One of the courses I completed this month is “Philosophy, Science and Religion: Religion and Science“, provided by the University of Edinburgh through Coursera. It’s a course I recommend to everyone ready to question the reality. So sad that during all the years wasted spent in the school, the majority of time during “Religion” lessons (a mandatory “gift” provided by government during the fascist era in 1923, extended in 1929 also for high schools) was used for a religious propaganda where everything is seen only in a Catholic perspective. I started this course when I realized I couldn’t provide a clear response to a great friend of mine who asked me something about Buddhism; so, as always, I started digging down the rabbit hole and… I found this course, which I completed and now I’ll try to summarise the main points – but please invest your time in this course: less than 30 hours and every single minute is well spent, specially if you keep your mind open.
Science, Religion, and the Origin of the Universe
Buddhism and science
Buddhism begin with Buddha Siddharta Gautama (Buddha means “the awaken one”), 5-6 centuries before Christ. After him, Abhidarma (high learn) schools to teach his thought. Only one of those schools is still present: Theravada Buddhism (way of the elders). Then, several different forms of Buddhism spread over a large geographical area.
Main concepts reside in the 4 noble truths, that are more or less like medical diagnosis:
- Illness: duhkha – life is suffering (even good things finish, so there’s a backside)
- Cause: trsna – suffering is caused by attachment and aversion
- Prognosis: get rid of trsna and you’ll get rid of duhkha
- Treatment: noble eightfold path.
We have attachment and aversion since we don’t understand our world: that everything is impermanent, everything must pass and everything happens soon or later. What are the things you’re most attached to? Usually is ourselves, but “we are not ourselves”.
Kalama Sutra telling don’t believe in something (from divinity to probability) just because it’s written: don’t accept stuff just because it’s written/told in some “divine findings”. Buddhism doesn’t have conflicts with science, it’s open to new findings. Dalai Lama says: “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims”. Practice modesty: try to learn from someone better than you. How do we know that some scientists are wise? Because of the result. We trust airplanes because they are designed by engineers, following science and logic. Talking about logic: in classical western logic, there are 2 principles: Excluded middle (a statement is either true or false) and Non-contraddiction (a statment can’t be both true and false). There are 2 main exceptions: Aristotle (in Metamorphosis) said that something in the future will be true or false, but at the moment we don’t know it yet, so it’s a case in which it could be in contraddiction with the 2 principles at the present moment. Hegel said that, during motion, something can be and not be, at the same time (transition).
In Catuskoti (tetralemma), instead, there are 4 possibilities:
| True | ||
| True and true only | Neither true nor false | |
| False | Both true and false | False and false only |
At the core of the Mahayana Buddhism, there’s the concept of Emptiness (Sunyata): it’s not non-existence, it’s a kind of existence. Everything it’s not self-existent, an entity (person, object, other) only exists in relation to other entities.
Here, the course provide a great parallel with quantum mechanics: in quantum entanglment, 2 particles are influenced each other. Even if they’re so distant that they can’t tranfer info each other, the collapse of wave in one is observed also in the other one. So the equation to show that the 2 Schrödinger’s cats are “linked” since there’s a intimate connection between the 2 particles. If at the moment of the big bang all the particles shared same situations and were linked, even after the huge expansion, they’re still “linked” in some way, so all the universe consist of a huge system of particles entangled each others. This explain the concept of “emptiness” in Buddhism (and so we can understand “inter-being” in the universe).
Evolution and Design
Sin, Suffering and Salvation: Evolutions Thorny Issues
Human Uniqueness in Science, Theology, and Ethics
In 2017, 7 earth-like planets in Trappist-1 system were discovered (39 light years from us), so our planet is not so “unique” as we are used to think. Even before the first radio mass experiments on scaring US population about martians to movies like “Arrival” (2016), people dibated about extra-terrestrials. But if there are other worlds, why god is so focused on us?
Huxley (great fan of Darwin) debated with a bishop, in fact religion coulnd’t accept that we derived from monkeys, for the church we are “special” creatures. Religion want us to consider ourselves as different from animals, so some christians also try to defend the position quoting philosophers and even Chomsky (he said we’re the only species able to express ourselves in an articulate way). But even “simple” animals (like birds) can create and use tools to solve complex problems. Some animals can understand symbols (trained on videogames) and even recognize themselves, showing self-awareness (you can read here and here). So we are not some “special god’s creatures” and we should practice compassion also toward other animals.
