Thanks TFF,
Great reply. It took me days to work up something....The presumption is that they're offering something that actually CAN "explain things" - well, so long as we use the appropriate definition of "explain." Well I sure agree with this.
What kind of constraint is materialism? Materialism is the only thing that keeps us sane and grounded in reality.
Eh? "What kind of constraint is materialism?"
It is a constraint that limits us to that 5% of reality that we currently observe, measure and test.
The other 95% of reality, the dark matter and dark energy of the universe, may not be strictly material in the way that we currently define a sane, material reality.
You say: "Materialism is the only thing that keeps us sane and grounded in reality." -TFF
I'd paraphrase that to: Materialism is the only thing that keeps us rational and grounded in reason.
But even that may still be too much of a limitation.
I think Kauffman would say something along the lines of emergent properties--such as life, love, and civilization--transcend the reasonable materialism of their rational component parts.
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I'm not advocating that religions try to justify their paradigm by using science;
nor am I pushing for science to get all mystical, but....
I do think that both science and religion could benefit by adopting a more relativistic perspective--realizing that the same thing may be measured (valued) differently--depending on the frame of reference.
...and especially for the more complex emergent properties, either strict dogma or strict materialism may not be the best frame of reference.
How's that for a load of rhetoric, eh?
Cheers,
~
