Sunday, October 21, 2007

Modern Science, Old Faith

I’ve been present in the I International Seminar of the Historical Jesus in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in the last 3 days. The main character present was nobody less then John Dominic Crossan, founder of the Jesus Seminar and a famous scholar in the Historical Jesus studies. He is criticized by many other scholars that argue against he’s method, what is the Achilles Tendon of his conclusions.

The seminar was enricher and frightening. Frightening because I discovered something that I didn’t imagined that had came to that point. The science is losing it’s criteria. In the search of a less dogmatic discourse two devastate implications are rising against the scientific method. 3 were the cases analyzed.

1 – Some researchers choose to quote Jesus texts like historical and other texts of the same Jesus were throwing off based in the actual common sense. What makes no sense cause the gospel text was written for the audience of the I and II century a.D. In another words, what Christ said that affirm the main ideas of the researcher sustains itself through the Historic-Critical Method, but the irrelevant texts for the main ideas of the researcher, or even the texts that oppose his ideas, are thrown out without any criteria.

2 – Other researchers based their allegations and “scientific discoveries” in completely hypothetic factors. And at least, responsibly, admitted such dependency of hypothesis build upon not enough evidences. So, they establish a whole research in a unstable basis (by the inexistence of the basic hypothesis validation) to conclude, in the end, what just could be proven if the basis hypothesis of the research were proven. That’s scarily speculative.

3 – The last, worst and more frightening argument in the scientific method that I saw in the event was: More than one of the scholars who showed their researches, made allusions to the pluralism of ideas, the inexistence of absolute truths, but subjective ones. The maximum materialization of the anti-dogmatic discourse. “The science can’t be dogmatic”, they say. However this is a great postmodern illusion. Cause in the end, when is Said that science can’t be dogmatic, or there are no absolute truths, or that all truths are subjective, then, we are dogmatizing and establishing the plurality of ideas as an absolute truth (what is extremely contradicting to the pluralist proposal). In another words, there is no anti-dogmatisms, but the opposition to the disagreeable dogmas. The pluralist argument don’t sustain itself. A river must always have banks never more.

What bring us to the last implications of this discourse, the science is loosing it’s criteria by the denial of absolute truth. Although this discourse is based on the constant evolution of knowledge and the scientific truths in the elapse of time (something true 50 years ago, today can be a reason of jokes). That’s also a fallacy, cause we can’t deny lies if they don’t position itself as truths. The pluralism doctrine condemns good ideas to mix if bad ideas that will never be unmasked cause don’t figure as absolute truths. It’s part of the process of discovering and scientific evolution that one truth rises as absolute to be putted under prove and, if possible, proven or replaced.

There are another problematic factor in the question of putting speculations in position of scientific truths to be proved. Cause of the inconsistent basis, even resisting for years, will be product of studies that we don’t know, maybe never, the relevancy of the time dispend in this research. So, a great, and irrational, loss of time.

In the end, this is one problem find in the human’s ego that don’t like to be find oppositions, and prefer to admit other’s people truths as validate since won’t invalidate his own. But leaving a side this philosophic deepness, see how science is becoming exactly what it most hated since his born. The blind faith. Blind faith in science. The same blind faith that disconnected it definitely from religion. Scientific declarations are made based in weak speculations, with no prove, and so relative that makes me ask what is the relevancy of it? What’s the relevancy of scientific researches if the absolute truth don’t exist? If what is going to be the conclusion is just the product of the subjective mind of the researcher? What’s the science objective? When science sees the hole that is digging down will start to make this same questions, who knows if won’t gonna live a discredit crises like religion lives today?

Who knows it self-destructs? I hope not. But I don’t see any relevancy in the subjective and speculative arguments, do you see?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cabe a mim e ao meu poder de persuasão garantir, mesmo que eu não seja o detentor da verdade! ;D hahahaha

Pode até ser que haja algum lugar a se chegar... + a sua vida vai deixar de ser completa apenas pelo
fato de você não a ter encontrado?
Uma vez eu li em um conto que uma personagem virava para a Morte e dizia: "Nossa, esse cara viveu muito", e ela por sua vez respondeu: "Ele viveu uma vida inteira, nem mais, nem menos."
Ao meu ver, deveríamos ver a vida como um fim em si só. A vida não vai mudar pelo fato de você compreende-la ou não.

Não acho que estudo de casos deveriam ser descartados. Pois tudo acaba sendo um reflexo de algo maior. A regra nunca existe, pois nunca é extremamente precisa. Apenas nas idéias.

O fato de você ter 1,94 não mudará, mas a forma como isso é observado pode mudar. Eu posso medi-lo em polegadas por exemplo. Ao meu ver, você é alto, mas para alguém de 2,5 metros você pode ser baixo.

Tudo é uma questão de observação. E como com a nossa observação só podemos ver o ângulo que cabe a nós, nunca teremos a real detenção do conhecimento, pois para isso, deveríamos conhecer de todos as perspectivas, e ao mesmo tempo, de nenhuma.

Desculpas por não comentar em relação ao seu post, mas meu inglês não é lá essas coisas! ;D hahahahah

Abraços