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Reason and Religion
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| Omega_M |
This topic has probably been discussed before, but I would like you to read an interesting talk on "Reason and Religion" given by a Hindu Monk in 1900 to an audience in England. You can download the file here : http://www.sendspace.com/file/vzu4oo
It's a word document and it's about 8 pages long. The following issue is addressed, and I quote from the speech,
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Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of Religion?
In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen.... |
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Now, the question arises if this light of reason...can uphold its standard when the quarrel is between prophet and prophet, if it has the power of understanding anything whatsoever of religion. If it has not, nothing can determine the hopeless fight of books and prophets which has been going on through ages; for it means that all religions are mere lies, hopelessly contradictory, without any constant idea of ethics. The proof of religion depends on the truth of the constitution of man, and not on any books. These books are the outgoings, the effects of man's constitution; man made these books. We are yet to see the books that made man. Reason is equally an effect of that common cause, the constitution of man, where our appeal must be. And yet, as reason alone is directly connected with this constitution, it should be resorted to, as long as it follows faithfully the same. What do I mean by reason? I mean what every educated man or woman is wanting to do at the present time, to apply the discoveries of secular knowledge to religion. |
Can a religion satisfy these principles ?
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The first principle of reasoning is that the particular is explained by the general, the general by the more general, until we come to the universal....A generalisation ending in the Personal God can never be universal, for, first of all, to conceive of a Personal God we must say, He is all-merciful, all-good. But this world is a mixed thing, some good and some bad. We cut off what we like, and generalise that into a Personal God! Just as you say a Personal God is this and that, so you have also to say that He is not this and not that. And you will always find that the idea of a Personal God has to carry with it a personal devil. That is how we clearly see that the idea of a Personal God is not a true generalisation, we have to go beyond, to the Impersonal.
(The second) is Principle of Evolution - The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form, that all the potentialities of the effect were present in the cause, that the whole of creation is but an evolution and not a creation. That is to say, every effect is a reproduction of a preceding cause, changed only by the circumstances, and thus it is going on throughout the universe, and we need not go outside the universe to seek the causes of these changes; they are within. It is unnecessary to seek for any cause outside. This also is breaking down religion. What I mean by breaking down religion is that religions that have held on to the idea of an extra-cosmic deity, that he is a very big man and nothing else, can no more stand on their feet; they have been pulled down, as it were. |
I would like skeptics, who think of religion as merely as a set of superstitions and blind beliefs, to post their views in the light of this speech.
While reading it, please consider that this talk was given in 1900 and in English by an orator whose natural language was not English. Nevertheless, he was well versed with both Eastern and Western philosophies and is considered to be one of India's most influential philosopher and thinker. He was the first Indian to be invited to accept the chair of Oriental Philosophy at Harvard University.
Swami Vivekananda |
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| Dj Tomer |
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Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of Religion?
In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen....
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It's all right there, religion cannot stand through a scientific perspective, no matter what "religious scientists" will try and tell you, because it's very core ideas defy scientific analysis and explanation.
The idea they try and use to prevent any scientific debate is that "religion/god is outside the realm of science" or that religion cannot be scientifically scrutinized because it deals with different aspects of our life.
The simple fact is, once you use science to examine religious claims you quickly see that the existence of god is all but an impossibility - not because of our close-minded atheist outlook - but using pure and simple logic. If a single supreme being was able to conjure up our entire universe, with all of its diverse complexity, don't you think he himself would have to be just as complex, if not more? Once you realize that a god complex enough to create such a complex universe is required, the question obviously comes up, who created god? That's the main problem with god as an explanation for creation, it doesn't solve anything, it only raises more questions. |
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| Omega_M |
This issue has been addressed:
| quote: | The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form, that all the potentialities of the effect were present in the cause, that the whole of creation is but an evolution and not a creation. That is to say, every effect is a reproduction of a preceding cause, changed only by the circumstances, and thus it is going on throughout the universe, and we need not go outside the universe to seek the causes of these changes; they are within. It is unnecessary to seek for any cause outside. This also is breaking down religion. What I mean by breaking down religion is that religions that have held on to the idea of an extra-cosmic deity, that he is a very big man and nothing else, can no more stand on their feet; they have been pulled down, as it were.
