Religion vs. Science (and Wittgenstein)

[Michael S. Pearl]

Science does not “explain away” love; it explains how love arises. Describing love in terms of brain activity, hormones like oxytocin, and evolved psychological mechanisms is not a dismissal—it’s an explanation rooted in observable evidence.

Science does not explain away love, but it also does not explain "how love arises." Therefore, any claim which alleges that love is reducible to explanation in terms of neuronal circuitry, hormones, and other physio-chemical factors would be scientistic.

Science does not explain how learning occurs; science does not explain how different people learn differently; science does not explain genius. Without such explanations, or until there are such explanations, it is impossible for science to explain the love at issue.

The love at issue is not "social bonding". Has a scientific investigation into the sort of love that is at issue even been undertaken? Interestingly, if this love is necessarily non-homogenous (to employ a variation on Jarhyn's word choice), then this love might well be the sort of condition that science cannot readily or well investigate. And this ties back to Wittgenstein’s claim that ethics can be no science.

This is a misrepresentation of both science and philosophy. Science does not assert that people “do not think.” What you’re referencing is a specific philosophical argument rooted in hard determinism, which is debated, not settled.

A question was presented. It asked if science insisted that people do not think. Science makes no such claim. Therefore, science was not misrepresented, because the question did not claim that it is science which asserts that people do not think.

By your own admission, there is philosophy which does insist that people do not think. Scientism is philosophy and not science, and there are scientistic philosophers who claim science as their basis for insisting that people do not think inasmuch as thoughts just happen to people. Call it determinism instead of scientism if you wish, but the fact remains: any claim denying that people think is NOT a scientific claim, and it is a claim that science does not support or endorse. There are, of course, different versions of determinism. One such version would be well described as scientistic determinism. Therefore, scientism was not misrepresented.

Science is imbued with philosophy, but science is not philosophy. Scientism is philosophy, and it seeks to justify itself by extrapolating from science, but scientism is not science.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

... a dedication to the well-being of society.

Compared to Confucianism and Buddhism the morality of the OT and NT gospel Jesus is crude.

Considering what we do know of ancient Jews and the situation 2000 years ago in Palestine I doubt a Jewish rabbi would be preaching universal love of all mankind, he would have been speaking to and about his fellow Jews.

Whether or not there was an actual Jesus as depicted in the stories is irrelevant. The stories are from a time sufficiently close to that at which the Jesus in the stories supposedly did his teaching, and those stories establish that someone(s) did indeed seek to promulgate a different perspective and/or emphasis with the intended audience including Jews of that time. Leviticus 19:18 said, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself." And then the "love your neighbor as yourself" in Matthew 22 got further fleshed out in Luke 10. There the testing lawyer asks, "And who is my neighbor?", at which point the story launches into the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The testing lawyer answered], “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise."

The Samaritan of the parable is an outsider; he is not a Jew, and yet it is only he who exhibits love of neighbor. The point made is that the first commandment is not met if the second is not met and that the second is met whenever love is done for anyone encountered without regard for whether or not that person is of one's own people, group, society, etc. So, there was indeed a teaching amongst and to Jews of that time which said that love is to be done for all.

This lesson is made still more explicit in Acts 10 when Peter goes to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion - meaning not a Jew. Peter says, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. ... Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who ... does what is right is acceptable to him."

The lesson in these stories is very different from that emphasized in Confucianism as characterized. The Jesus and related stories acknowledge and do not teach against social concerns, but these stories do insist that morality, ethics, goodness, etc., are not solely or even predominantly determined in terms of societal well-being. These lessons were not utterly alien to the Jews of that time.

 

[Jarhyn]

but it also does not explain "how love arises"

Yeah it does. I mean, I went on a whole long post explaining at least one situation where radical love makes sense.

Simply put, it comes down to the dramatic utility of social support first in child rearing, then in retention of information, and then in the freedom from development-time-only adaptation.

It also explains why such a thing would emerge, because any heuristic of identifying individuals can get linked to a system which acts in a particular way arbitrarily prior to any building of understanding as to why.

Love is the pre-understanding mechanism for respecting the utility of more "Lamarckian" models of evolution in nature.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

but it also does not explain "how love arises"

Yeah it does. I mean, I went on a whole long post explaining at least one situation where radical love makes sense.

