God is hope and faith; religious folk bond over affect. Organized communities provide structured access to interpersonal connection, a biological necessity. Religious practices are technics that facilitate access to these affects (c.f. Tibetan monk meditation studies—intensive spiritual practice can induce physiological change). Science has not translated these effects into a reproducible medium dissociated from the theological backdrop; sports and music are adjacent channels providing similar benefits, but are limited in the range of sensation and lifestyle structure they facilitate relative to nonsecular practice. Meaning can be as simple as “keep doing it for the people in your community”. As well, some foundational abstractions that constitute modern mathematics, logic, and science are derived from the parables, metaphors, and imagery of our various religious texts and traditions:
“One interesting change that has taken place is that in a probabilistic world we no longer deal with quantities and statements which concern a specific, real universe as a whole but ask instead questions which may find their answers in a large number of similar universes. Thus chance has been admitted, not merely as a mathematical tool for physics, but as part of its warp and weft.
This recognition of an element of incomplete determinism, almost an irrationality in the world, is in a certain way parallel to Freud’s admission of a deep irrational component in human conduct and thought. In the present world of political as well as intellectual confusion, there is a natural tendency to class Gibbs, Freud, and the proponents of the modern theory of probability together as representatives of a single tendency; yet I do not wish to press this point. The gap between the Gibbs-Lebesgue way of thinking and Freud’s intuitive but somewhat discursive method is too large. Yet in their recognition of a fundamental element of chance in the texture of the universe itself, these men are close to one another and close to the tradition of St. Augustine. For this random element, this organic incompleteness, is one which without too violent a figure of speech we may consider evil; the negative evil which St. Augustine characterizes as incompleteness...” —Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, pg. 11.
Mechanisms persist despite asserted objectivity. There have been many religious scientists. Some partitioned their lives, maintaining one of personal faith, and one of knowledge pursuit; others found utility in their overlap. Instrumental or operational reason can coexist with spiritual practices. Subversion and iconoclasm are tools to sustain alienation. Sovereignty is a relational attribute.
God is hope and faith; religious folk bond over affect. Organized communities provide structured access to interpersonal connection, a biological necessity. Religious practices are technics that facilitate access to these affects (c.f. Tibetan monk meditation studies—intensive spiritual practice can induce physiological change). Science has not translated these effects into a reproducible medium dissociated from the theological backdrop; sports and music are adjacent channels providing similar benefits, but are limited in the range of sensation and lifestyle structure they facilitate relative to nonsecular practice. Meaning can be as simple as “keep doing it for the people in your community”. As well, some foundational abstractions that constitute modern mathematics, logic, and science are derived from the parables, metaphors, and imagery of our various religious texts and traditions:
“One interesting change that has taken place is that in a probabilistic world we no longer deal with quantities and statements which concern a specific, real universe as a whole but ask instead questions which may find their answers in a large number of similar universes. Thus chance has been admitted, not merely as a mathematical tool for physics, but as part of its warp and weft.
This recognition of an element of incomplete determinism, almost an irrationality in the world, is in a certain way parallel to Freud’s admission of a deep irrational component in human conduct and thought. In the present world of political as well as intellectual confusion, there is a natural tendency to class Gibbs, Freud, and the proponents of the modern theory of probability together as representatives of a single tendency; yet I do not wish to press this point. The gap between the Gibbs-Lebesgue way of thinking and Freud’s intuitive but somewhat discursive method is too large. Yet in their recognition of a fundamental element of chance in the texture of the universe itself, these men are close to one another and close to the tradition of St. Augustine. For this random element, this organic incompleteness, is one which without too violent a figure of speech we may consider evil; the negative evil which St. Augustine characterizes as incompleteness...” —Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, pg. 11.
Mechanisms persist despite asserted objectivity. There have been many religious scientists. Some partitioned their lives, maintaining one of personal faith, and one of knowledge pursuit; others found utility in their overlap. Instrumental or operational reason can coexist with spiritual practices. Subversion and iconoclasm are tools to sustain alienation. Sovereignty is a relational attribute.