The lack of credibility by scientistic esotericism

Anticipating the outrage and feelings of insult of some believers, let me foreclose (again) that I consider myself as a pragmatic relativist. My pondering in all kind of religions, philosophies and theories led me to the conclusion that simply nothing is true or false, right or wrong. There’s simply no (objective) reality out there to base any (universal) truth on. Thus, I’m no disciple of science, either. Heck, I consider science just as much of a belief than religions for example: It’s basic axioms in methods and theorems in theories are arbitrary presumptions – premises. However, this is where pragmatism comes in: Science has provided the most comprehensive and compelling concept for explaining this our world (in the West) so far, calmed down people’s worries and doubts and thus contributed the most to life’s highest values – may it be longevity, happiness or human progress (as I think is the basis for the prior).
I’m trying to understand every different concept for explaining the world. This attempt of course is limited and sometimes thwarted by my social imprint (which is of a Middle-European Protestant-Christian, rather Republican than liberal democratic kind). I see logical inconsistencies in the argumentation of people who on the one hand affirm the subjectivity of our consciousness and the important role of the human subconscious and on the other hand, claim to have got conscious of all their social imprints and to be able to transcend them. Such transcendence would not only require full objectivity but also full awareness of the subconscious. This is logically contradictory, I reckon. But again, such people may immunize their opinions by claiming that they have also transcended logic – which I must admit haven’t managed myself nor observed among great philosophers, animals or nature in general: Trial and error, learning by doing – life is doomed to be logic, it seems. Thus, such people rather appear like heretics in my eyes and out of different presumptions alone, must be excluded out of this discussion.
And nevertheless or just in fact, it’s such logical contradiction and the subsequent lack of credibility among certain alternative concepts of beliefs to science that I want to discuss at this point. Recently, a huge variety of rather new concepts of beliefs have come to my attention that try to merge spiritual ideas with scientific findings. The term “spiritual ideas” may not have explanatory sufficiency (as in the sense of mathematical sufficiency), but seems to hit the spot as the basic difference between such concepts of beliefs and science is that it assumes “non-materialistic”, thus spiritual factors in the universe that play a role in our life. Again, it’s important to notice that such beliefs do not assume that this might be materialistic aspects that just haven’t been discovered or proven by science, yet, but presume (and thus immunize the discussion) that this cannot be researched by scientific methods. “Only through your spirit you can explain consciousness”, I was told. Well, this reminded me of semantic linguistics where my friend told me that you cannot really explain scientifically the coordination between words and their empirical referents. Another common example is that there’s no way to explain with science why human beings have consciousness. On my behalf, however, this question is flawed because again, we analyze our consciousness from a subjective point, raise it over living being’s state of being and think that we’ve reached the peak of evolution. How the heck should we really know what we are, what we are thinking when our subconscious is so overwhelming? I rather favour the cyberpunkish conception that consciousness and identity is the result of an overflow of information that cannot be processed in time. In such a view, consciousness is not digital – existent or inexistent – but analog-dynamic: You can have more or less. On a sidenote, I don’t see any other motive in the general dichotomic conception of human beings on the one side and the rest of the nature of the other side than the “eternal” struggle of the human ego to be special. Dodge this!
So, we’re talking about concepts of beliefs that draw most of their ideas from spiritual and religious beliefs like Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism (Heck, most of those people don’t even know the source of both Buddhism and Hinduism!), Daoism, Shintoism, etc. General characteristics of these beliefs are that they exclude (monotheistic) deistic entities, stress on the human spirit and other polypolistic forces in nature. This renders the explanatory content rather flexible or differently put, ambiguous and vague.
I don’t see any logical inconsistency in those views. They’re perfectly fine in regard of their intrinsic premises, the argumentation and conclusions.
However, the bogus comes in when disciples (especially Western people) try to merge these ideas with science. By trying to fathom the limits of scientific explanatory power, in the present case, quantum physics, they try to build a bridge to spiritual concepts: Waves are no immaterial, thus spiritual. The logic is incredibly flawed. Why? Because science is built on materialistic premises! You cannot connect to line of argumentations that are built on different presumptions! Further, empiric science itself consciously excludes itself out of the whole wave and string theories because experiments have already proven that the very act of empirical analysis influences the object of investigation. (Personally, I also see that case in social sciences where descriptive and especially instrumental theories turn normative as their explanatory power influences the empirical referent more than the other way round. Jensen’s free cashflow theory might be a famous example. Personally, I’m studying on the case of corporate governance in Japan in general.) Thus, such disciples simply abuse the huge comprehensive and consistent body of findings, arguments and conclusions by science in order to prove their own ideas right – even though you cannot prove but only confirm or falsify theories of a humanistic approach!
But, why the heck would they want to merge those ideas with science anyway? There’s only one simple answer: They cannot belief them without having approved their own (socially imprinted) beliefs of Western science and norms! In other words, they’re still (unconsciously) trapped in their old beliefs – and haven’t even got aware of that! Thus, they do not only implicitly confirm their old Western beliefs but also betray their new-claimed spiritual ideas, deprive their credibility and create an illogical bastard of esotericism. That’s what esotericism is anyway.
Instead, those disciples should keep their hands of scientific findings and turning them into scientistic arguments, but instead should stick to their completely distinct premises. And if they want to proselytize – either because they need confirmation in their own beliefs by convincing others or because they want to make profit out of it – they shall argue the only valid way: with pragmatism. They shall foreclose – just as I did – that their ideas are also mere beliefs, not to be proven (scientifically), but to be believed, and argue that then– and only then – they would fulfill those aforementioned highest values even better than science does.