What about your explanation makes you think of it as a scientific explanation? After all, it can make sense without being a result of scientific investigation or even a scientific explanation. What does "scientific" mean here?

 

[Jarhyn]

but it also does not explain "how love arises"

Yeah it does. I mean, I went on a whole long post explaining at least one situation where radical love makes sense.

What about your explanation makes you think of it as a scientific explanation? After all, it can make sense without being a result of scientific investigation or even a scientific explanation. What does "scientific" mean here?

It's more an engineer's explanation than a scientist's, I suppose.

Scientific explanation is, to me, the result of taking observable and sound models of phenomena, and then constructing those to provide a model which has further explanatory power.

My model would predict the emergence of "apparently inexplicable" individual attachments in general whenever validated lateral information transfer becomes possible within a population.

There's a direct link between lateral data transfer and nonviolent social interactions.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Love (radical love, like Jesus preached) enters into all this because lateral transfer breaks the tyranny of selfishness of DNA over the survival of the "system".

Does the following (simplified and likely too concise) depiction seem to you to resonate at all with your above remark?

Emmanuel Levinas described being as a process (and, for convenience, I will restrict expression so that it is in terms of humans) characterized by the persistent obsession that a person has with his or her own continuing-to-be. To break with being, to interrupt the processing of being would be to break away from the inertial indifference had for the encountered other wherein that indifference is generated with/by the devoted focus that the self has for its own continuing-to-be. To break with the indifferent processing that is being - to interrupt the indifferent processing of being - is to momentarily cease being for one’s self and, instead, to respond – to act – for the sake of the other, in particular the encountered other. This is to act in a way that is otherwise-than-being.

 

[Jarhyn]

Love (radical love, like Jesus preached) enters into all this because lateral transfer breaks the tyranny of selfishness of DNA over the survival of the "system".

Does the following (simplified and likely too concise) depiction seem to you to resonate at all with your above remark?

Emmanuel Levinas described being as a process (and, for convenience, I will restrict expression so that it is in terms of humans) characterized by the persistent obsession that a person has with his or her own continuing-to-be. To break with being, to interrupt the processing of being would be to break away from the inertial indifference had for the encountered other wherein that indifference is generated with/by the devoted focus that the self has for its own continuing-to-be. To break with the indifferent processing that is being - to interrupt the indifferent processing of being - is to momentarily cease being for one’s self and, instead, to respond – to act – for the sake of the other, in particular the encountered other. This is to act in a way that is otherwise-than-being.

It descended into gibberish somewhere around "to break with being".

I'm not proposing any kind of "breaking with being".

More, I'm not talking about eliminating the self so much as "migrating" the concept of self away from some specific stuff and into a bigger system of stuff.

DNA, for instance, has a "principal self" bound at times more in the system of the species than the individual "animal" level units, and the individual interests are divided from interests of others principally by the fact that we can't share DNA or morphology with one another.

Think about how Lamarck envisioned evolution: Lamarck imagined a giraffe who strained, stretched, and then had kids with longer necks because they managed to make their neck longer.

Now, we know this is NOT how DNA functions.

While some DNA function can be switched on and off as such, however, actual traits arise from mutation to the DNA not affected by such efforts.

BUT, if we can imagine a mechanism that would effectively accomplish this, this changes the "selection landscape":

Instead of trying to reproduce more and starve competition and fill the world homogenously with your kind, you would have an interest in retaining patterns for creating all known variance, with pressures towards information efficiency, validation of purported function, and identifiability of function, as well as the ability to communicate said models of function.

At that point, all of the natural motives for "exclusion" just kind of evaporate.

Look at what happened with the organization of bacteria into organisms, the advent of multicellular life? Personally, I find this an important boundary moment to look at, philosophically, because it is where individual cells reached an inflection point where preprogrammed death of the instance became a beneficial thing. There was no pressure on any one cell anymore in the reproductive regime.

Imagine also colony organisms, where the arrangement is even looser between the cellular units of the whole.

Prior to humans and this massive brain of ours, there simply was no mechanism to require "plain" descriptions of things, nor to validate that the thing works as promised.

