ourselves to mean creatures who operate in a mechanical fashion almost entirely around the basis of avoiding pain and propagating our genes.
Who says this is correct? Science? When Dawkins wrote
"The Selfish Gene" think about the theoretical and political assumptions he made as he interpreted the science.
Humanity is not subject to the natural sciences, but to the human sciences, ie. philosophy, a subject which as almost been entirely lost to us in this age post-Darwin, Freud, Weber etc...
I don't know where I am going without erupting into a full-scale post about philosophy and the background of the humanities endeavour, but suffice to say that there are more rich and complete views of humanity buried into our past.
Maybe instead of Darwin we should be reading Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau etc...