Eine These zur Problematik des wissenschaftlichen Geltungsanspruchs

Die grossartige Grundidee der Wissenschaften (gerade wegen ihrer historischen Ursprüngen in den Naturwissenschaften) ist es, dass im Gegensatz zu anderen Weltbildern, namentlich Religionen, keine konkreten Grundprinzipien für die Anschauungen, sprich die Theorien, existieren sollten, sondern nur Prinzipien, Grundsätze, in der Methodik, also, wie man die Welt anschaut.
Es ist auch diese Grundidee, auf der die empirischen Sozialwissenschaften und ihre deskripitven und instrumentellen Theorien fussen: Man behauptet nichts, was man nicht vorher gesehen hat.
Nun gilt es jedoch - wiederum aus historischer Sicht - zu befinden, dass die meisten heute gängigen empirischen Untersuchungen und Theorien von westlichen (also im westlichen Kulturraum sozialisierten) Wissenschaftlern im westlichen Raum untersucht und zu solcher Konsistenz entwickelt worden sind, dass sie im Zeitpunkt der Ausdehnung und Vermittlung in andere Kulturräume, speziell den asiatischen, wenig aufnahme- und veränderungsbereit war. In der Folge sollte sich die Wissenschaft nicht mehr an den Tatsachen, sondern umgekehrt die Tatsachen an den Theorien orientieren.
Hierbei entblösste sich die Empirie als stark in den Theorien befangen, als teilweise "self-fulfilling prophecy", indem sie den Untersuchungsgegenstand, asiatische Kulturen oder Wirtschaftssysteme, durch ihre eigene Untersuchung und mit dem übermächtigen ökonomischen, politischen und sozialen Apparat des Westens im Rücken selbst veränderte. Es ist dies, was Kritiker an westlichen Wissenschaften als "moderner Imperialismus" diffamieren.
An dieser Stelle soll nicht von einem (beabsichtigten) Imperialismus der Wissenschaften gesprochen werden, sondern von einem Paradigma: Die westlichen Theorien sind zu raffiniert geworden, als dass sie allzu andersartige Tatsachen integrieren könnten. Dies muss oder kann sie auch fast nicht mehr, da mit der Globalisierung schon in vielen Bereichen eine "Verwestlichung" - gerade auch im Zuge der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung - stattgefunden hat. Damit hat sich die Wissenschaft aber selbst unbeabsichtigt auch den Anspruch einer höheren Geltungskraft als andere Glaubensmuster, etwa auch die Religionen, abgesprochen.
Umgekehrt lässt sich diese Argumentation aufgrund des nachhaltigen Einflusses der westlichen Wissenschaften auf die verbliebenen andersartigen Referenzpunkte nicht beweisen. Sie erhebt aber auch keinen höheren Geltungsanspruch wie die Wissenschaft und will sich selbst immunisieren, sondern will als These verbleiben.

