Quebec: Judge rules "Students must learn about other religions"

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Shakespeare isn't going to provide any great insight into anything relevant that science covers, IMO. I have an English degree and I learned a lot of interesting things studying the guys you've listed above, but at the end of the day Shakespeare was just writing plays and poems. I don't think he contributed much of anything to humanity. I know I'll get flamed for that, but somebody like Alexander Flemming (inventor of penicillin) is much more valuable to humanity than a story teller.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Allan Bloom

[troutman]

Originally Posted by peter12

I can read Darwin once and understand exactly what he is saying. I can read Plato 1000 times and still not understand much. One is a scientist, the other is a philosopher.

Not sure where you are going. Is one field of inquiry more important than another?

I can read Hawking 1000 times and still not understand much.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by troutman

Not sure where you are going. Is one field of inquiry more important than another?

I can read Hawking 1000 times and still not understand much.

The enquiry into the state of human wisdom is the only endeavour that has ever mattered. Not that science and technology isn't important, but they are not what we live for.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by peter12

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Allan Bloom

I was speaking entirely about Shakespeare. I wasn't denouncing all reading for pete's sake.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I was speaking entirely about Shakespeare. I wasn't denouncing all reading for pete's sake.

I think Shakespeare qualifies as "all reading." The point that these books are just books and not the guides to our soul is something I profoundly disagree with.

How does science direct our passions and our virtues? There is nothing to it which makes us human, it is only a tool to explore our natural world.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by peter12

The enquiry into the state of human wisdom is the only endeavour that has ever mattered. Not that science and technology isn't important, but they are not what we live for.

Part of being human is wanting to understand how the world works, not just in understanding "the experience of being alive" (Campbell). I think these realms overlap too, unlike NOMA (Gould):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria

In his book Rocks of Ages (1999), Gould put forward what he described as "a blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution to ... the supposed conflict between science and religion."[1] He defines the term magisterium as "a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution"[1] and the NOMA principle is "the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).

Francis Collins also criticised the limits of NOMA, believing that science, religion, and other spheres have "partially overlapped," though agrees with Gould that morals, spirituality, and ethics cannot be determined from naturalistic interpretation

Richard Dawkins has criticized the NOMA principle on the grounds that religion does not, and cannot, steer clear of the material scientific matters that Gould considers outside religion's scope.

I don't see why morals and ethics can't be examined scientifically.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by troutman

Part of being human is wanting to understand how the world works, not just in understanding "the experience of being alive" (Campbell). I think these realms overlap too, unlike NOMA (Gould):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria

Aristotle said that man, by nature, is a political animal. The capacity to understand the world around us is aided by the capacity to understand ourselves. The ancients believed that all men were NOT capable of this understanding, us moderns believe differently. Unfortunately, the current reductionism of science is proving the ancients correct. The current interpretation of scientific data, unaided by philosophical understanding of humanity, is completely useless to the way in which we live our lives. Darwin, by himself, gives us no context to life beyond a vague and unconvincing natural history.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by troutman

I don't see why morals and ethics can't be examined scientifically.

Of course they can examined in a rational sense, just not in a laboratory.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by peter12

Aristotle said that man, by nature, is a political animal. The capacity to understand the world around us is aided by the capacity to understand ourselves. The ancients believed that all men were NOT capable of this understanding, us moderns believe differently. Unfortunately, the current reductionism of science is proving the ancients correct. The current interpretation of scientific data, unaided by philosophical understanding of humanity, is completely useless to the way in which we live our lives. Darwin, by himself, gives us no context to life beyond a vague and unconvincing natural history.

If we can't understand what a philosopher is saying after 1000 readings, just what exactly are they teaching us about life?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by peter12

Of course they can examined in a rational sense, just not in a laboratory.

I think biologists have examined scientifically "moral" behavior in primates and other animals.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by troutman

If we can't understand what a philosopher is saying after 1000 readings, just what exactly are they teaching us about life?

That there is more to life than I can understand in just 1000 readings.

[FanningTheFlames]

Plato's "The Cave" is still one of the most revolutionary works ever written because it forces you to face yourself. I don't think that my illusions are but shadows of a deeper reality, but I do think that my consciousness is what separates me from direct experience, if that makes sense.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by peter12

That there is more to life than I can understand in just 1000 readings.

Maybe life can't be understood at all?

I need a drink. Thanks for the interesting discussion.

