Science And Spirituality Should Be Friends

For most people, science deserves its reputation for being opposed to religion.

I'm not thinking of the rather noisy campaign by a handful of die-hard atheists to demote and ridicule faith.

I'm thinking instead of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution has proved victorious over the Book of Genesis and its story of God creating the universe in seven days. Since then, God has been found wanting when measured against facts and data. With no data to support the existence of God, there is also no reason for religion and science to close the gap between them.

Yet the gap has indeed been closing.

Read the whole story: CNN Belief Blog

Comments

[brokerallen]

09:47 PM on 05/07/2011

My concern is that many scientists believe they have a fundamental grasp of everything. They don't. They confine themselves to the empirical. The beginning of the universe is neither observable or measurable.

[FoxReincarnated]

04:13 PM on 04/09/2011

Sorry Deepak, your naieve sense of idealism cant go past the beginning stages. Especially if youre referring to christianity and science.

[brahmajnani]

01:11 AM on 03/24/2011

True... Spirituality is path travelling which human beings reached their true inner self... their soul atman... the spirit within! Realizing self... realizing god one finally reached stage of enlightenment (termed kaivalya jnana in Hinduism) and finally salvation (moksha)!

God Almighty could only be reached via path of spirituality... never religion... path of rituals! Path of spirituality was best travelled following teachings contained in sacred Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism... foremost of all sacred scriptures existing on mother earth! http://www.askvijay.com/Definition-of-Spirituality/

[Pete Mojica]

10:16 PM on 03/12/2011

For me you can't have the natural without the supernatural. We can't just have the science without God and we can't have God without the science, God created the science. I don't believe there is a conflict. The conflict is in the minds of the religious and the science minded who have a tunnel biased to their own view.

I think that science is a path to understand the physical workings of a spiritual God. I believe in both. I am not a scientist or consider myself religious. I see the value of both.

[LesCap]

07:42 PM on 03/12/2011

"For most people, science deserves its reputation for being opposed to religion."

For most people, it is religion that has been opposing science.

You sound very much like the "creationist" that seeks credibility by brow-beating someone in the world of science into a debate. Rather than admitting one is an apple and the other an orange, you still argue that both are just misunderstood ‘orapps’, sharing the same skin and deserving the same respect, simply picked from adjoining trees.

[peter ricci]

01:46 AM on 03/12/2011

Gap closing? Here it is - as science understands more, it takes more and more power away from religion - science doesn't move - as it is always about evidence and reason - so religion has had to give up everything - except individual spirituality - but the institutional power is gone now in western democracies.

So again now they cling to the things we do not know - the creation/beginning of everything and the creation/beginning of life. This list is getting awfully small.

[Zilo]

07:01 PM on 03/11/2011

I still think this man is a con artist. He's just really good at it and has gone the distance whereas a lot of them slip up early on.

I am very tired of religious people trying to take some of science's credibility to make up for their lack of any. The two just don't mix.

[DoesNotComputer]

09:50 PM on 03/10/2011

Deepak knows he's a vacuous fraud. You'd be a fraud, too, if you made this much money off it.

[ninetailedfox]

09:31 PM on 03/10/2011

Im not a seer, and its doesnt take a rocket scientist for this: Christianity overruns the planet. Guess who has to clean up the mess? Not other christians.

If you guessed Atheists, you are smart!

[DoesNotComputer]

09:52 PM on 03/10/2011

Islam actually outnumbers Christianity, at the moment, but that's sort of like there being more Easter Bunny fans than Santa Claus fans.

[a okafor007]

07:55 PM on 03/10/2011

They SHOULD be at odds because they are incompatible. Science relies on observing the NATURAL world and Religion relies on "observing" the SUPERNATURAL.

[researcher]

05:40 PM on 03/10/2011

"As to religions, they are free to find answers but beware, that if they go with the God hypothesis­­, the next question would be "Who created God?", and "Why was God created?"

Anyone that asks these two questions has revealed their ignorance about the infinite. The rational and logic mind is unable to comprehend that the infinite cannot be defined for to define the infinite is to limit the infinite.

So they resort to materialism and refuse to look beyond their logic and reasoning materialistic paradigms. But hey all are needed nothing is wasted, contrary to the popular beliefs of the materialists and the religious.

The materialists confuse cause and effect and the religious have made a god as king entity in their human image and the two shall not find common ground in the near future. Religious and materialistic paradigms are that powerful and hidden from their view.

But I give the materialists credit they have attained and discovered logic and reasoning abilities; the religious have not arrived at the stage of their evolution of consciousness process. Yet.

[AverageJosef]

08:37 PM on 03/10/2011

Excellent points. Actually, even in Math the concept of set theory and all that about infinities is rather bizarre (for us non-mathematicians). That there could be infinities in infinities is breathtaking. One of the most complex things is that group-theory thing.

I think that the naysayer's about religious worth are really deluding themselves in some ways. Alas, literal religious people are deluding themselves in all-ways. :)

[Jocto]

11:17 PM on 03/10/2011

-
First; the rational among us are not "Religious"!

Nor, do we dwell on, or ask such silly questions as you pose!

And "the rational and logical mind" 'knows' that "INFINITY REFUTES DIVINITY"!

