Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Scientific thoughts resumed

With the inductive reasoning trick, the ability to explain events of the natural world with accuracy and also harness the forces therein becomes similar to a cake walk.

Religious persons with a faith-based though process tend to retreat to the myth or lore of the religious texts (in the Judeao-Christian religions at least), which if scholarship is to be believed tells us that the origins of these texts are from oral tradition which eventually became a written tradition as well.

The method for obtaining an understanding of the world was essentially the same, there was a lacking in the passing of knowledge gained. (or something, the Ancient Egyptians built huge monuments and we only have relatively accurate answers as to how they did it.)

Anyway. The process of humanistic scientific thought is the same as the process religious-istic scientific thought. They are both trying to answer the same sorts of questions but through different filters and from different starting points. To take it back to the Science vs. Religion thing, I say that they are working toward the same goal which is an understanding that eliminates or lessens the fear of the unknown. I don't have to fear because I understand.

* * * * *
Completely different note. I am finishing up the last few chapters of No Man Knows My History and I must say that the issues that I feel like I'm dealing with on a personal level as a citizen of this country (economic, religious, and political on the national/international which have an impact on my daily life, i.e. gas prices, coffee shop discussions, "income status," etc...) are things that are universal. There were political scandals since the days of politiking began. It's all just a huge game. Just one big game. I don't want to play anymore.

4 comments:

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Dean ASC said...

OK, I can agree that Science and Religion are both trying to explain the world in human terms. They both are used to dictate how we live our lives, should live our lives and give reason to tell others how they should live their lives. However, when scienctific theory is wrong or unclear the theory will be changed to more accurately represent the issue. Religion (in the big three sense) leans on dogma and the inviolability of the bible, koran or torah and possibly a set of dishes as an excuse not to change. I'll take science with it's best guess as how things work over 'Because god says so, heathen!'

RicketyFunk said...

Sure, Dean, I take the same approach in regards to the nature of the flexibility of "scientific knowledge" over and above religion but "religious knowledge" has gone through it's own transformations as well.

I'll refer you to my next post as reply.

Dean ASC said...

Something from this post has stuck with me for a while and I just figured out what it is. You say that we don't know for sure how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. The exact knowledge is lost but we have an approximate guess as to how much of it is constructed. I've always wondered how much of the ancient world did we lose when the library at Alexandria burned. Recent discoveries of 9,000 year old dentil drills and cocaine in the bellies of 5,000 year old mummies suggest technologies in medicine that had to be rediscovered in the last 180 years. How much more knowledge was lost because the Church wanted the paper to engrave more bibles?

True there is a wealth of knowledge the ancients posessed that we know little about today. That doesn't mean their culture wasn't any less advanced in what is truly necessary. They may not have had flight but they managed to cross from north Africa to the Andes. Not an easy feat of navigation under wind power.