"Through a sleight of language, science doesn't just replace religion, but becomes a religion. And a bad one at that."
I agree that science has become a religion, though the argument that it is a "bad one" doesn't ring true. Besides what defines a "good religion" and makes it better than a "bad one"?
I disagree that science does little to lift us from a "horizontal wasteland". It all depends on how you read and interpret science. Basically science is based on empirical observation of material reality. These observations are catalogued and judged in light of previous observations finding general norms that work as fact most of the time. Platonically this has the Scientist, untrained in metaphysics, filling out the realm of the forms with his observations of the world.
Science is to religions what the neoPlatonic "One" is to the masses of "formless matter" at the opposite end of the specturm.
Also I don't see how religion is any different than science in the fact that "Science deals only with repetition". After all most religions operate on the basis of texts, ritual, or percieved experience, all of which have their equivlance in science. The only thing is scientists would test the Gospel of Judas before rejecting it as hersey.
Hey Pete.
Good to hear from you again.
Re: Bob's comments... I think Bob's comments on science arise from its insistence that the universe is a closed system, which is not a scientific statement, and which is bad religion because it fails to free or uplift. Being closed makes it mechanical and unfree (what is freedom to a machine?).
In contrast, allowing an uncreated divine into the mix makes the system open and therefore subject to radical change. Too much of that is mysticism and not compatible with science. A God who does not triffle with his creation, but sustains it so that we can learn it's routines and thereby understand Him better is classic western theology since the enlightenment at least.
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