Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunnybayes  Had an insight, shoot some holes in it...
A definition of spiritual [for the purpose of this post]: using terms that are fuzzy and not well defined yet.
A definition of science: the terms have been tested against reality very accurately and have been strongly defined.
Spirituality is necessary before you can do science.
Spirituality is your best guess before you can back it up with science.
Spirituality is faith that a concept works before you know how to tie it to reality, spirituality becomes science once it is backed up with reality.
Spirituality is the root of all evil : evil as in not seeking the truth (using fuzzy terms) and backing it up with reality.
Therefore spirituality is the root of all evil and the path to goodness and truth.
I refuse to define faith, good, evil, root, truth, and path, so this is a Spiritual insight. For example, Here's some arbitrary definitions of good, evil, root, spirituality, science , truth, path.
But it might be a useful insight since we have a subconcious intuition belief in our brains for those words.
Conclusion? Probably made several times before, but Spirituality and Science are not really in conflict, in fact they compliment and need each other. |
I agree with your conclusion, but not with the way you arrived there. Your definitions of spirituality and science are way off base for starters. The way you define spirituality, for instance, does not separate it from science. Science always begins with a hypothesis, which is an untested assumption that very well may use loosely defined and unclear terms (similar to your definition of sprituality), forms a theory after testing the hypothesis, then tests the theory experimentally to either prove or disprove it. If the theory is proven, it becomes scientific fact. Spirituality can be said to have similar processes in coming to conclusions based on theories of right vs. wrong that are tested out in everyday life.
On your next point, spirituality is absolutely not necessary before science. All that's necessary is a curiousity about how the world around you works.
Regarding the next couple points, spirituality doesn't necessarily deal with the question of "how," as science typically does, but rather "why" and "what are the moral implications." In that way, the two disciplines often deal with different aspects of the same issues. Often, knowing how something works can shed insight on a particular aspect of spirituality and can lead to innovations that have spiritual implications, but it doesn't change the basic spritual precepts.
Take human reproduction, for instance. Humans have only recently come to a good understanding of how it works. This has led to innovations such as birth control, abortion, pre-natal medicine and a host of other scientific and medical advances. They all have spiritual implications in that they all may potentially affect the next generation of children, which is something we need to take very seriously and we need to do right by them. In this case, science is what explains how things work and enables innovations that give us better control over reproduction, sprituality gives us the guidance to use all that knowledge for the betterment of humanity.
So, in that way, the two disciplines can indeed be complimentary, but they are not dependent on each other, nor is spirituality the "root of all evil." The lack of knowledge is not evil, per se, nor is it a good thing. Evil is the use of knowledge (or lack thereof) for personal gain at the expense of others. Sprituality merely distinguishes good from evil, it is not at the root of either. The root of evil, I would argue, is our human tendency for self-gain at others' expense.