<<
Sam, on the other hand, is making a claim of a different sort. It's less a statement of faith than a brief but superb summary of the results of scholarship.
How each of these, philosophy or scripture, are then used conversationally to insist folk should believe thus and so (dogma) or I believe thus and so (confessional) is a different matter.>>
Maybe I don't understand what you are saying above?
There are two uses for philosophy and science. That which is explored for the truth (unto itself) to the degree we can know that.
And that applied to the individual, which is relative.
I think most scientists, and indeed philosophers, at first are just interested in finding the truth. That search, and the way we do it, is what made us contemporary with the ancient Greeks as Will Durant says. Reason versus myth.
And it is hard enough to find the truth, without interjecting unsubstantiated ideas that lack reason, into the soup.
To me the sophistication of ideas is the objective; and what epicure said very eloquently, and correctly, is that on a level playing field of pure ideas (like reality, logic and democracy), the ancient Greeks, in the totality of the exercise, were far advanced over any religious writings.
My reading certainly confirms that, and I looked everywhere. |
