Intellectual Discrimination and Religion

Did they ask you to prove that you had your experience, or that your experience meant what you think it did? They are too different things. We can acknowledge that a person had a very intense experience of an alien in their bedroom without agreeing that an alien actually was in their bedroom.

Do all academics have the characteristics you discuss, or just a subset? A scientist would certainly be interested in testing whether the experience you had represented an internal or external event. Would a professor of literature? (I don’t know - I would suspect the reaction would not be so universal.)

This is totally incorrect. A theory that has been disproven has been disproven. A hypothesis might be called unscientific if it is unfalsifiable or perhaps based on invalid observations. The theory of ether, though untrue, is not unscientific. It made excellent predictions.
This accusation of dogma where no dogma exists might be one of your problems.

There is no such rule in science. All our observations are personal evidence to some extent. However, the question is: evidence of what? While you might think your experience is evidence of contact with god, we might check to see if everyone has the same impression of god. If the thing experienced is directly related to the culture of the person experiencing it, perhaps something else is going on. We can’t assume that, but if we are able to reproduce a spiritual experience through drugs of electrical stimulation of the brain, we might hypothesize a non-spiritual cause of the experience. We’d not be rejecting the experience in any way - in fact we’d be confirming it. We’re just saying that there is an explanation for it besides God. This doesn’t even say God didn’t do it, just that God didn’t necessarily do it.

There are two fallacies here. The first is that these observations do get repeated over and over again. Not by everone, but even one person consistently falsifying them would be big news. As far back as 1969 freshmen physics students were reproducing the Michelson Morley experiment with lasers shot around a lab. The second fallacy is that science is not provisional. All results are open to refutation at any time. A friend of mine had the unfortunate experience of disproving a physics formula everyone thought was true in the course of doing his dissertation. Alas, the result was not good enough to get one based on the disproof, so he had to find another topic. But no one was ready to burn him at the stake for overturning this small bit of dogma.

What I think you may be getting at is that academia and religion have been at something of a feud for centuries, and the heart of it is related to accepting doctrine without proof vs. pursuing the truth via logic and science even if those vehicles take us beyond established dogma.

Your view of religion as an individual, non-dogmatic experience is actually a historical anomaly in large societies. Up until fairly recently, the church was not a vehicle for individual self-discovery but rather a means to control people. The power was putatively derived from a god, therefore the people could not argue their subjugation by reasoning or logic. Academia represents a liberation from that restrictive mindset and remains extremely suspicious of it.

A lot of this is just habit born of repetitively exploring the same logical paths and knowing where they end. Yes, we really should objectively evaluate every idea and theory, but there isn’t enough time in the world to evaluate everything scientifically. Habit and experience tell us that if the initial flaw is contaminated with religious belief, we aren’t going to be led to a reproducible answer. Thus for the sake of expediency we cut right to the chase and perhaps there is a little self-blinding that takes place in the process.

So you had me up to this point…

… and then you lost me. Defending academia or science is not defending a dogma. Not if you’re defending the Pure Intention of the same. It is true that in any institution there is a crust of individual belief and habit that builds up over time, but that in itself does not negate the validity of the processes it purports to teach.

Actually there isn’t. That doesn’t mean it is valid to eliminate evidence because of its personal nature. But if you are the only one who had the experience… it is scientifically impossible to say that it did or didn’t happen. It is inaccurate to say that it isn’t true, because that isn’t knowable to anyone except you. And it is also inaccurate for you to say that it is universally true, because you are the only one who experienced it.

Ultimately we cannot know all things in this world… we can only understand the system of learning that brought the knowledge to us. If it came from a doctrine that says knowledge must repeatably predict things before it is valid, you can feel secure using the knowledge in this manner. If it comes from a belief system that accepts individual knowledge as true, then there’s really know way of predicting whether the knowledge will be of use to you.

You are on shaky ground by stamping “racism” on indirect bias against characteristics that you claim are possessed by a particular racial group. The first thing you’d have to demonstrate is that a particular racial group possesses a particular characteristic, and that discussion really isn’t going anywhere. It serves only to sensationalize the discussion and it really isn’t appropriate to the question of academic bias.

