eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (08/25/88)
Perhaps Dr. Minsky's remarks were intemperate. But the responses of his
opponents make the error of identifying 'religion' with one particular
*style* of religion, the monotheist-dualist-antimaterialist kind that
happens to dominate Western culture.
Within the context of the Judaism and the two most important Zoroastrian-
influenced religions (Christianity and Islam) it is essentially correct
to describe 'religion' as either a) opposed to science, or b) self-consciously
about things held to be metaphysically 'beyond' scientific inquiry.
These religions depend for critical parts of their belief systems on the
historicity of various 'miraculous' occurences, and so must respond in one
of the above two ways to science's claims to the even *potential* of
universal explanatory power through the notion of unbreachable 'natural law'.
However, there are other kinds of 'religion' (underrepresented in this culture
at present) for which none of this is an issue. Some non-theistic varieties
of Buddhism, for example, are nearly pure psychological schemata with little
or nothing to say about cosmology (Zen is perhaps the best-known of these).
There are many other forms (collectively called 'mystery religions') in which
the religion is not at all concerned with what is 'true' in a physical-
confirmation sense, only what is mythopoetically effective for inducing certain
useful states of consciousness.
To people involved in the shared *experience* of a mystery religion or Zen-like
transformative mysticism, the whole science-vs.-'religion' controversy can seem
just plain irrelevant to what they're doing.
Someone operating from this stance might say: "The gods (or the Vedanta, or the
Logos, or whatever) are powerful in human minds -- who cares if they 'exist'
in a material sense or not?" At least one great Western thinker -- Carl Jung --
would have agreed. Religions come and go, but the archetypes are with us
always.
I bring all this up to point out that the 'religion-vs.-science' debate is a
good deal more parochial and culture-bound than either of the traditional sides
in it recognizes -- that scientists who get drawn into it often implicitly
accept the (usually Christian-inculcated) premise that the validity of a
religion hangs on its cosmological, historical and eschatological claims.
It doesn't have to be that way. I, for example, can testify from ten years
of experience that it is sanely possible to be both a hard-headed materialist
and an ecstatic mystic; both a philosophical atheist and an experiential
polytheist.
Further discussion (if any), however, should take place in talk.religion.misc,
and I have directed followups there.
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
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