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...and I quote:
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The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All this indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself. "Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the young man walking in the pride of youth, Thou art the old man tottering in his step." He is here. Him we see and feel: in Him we live, and move, and have our being. You have that conception in the New Testament. It is that idea, God immanent in the universe, the very essence, the heart, the soul of things. He manifests Himself, as it were, in this universe. You and I are little bits, little points, little channels, little expressions, all living inside of that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss.
The difference between man and man, between angels and man, between man and animals, between animals and plants, between plants and stones is not in kind, because everyone from the highest angel to the lowest particle of matter is but an expression of that one infinite ocean, and the difference is only in degree. I am a low manifestation, you may be a higher, but in both the materials are the same. You and I are both outlets of the same channel, and that is God; as such, your nature is God, and so is mine. You are of the nature of God by your birthright; so am I. You may be an angel of purity, and I may be the blackest of demons. Nevertheless, my birthright is that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss. So is yours. You have manifested yourself more today. Wait; I will manifest myself more yet, for I have it all within me. No extraneous explanation is sought; none is asked for.
The sum total of this whole universe is God Himself. Is God then matter? No, certainly not, for matter is that God perceived by the five senses; that God as perceived through the intellect is mind; and when the spirit sees, He is seen as spirit. He is not matter, but whatever is real in matter is He. Whatever is real in this chair is He, for the chair requires two things to make it. Something was outside which my senses brought to me, and to which my mind contributed something else, and the combination of these two is the chair. That which existed eternally, independent of the senses and of the intellect, was the Lord Himself. Upon Him the senses are painting chairs, and tables, and rooms, houses, and worlds, and moons, and suns, and stars, and everything else. How is it, then, that we all see this same chair, that we are all alike painting these various things on the Lord, on this Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss? It need not be that all paint the same way, but those who paint the same way are on the same plane of existence and therefore they see one another's paintings as well as one another. There may be millions of beings between you and me who do not paint the Lord in the same way, and them and their paintings we do not see.
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I recommend you read the Speech. |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | | Can a religion satisfy these principles ? |
If it did, I wouldn't call it a religion. So, no.
| quote: | | I would like skeptics, who think of religion as merely as a set of superstitions and blind beliefs, to post their views in the light of this speech. |
It's really an uninsightful collection of ideas, if you ask me.
Many monistic religions attempt this foolish notion of taking all of existence and then categorizing that as "God." But such a categorization is inconsistent with the idea of god as a supernatural entity, since really what you are calling god is merely the totality of natural phenomena. It is really so different than the traditional concept of a god that using the same word is not appropriate.
This wrongful categorization is then supposed to lend credibility to the religion: if you define your god as existence, you eliminate the problem of showing it exists. Well, that may be convenient, but it says nothing about the accuracy of the categorization in the first place.
In the end, despite this foolish categorization (which I accuse of being nothing more than an attempt at obfuscation), the ideas of this religion are just as much "a set of superstitions and blind beliefs" as any other.
Like most monistic belief systems, the "oneness" of the various phenomena in the universe is recognized, but there is a failure to recognize that while these phenomena have much in common and are bound together in a network of sorts, they also have independent and unique attributes which distinguish them from the rest of existence. In that respect, it is a blind belief, or at least, half-blind.
Other beliefs he espouses further reveal that this religion is just as irrational as any other:
He categorizes various forms of existence as "higher" or "lower" - but what is the basis in reason for this belief? And what is the basis in reason for the categorization of a "personal god" as the "highest manifestation"?
The concept of a "soul" is repeatedly mentioned. What is the basis in reason for the belief in such a phenomenon?
Basically, the religion that Vivekananda attempts to portray as being justified by reason contains many elements that are not justified by reason. In other words, the attempt was a failure. |
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| Lira |
Although I am on a break (reason why I wrote just one post in the last couple of months), I had promised to give you my opinion on Swami Vivekananda, and I was actually looking forward to doing that (even if the texts you first sent me were different, as I recall it). As soon as I laid my eyes on this thread, I was wondering whether I should reply (being a rather tolerant and curious sceptic), but you said you wanted us sceptics to give our opinion so I can only hope I will be as open-minded, in the following lines, as you're being in your request :)
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Part 0: Our starting point
| quote: | Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of
Religion? In my opinion this must be so |
This is our starting point then, and I'll be as fair as I can to him, considering the fact that we're a century apart. I'm also going to avoid clashes in the terminology, so I'm not going to use the word Brahman for "God", because of the reasons Arbiter already pointed out (it would be like using the same word both for the creator and the creation).
