Can science REALLY explain Reality?

[AlanFromWichita]

:slapfight:

 

[Solus_vistor]

As I tried to argue - assuming we can agree on what is that reality that science can investigate in principle, which is also easy - there are only two… ".

Sorry, of course it should be

As I tried to argue - assuming we can agree on what is that reality that science can investigate in principle, which is also not

 

[lynnvinc]

I’m sorry, but I do not think so.

Science’s domain concerns explaining the world of nature and its phenomena.

It is PHILOSOPHY (and Religion) that explain Reality, not science.

Anybody who thinks Science=Reality is under the spell of Scientism, and that is faith-based.

And true science is NOT faith-based in any way. It concerns studying and explaining (defined) natural phenomena. NOT reality.

Got this explanation from a response in another forum. Parapharsed this somewhat and added “religion” to it. Made by a scientist, as a matter fact.

Thought it wa a cool response to a question asked there.

Anybody agree/disagree with it?

I sort of agree with you. Science is fairly good (not perfect) for what it does – explain the material world, the empirical world, the world we can know through our 5 senses – but that is an exceedingly limited world. Only God knows all and is All in All. Occasionally we get a glimpse into the “beyond-our-senses-and-knowing” – an inspiration, a passage in scripture, a special dream, a mystical experience, etc – but in this life we can never really have any grasp of it.

So that’s where faith comes in – we put our faith in what the prophets have told us, what some peasants & fishermen from 2000 years ago told us.

It is really wonderful that God, knowing our limitations and penchant for material things, became man and moved among us in the flesh. That He gives us Himself in a tiny waffer, knowing how we would relish the idea of being fed by God and being fed God, and how we tho limited are grasping for the “more,” that “beyond.”

I’m also thinking that science actually came out of Christianity/Catholicism. A animistic/animatistic or pagan view of the world could not have produced science. Only when we understood God as not only immanent and omnipresent, but also transcendent could we then study His creation and search for His laws of nature.

Science has always drawn me closer to God. Everything in creation only draws me closer to God.

I would someday like to paint this picture. It is a huge cornucopia, and in the foreground are all sorts of fruits and foods. In one foreground area some people are fighting over them; in another people are gluttonizing and have x’s over their eyes; in another some people are fencing them off from the poor (tho there is much more than enough for all).

But there are some people who are climbing over the fruits into the cornucopia, traveling through it to its source, and those who have reached the source are coming out the small end in the background where Jesus is waiting with ourstretched arm and embraces.

 

[lynnvinc]

Now, having said what I just said above, I think it is important to give due respect to science, despite its limitations. If we can think of the world as another Bible written directly by God, then scientists are like its exegetical specialists.

God is Truth, but science also comes up with “truths” (or facts) that should be respected and considered - tho they be subject to change and advancement with better data and/or theories.

I think the Catholic Church respects science very much, which is more than I can say for many non-Catholic denominations, which reject science and create their own bizarro, parallel “science.”

 

[tonyrey]

I sort of agree with you. Science is fairly good (not perfect) for what it does – explain the material world, the empirical world, the world we can know through our 5 senses – but that is an exceedingly limited world. Only God knows all and is All in All. Occasionally we get a glimpse into the “beyond-our-senses-and-knowing” – an inspiration, a passage in scripture, a special dream, a mystical experience, etc – but in this life we can never really have any grasp of it.

So that’s where faith comes in – we put our faith in what the prophets have told us, what some peasants & fishermen from 2000 years ago told us.

It is really wonderful that God, knowing our limitations and penchant for material things, became man and moved among us in the flesh. That He gives us Himself in a tiny waffer, knowing how we would relish the idea of being fed by God and being fed God, and how we tho limited are grasping for the “more,” that “beyond.”

I’m also thinking that science actually came out of Christianity/Catholicism. A animistic/animatistic or pagan view of the world could not have produced science. Only when we understood God as not only immanent and omnipresent, but also transcendent could we then study His creation and search for His laws of nature.