I believe there is a scientist by the name of Persinger who has been doing experiments with producing the feeling of a spiritual presence by the mechanical stimulation of the brain. He does not, however, hypothesize a “non-spiritual cause” of the experience. And why should he?

Perhaps drugs or electrical stimulation allow a part of the brain to function a full throttle, so to speak. Perhaps it is an avenue to a sense that is as reality based as sight and hearing. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.

But maybe this is the kind of bias that mswas is so frustrated with.

I don’t see it across the board in academia at all – not even in science. But I certainly do see it often here. It is often difference between close-minded skepticism and open-minded skepticism.

But I am probably getting into something totally different from what mswas was referring to.

BTW, I am a very liberal Protestant. There are lots of us out there.

I wish to relate a personal experience in response to this.

Not too long ago, I had a debate with a poster who stated that his revulsion toward homosexuality was natural and innate-- almost an evolutionarily programmed response.

I spent about a week on this person, digging up cites which prove that no prejudice is innate, but is culturally learned through the process of socialization. It ended up being, IIRC, a three page thread and most people had dropped out after page one.

The person who I was trying to convince gave a final post after a all of the research, studies, papers and data which I had produced (working very hard at it, if I do say so myself) saying, “Well, I feel my revulsion so strongly, I know it must be innate, and nothing you can say can change that.”

Honestly, I was crushed. What can one say in the face of such stubborness?

This sort of experience is extremely frustrating (almost angering) to people of an academic bent. We are trained that opinion means nothing-- facts are what is important. (That’s one of the first thing my husband tells his sociology students when he asks them to write a paper on a social issue-- “I am not interested in your opinion. Tell me the facts which support your side.”)

What you are essentially asking when you complain that people ask you to prove your experience is for academia to accept the antectdote, “feelings” or personal experience, as seriously as a scientific study. That is completely antithetical to the principals of academia. *And should be. *

Academia is about the search for the truth-- to take a theory and prove or disprove it by research, study and experiment. It is the desire to peel away the layers of the inconsequential to get at the tiny nugget of knowledge at the center. It deals with the tangible-- not with the spiritual. Spiritaulity, by nature cannot proven or disproven, thus has a very limited place in academia.

Have I reproduced experiements myself? No. But I have gone back and read the papers of the scientists who did. I have also read the papers of those who say they were wrong. That’s the wonderful thing about science-- scientists are constantly arguing, skeptical of one another’s findings. Do I have confidence in an individual scientist? No. But I have deep confidence in the scientific communtiy at large which is constantly probing for fault. Perhaps a fallacy will not be discovered for decades-- hell, I may go to my grave believing in something that science teaches me but which is later found to be incorrect. I’m not saying science is infallable-- I’m just saying it tries. That process is the beauty of it.

Religion has none of this. There is no scientific process for evaluating a faith. The existance of a god cannot be proven or disproven to certainty.

Thus, the essential difference between academia and the religious community. Some people (and not just religious folks) have a deep hostility towards having any of their beliefs challenged. Those in academia have to get used to seeing their sacred cows butchered before their very eyes.

So, what I am saying is that while certain individuals in the religious community may have hostility toward academia, religious people as a whole do not. Nor do I think that academia deserves it. There are myriad reasons why this hostility exists-- it is not just as simple as academia dismissing the religious faith of the community.

To put it simply, the reson I don’t like Diet Coke may be entirely different from the reason my neighbor may dislike it. Maybe for me, it’s an aspertame allergy-- for her, it may be the taste. For some religious people, it may be a predjudice against the intelligencia, and for others it may be that they see the sciences as a direct challenge to their faith.

Whatever the reason may be, I don’t think it’s something that can ever be resolved. Academia cannot change from its basic principles and still retain integrity. For those who are, for whatever reason, hostile to those principles, they will simply have to remain dissatisfied. There’s no help for it.