Part 1: The purpose of religion
| quote: | | If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. |
Although I wouldn't have trouble recognising the superstitious nature of religion, it would be a hasty generalisation to consider it all "unworthy" and "useless", because that could be true of the modern world, but one cannot ignore the social implications of religion in the past.
Hinduism united India, in a way. The impact of monotheism can't be ignored either. Even Xinto, in Japan, served the purpose of simply granting the royal family the conditions needed for ruling the country.
These implications are the reason why Durkheim used to believe there could be no society without a religion - even if we strive for a religionless society, science would play a very similar role, taking care of all the metaphysics. Would it be a better choice? I suppose so, but as Kuhn pointed out, this wouldn't be a way of getting rid of dogmas either.
I promised I would be fair to Swami though, and Kuhn wasn't even born at the time that speech was first given, so let's just stick to Durky and the fact that the importance of religion in a society had already been recognised back in his time.
Part 2: Ethics
| quote: | | Decidedly then we have to admit that there is something more universal than these books, something higher than all the ethical codes that are in the world, something which can judge between the strength of inspirations of different nations. Whether we declare it boldly, clearly, or not — it is evident that here we appeal to reason. |
hmm... that isn't exactly the goal of scientists, as there are ethicists in Philosophy taking care of this field. But, since philosophers themselves must also appeal to reason, there's not much here to be commented on.
Part 3: The Slippery Slope
| quote: | | The first principle of reasoning is that the particular is explained by the general, the general by the more general, until we come to the universal. |
The whole paragraph, from which I extracted this sentence, is full of ideas that would need some careful revision. This one, however, comes from a true statement and turns it into a bridge to another idea that wasn't there initially.
For example:
| quote: | | When one apple fell, Newton was disturbed; but when he found that all apples fell, it was gravitation, and he was satisfied. |
True. Science must predict events: he understood why apples fell, gave this phenomenom a name (gravity) and there's your law. However, that's all there is. Newton himself even avoided getting into metaphysics - the important thing was that apples fell. There was no "continuum" towards a universal law.
Even if you consider Einstein's General Relativity (which should be done only if the speech had been given after Einstein published his ideas on this), it just postulates a very simple law: two people in the same reference ought to experience things the same way. But this doesn't try to say anything outside the realm of physics. It doesn't try to be a universal law: it's just a law of physics.
Part 4: Knowledge and Science
| quote: | | The mind, as it were, has stored up numerous classes of such generalisations. It is, as it were, full of pigeon-holes where all these ideas are grouped together, and whenever we find a new thing the mind immediately tries to find out its type in one of these pigeon-holes. If we find it, we put the new thing in there and are satisfied, and we are said to have known the thing. This is what is meant by knowledge, and no more. |
I'm fond of simplicity myself, but this pursuit for generalisations even ignores the different meanings of the word "knowledge", as if it were an unified entity:
http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/epistemology/#WIK
That's why science avoids being so "general": the more something tries to explain everything, the more difficult it becomes to sustain itself.
| quote: | | A second explanation of knowledge is that the explanation of a thing must come from inside and not from outside. There had been the belief that, when a man threw up a stone and it fell, some demon dragged it down. Many occurrences which are really natural phenomena are attributed by people to unnatural beings. That a ghost dragged down the stone was an explanation that was not in the thing itself, it was an explanation from outside; but the second explanation of gravitation is something in the nature of the stone; the explanation is coming from inside. This tendency you will find throughout modern thought; in one word, what is meant by science is that the explanations of things are in their own nature, and that no external beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the universe. |
This is where "being fair" becomes a bit more difficult. More and more, he adapts things to his own worldview (which is natural), but he's slowly shaping the concepts of science and knowledge in order to fit his religious ideas and avoid the destruction mentioned in the first paragraph.
Certainly, when you talk about a stone falling due to gravity, this is not because of something in the stone, but rather because of circustances in which the stone is just a factor.
As much as I try to be realistic (and tolerant) about subjectivity, this distortion, so to speak, is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
| quote: | | Every science wants its explanations from inside, from the very nature of things; and the religions are not able to supply this. |
Given the empirical nature of science, this is not really accurate either. Science wants to know, primarily, how stuff works, which is quite different from "explaining something from inside".