Science has always drawn me closer to God. Everything in creation only draws me closer to God.

I would someday like to paint this picture. It is a huge cornucopia, and in the foreground are all sorts of fruits and foods. In one foreground area some people are fighting over them; in another people are gluttonizing and have x’s over their eyes; in another some people are fencing them off from the poor (tho there is much more than enough for all).
But there are some people who are climbing over the fruits into the cornucopia, traveling through it to its source, and those who have reached the source are coming out the small end in the background where Jesus is waiting with ourstretched arm and embraces.

A great idea for a picture, Lynn, depicting the truth about reality.

Science is superb but it tells us **nothing **about our spiritual life.

 

[inocente]

For like the ninth time, this is completely irrelevant. We aren’t talking about science. We are talking about scientism. The former is a methodology. It is validated because it derives from an epistemology which is not obviously stupid. The latter is not.

Ah, this must be one of those parallel realities I’ve heard about. Here’s an experiment then. We started this conversation when I responded to your post #357. In your reality does what you wrote say science or scientism: “Science cannot furnish evidence for its own validity. That validity derives from a larger network of (unempirical) epistemological assumptions.”

Saying “all knowledge is scientific” begs the question of how exactly we know this to be true. Saying “it appears to work” doesn’t answer anything, because the appearance of its utility is itself a nonscientific fact that, according to scientism (rigorously applied), cannot be trusted. Either we can trust nonscientific intuitions or we can’t. If we can, scientism is false. If we can’t, we can’t know scientism is true. If the solution is that we must not rigorously apply scientism, then let’s not rigorously apply it to everything. QED.

The whole basis of natural science is we don’t try to prove what is true, instead we discard what is false. No disrespect but I’m wondering whether our problems communicating are because, whatever your training and background may be, you don’t understand what science is.

*Unlikely by what standards, exactly? *

Standards of evidence, i.e. absence of any. Do you think epilepsy is caused by demonic possession or a neurological disorder?

*Is your calling yourself a Baptist ironic or is this how people actually think in fundamentalist Protestant circles?

Which is irrelevant to the discussion. I am increasingly getting the sense you have a soft spot for these idiots born of an irrational hatred of Catholics and Catholic thinkers.

Again, irrelevant, and sort of stupid too. Blasting Ed Feser as a “religionist” “prevaricator” is the height of ridiculousness.*

Whenever someone descends into ad hominem, it’s a fair bet they’ve run out of reasoned arguments. Though I like that it’s such an exotic ad hominem, I’ve never been called a stupid, ridiculous, irrational Catholic-hating fundamentalist bigot before, how very, now what’s the bon mot, quaint.

PS the Easter Vigil 2012 thing that comes up with your posts implies you have the enthusiasm of the new, and it often happens that new enthusiasts forget all the stuff about not judging others. Suggest maybe you start with Luke 18:9-14.

Is this a serious question?

Yes, of course it is. You wrote “a sane society would not tolerate such people in its midst” referring to two academics.So again, who decides what is sane?

I mean it in the loose sense that society presently does not tolerate “racism.”

OK.

Oy vey. I am always impressed by people who conflate modernity with their religion. For the vast majority of Christianity’s history, it was a state-established religion, with temporal enforcement of Church law and bishops serving on royal councils, etc. Fasting laws were enforced and blasphemers were routinely executed. To believe none of this is compatible with Christianity you’d have to believe God actually allowed the whole of Christendom to get everything wrong for the whole of its existence until approximately five minutes ago. Then again, this is basically exactly what Protestants believe in principle, so hardly surprising that you believe it.

I’m not sure what any of that has to do with anything, where did all this sectarian stuff come from? Are we supposed to be on the streets of Belfast during the Troubles or something?

If you want to put a badge on me, I’d prefer the snazzy pink and yellow one. So please call me a homosexuell Jude, a name I choose, not Protestant, a label you chose.