Even now we are at a point where the ability to accept something presented to us and build that thing and know it will not harm us is quite limited. Presenting models for building things which cannot be validated but are nonetheless executed is exactly why viruses work. Individual cells, lacking the full power of an entire "sapient" brain cannot even hold out hope of such mechanisms in the long term for modifying DNA in the way we do with our tech and language.

That's ultimately why I think smarter species tend towards love to whatever extent that they are... And perhaps why Darwinian prerogatives cause it to arise on a pair bonding basis, as well, because of how sexual reproduction creates shared interest.

 

[steve_bank]

... a dedication to the well-being of society.

Compared to Confucianism and Buddhism the morality of the OT and NT gospel Jesus is crude.

Considering what we do know of ancient Jews and the situation 2000 years ago in Palestine I doubt a Jewish rabbi would be preaching universal love of all mankind, he would have been speaking to and about his fellow Jews.

Whether or not there was an actual Jesus as depicted in the stories is irrelevant. The stories are from a time sufficiently close to that at which the Jesus in the stories supposedly did his teaching, and those stories establish that someone(s) did indeed seek to promulgate a different perspective and/or emphasis with the intended audience including Jews of that time. Leviticus 19:18 said, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself." And then the "love your neighbor as yourself" in Matthew 22 got further fleshed out in Luke 10. There the testing lawyer asks, "And who is my neighbor?", at which point the story launches into the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The testing lawyer answered], “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise."

The Samaritan of the parable is an outsider; he is not a Jew, and yet it is only he who exhibits love of neighbor. The point made is that the first commandment is not met if the second is not met and that the second is met whenever love is done for anyone encountered without regard for whether or not that person is of one's own people, group, society, etc. So, there was indeed a teaching amongst and to Jews of that time which said that love is to be done for all.

This lesson is made still more explicit in Acts 10 when Peter goes to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion - meaning not a Jew. Peter says, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. ... Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who ... does what is right is acceptable to him."

The lesson in these stories is very different from that emphasized in Confucianism as characterized. The Jesus and related stories acknowledge and do not teach against social concerns, but these stories do insist that morality, ethics, goodness, etc., are not solely or even predominantly determined in terms of societal well-being. These lessons were not utterly alien to the Jews of that time.

You argue as a theist.

My concussion is the gospel Jesus is a conflation of multiple events and people. Plus the gospel writers likely added what they thought Jesus should have or would have said.

Stating that you know what exactly is the intent of Jesus has no basis in fact. The lack of desalt in the gospels is what makes Christianity. Believers make Jesus into their own personal savio0r that fits their needs.

A Jew claiming to be the son of god or divine in any way would have been serious blasphemy to Jews, probably a death sentence.

The gospel Jesus is obviously a Greek demigod. Human mother and god for a father. The demigod has some but not all the powers of the god. The demigod dies in an heroic act for the tribe or group.

Greek mythology. It would resonate with gentiles. Greeks and Romans would never relate to a dead Jew.


There were multiple claimants to the title of messiah. There were competing versions of Jesus which were suppressed by the dominant Christians.

There was conflict and violence among Christian sects. Constantine convened the Council Of Nicaea to address the conflict. The result was a political consensus among tyhe Chistan powers centuries after Jesus. Greek philosophy was an influence.

There were disputes over the divinity of Jesus.

Th gospels served a political purpose, an agenda. There is no way to know who an HJ may have been, or if anything in the gospels was actually said by a Jesus.

No different than religion today.

 

[Learner]

a dedication to the well-being of society.

Compared to Confucianism and Buddhism the morality of the OT and NT gospel Jesus is crude.

Considering what we do know of ancient Jews and the situation 2000 years ago in Palestine I doubt a Jewish rabbi would be preaching universal love of all mankind, he would have been speaking to and about his fellow Jews.

Whether or not there was an actual Jesus as depicted in the stories is irrelevant. The stories are from a time sufficiently close to that at which the Jesus in the stories supposedly did his teaching, and those stories establish that someone(s) did indeed seek to promulgate a different perspective and/or emphasis with the intended audience including Jews of that time. Leviticus 19:18 said, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself." And then the "love your neighbor as yourself" in Matthew 22 got further fleshed out in Luke 10. There the testing lawyer asks, "And who is my neighbor?", at which point the story launches into the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The testing lawyer answered], “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise."

