Science and Religion...

Amen!

I would argue that religion in no way gives man wisdom. Religion often works against wisdom.

Experience is what gives man wisdom, and religion can be a conduit for experience, both positive and negative. However, religion also is a wonderful way to create locked down mental states, to entrap people in fundamental extremism or orthodoxy, stifling their creativity and freedom to learn.

Religion can play both the role of teacher and slave master, and it is the discerning mind's role to decide which it will allow itself to experience.


Wisdom is, after all, the knowledge of how best to employ your knowledge, so to speak. Wisdom is an often intangible thing that allows us best to understand others and the world around us, and how we connect and interact with both. Wisdom has many parts- emotional intelligence, tact, the ability to know how best to use your knowledge, and simple empathy are examples. It is a complex thing, and it has to be a highly personal discovery to awaken to it. You cannot ever be taught wisdom, it is something you must come to on your own.

Because of this, wisdom cannot be taught by religions, they can only enable you to find it on your own. Since though, they can also stifle your pathway to wisdom, it might be best for some people to abstain from them on the whole.

It is an interesting word, Wisdom. We've stripped it of almost all meaning by insisting that we could not possibly be following the crowd, or we know better than others, almost constantly. It is a thing that is nebulous and hard to define, much less achieve... and I would go so far as to say that anyone who would claim true wisdom is either arrogant or wants something from you.



On another note, Dr. King's meaning is far better and far more nobly illustrated when the entire quote is in context.

“Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from singing into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzingly obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

You need some moral framework in science, and you need science in religion. A moral framework in science lets scientists ask not only if they can do something, but if they should- and science in religion helps do exactly as Dr. King said. It's a wonderful partnership... when it works.

I was intentionally staying out of this one, as it is not the first of its kind and while entertaining, the debate that this usually gets to is mostly just exhausting. However, I do have to object a little bit to the final part of Ty's post.
The common suggestion that religion has anything to say about morality is false. Sure, it makes countless moral pronouncements, yet if going by the framework itself it does nothing to back them up, and that is especially dangerous given how many highly immoral pronouncements many of them make. Now the realms of science so far do little to help out, but the methods of science are perfectly suited to start building a moral system and I submit that nothing that makes empty pronouncements qualifies as a system so much as something that has an actual rationale behind each branch reaching down to some very basic agreed upon or undisputed premises.

And of course, religion doesn't require science either. It works with or without it (it works even better without it, as it seems) which is precisely the reason that it is such a danger to the well-being of our species.

Religion provides some moral framework, though it is certainly not the only thing to do so.

The problem that arises from a religious moral framework though, is that it is always the morality of the time, and has difficulty evolving as time passes.

Ty wrote: Religion often works against wisdom.

Seriously? You're saying that here? Where Jediism is a religion?

But ironically I would have to agree with you. I'm not a fan of religion or institutes in general. I follow the Jedi way, the old-school, fundamental concept of what a Jedi is.

Often, not always.

Any institution that has a doctrine or dogma risks having its constituents close their minds to anything but that which they believe to already be true, stifling growth and ensuring wisdom is forever unattainable.