[QUOTE=Lissa]

No one is asking anyone to accept personnel experience as evidence. Thats not what the OP is about.

thats exactly what the spiritual journey is about as well.

The spiritual journey is about stripping away illusion andn false mind sets and conceptions until we arrive at the truth of who we are.

Agreed! The OP was about the division between those who believe and follow a spiritual path and those who are of a more academic mind set. Why does it exist and what can we do about it? We’ve spent very little time actually discussing it.

Here again there are many similarities in the search for truth scientific or spiritual.
The difference is that the spiritual search for truth takes place within each individual in their own unique way and time. You might indeed cling to a false spirtual premise for decades only to wake up someday to discover you don’t believe in the same way anymore. If you have courage and a comittment to truth you will examine your beliefs and consider others. I recognize there are many who don’t do that. I think the scientific pursuit of truth aides the spiritual search for the honest seeker. It does take generations but beliefs will evolve and change. There are probably still Christians who think they should be allowed to punish and maybe kill unbelievers. Fortunatly they are not in the majority so the inquisition isn’t likely to happen again.

I think what the OP is asking is can we have a mutual respect that leads to group progress? Can we avoid the slightly superior attitude that sometimes accompanies academic accomplishment? Can we overcome the ridiculous “God likes us better” attitude or the “it’s my job to convince you” thing that sometimes accompanies the spiritual experience.

It’s certainly not that simple but that is part of it. There are many spiritual people who don’t want to be lumped in with the religous extremist on the right. I think for progress to be made there has to be open and respectful communication. The intellectual liberals need help understanding the “feelings” and attitudes of those on the religous left so we can work together.

Again, no one is suggesting Academia change its basic principles. It’s about both sides showing respect for the right to choose a different way. It’s about working together for progress while preserving individual integrity. The religous don’t insist that academics “see the light” and the academics respect an individuals right to choose the spiritual path even if they don’t understand or appreciate it.

Lissa: From my point of view, there is not conflict whatsoever between my faith and Science. I am searching for the truth, and there is no conflict. It’s like the difference between literature/painting and physics/mathematics. There is no essential conflict, they are asking different questions about the same subject.

For instance, Science Asks what does A+B equal? Why it’s C

Whereas spirituality would ask the question: What is A? What is B? What is C? Why when you put the two together do they equal C?

It’s the difference between Knowledge and Understanding. Both have a valid place, neither is superior to the other because that sort of valuation is silly and uninformative.

The reason I have issue with people asking me to prove my experience, is that I wasn’t presenting my experience as “fact” I was talking about a discussion that I had, and the results of discussing a certain experiential idea. I can’t say that the experience is anything in particular that would be universal and meaningful to everyone, but had I a video camera, I could prove what the reactions to the statement were. I did not, so I cannot prove that people reacted that way, nor do I really care to, if you choose not to believe me, then I suppose there isn’t much room for discussion. In my opinion arguing with me when I say I experienced something is fruitless.

My response to Voyager would be: All things are of God. That makes it very difficult to disprove that something is of God. This is why I don’t see Science and Faith as being in any way conflictory. I am trying to discover the essence of God, and Science helps me to do this. Saying that a drug disproves a divine entity is to me, rather silly.

If God created me, created seratonin, created LSD, gave LSD the ability to manipulate seratonin in my brain, then the experience is certainly “of God”, regardless of how we produce it.

Science is a set of rules that allow for just about any occurence as long as certain factors within the system are internally consistent to cause that effect. If we were living in a different system with different physical properties, there is no reason we could not levitate, or have telekinetic powers, it’s all a matter of the properties of the natural system in which we exist. We here on Earth are ruled most prominently by the forces created by the objects in our solar system. On a different planet, or in a different solar system, the physics we are used to would be slightly, or drastically different. However, the Faith provides the ability to create. While we are not creating a new scientific system, we are able to come up with new ideas of what can practically exist within the system in which we live. It is this imagination that has us asking the questions in the first place. If it were not for the faith that we even have the power of revelation, we would not ask the questions that we answer with our critical thinking skills.