"INFINITY" 'IS' a 'man-made' 'word' used to "DEFINE" 'CEASLESSNESS'

having--- no beginning and no end!

And, we 'do' know' that "conscioness" is an 'innate' quality of human beings!
-
a BIT more "RESEARCH" might improve your ideas about the World we live in!
-
Cheers, J. A.

[researcher]

01:11 PM on 03/11/2011

consciousness is within all that is, not just human beings.

if you can arrive at such a place in your life then the world will take on a whole new meaning to you.

then you will find meaning and purpose to your life. ok lives :-)

to suggest that consciousness is just an innate quality of human beings is materialism defined. good defintion of materialism; I will give you that.

"And, we 'do' know' "

no greater ignorance than the statement "and we do know". this is called positive ignorance, thinking we know when we do not know. study deeply the difference between theory and a knowing beyond knowing and a whole new world will evolve in your consciousness. or not. :-)

[A-Superstitionist]

03:15 PM on 03/10/2011

Mark Twain said that "the first religion started when the first con man met the first fool".

To make this more current and political correct: "superstitions start when con persons meet gullible fools".

There are lots of con people out there and most people on this planet seem very gullible (otherwise we would not have over 80% hang onto religious superstitions.

This is a fertile environment for the chopra's of this world to get wealthy conning just a small percentage of the gullible population.

[DoesNotComputer]

09:52 PM on 03/10/2011

"Faith is believing what you know ain't true." - Mark Twain

[A-Superstitionist]

11:12 PM on 03/10/2011

The tragedy is that unlike scientists who are trained to doubt everything until there is conclusive evidence and then still keep looking for more data, people of faith are more than 100% certain that their faith represents truth without evidence at all and without even being interested in searching for evidence.

Go figure.

[HCLiberal]

01:04 PM on 03/10/2011

That there is a conflict between religion and science is a red herring.

Science is about knowing how nature works, and in that no other epistemolo­gy comes even close to what has been achieved by the scientific method.

Take the example of knowing how universe started. Science is taking us closer to knowing that- whether or not the Big Bang theory eventually survives. No other epistemolo­gy has done or is doing that.

As to "why universe started", science doesn't deal with that question, because "why" implies a "purpose" (and purpose implies the purpose of some entity). That there might be a purpose is a hypothesis that cannot be investigat­ed by the scientific method/log­ic. Science doesn't deal with hypotheses that cannot be tested for validity.

As to religions, they are free to find answers but beware, that if they go with the God hypothesis­, the next question would be "Who created God?", and "Why was God created?

As to "Science and Spirituality Should be Friends" - I don't know about that, because science has nothing to gain from such a friendship.
.

[persuter]

05:00 PM on 03/10/2011

"Take the example of knowing how universe started. Science is taking us closer to knowing that- whether or not the Big Bang theory eventually survives. No other epistemolo­­gy has done or is doing that."

Just to note - this is a statement of faith. If the Big Bang theory is not correct, then IS science taking us closer to knowing that? You can study something for ten thousand years - if you're still wrong at the end of it, you haven't gotten any closer, have you? If God in fact created the Universe to LOOK twenty billion years old, then in fact science is taking us away from the truth.

The belief that science is taking us closer to the truth is fundamentally an expression of faith in the idea that reality is correctly described by Occam's Razor as applied to empirical evidence, as opposed to, say, the Bible. So far reality SEEMS to be described well by that, but it's certainly far from proven.

Certainly no other epistemology has produced the kind of healers that science has - that's for sure.

[AverageJosef]

08:42 PM on 03/10/2011

I don't think interested people are really asking "why?". It's more of how or what started it. Why something and not nothing. And, even in religion (if you widen the scope) does deal with this. Thus, in one of the vedic hymns it says, even the wise know this, or maybe they do not. In other words, it is a mystery. A good mystery. That is the difference between religion and Religion. One accepts the unknowability, the other will accept the false.

[Cole 33]

11:52 AM on 03/10/2011

There is also no reason for religion and science to close the gap between them.

? Science doesn't care at all about whether religion wants to get in bed with it. Religion is like the really crazy scary ex who used to do and say all sorts of crazy things. Science doesn't want to be in a relationship with religion anymore, it's doing just fine on it's own.

So Religion, stop showing up to the same parties Science is going to, you didn't even know about the party until Science posted it on it's FB page, and Religion stop taking things off Sciences facebook page! You've got your own page on MYSPACE, and fewer and fewer people are using Myspace anyway.

Religion, please stop drunk texting Science, it doesn't care about you anymore, it doesn't need you anymore Science does not want to be your boyfriend, so stop calling and texting Science asking to be friends, Science is not your friend, Science wishes you no harm, but is not concerned with what you are doing, and is moving on without you.

[Blow In]

07:08 AM on 03/10/2011

Deepak Chopra published the book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind in 1993. He looks a lot older than he did then. Like about 18 years older.

[AverageJosef]

08:44 PM on 03/10/2011

LOL! If you ask people like that about it, they will come up with some excuse. Fake and Fakir are they related concepts?

[phnxrth]

11:37 AM on 03/11/2011

Ah but the brilliant mind that moveth most swift and maketh the huge money needs only its own sheen. :)