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I think somehow society is going to have to breach this divide that currently exists between science and religion, if we are going to heal our planet.

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I feel that the emerging paradigm is one of open spirituality as opposed to the traditional approach of adhering to a single religious system. That said, of course open spirituality can include the use of texts, practices, etc. found in religions - but their use is very personal and driven by one's own intuitive guidance and unfolding spiritual path. So with that in mind, I think that spirituality and science will certainly see more eye to eye in the future, but that might also necessarily negate some religious principles that are seen to no longer have value spiritually, nor evidence scientifically. So I feel adherence to a religion, at least in the way it was traditionally done (usually the same religion your whole life, usually the one born into, with religious claims to being the sole path etc..) is falling away to reveal something new for humanity

Peyote Road said:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

----Richard Dawkins


While I don't neccesarily agree with his logic, I find it ironic that the sentiment he is preaching, that is gratitude toward our life, is exactly the attitude religion teaches us to adopt.

I think somehow society is going to have to breach this divide that currently exists between science and religion, if we are going to heal our planet. Obviously religion has been very corrupted over the centuries, but its a shame people like Dawkins can't recognize the real wisdom contained in the scriptures, which he seems to be in agreement with.

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Peyote Road said:

I think somehow society is going to have to breach this divide that currently exists between science and religion, if we are going to heal our planet.

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On "Nature Via Nurture"

Here is a little experiment you can try, using a few common objects such as video recorders, snakes and baby monkeys (make sure the monkeys were raised in captivity). First, show your monkeys a snake: never having seen one before, they are unlikely to be worried. From this, we can conclude that fear of snakes is not, for monkeys, innate.

Next, show your monkeys another monkey being terrified by a snake (it doesn't matter if it is only observed on video): they will instantly start the screaming and smacking of lips that are their way of expressing terror, and the reaction will be repeated on any subsequent encounters with snakes. From this, we conclude that fear of snakes can be learned.

Finally, show your monkeys another monkey being terrified by something harmless - a flower, say (you will almost certainly have to use a doctored video): your monkeys will not be remotely impressed, and on future encounters with flowers will betray no interest or alarm. From this we conclude that while fear of snakes can be learned, other sorts of fear can't. Monkeys may not have an innate fear of snakes; but they do have an innate predisposition, a slot in their heads where "fear of snakes" will fit.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3592370/You-cant-teach-a-monkey-to-fear-a-flower.html

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The snake and the serpent, flesh-and-blood reptile and demonic dream image, reveal the complexity of our relation to nature and the fascination and beauty inherent in all forms of organisms. Even the deadliest and most repugnant creatures bring an endowment of magic to the human mind. Human beings have an innate fear of snakes, or more precisely, they have an innate propensity to learn such fear quickly and easily after the age of five. The images they build out of this peculiar mental set are both powerful and ambivalent, ranging from terror-stricken flight to the experience of power and male sexuality. As a consequence the serpent has become an important part of cultures around the world.

Perhaps the most bizarre of the biophilic traits is awe and veneration of the serpent.... In all cultures the serpents are prone to be mysterically transfigured.

The Hopi know Palulukon, the water serpent, a benevolent but frightening godlike being. The Kwakiutl fear the sisiutl, a kind of three-headed serpent with both human and reptile faces, whose appearance in dreams presages insanity or death.

The Sharanahua of Peru summon retile spirits by taking hallucinogenic drugs and stroking the severed tongues over their faces. The are rewarded with dreams of brightly colored boas, venemous snakes, and lakes teeming with caimans and anacondas.

The mind is primed to react emotionally to the sight of snakes, not just to fear them but to be aroused and absorbed in their details, to weave stories about them. Every continent except Antarctica has poisonous snakes...

In hymns of Atharva Veda:

With my eye do I slay thy eye, with poison do I slay thy poison. O Serpent, die, do not live; back upon thee shall thy poison turn.

Two serpents entwine the Caduceus, which was first the winged staff of Mercury as messenger of the gods, then the safe-conduct pass of ambassadors and heralds, and finally the universal emblem of the medical profession.

E.O Wilson, Biophelia Hypothesis

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The biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. Edward O. Wilson introduced and popularized the hypothesis in his book, Biophilia (1984). He defines biophilia as "the urge to affiliate with other forms of life".

The term "biophilia" literally means "love of life or living systems." It was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. Wilson uses the term in the same sense when he suggests that biophilia describes "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”

He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with other life forms and nature as a whole are rooted in our biology. Unlike phobias, which are the aversions and fears that people have of things in the natural world, philias are the attractions and positive feelings that people have toward organisms, species, habitats, processes and objects in their natural surroundings. Although named by Fromm, the concept of biophillia has been proposed and defined many times over. Aristotle was one of the many to put forward a concept that could be summarized as "love of life". Diving into the term phillia, or friendship, Aristotle evokes the idea of reciprocity and how friendships are beneficial to both parties in more than just one way, but especially in the way of happiness.

In the book Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations edited by Peter Kahn and Stephen Kellert, the importance of animals, especially those with which a child can develop a nurturing relationship, is emphasised particularly for early and middle childhood. Chapter 7 of the same book reports on the help that animals can provide to children with autistic-spectrum disorders.

Product of biological evolution:
Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution. For example, adult mammals (especially humans) are generally attracted to baby mammal faces and find them appealing across species. The large eyes and small features of any young mammal face are far more appealing than those of the mature adults. The biophilia hypothesis suggests that the positive emotional response that adult mammals have toward baby mammals across species helps increase the survival rates of all mammals.

Similarly, the hypothesis helps explain why ordinary people care for and sometimes risk their lives to save domestic and wild animals, and keep plants and flowers in and around their homes. In other words, our natural love for life helps sustain life.

Very often, flowers also indicate potential for food later. Most fruits start their development as flowers. For our ancestors, it was crucial to spot, detect and remember the plants that would later provide nutrition.

Development:
The hypothesis has since been developed as part of theories of evolutionary psychology in the book The Biophilia Hypothesis edited by Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson[7] and by Lynn Margulis. Also, Stephen Kellert's work seeks to determine common human responses to perceptions of, and ideas about, plants and animals, and to explain them in terms of the conditions of human evolution.

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...A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for
they are the over-goers. I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Overman, may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the overman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own
down-going. I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the overman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing. I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge. I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more
of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to. I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.

I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and
who then asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?"- for he is willing to
succumb. I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going. I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones. I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and
all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going. I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his
head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his
down-going.

I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the
dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the
lightning, and succumb as heralds. Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Overman.

Friedrich Nietzsche; Thus Spake Zarathustra

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We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

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As I said, I am going to borrow the mathematicians’ term ‘theorem’, but I’m spelling it ‘theorum’ to differentiate it from a mathematical theorem. A scientific theorum such as evolution or heliocentrism is a theory that conforms to the Oxford dictionary’s ‘Sense 1’.

[It] has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; [it is] a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.

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zzripz said:

All I say is be careful of falling for these peoples ideas just because you see them as an author-ity.

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We fancy, that were we brought on a sudden into this world, we could at first have inferred that one billiard ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse, and that we needed not to have waited for the event, in order to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree.

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viktor said:

zzripz said:

All I say is be careful of falling for these peoples ideas just because you see them as an author-ity.

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So why should anyone listen to you?

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