V. Rational Vs. Experimental Truth

Logic, Mathematics and Western Philosophy all were developed in Ancient Greece. Their development affected the world afterwards and all three are based on the application of reason. Because Philosophy deals with the application of reason to moral and ethical questions, it’s better when contrasted with spiritual truth so we’ll deal with it then. 

In logic it is easier to see the contrast between rational truth and experimental truth. In his writings Aristotle refers to logic as an instrument of science. Applying reason to the workings of the universe, or society was new and scientific at the time. Logic is essentially based on the syllogism, which is a type of logic equation. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A must equal C. It makes sense, but it might not be true experimentally even if the argument is true itself. As an example let’s say the sky is blue and air is not blue, then the sky is not air. Of course the false premise here is that the sky is blue. It isn’t. But ask most people: “Is the sky blue?” and see what response you get. It makes rational say to say the sky is blue (at noon on a cloudless day) but even then the sky is air even at that zenith of blueness. In logic they say that this argument is valid because it follows the premises (sky is blue and air not blue), but it’s unsound because it’s not true. However, the reason we know it’s not true is because we’ve been able to determine that scientifically, not due to a fault in the logic of the argument. If one can’t touch the sky and see the air isn’t blue, one might think that the sky is a blue dome covering the earth, or a painting done each day by a Divine force. 

Logic has three rules of which the second in particular has major consequences for the rational truth. The first law is called “the law of identity” and basically says that if you say A=B then it must. This says something about the immutability of things in logic.  The second is called the “exclusion of the middle” which gets us into the bipolar nature of rational logic. This law says that things must either be or not be. There is no room for sort-of being or partially being. The last law is the “law of non-contradiction” which holds that only one state of being at a time is possible. So if A equals B then A can not not-equal B at the same time. It’s essentially the opposite of a quantum mechanics position where a particle can be in two forms at once until observation changes that. Notice how this last two laws put logic in a collision course with science from the get-go, because of science’s needs for partiality and uncertainty. The second law leads to a binary nature of logic which plays into guilt or innocence in the legal system. Nobody is partially guilty in the judicial system you’re either innocent or guilty. Yet in nature things can be partially something all the time. Let’s take a virus. Is it alive or dead? Well both, sort of.

Now let’s look at math. Math appears like science, no different than physics. In fact math is necessary to understand even the basics of physics. Newton himself developed a novel type of math called calculus in order to expand physics. But Math is not experimental the way physics is. Math is more a logic puzzle than an experiment. Einstein's theory of relativity is a mathematical description of a phenomenon that can be observed and measured. The theory of relativity makes sense, yet experiments show it works for planets, though not at the quantum level, again shown experimentally.

  The danger of using logic to drive science can be demonstrated by Aristotle’s belief that the biggest bee was the king bee. In his observation the biggest animals were the males so by logical extension (deduction) the biggest bee should be the biggest male. Yet we know that the biggest bee is the only reproductive female in the colony and that male bees or drones are no larger than the worker bees.

It can be very useful to keep in mind how logic and science differ not only on the concept of truth but also on the concept of doubt. Doubt is related to truth, as certainty and surety is. As illustrated by the global warming debate, this differing concept of doubt can get in the way of understanding. 

VI Experimental vs. Spiritual Truth

Many people this day and age see a conflict between science and religion, when in reality there is none. Truth in science concerns itself with what is measurable; science is an explanation for how things work, not why they work. Many people make this leap intuitively without realizing that they’re making it, but it’s not really there. When people say that evolution progresses, they totally miss the point that evolution is directionless. There is no progress in evolution whatsoever. A bacteria is as evolved as a human is, no more nor less. But it’s easy to miss that. The word progress in itself is a conceit that most use without realizing its true meaning. Progress implies a goal, a destination. Yet it’s surprising how people can say that there is progress in society without saying to what its progressing. Because of murky language like this, many people don’t get the extent of the experimental truth. In reality experimental truth only really opposes a religion of the gaps not a religion of the truth. If God is merely your explanation for how humans appeared on this earth, then what’s the difference between a God like that and a pagan god of thunder. Both are explanations for things beyond the current understanding of the time. What causes thunder? We now know, so we need no god to fill-in that gap of knowledge. Spiritual truth on the other hand is described in very old texts. It is a truth that people that who know it, know they don’t know it and those that claim to know it surely do not. Spiritual truth is by definition unmeasurable, and thus outside the scope of science. It’s paradoxical and thus outside the realm of logic. Spiritual truth is the absolute truth that Gandhi equaled to god. It’s the mystery Rumi referred to when he said “Turn towards the direction that transcends all directions.” Words can’t explain it merely point at it.