[photon]

Originally Posted by peter12

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.

By natural I just mean that our brains are physical organs constructed by our genes and our environment, and that "we" arise from the processes in the brain.

That doesn't necessarily mean that that reduces us to mechanical creatures, it just means that there are natural reasons for what we as humans do and think. Understanding those reasons doesn't make those the thoughts and actions invalid.

Understanding why we have the mores we have and how they developed doesn't invalidate them, any more than understanding that a magic trick is really just a trick makes it less magical; I don't have to believe in magic to feel the effect of the trick.

Originally Posted by peter12

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...

Unless you are suggesting some kind of mind/body dualism how can you say humanity is not subject to the natural sciences?

From Wikipedia: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language."

I think science can contribute to the philosophical discussion about any of those things.

Originally Posted by peter12

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.

Studying humanity through science is not in itself a view of humanity; science doesn't make value judgments. Science is a process.

Science could tell us how altruism developed, and could tell us how the drive for infidelity developed, but doesn't make a statement about the value of each of those and if they should be sought after or avoided. Just like science can tell you how to build a bomb, but not if you should use it.

And philosophy does have a close relation to science in that it is reasoned and explicit (as opposed to mysticism or something).

Originally Posted by peter12

Of course they can examined in a rational sense, just not in a laboratory.

The world is a laboratory.

Originally Posted by peter12

Aristotle said that man, by nature, is a political animal. The capacity to understand the world around us is aided by the capacity to understand ourselves. The ancients believed that all men were NOT capable of this understanding, us moderns believe differently. Unfortunately, the current reductionism of science is proving the ancients correct. The current interpretation of scientific data, unaided by philosophical understanding of humanity, is completely useless to the way in which we live our lives. Darwin, by himself, gives us no context to life beyond a vague and unconvincing natural history.

You'll have to elaborate on how reductionism of science is proving that men were not capable of understanding themselves.

If people ignore philosophy in the pursuit of understanding that's hardly the fault of the scientific process. It's not a one or the other proposition.

To complain that Darwin gives "no context to life beyond a vague and unconvincing natural history" seems like a big straw man to me. Darwin never set out to nor claimed to have a complete view of humanity. He simply described the processes (descent with modification and natural selection) that leads to the diversity of life on our planet. By itself it's not a value judgment about any facet of humanity.

HOWEVER you can take Darwin and use his conclusions in philosophy. At one point people thought black people were not fully human; while Darwin removes those distinctions. In a philosophical discussion of ethics knowing that black and white people are the same might have some impact on the discussion no?

As an aside I'd like to know how Darwin is unconvincing about what he said.

[jammies]

Perhaps science is seen as a possible way to the understanding of the human condition because philosophy has been such a failure in the same cause. Do we really have any better understanding of the great philosophical questions than the Greeks had over 2000 years ago?

I see "science" as a way of thought, and as a way of thought I don't see how it can be outright dismissed as a basis for understanding the human condition. The idea that science is all about reductionism is plain wrong and a favorite argument of those who don't really understand science and don't have any real desire to do so.

Science assumes that there is an objective reality and then tries to discover what that reality by postulating hypotheses and then testing to see if the results of experiment and investigation match the expected results of the hypothesis. Science is not dogma or a particular method of inquiry, science is much more discovering the method of inquiry that will lead to illumination of the subject you are investigating. It is predicated upon reality being knowable: to say that human thoughts and motivations are beyond its power to elucidate is to claim one of two things: they are not part of objective reality, or they are not knowable.

I am not saying that one of these two things might not be true, but to say that one, the other, or both ARE true is an unsupported assertion, and not any kind of final argument. The idea that thought is physical has already, to my mind, been almost entirely proven, and thus it seems unlikely that it stands apart from objective reality; that it is unknowable might be true, but that doesn't leave philosophy in any better position than science, does it?

[Azure]

Sorry, but I'm still not seeing why anyone should be 'forced' to take this course.

It should be offered, sure...but not forced.

If someone has a history in world religion, let them take the class. If they don't....don't force them.

Just like Physics, Chemistry, or Biology. Here in Alberta at least you don't actually have to take a 20 or 30 level course in any of those. You can actually take a Science 20/30 class that covers part of each, or you can take a Physics 20/30, Biology 20/30 or Chemistry 20/30 class.

Or you can take two of them.

Its all about what the kids are interested in.

Social Studies as a course isn't very well suited to teach religion anyways.