Our friend U2 seems unable to understand that the anti-religion thesis requires as much faith as the religious thesis...
1. Believer or non-believer the first step is to be clear as to what the credible options are, and this is based on what your definition of truth is, your epistemology, as ideas must be judged in light of this definition.
2. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.
a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.
3. Empiricist philosopher David Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of taste and sentiment, Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
a. This view reduces morality to personal taste: Whatever works for you.
b. This represented a sea change in Western thinking, which ran counter to the traditional view of truth as covering both the natural world and the moral order.
c. Henceforth, the natural world, observed via the senses, qualified as genuine knowledge. But morality and values, neither perceived through the senses, are merely subjective feelings: principles, rather than transcendent truths, became simply preferences. Here is the division between science and religion.
4. This division of truth is known as the fact/value split, or the divided concept of truth. Simply stated, it means that objective knowledge is possible only in the realm of empirical facts.
a. A survey released yesterday posits the idea that the United States -- already one of the most religious nations in the developed world -- may be even less secular than previously suspected. Americans May Be More Religious Than They Realize - washingtonpost.com
b. . While the vast majority of Americans recognize a higher power, and state that they regularly pray, and, therefore, acceptance of an invisible spiritual world, they also, syncretically, accept the empirical definition of truth. In short, they accept a secular worldview without realizing it.
c. The consistent view would be to simply challenge the use of the definition, since the separation of facts from values is the basis for the secularization of much of Western thinking.
d. This kind of relationship with religion is not, it seems, unusual. Peter Lipton, a Cambridge philosopher, spoke of his struggle to be a practicing Jew in spite of his lack of belief in a supernatural God. "I stand in my synagogue and pray to God and have an intense relationship with God, and yet I don't believe in God," Lipton confessed with a rueful grin. Clash in Cambridge: Scientific American
e. How about an earlier definition, such as the one earlier Greeks used as the principle that unifies the world into an orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. The stoic, Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC, the logos was the active reason pervading the universe and animating it. It was conceived of as material, and is usually identified with God or Nature. Logos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heraclitus was the earliest Greek thinker to make logos a central concept. He urges us to pay attention to the logos, which "governs all things" Logos
For a far better explanation, one should pick up a copy of "Saving Leonardo," by Nancy Pearcy
1. Believer or non-believer the first step is to be clear as to what the credible options are, and this is based on what your definition of truth is, your epistemology, as ideas must be judged in light of this definition.
2. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.
a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.
3. Empiricist philosopher David Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of taste and sentiment, Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
a. This view reduces morality to personal taste: Whatever works for you.
b. This represented a sea change in Western thinking, which ran counter to the traditional view of truth as covering both the natural world and the moral order.
c. Henceforth, the natural world, observed via the senses, qualified as genuine knowledge. But morality and values, neither perceived through the senses, are merely subjective feelings: principles, rather than transcendent truths, became simply preferences. Here is the division between science and religion.
4. This division of truth is known as the fact/value split, or the divided concept of truth. Simply stated, it means that objective knowledge is possible only in the realm of empirical facts.
a. A survey released yesterday posits the idea that the United States -- already one of the most religious nations in the developed world -- may be even less secular than previously suspected. Americans May Be More Religious Than They Realize - washingtonpost.com
b. . While the vast majority of Americans recognize a higher power, and state that they regularly pray, and, therefore, acceptance of an invisible spiritual world, they also, syncretically, accept the empirical definition of truth. In short, they accept a secular worldview without realizing it.
c. The consistent view would be to simply challenge the use of the definition, since the separation of facts from values is the basis for the secularization of much of Western thinking.
d. This kind of relationship with religion is not, it seems, unusual. Peter Lipton, a Cambridge philosopher, spoke of his struggle to be a practicing Jew in spite of his lack of belief in a supernatural God. "I stand in my synagogue and pray to God and have an intense relationship with God, and yet I don't believe in God," Lipton confessed with a rueful grin. Clash in Cambridge: Scientific American
e. How about an earlier definition, such as the one earlier Greeks used as the principle that unifies the world into an orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. The stoic, Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC, the logos was the active reason pervading the universe and animating it. It was conceived of as material, and is usually identified with God or Nature. Logos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heraclitus was the earliest Greek thinker to make logos a central concept. He urges us to pay attention to the logos, which "governs all things" Logos
For a far better explanation, one should pick up a copy of "Saving Leonardo," by Nancy Pearcy