One of the best descriptions of how Spiritual Truth and Scientific Truth don’t intersect was on National Public Radio on Krista Tippet’s Speaking of Faith. Tippet interviews Father Coyne and Brother Consolmagno two Jesuits who work at the Vatican’s observatory talk about the science and God. 

Fr. Coyne: Correct. My take on the relationship, my personal life, OK, is built upon the following: I'm a scientist. I try and understand the universe. My understanding of the universe does not need God.

Ms. Tippett: I think you're also suggesting — you also suggest that to talk about God in that way, in some sense, is to diminish God and also to diminish the capacity of human intelligence that drive science, that is connected with God in your mind.

Fr. Coyne: That's very true. I think to drag God in when we find that our science is inadequate to understanding certain events that we observe in the universe, we tend to want to bring in God as a god of explanation, a god of the gaps, OK? And we constantly do that. Newton did it, you know? If we're religious believers we're constantly tempted to do that. And every time we do it, we're diminishing God and we're diminishing science. Every time we do it.

Br. Consolmagno: What you wind up doing is turning God into a pagan god, you know, god of thunder, god of lightning, god of crops. And the Romans thought the Christians were atheists because they refused to believe in that kind of god.

Ms. Tippett: Right. But, you know, I think whereas in other centuries, the god of the gaps idea worked for people. I really do feel like in the 21st century we feel that our science will answer all the questions. Right?

Br. Consolmagno: Maybe you're talking about a science of the gaps at this point.

from Speaking of Faith “asteroids, stars and the love of God.” April 1, 2010.

VII The Danger of the science of the Gaps

The science of the gaps that brother Consolmagno refers to, means using science as a source of answers for spiritual or moral questions. This is inherently dangerous as the empirical truth is limited, and looking for a reason or a spiritual truth in it can lead one down strange paths. In a way it’s trying to Deify science. It’s making the way science describes things work to how they should be. 

Intelligent Design and Social Darwinism are examples at opposite ends of trying to use science as a way to provide answers to spiritual questions. On one hand Intelligent Design tries to accord what is known scientifically, to what should be known. It tries to find some “intelligent design” in the world as a justification for spiritual questions, as a sort of answer. It looks at the theory of evolution and sees random change as spiritual confusing, as somehow disproving the existence of God when in reality the theory of evolution by natural selection does no such thing. Both Wallace and Darwin were men of deep religion. They didn’t see the natural world in opposition to a divine order, because that is a way of getting spiritual meaning out of the world, instead out of spiritual truth. Darwin especially saw God’s hand in nature. On the other side you have social Darwinism which reduces evolution to “survival of the fittest” (which was coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin and is at best an artless expression of the theory and at worse a perversion of it). It uses this interpretation of the theory to justify injustice. It essentially says: this is how it is in nature, so this is how it’s supposed to be: eat or be eaten, survival of the fittest. In this limited interpretation social Darwinism has been used as a justification for genocide and eugenics. Where intelligent design tries to make science bend to justify belief in a divine order, social darwinism tries to justify immorality by saying it’s in accordance to nature’s order. Science doesn’t concern itself with morality or spirituality or justice in this manner. It merely describes the world and experiments with it. The theory of evolution by natural selection is mired with confusion because of the injection of morality into it (even Darwin himself muddled it here). “Survival of the fittest,” is a particularly bad phrase to describe evolution because it appears to give some cause and effect to survival, when in reality there isn’t one. If you survive you are not the most fit by fiat. Or if you consider yourself fit, it doesn’t give you the right to oppress those you don’t consider fit. A better summary of it would be “Of those that survive, variations in the population tend to favor fitness.” Evolution means change. What the theory of evolution describes is how populations, species and the like, change due to natural selection (as opposed to say human selection or sexual selection, both of which cause change or evolution too). Nothing else. It’s not a law of eat or be eaten (symbiotism exists) and it’s not a way things should be (don’t justify cruelty this way), just the way things work to the best understanding at the time. Likewise it doesn’t dispel a creator, just because things change on their own without an “intelligent designer” at hand. 

