Wisdom Traditions – Beyond Science/Religion/Atheism

In the menu above this comes after the practical application of wisdom traditions as it is “less important” – “thinking” rather than “doing” is a very western trap in this regard. In many ways we “learn by thinking” as opposed to “learn by doing”. However whether thinking or doing all of our existence is very much informed by our understanding and core beliefs. Many of our core beliefs are implicit as we gradually absorbed them as a subtext. At school you were almost bound to have been faced with two alternate “explanations” – religious or scientific with nothing more nuanced in between. Like everything you were taught at school this is too simplistic by far. Albert Einstein late in his life was asked if he had any regrets. His answer was that he wished he had read more of the world’s great mystics earlier in life…

A “religious” person will have a whole raft of answers to this question. These are, in the main, generally as “un-falsifiable” as they are “un-provable”. Notwithstanding which of course there are shelves of books “proving!” or “disproving!” the existence of God. Western “debate” – though it hardly merits that term – is this kind of medieval “yes he does exist”, “no he doesn’t” kind of thing with an implicit division of the world into theists and atheists. But you have to go a long way to frame Taoism in this way – doubtless both atheists and theists would probably claim that the Tao for their side of the “debate”. And of course not just between different religions, but often more passionately within them, there are vast doctrinal differences – each sect believing they are “right” and others “wrong”. Anyway if you are religious and happily believing in what you have been told in your sect then that’s great, there is no more to be discovered – it’s certainly simple – as long as you keep doubt at bay. At the core the base metaphysic is of course the belief that a person is more than just dust and dead matter, that there is more to the universe than meets the eye.

The predominant modern paradigm is “scientific”. Philosophers of Science long ago distinguished between Science as:

i) “scientific method” (being rigorous and systematic),
ii) as a cultural “activity” (research) and “body of knowledge” (approved textbooks)
iii) any underlying metaphysics.

This last point is often an extraordinary blind spot, in many contexts (fuelled by the whole creationism thing in the States?), “Science” has become synonymous with philosophical materialism – the idea that the universe is “just” space-time/matter-energy. This is a logical nonsense however (notwithstanding which it is so implicit it took me decades to notice I had fallen for it!). Science confines itself to the objective examination of the objective material universe using material instruments.

Source: http://www.mikebaliman.com/