Religious and Scientific Truths

Actually, it is crazy to expect that I could achieve something by reenacting political processes with the help of toy worlds. In different cultures too. The basic literature on the four selected cultures is diverse, old, and new, and almost endless, and often at a high level of abstraction, sometimes so untouchable that depicting them is prohibited from within.

Is the chosen means (the operational toy world) suitable? Isn’t the number of details that will have to be disregarded too great? And: is the reenactment of cultures justifiable in a moral sense?

When in a trial by the Roman Inquisition in 1615 a theory of Galileo Galilei on the basis of texts in the Bible was dismissed as sacrilegious gibberish, a process was started in which ‘truth’ was given an extra meaning: it had existed as religious truth for a long time. Now scientific truth was added. Galileo’s trial shows that these two kinds of truth can be in conflict. But what do I mean by that?

Religious Truths

With cultures around TBCM, Islam, the American Dream and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in mind, I define religion as an all-encompassing supernatural vision that is accepted as binding in a community because it is believed to be good. Religious truth is thus based on a moral insight shared in a community and that is religiously and / or philosophically legitimized.

Religious truths determine cultures and are concurrently culturally determined. If the insights to be derived from religious truths are to survive in a changing world, they must be based on valid reasoning. This requires the art of valid reasoning with religious core values in a changing world. To this end, priests, scholars and / or philosophers are needed. They create and cherish methods of interpretation, models, logics and mathematical systems, and with them they create new religious truths.

Valid reasoning based on axioms leads to theorems in mathematics. I adopt that term for all religious truths, including the extra-mathematician ones. In other words, valid reasoning based on core cultural values leads to religious theorems. Thus I cleared my way to speak about TBCM theorems, Islam theorems, neo-liberal theorems and human rights theorems.

Scientific Truths

With the results of Galilei, Newton, Boltzmann, Darwin, Feinman, Von Neuman, Crick and Gazzaniga in mind, I define science as aiming to describe and explain nature in a reproducible way as objectively as possible, using the scientific method. This prescribes to posit a story that explains a certain phenomenon in a certain context from a certain point of view, in order to make predictions with it and then test these, by experiment or observation. The scientific truth of an explanatory story thus rests on the fact that it has already been tested and repeated, but has not been refuted.

Thus, scientific truths of explanatory stories are always uncertain. They always concern sub-areas, so that scientific specializations have been developed for them. This requires the art of valid reasoning with scientific theorems in a changing world. Scientists were and are needed for this. They make and cherish models, logics and mathematical systems. With that they then make new scientific theorems. Logics and mathematical systems are in science related to their religious counterparts.

As with religious theorems, I adopt that term from mathematics for the outcomes of all valid scientific reasoning based on established scientific theorems. In other words, valid reasoning based on scientific truths produces scientific theorems. Thus I am paving my way to being able to speak about social science theorems, political science theorems, economic scientific theorems and natural science theorems.

Clashing Truths

The strength of a culture is related to the number of people who subscribe to its core values.

The strength of a discipline is related to the number of its useful and robust scientific theorems.

Clashes arise when cultural core values threaten to limit the expansion of a discipline or, vice versa, if the number of people who believe in the core values of a culture is under pressure because they are not tenable from a scientific point of view.


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3 responses to “Religious and Scientific Truths”

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