science vs religion blah
Again a comment that threatened to get longer than the blog itself.. I know this business of science vs religion has been beaten to death.. but its friday and its snowing and I havent blogged in a while, so... Right then, onto flagellating moribund equines...
Mindsurfer raises some interesting points in his blog "Scriptures and their interpretation", when he equates scriptures and laws of science to axioms. But, IMHO, there is a slight problem in this analogy. In science, a law that can be used as an axiom later has to go through the rigorous process of being proved a law first. And the only axioms acceptable are tangible facts. Among the various properties that distinguish a scientific law from philosophy, a crucial one is that of falsifiability (as proposed by Karl Popper). A hypothesis cannot be accepted as a law if there is no way to prove it wrong. This rule is extremely brutal as it lays to waste several beautiful "scientific" theories (including M-theory, brane-theory, several hypotheses of psychology). If someone puts forth a claim like "God is everywhere, within oneself and without oneself", there is no way to prove it right or wrong. Hence it cannot be used as a law, only as an axiom (even though its hardly a tangible fact).
I agree parts of Hindu scriptures are excruciatingly clear about how to conduct oneself through life. They are even tailored to fit your particular disposition (which had the unfortunate side-effect of caste system). But even this results in a subtle problem, which I'll come back to later in the blog. Having said that, I must say a large part of scriptures are allegorical, which makes them vulnerable to interpretive misjudgements.
Even if you set aside these interpretive ambiguities, the fundamental philosophy involves the participation of audience in the realization of its axioms in an unaccpetable way. Consider the starting words of Yoga Sutras by Patanjali.
"Yoga chitta vritti nirodha"
The union (yoga) of mind and Ultimate Truth can only be realized when the mind (chitta) is freed (nirodha) from all interferences (vritti).
Sort of like a disclaimer that if this doesn’t work, its probably your fault.
Science always tries to remove the observer from the experimentations while framing the laws (except probably in certain cases of Relativity and QED). Even when it doesn’t altogether remove the observer, an attempt is made to nullify the identity and contribution of the observer. In Indian philosophy, the outcome often depends on the observer itself– a fact often brushed aside by a convenient excuse that elimination of objectivity is essential for anything involving mind. Thereby, creating a congenially confused atmosphere for peddling mystical nostrums.
Looking at it another way, according to information theory, for assigning meaning to any signal, there are three things needed. 1) A way to separate signal from background noise 2) A way to to interpret the signal 3) Finally, a way to understand the inherent meaning of the signal. I already discussed how scriptures are susceptible to vagaries of interpretations (which makes 2 difficult) and falsifiability/objectivity (which make 3 difficult). And as SSM pointed out in an earlier comment, probably even 1 is a little dubious.
As I mentioned earlier in ano's blog, mythology is essential for religion to exist. It wasn't a cavalier statement. For God to exist, its important, paradoxically, for God not to exist. Consider a scenario where there was a booming voice from sky which regularly told people what is right and what is wrong. It would have been a recipe for unhappiness and mayhem, since its human nature to question that which is given as truth and find reasons to be unhappy with whatever they have got. Which brings me back to the point earlier in the blog that people would still ask questions even if their life is laid out for them (as it is by parts of Hindu scriptures).
Which leads me to the following conclusion. The very existence of a belief system in the mind defeats its purpose. Very likely, you would end up in a rabbit-hole of unquenchable scrutiny. Probably you'd get tired and capitulate to the belief system. The moment your mind is enslaved to a pattern enforced by a belief system, it has a model in place craving for validation. The mind would then suitably distorts facts to foist into this model. When in actuality, it is the model that should be modified to fit the facts. Yes, I am quite aware that science is one such model too. Science is an especially rigid monolith, which readily appeases itself with laws and principals of its own creation, when it has no way of knowing for sure whether the universe was created 10 billion years ago or 10 seconds ago?
Karl Marx probably best summed it up for religion by calling it the opiate of the masses. Quite possibly, so is science. Interesting choice of words, considering opiate dulls the mind into ignorance, instead of providing revelations, which ostensibly is the purpose of both religion and science.