A big sticking point with evolution is random mutations. Though most of the variation which drives evolution is not produced that way, but through recombination through sex; random mutations have become the main engine for evolution in the minds of many.  Random Change does not mean lack of a creator.  Even if all evolution was random there is no implication for a lack of creator anymore than flying a spaceship through the heaven to the moon and back has any implications for a Divine Heaven. Let’s take people who use glasses to see. This trait has been growing abundantly in human population since the survival pressure was removed from bad eyesight.  If we used this as evidence of “intelligent design” are we then supposed to wear glasses according to some divine plan? Was my laser eye surgery an affront to an Intelligent Designer? Hardly. If we say that people that wear glasses can’t hunt as well as those that can see without them then, does that mean that people that wear glasses are less fit? Hardly. There is no necessary contradiction between change and presence of a divine creative force. Both concepts operate on different levels. Where there is conflict is when one sees the divine creator as a god of gaps, one that explains evolution by actively controlling it. But the experimental truth doesn’t concern itself with this, it only seeks what’s measurable or can be made measurable. 

[Note: The following is a draft. The other sections I was able to write quickly but this one after a month of working on it is still very rough, but I've decided to include it anyway due to its importance. Please note that religious truth (be if of a group or an individual) is not equivalent to spiritual truth. Religious truth tends to combine many of the truths particularly the rational as many religions serve as law-giving entities in addition to their spiritual aspects.] 

VIII Rational vs. Spiritual truth. (draft)

  Spiritual truth is also paradoxical truth, in a way a truth that can’t be adequately explained with language. Rational truth on the other hand is defined by the language it’s stated in. Philosophy seeks to apply reason to questions of ethics and morality and thus gives us a good contrast to what the spiritual truth and rational truth are like. 

Philosophy began in ancient Greece and it’s intimately tied to Greek Thought and language. So much so that western though has a hard time differentiating the characteristics of greek thought. Greek conceptualizes the state of being as a restful-static harmonious state, and that to be the higher preferred state of the world. Plato believed that there where two types of being: the approachable by the senses, the sensible, which is mutable, and the intelligible world, which is a “higher reality; here nothing alters, nothing comes into being, and nothing passes away.” (Hebrew thought compared with Greek, Thorleif Boman, p. 53) This was the world of ideas and mathematics. Not only was this the proper state of things in Greek thought but also the unadulterated state of the universe. 

“[Plato’s] teachings would help the philosopher to realize his true self, by liberating his soul from the prison of the body and enabling him to ascend to the divine world. It was a noble system, which used cosmology as an image of continuity and harmony.[…] eternal forms had emanated from the One and had in their turn animated the sun, stars and moon, each in their respective sphere.” (A History of God, Karen Armstrong, p. 93)

Greek cosmology took the stars or heavenly bodies to be spherical, eternal and perfect. The philosopher strove to reach this natural perfection. The world of sensations, emotions, the changeable mutable world was to be avoided thorough the careful use of reason, and thought.

“[The Eleatic school of philosophers] considered being not only as the essential point, but even more, as the only one since they flatly denied that reality of motion and change. Only what is immovable and immutable exists; all becoming and passing away is mere appearance and is equivalent to what is not, about which nothing positive can be said. Our sense-impressions are deceptive.” (Hebrew thought compared with Greek, Thorleif Boman, p.51)

Though the Elaitic school of philosophy is extreme, it serves to stress the preoccupation with immutability in the state of things. This has very important consequences for philosophy. For one things are just not immutable, and furthermore it shows just how much the language is the trap of rational truth. Heraclitus postulates “Everything changes; war is the father of all things, and a man cannot step into the same stream twice.” (ibid.) Yet Plato says of Heraclitus in Thaetetus: “The maintainers of the doctrine have as yet no words in which to express themselves.” (ibid.) Thus the rational truth is limited by the language used to delineate it. 

If we look a the concept of being as restful-static, then being and non-being at the same time are impossible paradoxical states. Yet this distinction is not present in all languages: “The distinction between becoming and being, which is so meaningful for us and even more so for the Greeks, appears to have been irrelevant to the Hebrews or to have been experienced by them as a unity.” (Hebrew thought compared with Greek, Thorleif Boman, p.33) 

The paradoxical truth like a zen koan (a type of riddle) seeks a truth that is not deduced but perceived whole in an instant. It’s not part of the realm of the senses as it can’t be perceived. But it is also not tied to deductive process tied to limiting language categories. In its approach it reveals more emptiness of knowledge than actual knowledge. Eastern philosophy probably due to language affinity treats it often (except possibly for Confucius who was very legalistic). 

Western Philosophy is then tied into an approach of using reason to derive ethics and morality.  This is headed for trouble from the beginning. Morality and ethics cannot be rationalized into existence, the same way it can’t be legalized into existence either. Reason can be used in the application of morality but morality doesn’t spring from it. Where as spiritual truth seeks an epiphanic process of knowledge, no less true than the rational process but outside the rational language.

© 2010 David Acevedo