Post #162 "The Search for Reality II"

In the search for Reality in science and religion, one could wonder, does science ever use Faith as a  means of attaining Knowledge and does religion ever use Reason as a means of attaining Knowledge? Does science ever depend on the word of its experts or is every fact tested individually by each scientist? On the other hand, what of religion? Religion could be seen as depending on the expertise of  its founding leaders as eyewitness to persons and events on which it bases its beliefs and tenets as in the christian religion's belief in its leader, Jesus, the Christ through the testimony of its apostles and disciples. Does science credit eyewitness as an acceptable means to attaining Knowledge? Most religions rely on an eyewitness accounting that is, then, handed down throughout history.

Would science allow eyewitness accounts to be acceptable as akin to establishing a bed-rock of fact? Rene Decarte's final book was written on the passions of the soul. It is interesting and seemingly contradictory to his total movement of Faith to Reason, that Decartes, at the culminating moment of his career, would refer to 'passions of the soul.' Russell Shorto, in his book Decarte's Bones, p.252 says that Decartes had "long realized that there was difficulty with his division of Reality into mind and body---the difficulty being to figure out how the two substances interacted." Decartes concluded that there must be a connection between the two. Is science Really replacing religion's Faith or is science replacing Faith with Reason to fulfill the human need to worship, in this case to worship at the altar of exclusive, self-perpetuating academic cults or individual fame and glory including the worship of possessions, or to put it more succinctly.... Self Worship? It would seem then that the creation of life would be the creation of the state of Perfection, the state of Knowledge/possession of Infinity--the unattainable and exclusive quality, usually associated with one's God and the perfect habitation of that God known by many names such as Heaven, Eden, Utopia, Shangrila, or Camelot.

Just what is the quality of that which calls forth worship? Would that quality not have to call forth acknowledgement of the finest, of the best, the most, in other words----Perfection? Worship, then, is the act of acknowledgement of who is our God. As Power has been determined as the action and effect of the Ultimate God/the Ultimate Power, power would be the means of identifying that which is Perfect. All that which is ultimate feeds into the Ultimate, it feeds into power. The 'All-knowing', the 'All-loving', the 'All-mighty', the 'All of anything and everything' is the state of Perfection by which God is identified. The 'most', the 'finest', the 'best', of everything creates the state of Perfection. Perfection is Power! Perfection is the identity and Power is the action of the Ultimate God of Creation.