Reconciliation of Science and Religion

This is somewhat of a response to Carissa's "Blending and Religious Beliefs" post and Daniel's "Empiricism, A Religious Experience" reply to her post.

I agree with Carissa that "Conceptual Blending and Analogy" by Gilles Fauconnier was a fascinating chapter. We never think about how many "easy" actions we perform daily are actually incredibly complex conceptual blends. The computer mouse example really struck me, as it is something I use every day without devoting any conscious thought to it. Obviously, at one point in my life I had to consciously learn the coordination to manipulate a mouse about a computer screen, but by now that action has become so natural that essentially no conscious thought is needed to do it.

This reading highlights the "remarkable human capacity for building novel conceptual/physical domains"(Fauconnier 278). This is the essential trait for creating religious beliefs, and as we discussed earlier in the term, something the Neanderthals were lacking. Without this quintessential human ability, it would be impossible to link definite real-life events to abstract descriptions of them. Therefore, all abstract religious belief would be nonexistent and so would any other abstract scientific descriptions of nature (taking off of Daniel's post) like quantum mechanics or relativity. Basically, any way that people attempt to describe observable physical effects with non-observable causes (Dan mentioned electric field) would be impossible for humans without this conceptual blending capacity that Fauconnier describes.

Carissa clarified her position by countering Dan's post with, "when religion looks for explanations of phenomena, the explanations are very broad as opposed to restricted to certain situations like an electric field". I would argue that although the electric field is one specific case, if you combine that explanation with all other scientific explanations for other observable phenomena, there is a generally excepted scientific "religion". This "religion" is constantly evolving as more applicable theories are introduced to replace obsolete ones, similar to how religions are evolving to better explain human nature. (Which Dan mentions as well).

Carissa also mentions in her reply, "the scientific theory [of evolution] only deals with the evolution of animal species while the God 'theory' deals with the creation of the entire universe". I completely disagree that evolution "only deals with the evolution animal species" because, basically, it doesn't just deal with the evolution of animals. The theory of evolution encompasses all living things, not just animals. So, that theory along with other physical theories can describe the physical world in the same way that religion describes human nature and dynamics. However, it seems like religion also attempts to describe the physical world, so I'm not sure how to connect that with my argument. I suppose that I use physical laws and theories as sufficient explanation for the world around me, and in the same way many use religion as sufficient explanation for otherwise incomprehensible phenomena.

The striking connection between religion and empiricism definitely makes me want to delve into this subject a bit more.