I deny at any rate that “non-social engineering” is even a possibility. Every society does it, including this one. FYI, I’m a monarchist.

I withdraw my earlier lack of clarity as to whether you were actually a Protestant. No one but a Protestant would indulge in such rank theological-epistemological reductionism.

I know little of these Protesticles you speak of, and had no idea that when Jesus said the kingdom of God belongs to little children, He actually meant only little children with PhDs in theology and epistemology.

 

[inocente]

:slapfight:

:compcoff:

 

[tonyrey]

Now, having said what I just said above, I think it is important to give due respect to science, despite its limitations. If we can think of the world as another Bible written directly by God, then scientists are like its exegetical specialists.

God is Truth, but science also comes up with “truths” (or facts) that should be respected and considered - tho they be subject to change and advancement with better data and/or theories.

I think the Catholic Church respects science very much, which is more than I can say for many non-Catholic denominations, which reject science and create their own bizarro, parallel “science.”

Yet some of them reject philosophy in favour of science and reduce God to a First Cause!

 

[inocente]

As I’ve suggested before, the unspoken assumption at the heart of this thread’s initial question is that there absolutely and undoubtedly exist aspects of reality that are inaccessible to science, even in principle, because they are not natural, but supernatural or divine. My contention is that if such is the case, then such aspects of reality are also quite irrelevant to our own existence, since they could have no possibly perceptible effect upon us or our interaction with the world, indeed could not even be detectable by us in any manner. Indeed, in my less charitably-minded moments, I am inclined to think that the insistence upon the necessary limits of scientific enquiry is a reactionary response, on the part of those who are determined to preserve religious faith, to the encroachment of scientific explanation into areas that were previously considered the domain of theology - such as the structure of the cosmos, the development of life and our relationship to other animals; the nature of disease and mental illness, the causes of natural disasters, and so on - an encroachment, it must be said, that shows no signs of slowing down or stopping.

I once fell over a thread where two Catholics were earnestly discussing how transubstantiation could be explained by quantum physics. Personally I don’t believe in transubstantiation but was a bit horrified even so - surely that kind of superficial analysis robs the Eucharist of all meaning.

I think the real science is that we all have lots of beliefs of all kinds, many not religious like look both ways before crossing the road, because if instead we always had to work everything out from first principles we’d never get anywhere. We’re happiest with those who share our beliefs, because it gives us a common language. The content of the beliefs is a lot less significant than being around people who share them, so at the end of the day whether one set of beliefs or another is closer to some idealized version of the truth isn’t particularly important from a scientific point of view, the fact that we have beliefs at all, why we have them and so on is much more remarkable. imho

 

[tonyrey]

Uh, you haven’t actually said anything here that addresses or goes any way to refuting my point - if anything, it is fair to say you are being reactionary.

Ad hominem.

If we can detect any aspect of reality, then that aspect of reality is in principle investigable by science; you claim undetectable realities exist, but there’s no way you could actually know this - that’s what “undetectable” means.

I actually know - like every rational person - that my thoughts are undetectable by science.

And it seems rather ironic, to say the least, to claim that science is struggling under the encroachment of philosophy and religion - the latter have had millennia in which to explain the world, and have come up with hardly a fraction of what has been elucidated by scientific inquiry. Indeed, there is hardly a philosophy worth its salt in our time that has not been informed by science.

Stanley Jaki has explained how modern science wouldn’t even exist without the metascientific principles established by the philosophical truths of Christ’s teaching and safeguarded by the Catholic Church.

 

[inocente]

It just occurred to me this word “explain” is problematic.

Science describes reality to the best of its ability at any given time. It provides models of reality that persist sometimes for many years. It refines and replaces older models as new things are discovered. It investigates reality to the extent it can observe it.

But explain? No. Explain to me why is a tree? That’s not science, but it’s part of reality.