So I really don’t think that there is any conflict whatsoever between science and religion, only a conflict between conflicting dogmas, and I do not believe that either side in that dogmatic conflict is any more at fault than the other.

Erek

But in a spiritual sense, your truth is not my truth. Or we might experience the same truth independently. All of those things are permissible in spirituality. But science is the way we prove that something is true for both of us. So if you try to assert that your spiritual truth is also my spiritual truth, you will have to do it scientifically. This never goes well. The best way is for people to realize that spirituality is subjective and personal, and stop trying to prove that your beliefs have any effect whatsoever on someone else’s reality.

NattoGuy: Currently, my spiritual beliefs are having an effect on your reality.

You know what I’m going to say next, right?

Can you give me a reason why I shouldn’t say that?

You responded.

Yes, to you, and to any real participants reading this conversation. Not to your spirit guide or whatever. My response proves only that I am pretty sure you exist… it holds no implication for the existence of whatever you yourself believe exists.

Of course my spiritual beliefs effect other peoples reality. My spiritual beliefs have everything to do about how I interact with people everyday. Everytime I make a choice about what to do in any situation, thats my spiritual beliefs.

I think I get your drift and agree to a point. I am not into preaching or trying to convince anyone that my beliefs should be their beliefs. The truest testimony, perhaps the only true one is how we live together. I enjoy a good discussion with willing participents. If a situation arises and I do wind up preaching a little or offering spiritual advice, I respect peoples right to consider it or dismiss it.
You’re right, the spiritual journey is personal and though I believe there is ultimately one truth that we all get to, each must choose his or her own path to that truth. Free will is one thing we must respect and even revere. Since our beliefs directly effect the choices we make as individuals and as a society we must continue on some level to challange each others beliefs on some level. People who insist on pushing their beliefs on others especialy in the form of legislation, should definately be challenged.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]

That’s all fine and dandy, but it still does not approach the standards of scrutiny that academia posesses.

I don’t think there is anything we CAN do about it-- and I’m not so sure if there was that we SHOULD.

I think the fundamental differences between religion and academia are too vast to be melded into one “learning experience” which would be acceptable to all. I stand my by assertion: if some religious people cannot put aside their prejudices and hostility, that’s their problem. Plenty of religious people go through college without problem, keeping their faith intact.

If you get people of different faiths in one room, you’ll often end up with some of those people trying to convince others that their faith is bunk and they’ll fry in hell if they don’t switch over to the “right” religion. For the love of Pete, you see this between Christian groups, who worship the same God, in basically the same way, but have heated disputes about tiny matters of doctrine.

My town of thirty thousand has almost two hundred churches. I kid you not. New churches spring up overnight like mushrooms. A great portion of them have congregations of about thirty people. Whence this phenomenon? A fight within the congregation of an already established church over an amazingly tiny detail. The church splits, with each side forming a new congregation.

So, in the light of this, I ask you, how the blue hell is academia supposed to draw religious groups together toward common progress, when religious groups cannot even get along amongst themselves? Despite mswas’ heartwarming stories of all faiths coming together in a room to bask in the light from one another’s eyes, there is little real solidarity between the faiths. How can there be when the members of each particular group are certain that they are the only ones who’ve got it “right” and everyone else is gonna burn?

Yes, yes, I know there are enlightened folks out there who no longer go in for the hellfire-and-brimstone approach, but there are a good many who do. What do we do about them?

You ask for the impossible. Those “feelings” are not one-size-fits-all. Trying to adapt to please everyone would be completely unachievable, and, in my opinion, a waste of time. I repeat that if some people in the religious community are hostile to academia, too bad for them.

Let me give you another personal experience antecdote about religion and academia.

My husband had a student in his sociology class who was having a bit of difficulty. When my husband asked the students to write a paper on the social forces behind divorce complete with cites, she turned in a paper about what the Bible and her church says about divorce-- that it’s wrong. She used the Bible and a Christian website as her cites. My husband waited until after class and sat her down. He told her this was not a religious discussion. He respected her faith and her opinion, but it was not relevant in this class. He wanted her to do research about social forces, not moral judgements. He told her that the Bible was not a sociology text, and that she needed to get her cites from scholarly publications.

