Reply #30: No, actually, they couldn't

[Selwynn]

My words couldn't be easily used to defend anything of the sort, unless they were deliberately misused, since they include the statement that says:

Of course prayer is not going to miraculously physically heal a sick stranger. Of course prayer doesn't reflect any kind of super-physical or psychic power. If you have cancer, you'd better go to a doctor.

It’s hard to use that sentence to defend faith healing. And the rest of my argument cannot be dissect piecemeal to avoid that statement in conjunction with the rest of it.

To me, you see so painfully wrong if you think that poetry and art do not have any place in understanding the universe. And that's awfully sad. Somehow I imagine that you are not a poet. :) The place of scientific inquiry and the place of artistic inquiry are both equally essential to the fullest understanding of the world in which we exist. To not understand this fact, is pretty tragic.

There is a difference between "naming" and "knowing" a thing - between understanding technically how a thing functions, and having the complex pleasure of experiencing its function. Both are very necessary to a full life.

That does not mean you must describe part of your experience of life as "religious." Not at all, but it does mean that you must a) acknowledge that the word is not neatly put into a box, and b) even the things we can numerate in the end lead us to a conclusion much like Camus who exclaimed that despite all the knowledge of science and intellect we cannot, in the end, apprehend the world. c) acknowledge that the more we discover, the more relationships and interrelatedness seem to be extremely significant in life. Both on the socio-communal level, and on the level of personal identity.

Science can, for example, lay out all the individual parts of a DeskJet printer on a table, and in detailed terms explain the function of every part, and how the parts go together, and how each technical element works, and theoretically describe how the culmination of all these parts in a certain fashion will result in on object can print. But science has not so much to say about the experience of printing a picture of a son's dog the was hit by a car last year, a picture from a time before then when both dog and son were happy, and watch that son take the picture, and hug it and cry - not quite sadness, and not quite joy.

Both what science can tell is, and what the poet can tell us are crucial to a fully realized life. Both what the mind can teach us and what the heart can teach us are crucial. Both what rationality and feelings can teach us are essential.

There is nothing threatening to the place of science, rationality, critical inquiry or intellectual pursuits to acknowledge the fact that each of these things plays a very critical role in our understanding of the world, but they do not play the exclusive role. Whether we understand things in religious terms or not, the insight that is shed on life - real, truthful and valid insight on a life that is larger and more complicated than just what can be quantified, categorized or easily referenced -- is just as crucially important as anything else.