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Scientism-based worldwide society

March 19, 2006

Aug 28, 2005   Dov, in biologicalEvolution forum

Re spirituality, religion and scientism-based society                                                                       ——————————————————-

(A) Most persons I know, including "scientists" whose writings I read, relate human existence, faithfully, to a vague ultimate reality, i.e. they consider the life of some humans of greater esteem in the context of the vague reality than the life of other organisms, and are unable to accept that death of all human primates, like the death of other organisms regardless of their physiological complexity, is the definite absolute cessation of its occurrence-existence and is the incorporation of the components of ex-living system into the totality of the relentlessly dispersing-diluting universe.

Spirituality, i.e. humans' sensitivity or attachment to religious values or to other human-invented cultural ideas, has come about by our predecessors who adapted from life in semi- or tropical forest circumstances to life on plains. As changed living posture and circumstances led to modified perceptive/adaptive capabilities and eventually to language communication humans have gradually replaced adaptation to changed circumstances with self-evolving cultures/civilizations for control and modification of much of their circumstances. This is essentially similar to Life's genes' celling evolution four billion years earlier, but with culture functioning for humans for change/control of their circumstances in lieu of RNA and protein toolings that function for in-cell genomes for adapting their cell's physiology to changing circumstances.

Cultural aspects, ALL cultural aspects, function for individual humans and for human communities of all sizes and phenotypes (distinct ethnic/national/religious/cultural communities) in the same manner and for the same ends as biological systems function in and for cells. This is plainly in accord with the fractal nature of Earth Life.

All our capabilities and functional traits are inherited from the long line of our predecessors back to their single cells editions, including communication. Humans' unique further complexing of communication is the added "intelligent" level that renders human knowledge a tool for extensively modifying its living circumstances instead of having to physiologically adapt to changing circumstances.

(B) Religion was evolved by humans and has been functioning for humans in the same process and for the same ends as the inter- and intra-cell biological factors have evolved and have been functioning for life's cells and for all organisms. In the human historical circumstances evolutions of religions rendered a survival service. They were possible and enabled based on faith. Their various sets of elements/features have become distinctive "phenotypical" features of most humans.

A humanist/scientism-based social framework can and should accommodate the various phenotypical religious groups, enabling their survival and preservation, with a scientific understanding of their evolution and history and with humanist rational moral conviction thoroughly replacing each and every aspect of their faith/holliness basis.

(C) Humanism, including secular humanism, is a cause/principle/system of convictions held to with ardor. The question is if it is held to also with "faith". When it is regarded as either right or wrong it is held to by faith and thus is a religion. Some humanists abhor a religious tag; they regard it as a cooperative regime, not right (vs wrong) but most efficient and fair.

My own taste/election is an explicitly scientism-based humanism regime. I have been trying for a few years to advance an international program for promoting the international wide public continuously updated availability of scientific information to serve as a basis of scientism-based humanism ( SCM, Science Creed Manifest ). Such a program might be a major contribution to public "enlightenment".

An averagely educated person can nowaday avail self of ever much wider/deeper scientific information, faster and simpler than our predecessors. With the wealth of presently available scientific information and knowledge we should not hesitate/wary of assessing things and forming attitudes/values by our own judgements. It is this that seems to me the essence and spirit of "enlightenment".

(D) Science is a discipline and a regime devised by humans for uncovering the patterns of things. Science is a human device. Regarding science as "being discovered" is not scientific; it might easily be adopted by religious thinkers. Nature's patterns, processes and rules, at all cosmic levels, have not "always been there" waiting to be discovered. They have been evolving since the beginning, from nil through ever further complexities and consequently at ever accelerating rate, towards an unfathomable end.

My taste/election is of a scientism-based social-cultural humanist regime and civilization, to be held to with conviction and ardor, scientism defined as "a method or doctrine characteristic of scientists, and the proposition that scientific methods of studying and practicing natural sciences should be used in all areas of investigation and conduct". I am an enthusiast of application of scientism to social-cultural-civil affairs.

And I posit that scientism-based humanism may be a world-wide framework that embraces and accommodates all faith-relieved religious phenotypes, with harmonious survival of all the groups with their distinct traditions.

end. DH

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