> No, it's not, by definition. Instead of finding out how stuff works, this particular philosophy prescribes just deciding how it should work and then believing this arbitrary decision to accurately reflect the nature of the universe.
Okay, this is actually just you projecting your beliefs onto what spirituality means. It is not by definition in any sense of the word.
> It's inappropriate to tag cosmic processes with a concept that should be reserved for intelligent life forms.
How do you know the universe is not an intelligent life form?
> It's this fallacy which brought us a movement that explores "alternate theories" in biology class. Religion is not science. "Making stuff up" that is unsupportable by evidence is not science.
Sigh When did I say it was? I explained clearly the difference between science and other forms of making stuff up, and you talked right past it. It is as if you believe human beings are incapable of thinking in both scientific and unscientific ways.
> Rejecting the whole stack of evidence and the hypotheses that came out of those observations in favor of something untestable and arbitrary does not seem like a viable strategy to understand the nature of the universe.
Who's rejecting anything? Science does not tell us whether there is a god or not.
> You call it atheistic hubris, I call it the growing impatience of rational people in the face of a world governed by fairy tales.
That's not what I call atheistic hubris. What I call atheistic hubris is that the lack of recognizable evidence of higher consciousness is evidence that there is no higher consciousness. The reason it is so hubristic is because we no idea what said evidence would look like. Declaring this one way or the other is not scientific, it is instead I believe, a psychological need to have a firm order in one's knowledge of the universe. I stand as evidence that this is not a pre-requisite for a true and healthy relationship with science.
> I don't think our meatsacks are profane puppets in the service of an unseen force that floods the universe with artificial meaning. Instead I believe our "meatsacks" are marvelous, awesome machines and they gave rise to a form of consciousness that is unparalleled on this planet.
Why do you say puppet? Trying to pigeonhole spiritual belief into some kind of biblical metaphor is exactly the attitude I'm fighting against. I'm not saying that your mind is not governed by chemical processes playing themselves out; I'm saying that even if that's 100% true (which is a very difficult truth to verify when you get down to the nuances), it doesn't mean there isn't something else going on on another level. Perhaps the universe is conscious and you are just one small part of that, or perhaps there are parallel dimensions that get the information from our universe in some read-only fashion. My point is not to arrive at the objective truth (how often do you arrive an objective unchanging truth in your interpersonal life?), but rather to leave myself open to bigger questions even if they remain unanswerable in any scientific capacity for the rest of time.
Okay, this is actually just you projecting your beliefs onto what spirituality means. It is not by definition in any sense of the word.
> It's inappropriate to tag cosmic processes with a concept that should be reserved for intelligent life forms.
How do you know the universe is not an intelligent life form?
> It's this fallacy which brought us a movement that explores "alternate theories" in biology class. Religion is not science. "Making stuff up" that is unsupportable by evidence is not science.
Sigh When did I say it was? I explained clearly the difference between science and other forms of making stuff up, and you talked right past it. It is as if you believe human beings are incapable of thinking in both scientific and unscientific ways.
> Rejecting the whole stack of evidence and the hypotheses that came out of those observations in favor of something untestable and arbitrary does not seem like a viable strategy to understand the nature of the universe.
Who's rejecting anything? Science does not tell us whether there is a god or not.
> You call it atheistic hubris, I call it the growing impatience of rational people in the face of a world governed by fairy tales.
That's not what I call atheistic hubris. What I call atheistic hubris is that the lack of recognizable evidence of higher consciousness is evidence that there is no higher consciousness. The reason it is so hubristic is because we no idea what said evidence would look like. Declaring this one way or the other is not scientific, it is instead I believe, a psychological need to have a firm order in one's knowledge of the universe. I stand as evidence that this is not a pre-requisite for a true and healthy relationship with science.
> I don't think our meatsacks are profane puppets in the service of an unseen force that floods the universe with artificial meaning. Instead I believe our "meatsacks" are marvelous, awesome machines and they gave rise to a form of consciousness that is unparalleled on this planet.
Why do you say puppet? Trying to pigeonhole spiritual belief into some kind of biblical metaphor is exactly the attitude I'm fighting against. I'm not saying that your mind is not governed by chemical processes playing themselves out; I'm saying that even if that's 100% true (which is a very difficult truth to verify when you get down to the nuances), it doesn't mean there isn't something else going on on another level. Perhaps the universe is conscious and you are just one small part of that, or perhaps there are parallel dimensions that get the information from our universe in some read-only fashion. My point is not to arrive at the objective truth (how often do you arrive an objective unchanging truth in your interpersonal life?), but rather to leave myself open to bigger questions even if they remain unanswerable in any scientific capacity for the rest of time.