Consciousness is magic
January 15th, 2010
Before discussing it, I offer you the chance to watch From Science to God by Peter Russell. (and apologies to Sarah Silverman for alluding to her film Jesus is Magic in the post title)
Peter Russell is an author and filmmaker who seems ever eager to bridge what many see as a gap between science and religion, however, it seems like he’s trying to make a bad relationship work. Not that one can be both scientific and religious, but that the two things must somehow be shackeled in ways that don’t really work for the purposes of shaping a new worldview.
This post actually started off as a response to a friend who had shared the video with me (that’ll learn ya). The basic notion here, that science can now be dismissed as a means of answering certain questions on the basis that the questions are really quite old and science hasn’t fully solved them yet, is what I’d classify as a sort of a new mutation of Neo-Luddism. I have a different piece of writing on Modern Luddites in general that seems to be taking quite a bit of time, but for now, and in this post I’d like to focus just a bit on the spiritual strain. Spiritualists take a lot of things for granted about science that often seems more like an analysis of what they are seeing in the mirror rather than an objective assessment, and this film is a perfect example. Read the rest of this entry »