The next paper was supposed to be on the social forces around abortion. He recieved the exact same kind of paper from this young lady-- nothing but opinion, Bible quotes and Christian perspectives. He again sat her down after class and explained that she was not going to be able to pass this class if she could not follow the rules.

I’ll give you three guesses on what her next paper was like. She failed the class. Afterwards, she railed against him as an “athiest”. (My husband is actually quite religious, but keeps his faith where it belongs-- at home.)

How are we supposed to fit this young lady in to academia? How can we “come together” with people who stubbornly oppose the concepts of academia? The only way my husband could have passed this young lady would be to lower his standards, which would not have been fair to the other students.

Was he not respecting her “spiritual path?” She would have answered that with a vehement “YES!” Others would say no.

So, until you can get all faiths to agree on what is the proper balance-- what is the spiritual path which academics should respect, this conversation is essential moot. How can academia ever hope to work together with myriad groups which cannot even get along amongst themselves?

They may ask the same questions, but their answers, by nature, must be essentially different.

But your opinion of what A, B and C are and why they equal C could be totally different from my opinion, and cosmosdan’s opinion might be entirely different from both of ours.

And opinion has little to do with academia. Academia is interested in facts, not in what you feel, or your philosophy of A, B and C’s nature.

The only valuation I am interested in is fact versus opinion. Opinions are essentially worthless-- everyone has one, and none of them ammount to a hill of beans. I may be of the opinion that the moon is made of green cheese, but the fact is that the moon is made of dust and rock.

I could philosphise endlessly about what the moon means, or I could study the composition of the moon and figure out how it was formed, and perhaps make a scientific discovery about the creation of the solar system. In my opinion the latter is a more worthy persuit.

[quote]
The reason I have issue with people asking me to prove my experience, is that I wasn’t presenting my experience as “fact” I was talking about a discussion that I had, and the results of discussing a certain experiential idea. I can’t say that the experience is anything in particular that would be universal and meaningful to everyone, but had I a video camera, I could prove what the reactions to the statement were. I did not, so I cannot prove that people reacted that way, nor do I really care to, if you choose not to believe me, then I suppose there isn’t much room for discussion. In my opinion arguing with me when I say I experienced something is fruitless./QUOTE]

Yes, it is very fruitless, as was bringing it up in the first place (in an academic setting, I mean.) Feelings, impressions, antecdotes and suppositions have very little place in academia-- nor should they. Students are not there to discuss their feelings or opinions about an issue-- they are there to learn the facts about it and regurgitate said facts at test time. Yes, debate is a very important part of academia, but it is debate based on facts not on how you feel.

That’s who I was thinking of. And his experiments don’t prove a non-spiritual cause, but they provide it as an alternative explanation. The “other world” that these experiences open up seems very similar to the world of the person having them. Hindus don’t see Jesus and Christians don’t see Krishna. I consider the non-spiritual explanation for these experience simpler and more elegant, but Occam’s Razor is not a proof, just a guideline. I’m open to the possibility of the spirit world, and my library has tons of books on ghosts and UFOs etc. from when I was a teenager. I also used to believe in God. But, honestly, none of it has seemed to pan out. Since I appear to have no psychological need for the spiritual, it is all a big disappointment.

Actually I was more interested in their justification for not accepting your experience. That you are honestly relating your experience seems to me to be more likely than you making it up. I have absolutely no reason to doubt you, and I can’t imagine why anyone would.

First of all, the drug does not disprove god, it just provides an alternate explanation. Second, I agree that science could be used to discover God - if there were a god there. In the early 19th century, when science was quite the fad, a large segment of the clergy in the US fully expected that this new science would bear out the things told in the Bible, to provide supporting evidence for God. You can’t blame them - if you think God exists, finding more about the natural world should expose more of his handiwork. The shock of Darwin is that evolution yanked the rug from under the most basic tenet - that God created man. Some left religion. some developed the “science and religion are different” philosophy we hear of today and some went to the faction that rejected science from the beginning, who now appeared to have the last laugh.

