Ranting: Empathy

[I haven't done of this for a while, have I?]

I have just attended a lecture on the book ORYX AND CRAKE, and despite of previous discussions, I've found some new thing to obsess over that is also related to some old thing.

The old idea: contemplations on the similarities and differences between religion and science.

The new idea: of ethnics and philosophy as the underlying thread beneath BOTH.

Granted, when you first look at the second sentence, your initial reaction might be, well "duh!", but it is seldom put into words because, as far as definitions go, both ethnics and philosophy are vague definition on an already vague-ish meeting point between two already highly controversial topics. And they are controversial, aren't they? Religion and science. Great deal of problems, moral, philosophical, political, whatever, about both, yet at the same time they are polar opposites except for when they, as I've probably discussed with various people before, bent so far in opposite directions that they end up going in a circle and meeting at the same point.

Yeah, a plague on my run-on sentences. I feel your pain (proverbially speaking, at least).

So consider religion; consider science. Both have ethical issues because various sect(ors) of it may engage in practices that are socially found unacceptable or harmful or, as the general consensus goes, just plain wrong. But that's the thing, isn't it? What's right and what's wrong, and who makes the calls because there are so darn many humans (there are, just trust me on this) and people tend to differ on the matter of opinions? The very idea of right and wrong is what's behind both (religion and science). In essence, both are trying to find Truth. Why? Because, believe it or not, both are run by humans and the Quest For Truth is something humans do (yeah, masochists...it's a species thing I guess). One relies on facts more, other relies on faith. Occasionally there's a minor role switch and the facts need a little faith and the faith could use a little fact but, in essense, that's how it goes. One focuses on thoughts, other on feelings, and please tell me that the controversy of mind v.s. heart (or what is figuratively consulted as the heart) is not a new one because, well, quite a few people would disagree with you if you did.

I am going way off topic. Just so...you know...that I noticed.

Back to ethics then. The reason (theory) of why ethics and philosophy are the underlying threads is because philosophy is the investigation of knowledge and existence and ethics, and ethics is the philosophical study of moral values and right and wrong. As you can see, there's a noticeable overlap in definition, with gives you the ambiguous feeling that we're talking about one mass of things that we're trying to pin down and not gettin very far at it. Makes you want to pin it down though, right? Know what it's all about?
Here we have it again, the drive for Truth. Final, ultimate, beautiful (or so we think) Truth. Lovely motivation for a lot of things (both clever and stupid) that we do. May we get there some day.

Amd what's the chance of that?

This is horribly long and I've just realized I have no overall 'wrap-up' that I can tie back to what I started with. So sorry to subject you to this, essentially ranty and highly pointless...well...rant.