Liked what you said except the bit about science not answering “why” questions. Why is a tree? Because we have an autopilot inside our head which models reality by dividing the world into things, one of which it calls “tree”, which is useful but misleading. Dude, cut the strings that bind you, we’re all one, all connected through time and space, or at least that’s my understanding of quantum physics, peace out man.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Liked what you said except the bit about science not answering “why” questions. Why is a tree? Because we have an autopilot inside our head which models reality by dividing the world into things, one of which it calls “tree”, which is useful but misleading. Dude, cut the strings that bind you, we’re all one, all connected through time and space, or at least that’s my understanding of quantum physics, peace out man.

Dude, you’re way ahead of me.

If I’m hearing you right, you are referring to the “calculus” view that a complex system can be broken into a million simplified pieces, each of which can be meaningfully discussed independently of the others. Of course we know that’s a fallacy – or at best a limited model – but it’s all we’re ever taught in school.

And yes, I love quantum physics. Only know a little about it, what I needed to get through semiconductor physics way back when and some YouTube videos of Dr. Quantum now. But I agree with you that we are all connected through space and time. Further, you can use language of physics and/or language of mysticism to describe it.

Alan

 

[inocente]

And yes, I love quantum physics. Only know a little about it, what I needed to get through semiconductor physics way back when and some YouTube videos of Dr. Quantum now. But I agree with you that we are all connected through space and time. Further, you can use language of physics and/or language of mysticism to describe it.

I’m no expert either, but how about this explanation of the lyrics to Everything is everything : “I am very close friends with the producers of Lauryn Hills album and it is very simply, everything is what it is because of everything else. without everything being how it is, nothing would be as it is, everything affects everything, ultimately making everything everything”.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I’m no expert either, but how about this explanation of the lyrics to Everything is everything : “I am very close friends with the producers of Lauryn Hills album and it is very simply, everything is what it is because of everything else. without everything being how it is, nothing would be as it is, everything affects everything, ultimately making everything everything”.

Nice.

 

[Gaber]

Originally Posted by inocente
I’m no expert either, but how about this explanation of the lyrics to Everything is everything : “I am very close friends with the producers of Lauryn Hills album and it is very simply, everything is what it is because of everything else. without everything being how it is, nothing would be as it is, everything affects everything, ultimately making everything everything”.

Nice.

That’s great! Thanks.

 

[tonyrey]

I actually know - like every rational person - that my thoughts are undetectable by science.

Even if our thoughts are deciphered from an EEG it would not imply that they **originate **in the brain.

Stanley Jaki has explained how modern science wouldn’t even exist without the metascientific principles established by the philosophical truths of Christ’s teaching and safeguarded by the Catholic Church.

The expression “philosophical truths” is not usually necessary but it is needed here to emphasize the primacy of philosophy which has been questioned and rejected in recent posts on this forum.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Even if our thoughts are deciphered from an EEG it would not imply that they **originate **in the brain.

NOW we’re talking turkey!

Put aside previous conceptions, and let’s take off into the Cloud!

Alan

 

[tonyrey]

NOW we’re talking turkey!

Put aside previous conceptions, and let’s take off into the Cloud!

Alan

Which Cloud, Alan?

I don’t think you mean the Cloud of Unknowing!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Which Cloud, Alan?

I don’t think you mean the Cloud of Unknowing!

I was hoping you would catch my drift, and you did not disappoint.

Seems to me, seeking the Cloud is just as useful for a scientist as for a mystic.

 

[AdamP88]

Where have I done that? That’s not my style. Evidence is my creed, not authority, consensus, tradition or revelation.

Even science does not always have all the evidence. The theory of evolution is still a theory…despite much evidence supporting it.

Science will never disprove the existence of God because it cannot. It deals with what is measurable. Science can attempt to explain what is in our reality or the laws of the physics. But it will never explain reality because the only explanation is a divine one.