The arrogance of many ignorant disciples of science

Yesterday, at 6 am with an empty stomach and a headache torturing me to insanity, I tried to have an argument with a pretty interesting young girl over the internet. Basically, she tried to deny the right of existence for Christianity because of illogical, contradictious aspects within the own world of Christian beliefs. She brought up the example of Christmas and the probably wrong dating and concluded since the date's wrong anyway, people shouldn't celebrate it in the first place. Still to believe that the written and colloquial sources hold true, "to have faith" in it, would be naïve and irresponsible. Actually, that argumentation of hears bore two fallacious implications: The first is that concepts shall be (completely) abandoned once they're proven wrong and second that the science are superior to non-scientific concepts.
However, there are several questions to confront the girl's radical logical reasoning: What's the problem with the wrong date? What to be thought about the fact that the character of Jesus Christ is actually getting substituted by the one of Santa Claus - who's supposed to be worshipped on December 6? If we're supposed to abandon Christianity because of that inconsistency - what about New Year? On the one hand, Western New Year is based on the Gregorian calendar which again is orientated on Christian holidays. On the other hand, astronomy gives evidence that the revolution of the earth takes longer than 365 days - and an additional day for every fourth year doesn't level out the gradually increasing temporal distortion. I've given two arguments of which the first unveils a scientific concept orientated on religious concepts and the second that even our scientific concepts are imperfect.
The point is that every concept is deducted from a limited set of observations and eventually faces contradictious evidence. There's the claim of (social) sciences that it holds higher value because of its principles of falsification, that theories can't be proven right but only wrong. This means that scientific concepts don't risk becoming dogmatic. That's also what the girl was playing at when she tried to distinguish between religious and cultural theories. However, just as that distinction is based on a categorization in Western social sciences, scientific concepts only exercise the principle of falsification within the system of scientific methods: If you want to criticize time measurement, you have to make an examination according to scientific methods and measures. Therefore, any concept, any theory - may it be religious, cultural or scientific - is based on deliberately chosen assumptions, theorems, which to question is simply no use. Thus, you cannot prove a whole school of theories wrong, but just sub-theories in it. And it that case, the different Christian schools have certainly led various conflicts, arguments which resulted in changes. And as all those schools are Bu lt on the principles of Christianity, Christian principles obviously must seem completely logical to them.
Therefore, the first two conclusions of that little argument were that first, every theory is normative at its core - even science, and that second, there's no use in discussing between different schools of theories.
However, there was a third, most crucial mistake in the girl's argumentation: She herself forgot about the normative character of science and considered as "real" and "true". Only because of that, she dared to question the Christian belief with system-extrinsic arguments. [work in progress]

About the importance of hypotheses

“You only see what you know.” – That’s a very common saying and especially prominent in travel books: Whenever you set for a new adventure into a new country, your eyes will meet so many new things. Most of those things won’t catch your eye and stay unnoticed because you simply didn’t realize them.
However, have you ever thought what this saying implies to science? Doesn’t it question the basic idea of empirical studies? What are all those observations about if they will only reveal what we’ve already known? This is a very important and probably the most perspicuous approach to learn about the importance as well as the limits of a research-leading theory and hypotheses. Indeed, the saying suggests that even empirical studies can never deliver more evidence but what the theory which the observation is based on allowed. This rather disillusioning conclusion is the basic message of the theory of second order cybernetics. Further, it applies for every area of theoretical conception, even outside the field of sciences. However, science has come up with a rather imaginative, literally imaginative way to somewhat circumvent that basic restriction: assumption. You simply assume that there is something and then keep looking out for it. If you find it, your assumption gets confirmed, in natural sciences even proven. If there’s no sign of evidence, your assumption’s wrong, respectively unproven. That’s the basic idea of hypotheses and a very powerful concept, indeed. But again, even in this case, critics of second order cybernetics could demur that assumption’s based on imagination which again can only construct ideas out of experience. Just as dreams are distorted, mixed-up or reconstructed impressions and thoughts, imagination is always restricted to the set of experience we’ve made.