Platonic dialogue on Science Spirituality

Alex

Administrator
Pls allow me to introduce, Spyridon Kakos

I have been the chief editor of Harmonia Philosophica (harmoniaPhilosophica.com) for more than ten years now and I have been mainly dealing with the inherent limitations of scientific thinking and the dogmatism underlying that thinking in various sectors. I have also been active in writing papers in peer reviewed journals regarding those issues (see https://philpapers.org/rec/ KAKFGT or https://philpapers.org/rec/ KAKCAT for an analysis for how the science of the brain and astronomy may be hindered by the dogma of materialism).

Spiros and I have decided to begin a dialogue here on the Skeptiko-Forum that may eventually be repurposed to reach a larger audience. Even though we're doing it out here in the open I'd ask you to refrain from commenting on it until we get further along. We just had a great Skype chat and I'm excited to see where this project goes.
 
Hello Alex,

As Socrates starts his inquiries, I would say to begin from the... beginning. And try to define the things for which we speak. Modern science has for a long time been in the forefront of attacks against spirituality, but without properly addressing the elephant in the room: To put it in simple words, that it does not know almost anything about the things it speaks about.

We speak about matter and yet, the essence of matter is something highly debatable (e.g. quantum mechanics has about 12 active different interpretations). We talk about consciousness and spirit and yet we have trouble defining them in an objective way as a scientific theory would like. We speak about life and death and we are still in the process of understanding what "life" is.

Yet, here we are. Conscious and alive. We 'know' what it means to be those things, but science cannot even start addressing them. For me, this is not an inherent limitation of science in general, but it is an inherent limitation of modern exact science as it is formulated after Galileo. Meaning that a science which is based on the dogma of materialism cannot - by definition - find out anything spiritual in the cosmos.

That is why it is important for me to question not only the axioms modern science uses, but also the very definition of science itself. In the old days before Galileo science and religion were not separated. Perhaps we need to re-unite them...

Spiros_
 
hi Spiros... thanks for starting this dialogue. As you probably know, we've covered this topic extensively on skeptiko. dozens of shows come to mind, for example:

https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-283-john-horgan.mp3
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-274-bernardo-kastrup.mp3
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-261-wsiw-alex-tsakiris.mp3
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-362-henry-bauer.mp3
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-377-dean-radin.mp3
https://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-376-rupert-sheldrake.mp3

...wait a minute... I had to stop... I mean there are literally a hundred shows in the skeptiko library that deal with this topic.

What I thought was most interesting about yr work is the overlap between extended Consciousness science and a new kind of spirituality that lies outside of the lines sanctioned by religion. I thought it would be interesting to hone in on this because you are coming at things from a Greek Orthodox Christian perspective and have some insights along those lines.
 
Every religion has a different type of spirituality which it endorses. And while Western Christianity tries mostly to capture the essence of God through logic, Eastern Greek Orthodox religion mainly attempts to approach God through the mysticism of acceptance. While Western Christianity based its faith on logical arguments, the great saints of Orthodoxy reserved a special place for what we call «απροσπάθεια», i.e. doing nothing. This is not a notion easily understood by anyone today. We are too much addicted to «doing something» to even consider the possibility of just standing still to listen to what the cosmos has to say to us. This is what I have been trying to say for years through the Harmonia Philosophica articles. Our senses are not a window to the world, they are a prison. Our logic and mind is not a tool to discover the truth, but a chain which keeps us away from it. It is like we are an empty bottle floating on an ocean of spirituality, keeping that lid on tight. It is only when we open that lid that the ocean will rush into us. And since you mentioned those other discussions, if you were to summarize what is the common element between those experiences you discuss here, what would that be?
 
if you were to summarize what is the common element between those experiences you discuss here, what would that be?
1. science is wrong about almost everything... because it's wrong about consciousness.
2. science is dogmatically attached to materialism
3. "shut up and calculate" is a good for engineering but bad for philosophy
4. materialistic Science's greatest accomplishment is obsoleting itself by proving we can't measure anything
5. science is a social engineering project
 
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