From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: Re: Environment and native issues
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 20:50:14 GMT

In <9208200056.AA15034@hpindbu.cup.hp.com> Alan McGowen
	<hpindbu.cup.hp.com!alanm> writes:

> ...I think that the only spirituality
> which is feasible for western humanity at this point is one which
> must emerge from a deepened understanding of nature through science.

I would certainly agree that any spirituality which makes sense to guide us
into a habitable and worthwhile future must be consistent with the best
principles of scientific discovery, but I also feel that our "science" may
be a pale shadow of what it could be if it were to have more room for what
is generally called "subjective" experience.  It seems to me that many of
the apparent disagreements between "science" and "spirituality" are really
artificial.  There is a scientistic religion that does battle with codified
belief systems which have come to be identified with spirituality.  However,
I feel that both kinds of institutions are serious distortions of the path-
ways toward greater understanding that they could be, so I have no interest
in joining in debates like "creation vs. evolution."  I have no problem
accepting what appears to be the indisputable factuality of living systems
evolving over time, but I feel we may have only a dim understanding of the
specific mechanisms involved, though we can infer from available evidence
some legitimate principles involving the effects of pressures from the
surrounding environment.  What causes me distress is how some scientists
seemingly arrogate to themselves (claiming to speak on behalf of "science")
the exclusive prerogative of declaring the inherent meaninglessness or
purposeless of the evolutionary enterprise.  It seems to me we have far
from the adequate evidence we would need to support such propositions.

> But spiritualities that come equipped with all the answers in advance can
> have problems when they turn out to be wrong in the details.

I would call such things "fundamentalist religions," and have no special
fondness for such things myself, but I don't feel it's fair to identify
spirituality with such a "religion" which deliberately attempts to put
itself at odds with prevaling world views on which it has no competance
to comment, any more than does an exclusively rationalistic "science" on
matters pertaining to the essence of the inner dimension of experience
or on a range of other subjects on which its evidence and methods have no
particular bearing.

> Not so long ago,
> western people all believed that the world was a product of a creator.

And the scientists of the 19th and early 20th century had some pretty
strange notions as well.  Our understanding evolves, doesn't it?  Let's
compare apples with apples.  More importantly, when either science or
spirituality strays outside its own subject area, there's bound to be
mischief.  It's really about "category errors" (cf. Ken Wilber's _Eye_
_to_Eye_ for a discussion of this subject as it applies to science vs.
spirituality).

> They
> were also quite sure that the creation was fairly recent and that species
> were fixed in nature once created. They were wrong about this...

Isn't this kind of logic just setting up a "straw man" for the purpose
of knocking it down?  Surely there were (and still are) some people who
hold such beliefs, but why identify spirituality/religion as a whole with
such mistaken and unsupportable beliefs??

> ...Some of
> these "creationists" still hold out against the teaching of evolution to
> children, using arguments not unlike Peshewegunzh's about the harmful moral
> effects of materialism.

"not unlike..."   Hmmm.  It seems like a rather questionable tactic to use
the logic of "guilt by association," particularly when the association has
nothing to do with the person to which you're implicitly attributing such
opinions.  Maybe Peshewegunzh does hold such views, but I haven't heard him
state them during the course of this or any other electronic discussion.

> Perhaps Peshewegunzh has no particular quarrel with evolution, but sees it
> as an expression of the creativity of the Great Spirit. Yet there can be
> pitfalls with this approach as well. Evolution is not a "progressive"
> process "culminating" in humans.

Well maybe not - and it would do us all good to keep such an idea in mind,
whatever we might think about the proposition.  What matters more, it seems
to me, is that we're the most "intelligent" species we know of on this
planet, and the most "capable" in other ways as well, even if a large amount
of these attributes are expressed in what I, for one, find to be unfortunate
ways.  The fact is that we have and continue to alter the natural environment
of this planet in ways that have, in many or most cases, become irreversible,
with or without our efforts to remedy the effects of our interventions.  We
seem to act as if we are the grandest product of the whole business, whatever
we feel about our part in the affair.

I feel it can only be the product of a naive - or poetical imagination (not
to identify one with the other, mind you) to put a "creator" into the role
of an anthropormorphized architect and builder in order to hold that there's
more going on than meets the eye of someone interested only in mechanism.
We ignore at our own peril the degree to which our rationalistic "science"
has become a religion, and how jealous and seemingly insecure is its own
deity.  Our Western science has a fairly good grasp of the "hows" of our
world, excepting for certain pesky matters of how non-living became living
(methane, ammonia, and electrical energy notwithstanding :-) - but it has
no special expertise, and no way of beginning to address the "whys" or even
to comment on whether such things make sense.  Let us not use our tools for
tasks other than those for which they were designed.  (A short film on
"Primitive Pete" in a junior high school industrial arts class taught me
that lesson in a manner and to an extent that it's become indelible! ;-)

I haven't heard Peshewegunzh advancing specific theological arguments, so
I don't quite understand why Alan has mounted such an attack.  In any case,
I don't feel this is the appropriate forum for a general discussion of the
merits of theories of biological evolution versus the creationist views of
certain fundamentalist sects.  Like a previous discussion many of our cur-
rent readers will recall, we swim in dangerous and shark-infested waters
when we start getting into controversial subjects which have been talked
about endlessly in the public forum.  We can also easily lose sight of the
fact that this mailing list / newsgroup is specifically designed for the
purpose of talking about subjects relating to aboriginal / indigenous peoples.

This is a potentially very fascinating discussion, but I feel it would be far
better if we could try to get back on track and if we could stick specifically
to what each other actually say, rather than with whatever strange notions we
might mistakenly associate with their positions.

Thanks.

Gary

--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst
Newsgroups: alt.native