Quote:
|
Reason or evidence based spirituality. Can we have a true spirituality based solely on reason or is an element of faith required?
|
Faith itself is based in Reason and Experience. There is no faith without reason. Perhaps one person's idea of a reason might be different than another's but that in itself is based on the two people's individual experience. People who do not understand faith, don't understand it because they have never seen it work. People who have faith have it because they have seen it work. It is that simple... as simple as any other scientific experiment, and no different. In fact science itself requires faith in Science, and a constant universe.
If for example, you believed in a random universe belief in Science would be impossible. If a person believed that you could drop a rock a hundred times and it fell down, but on the 101st time it might fall UP for example, then belief in experiments would be useless... and we all know in, for example drug trials, you have to look at hundereds of thousands of tests, to know all the possible outcomes, because of individuality... therefore, it would take tremendous "FAITH" to take a drug that had only been tested a thousand times. When it comes to biological organisms... the universe is far more random than we would like.
Faith can be defined in several ways, but the basic definition of Faith is just trust, and so I suspect all people have a form of faith in something or other. Most people trust someone or something. We have Faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, at the designated time. WE have faith that we can make it through a day's work, faith that the floor will not colapse under our feet, and Faith that our money will be honored at the bank. To me Faith is just a belief... a trust that things will be OK. Most people have this natural capacity to a greater or lesser degree.
Faith is also defined as Belief. Most people have a belief system, whether it is based in religion, science, politics, and/or experience. People learn what to expect from experience, which is processed through their personal philosophy, personality and disposition. In other words everyone has a hypothesis, or set of assumptions about life which they place their 'faith' in, whether that hypothesis is based in religion, or something else.
People place faith in Science, in exactly the same way they do religion, and often that is much more harmful... Science is in itself a religion. If you watch the TV adds for meds which list possible side effects, and the adds for attourney's who are drumming up lawsuits for people who have taken meds and are crippled or dead because of them... I think that we see a vast and irrational faith in the general population who take pills, just because their doctor perscribes them... and that IS also a kind of faith.
Even parinoid people have a concept of how things are, which they have faith in... maybe an inverse backwards kind of faith, but still a faith... which is a way that they predict the future by the past. They've been let down before, and they expect it again... it is reverse and distructive, but still faith. Science is based in the faith in the material to remain unchanging... and to keep a constant pattern of action to reaction. Without belief in these patterns, science would be meaningless.
I think Faith in some form is just human nature, but advanced faith is considerably more... of exactly the same thing. It is faith that allows miracles because we allow ourselves to believe, without doubt, that something which isn't likely will happen. It's easy to believe the sun will rise. It always does that, but what if you need for something less likely to happen? At that point... some use will, and others use faith, and some use both, but it is the same process. If we believe good things will happen then they tend to... and if we expect the worst, well then that's usually what we get.
IF we want to heal cancer, or move mountains or whatever, then we expect it to happen because of our faith... but that faith is still based in knowledge, and past experience. For example, I've seen miracles, and I know that I can expect them if I follow the procedure, and my motives are right. The bottom line is that people do not believe things without precident, or prior knowledge they are possible. If you see or read about someone doing something, then you generally figure you could do it too, right?
Therefore faith IS just as scientific in that way, as any experiement. Scientists base their research on previous research. Students of science perform experiments that have been done thousands of times before with the same outcome. They anticipate the outcome, because they know what to expect... and when it all boils down, our world view on Science, Politics, Miracles, Economics, is based in previously witnessing cause and effect.
Quote:
|
If our noetic or intuitive capacity can know levels of reality our rational minds cannot fully grasp then is it logical to confine our reality to what we can prove under current scientific methods? Does this leave us with a schism in our own psyches that we act out collectively? Are we making progress? Hope so!
|
Expecting something based on observed probability in your own personal experience, is far different than "Proving under current scientific methods." It is also highly individual how much confidence people put in scientific methods... We all experiment, and we all experience... it is our individual way of doing science, which is good enough for us... whether or not it is 'scientific.' If we take our dying friend to see a Healing Evangelist, and that person suddenly gets well, and we see people jumping out of their wheelchairs and doing cartwheels, then we learn to believe in faith healing. Can we PROVE that those people were healed by GOD? No, but for whatever reason that method did seem to work. For most people that would be good enough... to a skeptic perhaps he'd want to see the before and after xrays of a thousand people... and when he did, he'd still argue that some people's tumors vanish, and their bones re-grow instantaneously, and any amount of crazy extrapolated BS, before he'd believe in miracles... some people are just that way.
Quote:
There's more at stake than a diaphanous 'noetic and intuitive capacity' and the redefinitions it can bring... plenty of other things science hasn't managed to take on board yet. Compare Chinese chi kung energy theory with the work of Wilhelm Reich. The reason people practiced chi kung in Beijing parks even when the communists were arresting them was simple: their cancers were being cured. That's not noesis, that's stuff you can see on an x-ray. Lots of science on that since then as well.
It's not only everyone for him-/herself, it always was. If you experience it you believe it. 'Proof' continues to happen one person at a time. There will not be a 'final answer', and there will certainly be a new religion IMO that achieves popularity and probably one that stands as much against as with science. There's so many moves to come in the game!
|
Exactly... WE see something happen and we believe it. Science backs it, but the evidence... the proof will always be ignored by the skeptics. We have mountains of evidence, swept under the rug by unbelievers. The Chinese are not the only ones healing, and I've seen thousands healed before, but no one was out there verifying it. Each individual went home, and some back to the doctor, but there is no body of evidence being kept on healings. Doctors know that healings occur in the west as well as the east, but it is hard to PROVE it to people who refuse to listen. If we wait for proof to be proved to the satisfaction of every person who scoffs, then we will never accomplish anything.
Science is a word that gets thrown around a lot... but it is a religion too (a belief system)... and because it IS a religion, just like Methodists, Lutherans, and Baptists... they will disagree, and squabble and just wait till NEW sects come in... new information will be discredited in favor of old worn out theories, just as long as we allow it. Science is not only a religion, it is a religion with as many disagreeing sects and factions as Religion itself. As with all religions, new information is repressed, and old doctrines clung to with self righteous piety. As long as brilliant "Quasi Scientists" bow to ignorant people who like to throw the word Science around, when all they mean by it, is, some sort of status quo, which it is easier to maintain than buck... then we will not progress.
Kim
Reason or evidence based spirituality? 
