I mean, actually know for certain?
That you have an ‘inner’ life of thoughts and feelings.
Whether they are ‘right’ or even meaningful is a separate question. (Given that we know that we are prone to mistakes, we know that they can sometimes be ‘wrong’.) Whether they are really ‘just chemicals messing with your brain’ is neither here nor there: we still experience them.
Whether or not you have them no-one else can say for sure*, but you know if you have them.
(There is a whole school of philosophy based on this inability to know anything about the reality of other people’s inner lives – or indeed about the world outside our own minds – called solipsism, which assumes that everyone else is a figment of one’s imagination, and only oneself is real…
For the purposes of this blog, I will assume that you, dear reader, and I are both ‘real’.)
But what about the ‘outer’ world you experience through your senses? What do you know about that? The short answer is: only what your senses tell you.
That bears repeating: We only know about the World that surrounds us through our senses.
But to the modern mind your senses are subjective and not reliable; the very thing we rely on; the only means available to us to have anything remotely like first-hand experience of our surroundings; we mistrust and dismiss.
But in so-doing we throw out the baby with the bath-water…
If we can’t believe our senses, how do we know anything at all?
Scientists generally try as hard as possible to remove themselves from the equation; to make their investigations as ‘objective’ as possible, but they cannot remove themselves entirely; at some point they have to use their eyes or ears to actually take in the ‘results’, and then they have to interpret them.
What about other ways of knowing?
As a young adult I considered myself a Scientist who was open on questions of Spirit; a topic on which Science rarely has much to say, as there is nothing obvious to measure, and therefore no recognisable empirical evidence for or against.
Whilst I was inclined to think on balance that there might be some truth in the idea of an overarching spiritual dimension to the universe, and I felt that Jesus had been one of Humanity’s greatest teachers, I had little time for formal ‘Churchianity’.
I don’t see how Science can ever really simply reconcile itself with ‘authority’; the idea that something is true because The Good Book or The Prophet says so… We need to look for independent corroborating evidence (which may or may not support what was said).
Besides which, different religions have different narratives to explain it all, so how do we choose? And even if one settles on a particular religion, within that there are often different interpretations.
My ‘King James’ authorised Bible is not good-enough for a Jehovah’s Witness, who will assert that only their version has been protected by God from being corrupted…
Having ‘Faith’ is usually taken to mean believing something when the available evidence is inconclusive or ambiguous. This may well have an important role to play in how we live our lives or find a moral code, but in Science it is important to remain aloof in such situations; not to get too invested in something which could be proven wrong tomorrow.
Concrete Evidence...
No. Science tries to deal with concrete evidence, repeatable, reliable, relevant and (as far as possible) available-for-all-to-see. We try to avoid hearsay.
That said, much of the cutting-edge of physics relies on experiments which are essentially impossible for the average expert (never mind the average lay-person) to repeat, due to the cost and complexity of the equipment; so there’s still an element of taking things on trust.
What’s more, at that cutting edge the available evidence is often sparse, highly ambiguous and open to a wide range of interpretations. In quantum mechanics for instance, there are several main interpretations, all equally consistent with the evidence, but with widely differing explanations as to how it all works, and so far no meaningful way of testing the various hypotheses to eliminate any and narrow it down…
Despite our best efforts, there’s a lot of Faith in Science too: it’s hard to remain objective and not get too invested in your chosen field. We’re only Human, after all.
Perhaps it is fairer in this context to tease apart ‘Spirituality’ which is a generalised perspective, from ‘Religion’ which includes a collection of (differing) culturally based narrative contexts and explanations.
Is Subjective Evidence better than No Evidence?
If, having gone as far as it can according to its own wisdom, scientific understanding has gaps that might be explained by a spiritual perspective, then that is of interest (and it may be that some of the counter-intuitive aspects of both relativity and quantum mechanics fit this bill); but I want a Scientific understanding which does everything it can to do away with the need for ‘God’.
As the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli has pointed out, the main source of tension between Science and Religion is not that Science has the ‘objective answers’ whilst Religion has ‘tradition and superstition’, but that Science has ever deeper and deeper questions (with more and more obscure answers, if any), whilst Religion claims ownership of ‘deeper truth’.
Science, by its very nature can never reach a point where it stops asking questions and simply accepts that that is the extent of what it is possible for us to know, and beyond that we should simply accept. The task of Science is to keep pushing at the boundaries of what we ‘know’, and keep finding ways to ‘know’ more. Science is about evidence-based understanding.
I don’t want reach a certain point and then hear that ‘God did it’; that simply makes me want to ask ‘well… how?’
Stepping Away?
Stepping away from formal Religion is not the same as stepping away from Spirit.
Religion is a deeply cultural thing, and much of its importance and value is in guiding the ways in which we engage with the people and natural world around us. It moulds tradition and expectations, in ways both good and bad. At its best it may help us find a healthy moral code to shape our society.
But it is not well equipped to give us ‘factual’ answers to Scientific questions.
Being open to ‘Spirit’ doesn’t require fitting into or subscribing to any particular tradition or belief system; just maintaining the possibility in mind that there might be some level of non-material awareness or influence in the Universe, and perhaps that there might be some possibility of engaging with it.
“I prefer to think in terms of a Universe which can be allowed to unfold according to its basic principles.
I want my Universe to be self-consistent: True to itself.
I want the laws of physics to be a description of ‘God’ in action…”
Going with my Gut...
Even if, despite having only subjective evidence, I go with my intuition and allow myself the luxury of believing in a spiritual dimension to reality, I still prefer to think in terms of a Universe which can be allowed to unfold according to its basic principles, and which does not require the on-going intervention of a divine being, contradicting the very ‘laws’ of physics which uphold it, in order to make important things happen.
I want my Universe (and any ‘God’ connected with it) to be self-consistent. True to itself.
I want the laws of physics to be a description of ‘God’ in action…
Going with God?
Well… do I believe in a figure with a flowing white beard sitting on a throne floating in the clouds, surrounded by choirs of angels? Absolutely not.
Do I believe in a God at all?
That depends: give me a definition and I’ll tell you if I believe in it.
But perhaps the salient point here is that my answer isn’t a categoric “No!”
There are gaps in what I feel the current conventional Scientific approach can deal with; gaps for which a different perspective might offer credible answers.
So my stance on God has to be: ‘it depends what you mean’.
Arguably my ideal ‘God’ would be a non-interventionist creator/observer, with an intense interest in the experiential possibilities that might be played out within that created universe and, through its conscious inhabitants; a vicarious participant in its wonders, joys and sorrows.
More selfishly it would be nice if that ‘God’ was also a sympathetic/empathetic companion and guide to those same conscious beings immersed in its Universe, and could be related to as a Being.
Stepping Towards...
My original question was; What do you know?
Obviously, we know less than we’d like to.
How we know what (we think) we know is a major area of investigation for Philosophers; known as epistemology, and it will be a recurring theme in this blog.
Science is great; it has brought us such a long way in such a short time, but not only does it not have all the answers; it has huge gaps too. So whilst it might remain the ‘gold standard’ of how I try to understand the Universe, there are places (like inside our minds) where it doesn’t seem to be able to go.
But just as Science cannot simply stop enquiring at a statement like “God did it”, a true enquirer should no more feel obliged to stop at a statement like “That’s as far as Science can go.”
This is partly because Science is not the only valid way of knowing things; and partly because Science, of its nature, constantly finds new ways of extending what it can explore.
And maybe there are scientific ways to explore what might previously have been solely in the province of unknowable “Spirit”.
Does that make me “not a proper Scientist”?
Let me know what you think.
