[keiferski]

That can all be true, but still miss the point of what a good spirituality ought to be. Yes, it may be a flaw of human religious systems to put humanity at the center of everything. But that’s only a flaw if we’re looking for an external explanation of reality. The fact is that from our perspective, we are at the center of our universe and psychologically, we are healthier if we have some coherent answers to tell ourselves about reality.

This is the real flaw with the positivist, scientific-dominant world view IMO. It obsesses over this external notion of objectivity while forgetting that human flourishing is (arguably) more important than merely accumulating information.

[strogonoff]

Do you think it is not possible to hold a view that goes beyond hard natural science and acknowledges human flourishing as important[0], but also does not place humanity at the center?

[0] By the way, note that it is the unstated meta-purpose of natural sciences—at its core, all research is driven by the goal of improving human existence. It is sometimes amusing, sometimes frustrating to see the people who are into physics and natural sciences evade acknowledging that it is a human-centric field, perhaps more so than philosophy (where different branches can be more or less concerned with it).

[keiferski]

I think there are actually two questions there:

1. Is it possible for a view of the world in which humans aren’t at the center, but still flourish? I think the answer is…possibly; but I am a little, but not extremely, skeptical. I think human psychology seems to benefit from thinking we’re at the center of things, or at least that we aren’t merely another random creature in space.

2. The more interesting question is whether this is even possible, given the apparent nature of existence. I’m not an expert on quantum physics, but from my layman understanding, the observer necessarily affects the observed. Which would seem to imply that the observer is necessarily at the center of their own vision of the universe, even on a physical level. Again, I’m not sure how that spells out in physics and I could be mistaken in my understanding here, but: it does seem like the vision of the universe as this independent thing which humans move around on is a cultural legacy and not how reality actually is constructed.

On that last note - not sure I necessarily agree there. I think the unstated meta-purpose of natural sciences is to gain more information, with the assumption that more information is necessarily good. Scientists seem more driven by a desire for knowledge than a desire for human flourishing, to me.

[strogonoff]

I will not give into the quantum stuff, as it seems to me a misuse of physical models intended for another purpose.

> Is it possible for a view of the world in which humans aren’t at the center, but still flourish.

There are non-dualistic philosophical approaches to modeling reality where mind is the first-class citizen (as opposed to being explained away as an illusion, like materialistic monism mostly does). I assume such aporoach does not need to make humans the center of the universe, but intuitively it seems it should automatically put more emphasis on well-being.