In another thread I asked some questions about your “all things are of god” belief, especially around how this helps us to make decisions about our life. If you see God as nature, and take the discoveries of science as showing us the glories of the universe the more to appreciate god, I’m totally with you. If on the other hand your god is supposed to have done certain things, then science might show otherwise. Science is the same whatever.

Not true. One of the basic postulates of science is that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. We test that by observing light and radiation from parts of the universe distant in space and time. The laws would be the same in another solar system. (Perhaps you’ve been reading too many Superman comics :slight_smile: ) To levitate, or have telekinetic powers, we would have to expend the energy required to lift something, and to be able to exert a force on the thing. Picking up something with a magnet is levitation, and we understand how it works. But our brains don’t produce enough energy to levitate ourselves. If someone could prove they could do this, we’d have to find the power source somewhere. But to the best of our understanding, levitation is impossible, and would be impossible on any planet in any solar system. Yeah, if we were on an asteroid a small muscle twitch might send us into orbit, but I assume that is not what you mean.

Not to mention that other planets have very little influence on us. There have been plenty of studies on this, and they all come up dry.

BTW, I wonder which academics you are referring to. I think the hard scientists, like physicists, and the soft scientists, like sociologists, have a different world view from art history and English Lit professors. While there are facts they deal in, about the text of a book and the world in which it was created, there is no one truth about the interpretation. These people may or may not be spiritual, but they would have different reasons for their opinion from scientists. I will gladly admit that science will never find the “true” meaning of Hamlet.

In the observable universe. We can’t really tell beyond that.

This idea that science only tells us how things happen and not why they happen- I don’t know where it came from. Religion, which according to mswas takes care of the ‘why’ end, seems to leave a lot of unanswered questions. Although of course I would think that.

Actually yes, this is exactly what I meant. I didn’t say the laws would be different, only that the fields created by the bodies within the system would exert different levels of force.

I think this is bullshit. The fact that I can see Venus in the sky proves it exerts power over us. The fact that people talk about it so often, “The Morningstar” proves that it exerts power over us. The Sun warms us, the moon affects our tides. Jupiter’s Magnetosphere is larger in circumfrence than the Sun. We study the planets enraptured by their existence. We exist in a solar system that is completely dependent upon a balance just as is the ecosystem on Earth. We look to colonize Mars and the Moon. We create Gods and fix them to celestial bodies. We name the moons of the planets. We set our calendars based upon cycles of the planets.

Anything that would deny this is unscientific and dogmatic, as there are so many clearly obvious effects. The very makeup of our planet is dependent upon solar forces. It would be pseudo-science to claim that they do not have much affect on us. The question isn’t whether or not they affect us, but how they affect us.

Lissa: I feel like your posts actually portray the attitude I was describing in the OP more than any. You have a complete dismissal of religion, you put the blame squarely upon the shoulders of religious people, while you yourself have absolutely NO desire to reconcile. You claim to know whether or not people are enlightened based upon whether or not they share your personal bias. You unequivocably state that Academia is superior. You lump all religions into one basket while from the other side of your mouth you claim they cannot find a common ground with one another.

So in the meantime you say that opinion is completely meaningless. Well, I’ll continue to hold that genocide of whatever particular ethnic or social background you belong to is not desirable, and that will continue to have an effect upon whether or not genocide is perpetrated against you and yours. Though, of course my opinion is worthless.

Science IS a religion. That is my opinion. Your OPINION that it is not a religion, is of course, as you said, worthless.

Erek

Of course, in this case your worthless opinion is totally wrong. :rolleyes:

To say that Science is not a Faith, is a lie. You have faith that what you have discovered through logical principles are correct, but the root assumptions of that logic, are still rooted in faith.

Erek

Faith

3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction;
synonym see BELIEF

Belief:

1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence