Spirituality is right. The world is unknowable. So?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Things that 'can not be explained' now will not be seen the same way in 50 years.

I won't say that this really is so or not, rather I will say that this is not really the point for me. Explanation (in scientific, physical, mechanistic terms) of things yet unexplainable may be possible within the physical and scientific realm. Naturally if one looks for a scientific explanation of anything, this is what one finds. If one looks for a different explanation, this one is what one finds. But understand that I do not say science is wrong. This fundamentalist religious notion to reject the knowledge brought into our culture by science as false based on mistrust, religious dogma or blind faith in opposing views makes little sense. A spirituality cannot exist if it denies the existence of these informations. It has to be inclusive, but unlike science it has to be inclusive in a way that is not appropriative, not denegrating the other. Science claims truth and denies religious, spiritual or even holistic philosophical thought that truth and bascially puts them in the corner of the fool. It calls them liars, superstitious nonsense and self-deluding idiocy. This kind of appropriative inclusiveness is damaging, it spells conflict and is borne aout of the neodarwinist worldview of Scientism that everything is competition, that the better explanation will win, that science is the better way to see things compared to other views, thus the other ones have to go away because they are "false gods" (I think it is no coincidence that this analogy to the christian bible exists by the way). So I think what is needed is a view that is truely inclusive, that threats the knowledge gained by science as real, but that maybe questions the ideological aspects of it. And most of all I think that the focal point has to be a different one.

everything, from love to enmity, can be seen at their cores as a drive to survive, to outcompete others.

This is the type of neodarwinism I was talking about - everything gets described in that way - that competition, struggle of survival just for the sake of it is at the base of everything. A physical, mechanistic property. A "hard and cold reality" of matter and energy. And all other things build upon it - cells, bodies, animals (who are mere biological machines built to transport the genes to the next generation), love, compassion, emotions, feelings, consciousness. And even the parts that are not yet explained are thought to be explainable given enough data. So eventually all of the mentioned will be attmpted to be explained by interactions of matter and energy, of DNA and hormones. I think at least there is one (probably many more) other way to look at it - namely that all these physical properties are there to manifest consciousness, feelings, emotions, compassion, love. That to manifest this there have to be animals that have to have neurons, hormones, brains, bodies, cells,...
This is not denying the results of scientific exploration, it is just looking at this world from a different viewpoint. Again "what is primary" - the choice is that either the physical is regarded primary, which inevitably leads to a certain nihilism. Because if it is all just particles interacting, what does it matter if something dies or lives or a species goes extinct or an animal screams in pain. Descartes, one of the first "scientists" who followed strictly that kind of worldview in which matter is primary described the shrieks and whines of the animals he cut open alive as mere squaking wheels in the clockwork mechanisms he was taking apart. The only way out of this mechanistic dilemma of utter darkness and the allowance of all behaviour is to create a construct of an enlightened human. Of a human that is (maybe by culture, maybe by some other superiority) able to go against the course of nature, against the course of competition at all cost. Or another way to look at it is to see it as a flaw, as a evolutionary relic that humans actually feel bad about torturing an animal. Just neurons blinking for no special competitive reason at all. I think these presumptions are shaky at best.
Looking at it the other way round - that for us as living beings what is primary is our experiences, our emotions, our consciousness and that the physical world is basically the means we are existing seems to me much more fulfilling. We can still marvel at the things science tells us, but we are not slaves to the notion of being basically just walking vehicles for competitive gene transfer.

knowing something doesn't diminish it. I could describe the basic function and design of every single significant part of a computer, but that does not give me a problem in using one - indeed, I would say it gives me a greater appreciation.

I think this is only party true, because it matters what you look at in the end, and from what point you look at it. Certainly I'd say to know how something works does diminish it in our thoughts to some degree and in some aspects. We may still wonder at complexity, at numbers of components or fine tuned mechanistic connections. All quantifyable stuff. That wonder and marvel is however IMO depending on an ever increasing property. Once we know one thing in detail, we NEED more complex, larger, or more efficient mechanisms to invoke wonder and awe again. At the same time, it is easy to forget the whole over the parts and most of all that at times the whole is actually more than the sum of its parts. The very least one should do is to look at it all - at the parts, at the whole, at the subjective experience of us ourselves. But most of all I think what is needed, desperately, is a guideline how do deal with what we know. I think the view advocated by Dawkins & Co is a very very bleak and destructive one - a deterministic, mechanistic world in which consciousness and free will is merely an illusion, created by competing genes and memes that have the only goal of surviving. If this is a cultures world view, it is no wonder that there comes a sense of entitlement, of superiority with it. But also a sense of nihilism and "f*ck it". A sense of "we can do whatever we want because if someone dies because of it he was just not well adapted, not strong enough". So I think clearly that this way of looking at the world and taking this as the story we enact in this world is leading to what we see now - widespread destruction. Instead we should realize that other concepts can explain the world we live in and maybe these are called "spiritual". Cooperation instead of competition can be a major force for example.

I will close with a funny (not accurately transcribed) quote from Derrick Jensen here. He quoted 'Dawkins saying that "There are working models to explain the world as it is in terms of cooperation or competition, the problem with cooperation [and presumably his conclusion is that therefore it has to be based on competition] is, that if you have a cheater around, everything breaks down." - Look around you Mr. Dawkins - there IS a cheater around and everything IS breaking down.'