THE LOGIC OF CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY: Science v. Religion

Our central theme then boils down to these questions: What is the nature of the foundational authorities that give legitimacy to science and to religion, and how are these authorities related to each other? Although the nature of each of these authorities is well known and has been studied in detail, surprisingly little effort has been made to compare them.

On the scientific side, the foundational authority of the entire enterprise is the appeal to empirical facts. If this appeal is rejected as illusory, then science as a whole collapses. From this factual basis science proceeds by induction to form generalized empirical laws and ultimately to the genesis of explanatory theories. The second phase of the scientific enterprise consists in testing these laws and theories by use of the methods of verification and falsification. Here, again, empirical facts serve as the authority of last appeal for the acceptance or rejection of scientific laws and theories.

“Our new government is founded upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man.” - Vice President Alexander Stephens

The Civil War - by Ken Burns - part one - The Cause - 1861

I knew I was going to have my main character come from Lawrence, Kansas, which has a major history in the civil war. So, I’m watching this documentary on Hulu, and I’ll be reading on the history of the Civil War too.

I have vague notions of understanding Hegel. The Civil War was a long time ago. “Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers — if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible.” Of course, after I heard this quote I noticed on my twitter feed there was a happy hour that was going by the name ‘Class War’ Hour. Cryptic and mythopoetic as these nominal ‘trends’ may mask themselves as being, like Fallout tells us, War never changes. But sublation of such afterthoughts can be good for the present, unless you don’t believe in the future. And who can afford to these days?

Here’s a blog “called ‘White People Mourning Romney’, which features conservative Republican types as well as some of them mentioning hopes of states’ secessions from the U.S..

This is all total bullshit of course. Because the question is now not the future, because we are all inured with the future in our everyday. But now people with no imagination are fighting for an imaginary afterlife, for the subconscious belief to live alive without any thought of … what the hell am I talking about?

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide.”

- Abraham Lincoln.

“When seeking to understand the conspiratorial mind, the focus of its obsession is less important than the presence of the obsession itself.”

- Arthur Goldwag,

Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies

“The mesmerizer wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The medium, even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, may get no manifestation at all; the less he exercises his will, the better the phenomena: the more he feels anxious, the less he is likely to get anything; to mesmerize requires a positive nature, to be a medium a perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of Spiritualism, and no medium is ignorant of it.”

- Isis Unveiled,

H. P. Blavatsky

image source

“In questions of testimony, certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the borders of the supernatural.”

- Agénor de Gasparin
quoted in ‘Isis Unveiled’ by H.P. Blavatsky

“There is one thing though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied, viz: the levitation of furniture without contact. De Mirville catches him proclaiming that such levitation is impossible: “simply impossible,” he says, “as impossible as perpetual motion.”

Who can take upon himself, after such a declaration, to maintain that the word impossible pronounced by science is infallible?”

- Isis Unveiled,

H.P. Blavatsky, 1877

(via theburningchrome)

(via neighborhoodtragedy)

In his oft-quoted work, Conflict between Religion and Science, Professor Draper shows a decided propensity to kick the beam of the scales of justice, and lay all such impediments to the progress of science at the door of the clergy alone. With all respect and admiration due to this eloquent writer and scientist, we must protest and give every one his just due. Many of the above-enumerated discoveries are mentioned by the author of the Conflict. In every case he denounces the bitter resistance on the part of the clergy, and keeps silent on the like opposition invariably experienced by every new discoverer at the hands of science. His claim on behalf of science that “knowledge is power” is undoubtedly just. But abuse of power, whether it proceeds from excess of wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in its effects. Besides, the clergy are silenced now. Their protests would at this day be scarcely noticed in the world of science. But while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have seized the sceptre of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the tree of immortal life and within this world of perishable matter.

Isis Unveiled, ch. III

H.P. Blavatsky

Peter Harrison - Gifford Lectures Series entitled:

SCIENCE, RELIGION, and MODERNITY

- Lecture 1 - The Territories of Science and Religion

Playlist Includes - Lectures 1-6

I’ve been listening to this series of lectures, on and off for a while. This is a really in depth talk and it’s hard to get into, but I’ve become convinced it’s worth it. I’m on lecture four right now, ‘Fallen Knowledge’. He is making a very complex point about what constitutes ‘science’ and ‘religion’, and in history how these only recently became categories and before were different things, and exist only in respect to how people’s inner disposition directed their actions and beliefs. But there is also a whole lot more going on in these lectures. I think they are well worth listening to.

fuckyeahaltars:

(via Upload of the The Philosophers Stone)

the identification of contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process which Hegel supposes, is really a selfconsuming process, passing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity.

William James, pragmatist