Mindsurfer raises some interesting points in his blog "Scriptures and their interpretation", when he equates scriptures and laws of science to axioms. But, IMHO, there is a slight problem in this analogy. In science, a law that can be used as an axiom later has to go through the rigorous process of being proved a law first. And the only axioms acceptable are tangible facts. Among the various properties that distinguish a scientific law from philosophy, a crucial one is that of falsifiability (as proposed by Karl Popper). A hypothesis cannot be accepted as a law if there is no way to prove it wrong. This rule is extremely brutal as it lays to waste several beautiful "scientific" theories (including M-theory, brane-theory, several hypotheses of psychology). If someone puts forth a claim like "God is everywhere, within oneself and without oneself", there is no way to prove it right or wrong. Hence it cannot be used as a law, only as an axiom (even though its hardly a tangible fact).
I agree parts of Hindu scriptures are excruciatingly clear about how to conduct oneself through life. They are even tailored to fit your particular disposition (which had the unfortunate side-effect of caste system). But even this results in a subtle problem, which I'll come back to later in the blog. Having said that, I must say a large part of scriptures are allegorical, which makes them vulnerable to interpretive misjudgements.
Even if you set aside these interpretive ambiguities, the fundamental philosophy involves the participation of audience in the realization of its axioms in an unaccpetable way. Consider the starting words of Yoga Sutras by Patanjali.
"Yoga chitta vritti nirodha"
The union (yoga) of mind and Ultimate Truth can only be realized when the mind (chitta) is freed (nirodha) from all interferences (vritti).
Sort of like a disclaimer that if this doesn’t work, its probably your fault.
Science always tries to remove the observer from the experimentations while framing the laws (except probably in certain cases of Relativity and QED). Even when it doesn’t altogether remove the observer, an attempt is made to nullify the identity and contribution of the observer. In Indian philosophy, the outcome often depends on the observer itself– a fact often brushed aside by a convenient excuse that elimination of objectivity is essential for anything involving mind. Thereby, creating a congenially confused atmosphere for peddling mystical nostrums.
Looking at it another way, according to information theory, for assigning meaning to any signal, there are three things needed. 1) A way to separate signal from background noise 2) A way to to interpret the signal 3) Finally, a way to understand the inherent meaning of the signal. I already discussed how scriptures are susceptible to vagaries of interpretations (which makes 2 difficult) and falsifiability/objectivity (which make 3 difficult). And as SSM pointed out in an earlier comment, probably even 1 is a little dubious.
As I mentioned earlier in ano's blog, mythology is essential for religion to exist. It wasn't a cavalier statement. For God to exist, its important, paradoxically, for God not to exist. Consider a scenario where there was a booming voice from sky which regularly told people what is right and what is wrong. It would have been a recipe for unhappiness and mayhem, since its human nature to question that which is given as truth and find reasons to be unhappy with whatever they have got. Which brings me back to the point earlier in the blog that people would still ask questions even if their life is laid out for them (as it is by parts of Hindu scriptures).
Which leads me to the following conclusion. The very existence of a belief system in the mind defeats its purpose. Very likely, you would end up in a rabbit-hole of unquenchable scrutiny. Probably you'd get tired and capitulate to the belief system. The moment your mind is enslaved to a pattern enforced by a belief system, it has a model in place craving for validation. The mind would then suitably distorts facts to foist into this model. When in actuality, it is the model that should be modified to fit the facts. Yes, I am quite aware that science is one such model too. Science is an especially rigid monolith, which readily appeases itself with laws and principals of its own creation, when it has no way of knowing for sure whether the universe was created 10 billion years ago or 10 seconds ago?
Karl Marx probably best summed it up for religion by calling it the opiate of the masses. Quite possibly, so is science. Interesting choice of words, considering opiate dulls the mind into ignorance, instead of providing revelations, which ostensibly is the purpose of both religion and science.
posted by void @ 11:25 AM
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