Part 5: Where science ends
| quote: | | The Brahman of the Vedanta fulfils that condition, because Brahman is the last generalisation to which we can come. It has no attributes but is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss — Absolute Existence, we have seen, is the very ultimate generalisation which the human mind can come to. (...) The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All this indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself. |
Although I find this interesting, this is not science. In fact, it sounds closer to a logocentric worldview, and which has been under attack for quite some time.
| quote: | | To my mind, if modern science is proving anything again and again, it is this, that we are one — mentally, spiritually, and physically. It is wrong to say we are even physically different. Supposing we are materialists, for argument's sake, we shall have to come to this, that the whole universe is simply an ocean of matter, of which you and I are like little whirlpools. |
Seems true.
| quote: | | Is God then matter? No, certainly not, for matter is that God perceived by the five senses; that God as perceived through the intellect is mind |
The more I read, the more it reminds me of Plato's Theory of Forms...
| quote: | | That which is good today may be evil tomorrow. That which is bad today may be good tomorrow. What is good for me may be bad for you. The conclusion is, that like every other thing, there is an evolution in good and evil too. There is something which in its evolution, we call, in one degree, good, and in another, evil. The storm that kills my friend I call evil, but that may have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by killing the bacilli in the air. They call it good, but I call it evil. So both good and evil belong to the relative world, to phenomena. |
... and of an attempt to go beyond phenomenology (and I'm not saying that because of his choice of words).
| quote: | | The Impersonal God we propose is not a relative God; therefore it cannot be said that It is either good or bad, but that It is something beyond, because It is neither good nor evil. (...) Similarly, the sum-total of this universe is immovable, we know, but everything pertaining to this universe consists of motion, everything is in a constant state of flux, everything changing and moving. At the same time, we see that the universe as a whole is immovable, because motion is a relative term. I move with regard to the chair, which does not move. There must be at least two to make motion. If this whole universe is taken as a unit there is no motion; with regard to what should it move? Thus the Absolute is unchangeable and immovable, and all the movements and changes are only in the phenomenal world, the limited. |
Well, this is sure far away from the realms of science. Whether this is useful (or not) depends of one's stance towards metaphysics. Personally, and being honest, I really like this.
| quote: | | That whole is Impersonal, and within this Impersonal are all these various persons beginning with the lowest atom, up to God, the Personal God, the Creator, the Ruler of the Universe, to whom we pray, before whom we kneel, and so on. |
But the mystification of this metaphysical approach is troublesome, because:
| quote: | | All those senseless ideas of prayer, the low stages of prayer, which are simply giving words to all sorts of silly desire in our minds, perhaps, will have to go. |
Yet he mantains other superfluous concepts through selective thinking:
| quote: | | In all sensible religions, they never allow prayers to God; they allow prayers to gods. That is quite natural. The Roman Catholics pray to the saints; that is quite good. But to pray to God is senseless. To ask God to give you a breath of air, to send down a shower of rain, to make fruits grow in your garden, and so on, is quite unnatural. The saints, however, who were little beings like ourselves, may help us. (...) But those who are highly advanced do not care for such little helps, they have wellnigh forgotten all about this seeking things for themselves, wanting things for themselves. The predominant idea in them is — not I, but thou, my brother. Those are the fit persons to worship the Impersonal God. And what is the worship of the Impersonal God? No slavery there — "O Lord, I am nothing, have mercy on me." |
Part 6: Conclusion
After such long review, I will be brief - The content of this speech is not science. I would be genuinely happy to see a different approach to science, but it just can't be that. As Arbiter said:
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Basically, the religion that Vivekananda attempts to portray as being justified by reason contains many elements that are not justified by reason. In other words, the attempt was a failure. |
I wouldn't be that harsh, but I can't ignore the truth in that. The assumptions about epistemology were deeply flawed (with all its unnecessary generalisations, and the points highlighted by Arbiter), and the mysticism ended up being a final blow. It did contain, though, an interesting approach to metaphysics, which is certainly richer when developed more carefully (reason why I believe he must've done a great job teaching Oriental Philosophy at Harvard).
Finally, he should know that Religion is neither Philosophy (even if it can also speak of metaphysics) nor Science (even if it also seeks to explain the world). Both Philosophy and Science work within reason, and as Vivekananda's (accidentally) shown, Religion cannot satisfy this criterion. Also, Vivekananda shows us that even if he is thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen, he cannot help but prevent such destruction through cognitive biases that are common to most (if not all) of us.
That's it, I'd better get back to work now :D |
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