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Got into another discussion about science and religion and the meaning of life. This is perhaps silly for an older man of rather limited intellectual facility, but that's how I get my thrills, this and violent pornography. I'll spare you the violent pornography. Anyway, in this discussion, I have come up with the metaphor of a painting, a great work of art. It's awkward, but...
This painting is a metaphor for the physical world. Science, I argue, attempts to understand and explain how this painting has come to be. Scientists will perhaps be able to explain the qualities of the paint as well as the canvas and even infer the brush strokes - all the physical elements that have gone into the painting and how this painting was put together and shaped.
The reason I like this metaphor is for the next part, in which I try to address the conern that science is too reductionist and that it perhaps saps the specialness out of life. I argue that, while science seeks to understand how the physical world works, the meaning is left to you. What is the meaning of the painting? How do you interpret its significations and implications, not about how the painting came together necessarily, but about what the work of art means to you. You see, I argue, that this is what science does not do, and that science proper does not lay out normative judgments. What it means is entirely up to you and everyone else, whatever your philosophy or religion. Indeed, it becomes a matter of poltical negotiation and conflict, maybe even warfare.
For the true believer, I know that the answer remains that God is the master painter, and what science does is afford people the opportunity to study the great work and to perhaps learn how to make derivative masterpieces of their own.
I'm only arguing that even an atheistic conception of science does not sap the meaning out of life. That you still have your philosophy and religion to interpret the significance of the physical world for yourself. This is how this has come to be and how it works, but what it means to you and what you do with it is indeed beyond science proper.
I'll also note that I believe science itself is agnostic. Maybe there is a Master Painter, as science cannot prove there is none, and maybe scientists and philosphers are only trying to fathom a little of the mind of God to realize more of the potential of life and the world. But these more substantive conceptions of God are also outside of science, for science also cannot prove there is a God. This question is, thus far, outside of science and is in that realm of personal and social meaning.
I take it that science is our best, most authoritative arbiter of the physical world - what it is, how it works. What we do about that, and what we do with it, is a question of conscience and politics.
xXx
Got into another discussion about science and religion and the meaning of life. This is perhaps silly for an older man of rather limited intellectual facility, but that's how I get my thrills, this and violent pornography. I'll spare you the violent pornography. Anyway, in this discussion, I have come up with the metaphor of a painting, a great work of art. It's awkward, but...
This painting is a metaphor for the physical world. Science, I argue, attempts to understand and explain how this painting has come to be. Scientists will perhaps be able to explain the qualities of the paint as well as the canvas and even infer the brush strokes - all the physical elements that have gone into the painting and how this painting was put together and shaped.
The reason I like this metaphor is for the next part, in which I try to address the conern that science is too reductionist and that it perhaps saps the specialness out of life. I argue that, while science seeks to understand how the physical world works, the meaning is left to you. What is the meaning of the painting? How do you interpret its significations and implications, not about how the painting came together necessarily, but about what the work of art means to you. You see, I argue, that this is what science does not do, and that science proper does not lay out normative judgments. What it means is entirely up to you and everyone else, whatever your philosophy or religion. Indeed, it becomes a matter of poltical negotiation and conflict, maybe even warfare.
For the true believer, I know that the answer remains that God is the master painter, and what science does is afford people the opportunity to study the great work and to perhaps learn how to make derivative masterpieces of their own.
I'm only arguing that even an atheistic conception of science does not sap the meaning out of life. That you still have your philosophy and religion to interpret the significance of the physical world for yourself. This is how this has come to be and how it works, but what it means to you and what you do with it is indeed beyond science proper.
I'll also note that I believe science itself is agnostic. Maybe there is a Master Painter, as science cannot prove there is none, and maybe scientists and philosphers are only trying to fathom a little of the mind of God to realize more of the potential of life and the world. But these more substantive conceptions of God are also outside of science, for science also cannot prove there is a God. This question is, thus far, outside of science and is in that realm of personal and social meaning.
I take it that science is our best, most authoritative arbiter of the physical world - what it is, how it works. What we do about that, and what we do with it, is a question of conscience and politics.