The Samaritan of the parable is an outsider; he is not a Jew, and yet it is only he who exhibits love of neighbor. The point made is that the first commandment is not met if the second is not met and that the second is met whenever love is done for anyone encountered without regard for whether or not that person is of one's own people, group, society, etc. So, there was indeed a teaching amongst and to Jews of that time which said that love is to be done for all.

This lesson is made still more explicit in Acts 10 when Peter goes to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion - meaning not a Jew. Peter says, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. ... Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who ... does what is right is acceptable to him."

The lesson in these stories is very different from that emphasized in Confucianism as characterized. The Jesus and related stories acknowledge and do not teach against social concerns, but these stories do insist that morality, ethics, goodness, etc., are not solely or even predominantly determined in terms of societal well-being. These lessons were not utterly alien to the Jews of that time.

You argue as a theist.

My concussion is the gospel Jesus is a conflation of multiple events and people. Plus the gospel writers likely added what they thought Jesus should have or would have said.

If I may interject.

I find notions like these questionably intriguing. The idea that these gospel writers would put such effort into specifically give the illustration of Jesus's divinity - as you say above "adding what they think Jesus should have said etc & etc .."

It is intriguing when there is much less effort (if at all) to strengthen the portrayal of Jesus's divinity without "correcting" or "editing out" the "disparities" or "contradictions" (so called) that is said by atheists to be between the gospels.

Stating that you know what exactly is the intent of Jesus has no basis in fact. The lack of desalt in the gospels is what makes Christianity. Believers make Jesus into their own personal savio0r that fits their needs.

Even amongst the many Christian denominations...they are all united on the universal understanding and common core of the gospels, who all claim Jesus is saviour!

A Jew claiming to be the son of god or divine in any way would have been serious blasphemy to Jews, probably a death sentence.

Its great you brought this up as this is one of the points emphasized on when argued that Jesus DID claim he was divine or he was God.. because of the very thing of him being crucified for blasphemy!

The gospel Jesus is obviously a Greek demigod. Human mother and god for a father. The demigod has some but not all the powers of the god. The demigod dies in an heroic act for the tribe or group.

A character sounding similar to another character from another belief system, which the 'god/creator' concept is universal, doesn't necessarily make Jesus a "Greek demi-god".

Greek mythology. It would resonate with gentiles. Greeks and Romans would never relate to a dead Jew.

Jesus the Jew dominated the Greek and Roman gods when both nations became believers in Jesus.

There were multiple claimants to the title of messiah. There were competing versions of Jesus which were suppressed by the dominant Christians.

This ancient artifact says different

There was conflict and violence among Christian sects. Constantine convened the Council Of Nicaea to address the conflict. The result was a political consensus among tyhe Chistan powers centuries after Jesus. Greek philosophy was an influence.

Churches were already established long before the council of Nicea.

There were disputes over the divinity of Jesus.

see above video.

Th gospels served a political purpose, an agenda. There is no way to know who an HJ may have been, or if anything in the gospels was actually said by a Jesus.

No different than religion today.

I agree. The gospels were used for political purposes and all sorts of other things by various people.. good and bad.

 

[steve_bank]

Learner

You are rationalizing as Chrt6oans do.

The old Greek tales like Jason and The Astronauts and Hercules are a recognizable genre of Literature.

George Lucas said part of his his inspiration for the first Star Wars movie were the cowboy westerns he grew up with. Another was the VN War. The Empire being a technically superior culture aka USA against a small less capable peolpe.

Think about it.

Solo is the grey part good part bad gunslinger cowboy who chooses the good side in the end and gets the girl. He has a native sidekick with a crossbow.

An earlier cowboy 'Solo' was John Wayne in Angel And The Bad a Man.

The first SW movie was riddled with older movie cliches.

Agatha Christie is a recognizable genre.

The gospels IMHO were influenced by Greek mythology, Jesus the demigod.

I watched more modern remakes of The Odyssey and Jason And The Argonauts And The Golden Fleece on TV. Entertaining. God's interacting with humans. Sometimes helping, sometimes impeding, sometimes punishing. Sounds ljke the YAWEH bible tales. The same kind of mythology all cultures seem to have.

Greek literature and fiction was well developed centuries before the Jesus stories.

I read somewhere the gospels actually fit an lancet form of what we might call call action adventure today.